The origin of slavery in Africa was created by Arabs. Many parts of Africa were forced to subjugate to Islam, and with Islam the permission to trade in slaves was fully legal. The term slave has its origins in the word slav. The slavs, who inhabited a large part of Eastern Europe, were taken as slaves by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD. To put this in perspective nearly 50% of African states ruled or traded in slavery under the Muslim slave trade were enslaved. And of those over 140+ million Africans were shipped to the Arab continent. This number does not include the slaves within Africa, kept enslaved not only by Muslim rulers but by African Kings. Compare this to the Americas where 15 million slaves were shipped. Or slaves of white Europeans origin totaled an estimated 2-4 million Europeans. Al-Jahiz [Iraq] also stated in his Kitab al-Bukhala ("Avarice and the Avaricious") that: "We know that the Zanj (blacks) are the least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind, and the least capable of understanding the consequences of their actions." This sentiment was echoed in the following passage from Kitab al-Bad' wah-tarikh (vol.4) by the medieval Arab writer Al-Muqaddasi: "As for the Zanj, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence." Al-Dimashqi (Ibn al-Nafis), the Arab polymath, also described the inhabitants of Sudan (Not Nubia) and the Zanj coast, among others, as being of "dim" intelligence and that: " ...the moral characteristics found in their mentality are close to the instinctive characteristics found naturally in animals." Egyptian historian Al-Abshibi (1388--1446) wrote: "It is said that when the [black] slave is sated, he fornicates, when he is hungry, he steals." Swiss explorer Johann Burckhardt wrote: "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." It was also not uncommon to turn enslaved males, both African and European, into eunuchs via castration to serve as guardians to the harems. African's themselves were responsible for much of the slave trade. African King Gezo of Dahomey said in 1840s: "The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth ... the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery .." In 1807, the UK Parliament passed the Bill that abolished the trading of slaves. The African King of Bonny (now in Nigeria) was horrified at the conclusion of the practice: "We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself." Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against 'the usurping King of Lagos', deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. Slavery has never been eradicated in modern Africa even today, and it commonly appears in African states, such as Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Niger, and Sudan, in places where law and order have collapsed. David Livingstone wrote of the slave trade: "To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility ... We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path. [Onlookers] said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer. We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead ... We came upon a man dead from starvation ... The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves." Muslim Arabs hunted, enslaved, tortured and killed over 140+ million ethnic Africans for a millennium. Middle Eastern Muslim Arabs have a history of over 1400 years of human slavery, which even continues today in the Middle East. Arab Muslims controlled, maintained, initiated slavery of ethnic Africans. Islams Arab prophet Muhammad himself brought, kept and sold African slaves. Over 90% of these slaves died in transport, while slaves were killed in Arabia when they became aged, pregnant or useless, to avoid a population growth of slave offspring on Arab soil. In Africa there were a number of societies and kingdoms which kept slaves, before there was any regular commercial contact with Europeans, including the Asanti, the Kings of Bonny and Dahomey. To Learn more read: THE LEGACY OF ARAB-ISLAM IN AFRICA by John Allembillah Azumah. http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Legacy-Arab-Islam-Africa-Inter-religious/dp/1851682732

• published: 17 Jun 2012
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