Thread by @OzorNdiOzor

The Black slaves of Arabia and the Levant.

The Arab slave trade was the longest yet least discussed of the two major slave trades.

Existed For over 700 years in Africa, before the inception of European Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

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The practice of slavery in the middle east is not centuries(100s of yrs) old but rather thousands(AD) of years old. The Arab slave trade was the longest yet least discussed of the two major slave trades. The Arab slave trade of Blacks in Southeast Africa predates(existed before)

the European transatlantic slave trade by 700 years. Arab slave trade continued in one form or another up until the 1960s, perhaps till today. Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized as recently as August 2007.

Most accounts suggest that the bulk of the african slaves caught

or bought by Arab slavers died enroute to Arabia. By “most” What’s meant is over than 50%.

Some historians estimate that between A.D. 650 and 1900, 10 million to 20 million people were enslaved by Arab slave traders. Others believe over 20 million enslaved Africans alone had

been delivered through the trans-Saharan route alone to the Islamic world. Dr. John Alembellah Azumah estimates in his 2001 book “The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa” that over 80 million more Black people died over that route.

Unlike the Western Trans Atlantic slave trade where

African slaves were allowed to mate and produce family that in turn grow as slave so that the white men wont bother coming back to Africa for more slave, in the case of Arabia slaves from Africa, The slaves were never allowed to mate and procreate. The Arab slave trade typically

dealt in the sale of castrated male slaves. Black boys between the age of 8 and 12 had their scrotums and penises completely amputated to prevent them from reproducing, so that they could not form a large Black population in the Arab countries. Children were especially at risk,

and the Islamic slave market demand for children was much greater than the American one. About six of every 10 boys bled to death during the procedure, according to some sources, but the high price brought by eunuchs on the market made the practice profitable.

Many believe the treatment of slaves, african or otherwise, in Arabia contributed to the high mortality rate which lead to the subsiquent high demand for more slaves.

Africans were seen as less than human and perhaps still are in parts of Arabia. The term for a black person is

apparently ab’d or abid in Arabic which means slave. Such inferences leave little doubt of the sort esteme black africans were held in Arabic society and maybe even today.

Meanwhile In the beginning there was some level of mutual respect between the Blacks and the more

lighter-skinned Arabs. However, as Islam, sense of conqueror and the demand for enslaved Blacks grew, so did racism toward Africans.

As casual association with Black skin and slave began to be established, racist attitudes towards Blacks began to manifest in Arabic language and

literature. The word for slave —abid — became a colloquialism for African. Other words, such as haratin, express social inferiority of Africans.

The Islamic injunctions against the enslavement of Muslims led to the massive importation of slaves from the outside. African Muslims

were however never captured as slaves due to the Islamic legal views. it was not in the interest for Arab slavers to convert enslaved Africans to the religion. Since converting enslaved Africans to Islam would grant them more rights and reduce the potential reservoir of people

to enslave. Arab Enslavers Avoided Teaching Islam to Blacks to Justify Enslaving Them.

In theory, slavery in Islamic law does not have a racial or color basis. Arabs drew slaves from all racial groups. During the eighth and ninth centuries of the Fatimid Caliphate, most of the

slaves were Europeans (called Saqaliba), captured along European coasts and during wars. Some men were castrated to be eunuchs in domestic service, and the practice of neutering male slaves was not limited to only Black males. “The calipha in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th

Century had 7,000 black eunuchs and 4,000 white eunuchs in his palace,” writes author Ronald Segal in his 2002 book “Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora.”

Slave merchants would double the price of female slaves, this was because the Arab merchants were more focused on

concubinage capturing women & girls who were turned into sex slaves.

Unlike the Arabs with greater preference for women, European merchants were interested in strongly built young men as labourers in their farms.