Slavery in Islam: from the 7Th Century to the Present
Slavery in Islam: From the 7 th Century to the Present Mako A. Nagasawa Last modified: August 24, 2010 Summary What was the magnitude of the Arab Islamic slave trade? Records prior to 1800 are quite incomplete, and unfortunately, even some documents from 1800 – 1900 are questionable. Nevertheless, estimates can be made based on the data we do have. • Owen Alik Shahadah, author of the website arabslavetrade.com and defender of the view that Islam is an agent of Black African liberation and development, claims that the slave trade before 1800 was ‘a trickle.’ 1 Shahadah believes that 10 million African slaves were taken between 650 and 1900, with most coming in the nineteenth century. This compares with 10 to 12 million slaves taken across the Atlantic to the Americas during New World slavery. • Ralph A. Austen, who according to Orlando Patterson makes the ‘most systematic evaluation of the direct and indirect statistical data’ 2 estimates the following: Trans -Saharan Red Sea East Co ast Total 650 – 1600 AD 4,820,000 1,600,000 800,000 7,220,000 1600 – 1700 AD 700,000 3 200,000 100,000 1,000,000 1700 – 1800 AD 700,000 200,000 400,000 4 1,300,000 1800 – 1900 AD 1,200,000 200,000 5 1,257,100 6 2,657,1 00 12,177,100 • Note that the numbers underestimate the total number of persons captured, because of the great uncertainties about slaves dying en route because of illness, exhaustion, exposure, malnutrition, or mistreatment. Paul Bairoch argues for a much more aggressive total number of African slaves taken in the Arab slave trade, at 25 million.
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