The Muslim Arab slave trade in Africa dwarfed the Atlantic slave trade, by Hugh Fitzgerald. Hardly anyone in the West is aware that the Muslim Arab slave trade in Africa was far more widespread and damaging to black Africa, in time and space and number of victims, than the transatlantic slave trade — which receives almost all of the world’s attention because the PC use it for their political purposes today.
Over 28 Million Africans have been enslaved in the Muslim world during the past 14 centuries. …
The Arab trade in African slaves began much earlier than the Atlantic trade – the 7th rather than the 15th century — and it also lasted longer. …
Abolition came from the West, the Muslims kept it going:
There were no Arab abolitionists, no Muslim William Wilberforces. Western pressure ended Arab slavery. It was the Royal Navy that patrolled the coasts of Arabia and intercepted dhows carrying slaves. Slavery continued to exist, however, in several Muslim Arab countries well into the 20th century. …
It was only in 1962 that slavery was officially abolished in Saudi Arabia and Yemen – and only under terrific Western pressure. There are those who claim that there are still black Africans held in “slave-like conditions,” even if slavery no longer exists officially, in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and some of the sheikdoms of the Gulf. In the Sudan, northern Arabs continued to enslave southern blacks especially during the Second Sudanese Civil War, at least until 2005, with as many as 200,000 black Africans taken into slavery. …
68 million versus 12.5 million:
The Arab slave trade was particularly gruesome, for much of it involved castrating black boys in the bush, with the most primitive of implements, in order to supply eunuchs for the Muslim harems. Many of the boys died during the surgery; many others died in the days afterwards from infections, or during the long trek by land or sea to the Islamic slave markets.
The historian Jan Hogedoorn, in his study of what he called The Hideous Trade, estimated the mortality rate for those castrated slaves as high as 80-90%, meaning only 10-20% of those African boys originally seized arrived alive at the slave markets. While the consensus estimate of 28 million black Africans who made it to the Islamic slave markets at first sounds like a lot, over 1300 years (650-1950 A.D.) this amounts to an average of a little more than 20,000 black slaves brought annually from Central and East Africa all the way to those slave markets, which is perfectly plausible. …
Assuming, then, the lowest mortality rates for both the castrated boys (80%), and the women and children (20%), we arrive at a figure of 68 million Africans originally seized by Arab slavers. …
Now compare this with the Atlantic Slave Trade. Between 1525 and 1866, that is the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. Of those, 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage, to disembark in South America, the Caribbean, and North America. In the Atlantic Slave Trade, no boys were castrated – the slaves were intended for agricultural use – and the mortality rate, for the Middle Passage (the trip across the Atlantic) was a mere 10-15%. Nor did slaves in the Atlantic slave trade have to suffer a long trek across the Sahara, or from Central Africa to the Indian Ocean, as did those in the Arab slave trade.
This means that the Muslim Arab slave trade involved almost seven times as many Africans — 68 million instead of 12.5 million — as did the Atlantic Slave Trade. …
Sex versus agriculture:
The Arab slave trade was all about sex, the Atlantic Slave Trade all about agriculture. Men made up 2/3 of those taken by the European slavers, for use as agricultural labor. Women and children made up 2/3 of those taken by the Arab slavers, for use as concubines, with the remaining 1/3 being the castrated boys who, as eunuchs, guarded the harems. …
The famous Swiss explorer Johann Burkhardt, who travelled in Nubia and Egypt, reported in 1814 about what he saw: “I frequently witnessed scenes of the most shameless indecency, which the traders, who were the principal actors, only laughed at. I may venture to state, that very few female slaves who have passed their tenth year, reach Egypt or Arabia in a state of virginity.” In other words, girls as young as ten were routinely raped by the Arab slavers.
Capitalism enures slaves were better cared for, because they were someone’s property. When they were property of the state, as in Central and South America, they were often worked to death because no one cared. Only 7% of the transatlantic salves went to North America, yet their descendants today far outnumber those of the 93% who went to Central and South America.
The article cheekily suggests that Keith Ellison should run a publicity campaign and ask the Arabs for tens of billions in reparations He would be the perfect middleman for this transaction, between Muslim Arabs and black Africans, for he is welcome in both camps. He could interest 60 Minutes in doing a segment on “The Other Slave Trade.” Try to turn it into a PC cause.
Fat chance, because the only use of slavery for the PC crowd is to guilt today’s whites into giving them free stuff.
hat-tip Scott of the Pacific
