Arab Slave Trade - Scope of The Trade

Scope of The Trade

Historians estimate that between 10 and 18 million Africans were enslaved by Arab slave traders and taken across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 650 and 1900. The term Arab when used in historical documents often represented a cultural term rather than a "racial" term, and many of the "Arab" slave traders such as Tippu Tip and others were indistinguishable from the "Africans" whom they enslaved and sold. Due to the nature of the Arab slave trade it is also impossible to be precise about actual numbers. Additionally, approximately 11 -15 million African captives were taken to the Americas. Many died in the capture, on the ships, and in the dungeons in Africa. Likewise, some estimate that more than 2 million Africans died on the ship before reaching the destinations in the Arab world.

To a smaller degree, Arabs also enslaved Europeans. According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary corsairs, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries. These slaves were captured mainly from seaside villages from Italy, Spain, Portugal and also from more distant places like France or England, the Netherlands, Ireland and even Iceland. The impact of these attacks was devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. Pirate raids discouraged settlement along the coast until the 19th century.

Periodic Arab raiding expeditions were sent from Islamic Iberia to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.

The Ottoman wars in Europe and Tatar raids brought large numbers of European Christian slaves into the Muslim world too.

The 'Oriental' or 'Arab' slave trade is sometimes called the 'Islamic' slave trade, but a religious imperative was not the driver of the slavery, Patrick Manning, a professor of World History, states. However, if a non-Muslim population refuses to adopt Islam or pay the jizya protection/subjugation tax, that population is considered to be at war with the Muslim "ummah" (nation) and therefore it becomes legal under Islamic law to take slaves from that non-Muslim population. Usage of the terms "Islamic trade" or "Islamic world" has been disputed by some Muslims as it treats Africa as outside of Islam, or a negligible portion of the Islamic world. Propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.

From a Western point of view, the subject merges with the Oriental slave trade, which followed two main routes in the Middle Ages:

• Overland routes across the Maghreb and Mashriq deserts (Trans-Saharan route)
• Sea routes to the east of Africa through the Red Sea and Indian Ocean (Oriental route)

The Arab slave trade originated before Islam and lasted more than a millennium. Arab traders brought Africans across the Indian Ocean from present-day Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and elsewhere in East Africa to present-day Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Somalia, Turkey and other parts of the Middle East and South Asia (mainly Pakistan and India). Unlike the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the New World, Arabs supplied African slaves to the Muslim world, which at its peak stretched over three continents from the Atlantic (Morocco, Spain) to India and eastern China.