History of Arab slavery in Africa

Discussion in 'History & Past Politicians' started by kazenatsu, Jul 22, 2019.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The Middle East has a long history of slavery. It spread to Africa under the muslims, with Africans enslaving other Africans to sell to muslim slave traders. A lot of these men were turned into eunuchs to guard harems. Having an exotic big strong ebony-skinned African man to guard your harem was the thing to do at the time, apparently. Of course they took white slaves from the North to fill those harems. The raids against Europe were as much about filling their harems as it was about conquering new territory.

    Arabs were the first to bring wholesale slavery (as we know it today) to Africa.
    It would be another 400 years before the Portuguese began dealing in this slave trade, which had already been well established on the coasts of Africa.



     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2019
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  2. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The castration of Black slaves by Arabs still continues to exist in a few parts of Africa.

    A man has escaped to the capital Niamey from northern Niger, saying his master was about to castrate him.
    According to statistics provided by a local human rights group, 20,000 people are still living under conditions of slavery in the Niger - some of them suffering from extreme forms of torture.
    Talking about his ordeal, Mr Mohamet explained that he was being whipped everyday because he was suspected of wanting to rebel against his master.
    He said he had recently been sold to a new owner, known for his cruelty towards his slaves. His new master accused him of rebellion and disobedience.
    Mr Mohamet said if he had not escaped, he would have been castrated this week.​

    BBC NEWS | Africa | Niger 'slave' flees castration


    Slavery had been abolished when Niger was a French colony. But an independent Niger only abolished and criminalized it in 2003. One anti-slavery activist said this was only a "charm offensive to please westerners." Everything, apparently, stayed the same on the ground.
    Slave children also work in Niger’s gold mines. Boys are also sometimes castrated, an old Islamic practice. Slave masters are also reported to sometimes separate slave children from their parents at a young age to break the parent-child bond.​

    Slavery Defeat In Niger | Frontpage Mag
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2019
  3. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Oh nonsense. Slavery had been practiced in Africa since even before the Egyptian Empire was founded. And it continued through the Roman Empire and beyond. Much of the wealth of the Carthaginians was based on their participation in the Slave Trade even before Rome became an Empire.

    So why you are posting this pile of garbage, I have no idea.
     
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  4. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It was a different type of slavery though, less harsh, with more honorary cultural rules in place. It wasn't the same slavery that would come later.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2019
  5. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Oh nonsense!

    I am not sure what kind of pseudo-history you are reading, but that is far from true. Slavery was practiced widely, and in many regions was even similar to that of the Incans.

    With massive human sacrifices, where hundreds and even thousands would be executed. And in addition, cannibalism was often part of the practices.

    The Arabs actually were one of the main groups that put an end to these practices in most of Africa (a practice that was also followed-up by the British in their mandates in Africa).

    A look into the Leopard and Lion Societies shows this to be true.

    Yea, I got it. You hate Arabs and Muslims, but this kind of thing you can not blame on them. And it still continues in many areas today, even though their influence in the continent largely ended over a century ago.
     
  6. JessCurious

    JessCurious Well-Known Member

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    While its true that slavery existed in Africa in ancient times, the Muslim Arabs did greatly expand
    the practice in Africa. The country Sudan got its name from Arab slavers - Sudan means 'Land of the Blacks' in Arabic. It was so named by the Arabs because they considered it the best place to
    get their slaves. The British attempt to stamp out slavery in the 1880s was one of the main causes of the Mahdi's revolt. Slavery in Sudan was revived in the 1990s by Gen. Omar El Bashir.
    He required all subjects to follow sharia law, including animists and Christians who lived in the
    southern part of Sudan. When they refused he launched savage attacks on their villages, killing
    over one million over ten years. The Muslim Arabs who lived in the northern two-thirds of the
    country enslaved as many as 250,000 more blacks. The Christian and animist blacks refused to
    give-in, and today Southern Sudan is its own nation, albeit a war-torn and impoverished one.
     
  7. Quasar44

    Quasar44 Banned

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    The Arab slave trade was far longer and far worse if you can believe it
    The Arabs would kill them and never let them give birth
     
  8. Quasar44

    Quasar44 Banned

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    This was East Africa while the European was west Africa ??
     
  9. Anonymous.Professor

    Anonymous.Professor Newly Registered

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    As Arab slave trade was worse and longer than European it is also true that very strict antisemitic laws concerning the public mark for heretics were put in place by islamic rulers following sharia law. Like that Jews ( and christians ) should mark their houses with pictures of devils. ( Abbaside caliphate law from 850 )

    Also you had really a lot of massacres of Jews in medieval islamic countries. For example the massacre in Granada/Spain in 1066 was much bigger than the massacres of ''people's'' crusaders in Rhineland which happened a few decades later and was condemned by official catholic hierarchy.
     
  10. Pro_Line_FL

    Pro_Line_FL Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It was harsh. They estimate there was 100 000 slaves present at all times building the pyramids, and scores died.
     
  11. Pycckia

    Pycckia Well-Known Member

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    Not according to the most recent archeology:

    Redding's faunal evidence dealt a serious blow to the Hollywood version of pyramid building, with Charlton Heston as Moses intoning, "Pharaoh, let my people go!" There were slaves in Egypt, says Lehner, but the discovery that pyramid workers were fed like royalty buttresses other evidence that they were not slaves at all, at least in the modern sense of the word. Harvard's George Reisner found workers' graffiti early in the twentieth century that revealed that the pyramid builders were organized into labor units with names like "Friends of Khufu" or "Drunkards of Menkaure." Within these units were five divisions (their roles still unknown)—the same groupings, according to papyrus scrolls of a later period, that served in the pyramid temples. We do know, Lehner says, that service in these temples was rendered by a special class of people on a rotating basis determined by those five divisions. Many Egyptologists therefore subscribe to the hypothesis that the pyramids were also built by a rotating labor force in a modular, team-based kind of organization.


    If not slaves, then who were these workers? Lehner's friend Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, who has been excavating a "workers' cemetery" just above Lehner's city on the plateau, sees forensic evidence in the remains of those buried there that pyramid building was hazardous business. Why would anyone choose to perform such hard labor? The answer, says Lehner, lies in understanding obligatory labor in the premodern world. "People were not atomized, separate, individuals with the political and economic freedom that we take for granted. Obligatory labor ranges from slavery all the way to, say, the Amish, where you have elders and a strong sense of community obligations, and a barn raising is a religious event and a feasting event. If you are a young man in a traditional setting like that, you may not have a choice." Plug that into the pyramid context, says Lehner, "and you have to say, 'This is a hell of a barn!'"

    Lehner currently thinks Egyptian society was organized somewhat like a feudal system, in which almost everyone owed service to a lord. The Egyptians called this "bak." Everybody owed bak of some kind to people above them in the social hierarchy. "But it doesn't really work as a word for slavery," he says. "Even the highest officials owed bak."

    https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2022
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  12. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There are multiple issues with that. Firstly, I think we are talking about subsaharan Africa; Egypt does not really fall into that category; not the same geographical region or era of time. Secondly, there has been plenty of research suggesting slaves may not have been used at all to build the pyramids, since it took skilled labor.

    Egypt might be more comparable to the Middle East. If we think about the (later) Muslim taking of slaves from Africa.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2022
  13. Pro_Line_FL

    Pro_Line_FL Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Only the design and artwork required skilled labor, while everything else was brutal physical labor.

    As for sub-saharan Africa, the slavery was nothing like plantation / industrial style organized / systematic forced labor. Why? They didn't have plantations, or anything resembling them. Slavery did exist where people were considered the property of their owners, often times used as concubines and warriors.
     
    Last edited: Jun 29, 2022
  14. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The life of a slave-concubine back then was often not that different from a wife.

    Slaves were sometimes used as warriors, but not often. The rulers would have feared slave rebellions. And ordinary soldiers were, in many ways, treated similarly to slaves, in older times.
     
  15. Pro_Line_FL

    Pro_Line_FL Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Maybe the best value for having slaves was to trade them to the Arabs or the "muzungu" (white man) and receive tools and other goods in return.
     
  16. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Scores, out of 100,000?

    Just think of that, that alone screams that your claim is nonsensical. Hell, in modern California the annual death rate out of 100,000 is 709. So according to what you said, if you were correct it was better to live as a slave in ancient Egypt than in modern California.

    The vast majority of the "workers" were trained and skilled craftsmen. It takes years or decades to train a skilled mason or craftsman.

    No, the slaves were "support staff". They were the cooks, did the laundry, and things like that.

    And the great monuments of Egypt were likely seasonal. Built during the time between planting and harvest, and harvest and planting. Summer for acquiring raw materials, winder for putting them in place. The "year round" workforce was small, with volunteers surging in to do the "grunt work" when they had nothing else to do. And in that era, that was most likely their equivalent of taxes. Just as in medieval times peasants worked a few days a month on the lands of their Lords, in Egypt it is believed to be the same. Put time in each month or year on the monuments to pay for what your government gave you.

    Because you know, money did not exist yet, right? The "Great Pyramid" dates to around 2570 BCE. That is well over 2,000 years before the first coin ("Gold Stater", 360 BCE). The "first coin ever" only dates to around 600 BCE, still almost 2,000 years after the pyramids. So if you have to pay "taxes", it was either with a portion of your crops, or by providing labor.
     
    Last edited: Jul 1, 2022
  17. Pro_Line_FL

    Pro_Line_FL Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Scores = Very high death rate.

    Talking about nonsensical, trying to argue its "according to my argument" that the death rate of slaves 5000 years ago was lower that California today is nonsensical, and that's an understatement. That idea was hatched in your head, not mind, and its nonsensical indeed.

    Vast majority? Who told you that? Majority were 'muscle', who brought massive blocks of rock to the site. No skills needed.

    LOL. Sure man. Maybe they ordered the rocks from Amazon.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2022
  18. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    No, a score is 20. If you are going to use words, please use them properly.

    And how do we know they were not slaves? Archaeology.

    https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/were-the-egyptian-pyramids-built-by-slaves/

    In fact, we know that in reality, most times in ancient Egypt the number of slaves was not even 10%. Compare this to the roughly 45% of the Southern population that were slaves in 1860.

    The simple fact is, none of the ancient empires prior to Rome had a significant number of slaves. The infrastructure of the era simply did not support that kind of system. The very concept of Egypt being some "massive slave nation" is incorrect, and the primary source is the Hebrew Bible. Which most historians now place more as propaganda than fact.
     

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