Arab world

The Arab world (Arabic: العالم العربي‎ al-ʿālam al-ʿarabī; formally: الوطن العربي al-wațan al-ʿarabī), also known as the Arab nation (الأمة العربية al-ʾummah al-ʿarabīah), consists of the 22 Arabic-speaking countries of the Arab League.

The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 countries and territories of the Arab League. These Arab states occupy an area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The Arab world has a combined population of around 422 million people, with over half under 25 years of age.

The sentiment of Arab nationalism arose in the second half of the 19th century along with other nationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire. The Arab League was formed in 1945 to represent the interests of the Arabs, and especially to pursue the political unification of the Arab countries, a project known as Pan-Arabism.

History of slavery

The history of slavery spans nearly every culture, nationality and religion and from ancient times to the present day. However the social, economic, and legal position of slaves was vastly different in different systems of slavery in different times and places.

Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), which refers to it as an established institution. Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations, as it is developed as a system of social stratification. Slavery was known in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as almost every other ancient civilization. The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe resulted in the taking of large numbers of Christian slaves. Similarly, Christians sold Muslim slaves captured in war while the Islamic World was also engaged in slavery. Slavery became common within the British Isles during the Middle Ages. Britain played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade, especially after 1600. Slavery was a legal institution in all of the 13 American colonies and Canada (acquired by Britain in 1763). David P. Forsythe wrote: "The fact remained that at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom."Denmark-Norway was the first European country to ban the slave trade.

Hidden Colors

Hidden Colors is the name of an ongoing documentary filmseries directed by Tariq Nasheed and produced through King Flex Entertainment, to explain and describe the marginalizing of African Americans in America and the world. All three films were funded by separate Kickstarter campaigns.

Hidden Colors series

The first film in the series, Hidden Colors: The Untold History Of People Of Aboriginal, Moor, and African Descent, was given a limited theatrical release on April 14, 2011. The second in the series, Hidden Colors 2: The Triumph of Melanin, was released the following year on December 6, 2012. The third film in the series, Hidden Colors 3: The Rules of Racism, was released on June 26, 2014. The fourth film in the series, Hidden Colors 4: The Religion of White Supremacy. is currently seeking funding through Kickstarter.

Hidden Colors 1

Hidden Colors: The Untold History Of People Of Aboriginal, Moor, and African Descent was released on April 14, 2011. The film discusses the role of African and aboriginal people in history and argues some achievements have not been properly recorded or credited to them. Hidden Colors features several interviews with commentators on subjects such as the race and appearance of Jesus Christ and the reasons behind the end of slavery. The film also claims Africans were the first to circumnavigate the globe and that there was "pre-European settlement in the United States", that Africans created the first Asian dynasties, and that the Vatican created Egyptology.Rotten Tomatoes showed this one with an "audience score" of 95% positive.

Black

Black is the darkest color, the result of the absence of or complete absorption of light. It is the opposite of white (the combined spectrum of color or light). It is an achromatic color, literally a color without color or hue. It is one of the four primary colors in the CMYK color model, along with cyan, yellow, and magenta, used in color printing to produce all the other colors.

Black was one of the first colors used by artists in neolithic cave paintings. In the 14th century, it began to be worn by royalty, the clergy, judges and government officials in much of Europe. It became the color worn by English romantic poets, businessmen and statesmen in the 19th century, and a high fashion color in the 20th century.

In the Roman Empire, it became the color of mourning, and over the centuries it was frequently associated with death, evil, witches and magic. According to surveys in Europe and North America, it is the color most commonly associated with mourning, the end, secrets, magic, force, violence, evil, and elegance.

Arab slave trade

Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab world, mainly in Western Asia, North Africa, Southeast Africa, the Horn of Africa and certain parts of Europe (such as Iberia and Sicily) beginning during the era of the Muslim conquests and continuing into the early second half of the 20th century. The trade was conducted through slave markets in the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa, with the slaves captured mostly from Africa's interior.

Historians estimate that between 650 and the 1960s, 10 to 18 million people were enslaved by Arab slave traders and taken from Europe, Asia and Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert.

Scope of the trade

The trade of slaves across the Sahara and across the Indian Ocean also has a long history, beginning with the control of sea routes by Arab and Swahili traders on the Swahili Coast during the ninth century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the littoral. There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands. The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year. The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves bought by Arab slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands, Ethiopia and Somalia.