Humans, for hundreds of years, have enslaved and inflicted violence upon other human beings usually for selfish desires. Slavery is an illegal act of owning another human being as personal property and using them usually for free labor or sexual acts. Slavery has occurred for hundreds of years, with the most infamous and violent form of slavery being the European Slavery. This type of slavery is known as chattel slavery, usually based on race or geographical differences, where slaves are “treated like property, and they can be sold and bought.” European slavery is the well-known form slavery, where Africans were considered property enslaved, traded, and transported to toil on plantations as free property. While that is well-known and familiar, there was a less known form of slavery and trade that existed which was the Arab slave trade.
The Arab trade began as early as 1095 and was abolished in 1970.Thats what makes this form of slavery unique; it lasted more than a millennium. However, by 1839 the Arab slave trade became the main way of making money and doing business. While the European slave trade was the harshest and the most discussed slavery topic in history, many individuals fail to acknowledge another practice of slavery that has also impacted millions of Africans as well as Europeans- the Arab slave trade: harem trade. The slave trade, especially those that occurred in harems, has gotten less recognition due to the exploitation and violent extent of European enslaving African. Another reason is also because Muslim leaders fail to call the treatment their enslaved people endured slavery. Due to the public’s lack of knowledge on this topic, they fail to know the truth of the things that happened during this slavery. W...
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...nds of Islam. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002.
"The Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans, The Untold Story." The World Today. n.d. http://worldtodayshow.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/the-arab-muslim-slave-trade-of-africans-the-untold-story/ (accessed December 2011).
Millingen, Frederick . "The Circassian Slaves and the Sultan's Harem." Journal of the Anthropological Society of London, 1870: 9-10.
Toledano, Ehud R. . "Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East." 30. University of Washington Press, 1998.
"The Arab Muslim Slave Trade Of Africans, The Untold Story." The World Today. n.d. http://worldtodayshow.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/the-arab-muslim-slave-trade-of-africans-the-untold-story/ (accessed December 2011).
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference. "Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam." Article 11. 1990.
One of the major questions asked about the slave trade is ‘how could so Europeans enslave so many millions of Africans?” Many documents exist and show historians what the slave trade was like. We use these stories to piece together what it must have been to be a slave or a slaver. John Barbot told the story of the slave trade from the perspective of a slaver in his “A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea.” Barbot describes the life of African slaves before they entered the slave trade.
Hooker, Richard. "The Ottomans: The 17th and 18th Centuries." Washington State University - Pullman, Washington. 1996. Web. 06 Apr. 2011. .
Slavery is a sensitive topic that most would say evil and bad. Martin states that “some African-Americans claimed that Jews were the dominant figures in the trading of black slaves. (Martin 1993). Research by Mintz and McNeil support that “After making contact with the West Africans, the Portuguese est...
Moroccan traveler, Ibn Battuta, is well-known for being one of the greatest travelers of his time. Battuta’s descriptive account of his travels to East and West Africa in the fourteenth century provides important insight into African Islamic life at that point in time. Although Battuta and the peoples in black Africa shared the same religion, he comes to realize that sharing a religion is not enough to completely relate to a different group of people. The story of Ibn Battuta in Black Africa illustrates the difficulties he faced in relating to these peoples due to the non-traditional role of women, different religious customs, and frequent misinterpretation of situations.
Though the Atlantic Slave Trade began in 1441, it wasn’t until nearly a century later that Europeans actually became interested in slave trading on the West African coast. “With no interest in conquering the interior, they concentrated their efforts to obtain human cargo along the West African coast. During the 1590s, the Dutch challenged the Portuguese monopoly to become the main slave trading nation (“Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade”, NA). Besides the trading of slaves, it was also during this time that political changes were being made. The Europe...
Unlike most “victimized” cultures of Western European domination, the Ottoman Empire was considerably successful and powerful for many years, particularly in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century under the rule of Sulayman the Magnificent (Haberman, 132). By 1520, the Ottoman Empire had secured much of the Arab Middle East, Belgrade and most of Hungary (Haberman, 132...
In contrast to the Atlantic slave trade, where the male-female ratio was 2:1, the Arab slave trade instead usually had a higher female-to-male ratio. Concubinage and reproduction served as incentives for importing female slaves, though many were also imported mainly for performing household tasks. In both continents, anything a slave owns, is automatically the master’s own too, however in Arabia, a slave may be allowed to earn money to purchase his or her freedom and similarly to pay bride wealth if he was to be married, the marriage requiring the consent of the master first. If the master was to use his slave for sexual gratification, he may not co-habit with a female slave belonging to his wife, neither can he have relations with a female slave if she is co-owned, or already married. In America, a man may have relations with a slave but it wasn’t very likely, as this was taboo and not approved of.
Slavery as it existed in America was a practice founded on the chattel principle. Slaves were treated as human chattel to be traded, sold, used, and ranked not among beings, but among things, as an article of property to the owner or possessor.
In the Middle East it was male-dominant, male’s had all the control in the family. Women’s rule in life was to give birth too many children to continue the family blood line and take care of them, while the men go to work and come home find something for them prepared to eat. Men were the head of the house, whatever they said, had to be obeyed. Women were limited in their rights, even in marriage they weren’t asked for their opinion, “Would you like to marry this guy?” But rather they were forced by their family members to participate in arranged marriages. In this story we see that the slave woman had no rights, this woman obeyed them without saying a word. In addition, to this she was a slave, and slaves had no rights when it came to their master’s commands. She didn’t have a choice but rather obeyed what the master said even if she didn’t agree. Women were mistreated sometimes by men. "Bring the mule’s nose-bag along with you," he added to the groom; "she has not finished her feed, I think; when we get to the palace, put the bag on her again—she can eat the rest of her fodder while I am with the caliph. “Hear and obey," said the groom "(Portland, Maine: Wheelwright, 1955, p 310-313). One can see in this quote that they placed a bag over the girl and limited to when should she eat. The woman was treated as if she was a toy, played with for a while and then placed to the side when they were
Spielvogel, Jackson J. "The Muslim Empires: The Ottoman Empire.” Glencoe World History. New York, NY: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2005. p.484-489. Print.
Peabody, Sue. “Slavery and the Slave Trade.” Ed. Jonathan Dewald. Vol 5. New York. 2004. 429- 438. Gale
In speaking about slavery many quickly think of the African struggle under the possession of the whites, but slavery is not nearly as recent an occurrence as 1492 when Columbus reached the New World. For thousands of years slaves have been used for means of menial labor and the general dirty work of the more wealthy proprietors. Slaves were used in the creation of the pyramids in Egypt, work on Mayan temples in South America, and even used by the Mongols in northern Asia as a part of the Mongolian fighting machine. The enslavement of the Africans, however, created a legacy of oppression and tyranny that carried on much longer after the abolition of the systems. The reason for this is that African slaves were not looked upon as humans at all, but as a commodity that could be abused and sold purely for the purpose of making a profit. In most other instances of slavery throughout history motives like religion and love for a king drove the souls of the men and women laborers. This is the major striking difference between the Africans enslaved by the white man from the early fifteen hundreds until today.
Kara, Siddharth. Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. New York: Columbia UP, 2009. 5. Print.
Slavery is a form of forced labor in which people are taken as property of others against their wishes and will. They are denied the right to leave or even receive wages. Evidence of slavery is seen from written records of ancient times from all cultures and continents. Some societies viewed it as a legal institution. In the United States, slavery was inevitable even after the end of American Revolution. Slavery in united states had its origins during the English colonization of north America in 1607 but the African slaves were sold in 1560s this was due to demand for cheap labor to exploit economic opportunities. Slaves engaged in composition of music in order to preserve the cultures they came with from Africa and for encouragement purposes..
Ansary, Tamim. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes. New York: PublicAffairs, 2009.