The Brutal Slavery Of Over 12million Africans By Arab Islamic Merchants – A Bitter History
December 27, 2020 17059
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The harrowing experiences of the African-man during the era
of slavery still remains an open book in our history as people. A lot has been
accounted for. But many more tales remain untold or forgotten.
The Transatlantic slave trade seems to have the most popular of
accounts. And that might be because the slavers, historians, scholars, and the
slaves themselves spoke English and understood the English language. And that made
it easier for multiple narratives to be found.
Today you easily hear the horrific accounts of European and
American slavery from the mouths of a common African or African-America. But
the reverse is the case for the Arab slave trade and era. Very little or
nothing is known by the majority of English and French-speaking Africans.
The Arab slave trade involved some of the most atrocious and
dreadful atrocities committed against Africans. It is said that it was more
dehumanizing and Brutal.
The Arab slave trade
began in the 7th century, around 633. This was the year after the death of
Prophet Muhammad. Then the armies of Islam conquered a large portion of what
is today Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and the North African
coast. The Qur'an (Koran) was codified in 650, and Muslims took it as the
direct words of God (Allah). The Koran forbade the taking of slaves from fellow
Muslims, but did not forbid them from taking non-believers and those who opposed their
religion.
The practice of slavery in Africa, as a business venture,
started in Darfur in the
year 652. There was a peace agreement between the Arab invaders and the
Sudanese leader. So, to meet up with his own end of the treaty, the leader
provided the invaders several hundreds of African slaves every year. This
supply of slaves continued for centuries. The slaves were sent along the Red
Sea route up until the 18th century, which was the peak of the Arab slave trade.
The historian Paul Lovejoy in his accounts,
estimates that about 9.85 million Africans were shipped out as slaves to
Arabia, and in small numbers, to the Indian subcontinent. He broke the figure
down as follows:
An average of 5,000 Africans was shipped out by the Arabs,
between AD 650 and 1600. And this brings the number to a rough total of 7.25
million Africans. Then another 1.4 million Africans were shipped out between
1600 and 1800. The 19th century defined the peak of the Arabian slave trade,
where 12,000 Africans were shipped out every year. The 19th century alone
accounted for 1.2 million slaves shipped to Arabia.
The Arabic slave trade with an estimate of 9.85 million
African slaves falls closely behind the Atlantic slave trade with nearly 12
million Africans shipped out. Although some African historians argue that 12
million is too low and conservative. They suggest that over 50 million Africans
were shipped out during the Atlantic trade alone.
We at Liberty writers believe that there can never be an accurate
account of these numbers. What matters here is telling the stories and
teaching our people their route throughout human existence.
Lovejoy wrote that another 4.1 million Africans were shipped across the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf and India, by Arab slavers.
The Omani
Arab rulers of Zanzibar, throughout the 19th century, shipped hundreds of
thousands of African slaves to labor on clove plantations on the Island. After
the abolishment of the European and American slavery, this slavery at Zanzibar
was so horrific that Europe and American authorities started to highlight the
wickedness of the Arab slavers, who continued their enslavement of Africans
farther into the first decade of the 20th century. It has been reported that
even till today, Arab slavers are still buying and selling slaves in Sudan and
Mauritania. This is a slap to humanity and African leaders.
The African slaves were said to have suffered terrific
horrors in the hands of the Arabs. The men were castrated and the women were
converted to sex slaves. Even when the women got pregnant for their slave
masters and give birth, their children were killed. This is to snuff out any
chance of a semblance of the African in their community. What vile wickedness?
A British
missionary and explorer named David Livingstone was upset by the manner
the Arabs treated the African slaves, that he wrote back home in 1870 and had
this to say:
"In less that i take to talk about it, these
unfortunate creatures - 84 of them, wended their way into the village where we
were. Some of them, the eldest, were women from 20 to 22 years of age, and
there were youths from 18 to 19, but the large majority was made up of boys and
girls from 7 years to 14 or 15 years of age.
"A more terrible
scene that these men, women, and children, I do not think I ever came across. To
say that they were emaciated would not give you an idea of what human beings
can undergo under certain circumstances. "Each of them had his neck in a
large forked stick, weighing from 30 to 40 pounds, and five or six feet long,
cut with a fork at the end of it where the branches of a tree spread out.
"The women were tethered with bark thongs, which are, of all things, the most
cruel to be tied with. Of course, they are soft and supple when first striped
off the trees, but a few hours in the sun make them about as hard as iron round
packing cases. The little children were fastened by thongs to their mothers.
"As we passed
along the path which these slaves had travelled, I was shown a spot in the
bushes where a poor woman the day before, unable to keep on the march, and
likely to hinder it, was cut down by the axe of one of the slave drivers.
"We went on further and were shown a place where a child lay. It had been
recently born, and its mother was unable to carry it from debility and exhaustion;
so, the slave trader had taken this little infant by its feet and dashed its
brains out against one of the trees and thrown it in there."
This was the kind of brutality that Africans experienced at
the hands of the Arabs. It seemed like the entire world was pitched against
Africans. Each man taking his pound of flesh from a race that did them no harm.
The painful of them all was the trek across the Sahara
Desert, in leg and neck chains. One can imagine the distance the slaves would
have to travel on foot, under the devilish weather conditions of the Sahara,
with little or no water for hours/days.
Duncan Clarke said that "the hardships of these long marches across the desert were considerable, and many later travelers reported that the routes were lined with the parched skeletons of those who succumbed to exhaustion and thirst along the way."