…for moral reasons. And only the West faced his sin.
From Eastern Europe to North Africa
The sale of African slaves can be traced back to antiquity. It became popular in the seventh century when Islam was gaining strength in North Africa. This was seven centuries before Europeans explored the continent and ten centuries before West Africans were sold across the Atlantic to America.
Zanzibar’s Prison Island was the place where slaves were kept before being transported to other destinations
Back then, Arab Muslims in North and East Africa sold captured Africans to the Middle East. There, they worked as field workers, teachers or harem guards, which is why the castration of male slaves was common practice. Muslims, on the other hand, including African Muslims, were not allowed to be enslaved, according to Islamic legal views.
“Initially, the Arab Muslims in Eastern and Central Europe took white slaves to sell them to Arabia,” Senegalese author Tidiane N’Diaye told DW in an interview. “But the growing military power of Europe put an end to Islamic expansion and now that there was a shortage of slaves, Arab Muslims were looking massively to black Africa.”
Source Deutsche Welle, Silja Fröhlich, 22.08.2019
Barbary slave trade
The Barbary slave trade refers to slave markets on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which included the Ottoman provinces of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania and the independent sultanate of Morocco, between the 16th and middle of the 18th century. The Ottoman provinces in North Africa were nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, but in reality they were mostly autonomous.
European slaves were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland and the Southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the eastern Mediterranean.
The Ottoman eastern Mediterranean was the scene of intense piracy. As late as the 18th century, piracy continued to be a “consistent threat to maritime traffic in the Aegean”.
Source Wikipedia, Barbary slave trade
