Trans-Saharan slave trade

Part of a series on
Slavery
show Contemporary Child labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century jihadism Sexual slavery Wage slavery
show Historical Antiquity Ancient Rome Ancient Greece Ancillae Babylonia Slavery in the Muslim world Ottoman Empire Barbary slave trade Barbary pirates The Barbary Coast Turkish Abductions Sexual slavery in Islam Harem Ma malakat aymanukum Circassian beauties Ottoman Imperial Harem Cariye Jarya Odalisque Qiyan Umm walad Slavery in medieval Europe Byzantine Empire Kholop Serfs History In Russia Emancipation Thrall Atlantic slave trade Bristol Brazil Database Dutch Middle Passage Nantes New France Panyarring Spanish Empire Slave Coast Thirteen colonies Topics and practice Conscription Ghilman Mamluk Devshirme Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States Treatment House slaves Saqaliba Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers White slavery Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
show By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Trans-Saharan slave trade Indian Ocean slave trade Angola Chad Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Somalia South Africa Sudan Seychelles North and South America Americas indigenous U.S. Natives Aztec Brazil Lei Áurea Canada Caribbean Barbados Code Noir Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek Latin America (Encomienda) Puerto Rico Trinidad United States Field slaves female maps partus prison labor Slave codes Treatment interregional Human trafficking Virgin Islands East, Southeast, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai penal system India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women Korea Kwalliso Yankee princess Vietnam Australia and Oceania Blackbirding Human trafficking in Australia Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe Britain Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain Sweden North Africa and West Asia Iran Libya Human trafficking in the Middle East Yemen
show Religion Slavery and religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam 21st century Mukataba Ma malakat aymanukum Judaism Baháʼí Faith
show Opposition and resistance 1926 Slavery Convention Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Abolitionists Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom  [fa]
show Related Common law Indentured servitude Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of enslaved people owners Marriage of enslaved people (United States) Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project breeding court cases Washington Jefferson Adams Lincoln 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau Iron bit Emancipation Day
v t

During the Trans-Saharan slave trade, slaves from West Africa were transported across the Sahara desert to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle eastern civilizations. It was part of the Trans-Saharan trade.^[1][2]

Early trans-Saharan slave trade[]

The Garamantes relied heavily on slave labor from sub-Saharan Africa.^[3] They used slaves in their own communities to construct and maintain underground irrigation systems known to Berbers as foggara.^[4] Ancient Greek historian Herodotus recorded in the 5th century BC that the Garemantes enslaved cave-dwelling Ethiopians, known as Troglodytae, chasing them with chariots.^[5]

In the early Roman Empire, the city of Lepcis established a slave market to buy and sell slaves from the African interior.^[6] The empire imposed customs tax on the trade of slaves.^[6] In 5th century AD, Roman Carthage was trading in black slaves brought across the Sahara.^[7] Black slaves seem to have been valued as household slaves for their exotic appearance.^[7] Some historians argue that the scale of slave trade in this period may have been higher than medieval times due to the high demand for slaves in the Roman Empire.^[7]

Prisoners of war were a regular occurrence in the ancient Nile Valley and Africa. During times of conquest and after winning battles, the ancient Nubians were taken as slaves by the ancient Egyptians .^[8] In turn, the ancient Egyptians took slaves after winning battles with the Libyans, Canaanites, and Nubians.^[9]

Trans-Saharan slave trade in the Middle Ages[]

The main slave routes in medieval Africa

The trans-Saharan slave trade, established in Antiquity,^[10] continued during the Middle Ages. Following its 8th-century conquest of North Africa, Arabs, Berbers and other ethnic groups ventured into Sub-Saharan Africa first along the Nile Valley towards Nubia, and also across the Sahara towards West Africa. They were interested in the trans-Saharan trade, especially in slaves.

The slaves brought from across the Sahara were mainly used by wealthy families as domestic servants,^[11] and concubines.^[12] Some served in the military forces of Egypt and Morocco.^[12][13] In 641 during the Baqt, a treaty between the Nubian Christian state of Makuria and the new Muslim rulers of Egypt, the Nubians agreed to give Muslim traders more privileges of trade in addition to a share in their slave trading.^[14] The Bornu Empire in the eastern part of Niger was also an active part of the trans-Saharan slave trade for hundreds of years.

19th-century engraving depicting a caravan transporting black African slaves across the Sahara.

In 1416, al-Maqrizi told how pilgrims coming from Takrur (near the Senegal River) brought 1,700 slaves with them to Mecca. In North Africa, the main slave markets were in Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli and Cairo. Sales were held in public places or in souks. After Europeans had settled in the Gulf of Guinea, the trans-Saharan slave trade became less important.^{[citation needed]}

Ibn Battuta who visited the ancient African kingdom of Mali in the mid-14th century recounts that the local inhabitants vie with each other in the number of slaves and servants they have, and was himself given a slave boy as a "hospitality gift."^[15]

Arabs were sometimes made into slaves in the trans-Saharan slave trade.^[16][17] Sometimes castration was done on Arab slaves. In Mecca, Arab women were sold as slaves according to Ibn Butlan, and certain rulers in West Africa had slave girls of Arab origin.^[18][19] According to al-Maqrizi, slave girls with lighter skin were sold to West Africans on hajj.^[20][21][22] Ibn Battuta met an Arab slave girl near Timbuktu in Mali in 1353. Battuta wrote that the slave girl was fluent in Arabic, from Damascus, and her master's name was Farbá Sulaymán.^[23][24][25] Besides his Damascus slave girl and a secretary fluent in Arabic, Arabic was also understood by Farbá himself.^[26] The West African states also imported highly trained slave soldiers.^[27]

A slave market in Cairo. Drawing by David Roberts, circa 1848.

Late trans-Saharan slave trade[]

In Central Africa during the 16th and 17th centuries, slave traders began to raid the region as part of the expansion of the Saharan and Nile River slave routes. Their captives were enslaved and shipped to the Mediterranean coast, Europe, Arabia, the Western Hemisphere, or to the slave ports and factories along the West and North Africa coasts or South along the Ubanqui and Congo rivers.^[28][29]

The Tuareg and others who are indigenous to Libya facilitated, taxed and partly organized the trade from the south along the trans-Saharan trade routes. In the 1830s – a period when slave trade flourished – Ghadames was handling 2,500 slaves a year.^[30] Even though the slave trade was officially abolished in Tripoli in 1853, in practice it continued until the 1890s.^[31]

The British Consul in Benghazi wrote in 1875 that the slave trade had reached an enormous scale and that the slaves who were sold in Alexandria and Constantinople had quadrupled in price. This trade, he wrote, was encouraged by the local government.^[31] writes in an article published in 1911 that: "...it has been said that slave traffic is still going on on the Benghazi-Wadai route, but it is difficult to test the truth of such an assertion as, in any case, the traffic is carried on secretly".^[32] At Kufra, the Egyptian traveller Ahmed Hassanein Bey found out in 1916 that he could buy a girl slave for five pounds sterling while in 1923 he found that the price had risen to 30 to 40 pounds sterling.^[33] Another traveler, the Danish convert to Islam Knud Holmboe, crossed the Italian Libyan desert in 1930, and was told that slavery is still practiced in Kufra and that he could buy a slave girl for 30 pounds sterling at the Thursday slave market.^[33] According to James Richardson's testimony, when he visited Ghadames, most slaves were from Bornu.^[34] According to Raëd Bader, based on estimates of the Trans-Saharan trade, between 1700 and 1880 Tunisia received 100,000 black slaves, compared to only 65,000 entering Algeria, 400,000 in Libya, 515,000 in Morocco and 800,000 in Egypt.^[35]

The Slave Market of Marrakesh as depicted on the cover of Le Petit Parisien of June 2, 1907.^[36]

Abolition[]

After the establishment of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 to fight slave trading in the Mediterranean, Ahmad I ibn Mustafa, Bey of Tunis, agreed to outlaw exporting, importing, and selling slaves in 1842, and he made slavery illegal in 1846.^[37] In 1848, France outlawed slavery in Algeria.^[37] Slavery was not abolished in Mauritania until 1981.^[37]

Slavery in the post-Gaddafi Libya[]

Since the United Nations-backed and NATO-led overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011, Libya has been plagued by disorder and migrants with little cash and no papers have become vulnerable. Libya is a major exit point for African migrants heading to Europe. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) published a report in April 2017 showing that many of the migrants from West-Africa heading to Europe are sold as slaves after being detained by people smugglers or militia groups. African countries south of Libya were targeted for slave trading and transferred to Libyan slave markets instead. According to the victims, the price is higher for migrants with skills like painting and tiling.^[38][39] Slaves are often ransomed to their families and in the meantime until ransom can be tortured, forced to work, sometimes to death and eventually executed or left to starve if they can't pay for too long. Women are often raped and used as sex slaves and sold to brothels and private Libyan clients.^{[38][39][40][41]} Many child migrants also suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.^[42][43]

After receiving unverified CNN video of a November 2017 slave auction in Libya, a human trafficker told Al-Jazeera (a Qatari TV station with interests in Libya) that hundreds of migrants are bought and sold across the country every week.^[44] Migrants who have gone through Libyan detention centres have shown signs of many human rights abuses such as severe abuse, including electric shocks, burns, lashes and even skinning, stated the director of health services on the Italian island of Lampedusa to Euronews.^[45]

A Libyan group known as the Asma Boys have antagonized migrants from other parts of Africa from at least as early as 2000, destroying their property.^[46] Nigerian migrants in January 2018 gave accounts of abuses in detention centres, including being leased or sold as slaves.^[47] Videos of Sudanese migrants being burnt and whipped for ransom, were released later on by their families on social media.^[48] In June 2018, the United Nations applied sanctions against four Libyans (including a Coast Guard commander) and two Eritreans for their criminal leadership of slave trade networks.^[49]

Routes[]

According to professor Ibrahima Baba Kaké there were four main slavery routes to north Africa, from east to west of Africa, from the Maghreb to the Sudan, from Tripolitania to central Sudan and from Egypt to the Middle East.^[50] Caravan trails, set up in the 9th century, went past the oasis of the Sahara; travel was difficult and uncomfortable for reasons of climate and distance. Since Roman times, long convoys had transported slaves as well as all sorts of products to be used for barter.

Towns and ports involved[]

See also[]

• Trans-Sahara Highway
• Trans-Saharan trade
• Slavery in ancient Egypt
• Slavery in ancient Rome
• Slavery in Africa
• Slavery in Libya
• Human trafficking in Chad
• Slavery in Mali
• Slavery in Mauritania
• Slavery in Niger
• Slavery in Nigeria

References[]

Further reading[]

• The Garamantes and Trans-Saharan Enterprise in Classical Times