When the Portuguese first sailed down the Atlantic coast of Africa in the 1430's, they were interested in one thing. Surprisingly, given modern perspectives, it was not slaves but gold. Ever since Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1325, with 500 slaves and 100 camels (each carrying gold) the region had become synonymous with such wealth. There was one major problem: trade from sub-Saharan Africa was controlled by the Islamic Empire which stretched along Africa's northern coast. Muslim trade routes across the Sahara, which had existed for centuries, involved salt, kola, textiles, fish, grain, and slaves.
As the Portuguese extended their influence around the coast, Mauritania, Senagambia (by 1445) and Guinea, they created trading posts. Rather than becoming direct competitors to the Muslim merchants, the expanding market opportunities in Europe and the Mediterranean resulted in increased trade across the Sahara. In addition, the Portuguese merchants gained access to the interior via the Senegal and Gambia rivers which bisected long-standing trans-Saharan routes.
The Portuguese brought in copper ware, cloth, tools, wine and horses. (Trade goods soon included arms and ammunition.) In exchange, the Portuguese received gold (transported from mines of the Akan deposits), pepper (a trade which lasted until Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498) and ivory.
There was a very small market for African slaves as domestic workers in Europe, and as workers on the sugar plantations of the Mediterranean. However, the Portuguese found they could make considerable amounts of gold transporting slaves from one trading post to another, along the Atlantic coast of Africa. Muslim merchants had an insatiable appetite for slaves, which were used as porters on the trans-Saharan routes (with a high mortality rate), and for sale in the Islamic Empire.
The Portuguese found Muslim merchants entrenched along the African coast as far as the Blight of Benin. The slave coast, as the Blight of Benin was known, was reached by the Portuguese at the start of the 1470's. It was not until they reached the Kongo coast in the 1480's that they outdistanced Muslim trading territory.
The first of the major European trading 'forts', Elmina, was founded on the Gold Coast in 1482. Elmina (originally known as Sao Jorge de Mina) was modelled on the Castello de Sao Jorge, the first of the Portuguese Royal residence in Lisbon. Elmina, which of course, means the mine, became a major trading centre for slaves purchased along the slave rivers of Benin.
By the beginning of the colonial era there were forty such forts operating along the coast. Rather than being icons of colonial domination, the forts acted as trading posts - they rarely saw military action - the fortifications were important, however, when arms and ammunition were being stored prior to trade.
Source: Transformations in Slavery by Paul E. Lovejoy
Cambridge University Press, 2000,
ISBN 0-521-78430-1
Derived from tables: 2.1 and 3.1
http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa101101a.htm
he history of the slave trade has given rise to numerous debates amongst historians. For one thing, specialists are undecided on the number of Africans taken from their homes; this is difficult to resolve because of a lack of reliable statistics: there was no census system in medieval Africa. Archival material for the transatlantic trade in the 16th to 18th centuries may seem useful as a source, yet these record books were often falsified. Historians have to use imprecise narrative documents to make estimates which must be treated with caution: Luiz Felipe de Alencastro[6] states that there were 8 million slaves taken from Africa between the 8th and 19th centuries along the Oriental and the Trans-Saharan routes. Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau has put forward a figure of 17 million African people enslaved (in the same period and from the same area) on the basis of Ralph Austen's work.[7] Paul Bairoch suggests a figure of 25 million African people subjected to the Arab slave trade, as against 11 million that arrived in the Americas from the transatlantic slave trade.[8] Owen 'Alik Shahadah author of African Holocaust (audio documentary), puts the figure at 10 million and argues that the trade only boomed in the 18th century, prior to this the trade was "a trickle trade" and that exaggerated numbers have been claimed in order to de-emphasize the Transatlantic trade. [9].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
The Indian Ocean Slave trade evolved around the Indian Ocean basin. Slaves were taken from mainland East Africa and sold in markets in On the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. In contrast to the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the Indian Ocean Slave Trade was much older dating back from at least the second century C.E. until the early twentieth century. For example, the oldest written document from the East Africa Coast, thePleriplus of the Erythraean Sea, describes a small trade in slaves around the second century C.E.
http://lrrc3.sas.upenn.edu/indianocean/group1/ioslv4.html
Due to the enormous length of the Arab Slave Trade, from 700 to 1911AD, it is impossible to be certain of the numbers of Africans sold in this system. Estimates place the numbers somewhere around 14 million: at least 9.6 million African women and 4.4 African men.
It has been estimated that in all, at least 14 to 20 MILLION African men, women and children died throughout this trade. (Photos and Information courtesy of The Black Holocaust for Beginners by SE Anderson, A Pictorial History of the Slave Trade, Slave Trade of Eastern Africa by Beachy, Slavery in the Arab World by Gordon Murray and Africa in History by Basil Davidson)
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/9912/easterntrade.html
Who do u want to blame this for?
Well it was Islam that invaded Christendom and started thjis never ending war. So what exaclty makes the West warring on islam wrong and Islam warring on the west right?
Your the one who is delusional you dont even know your own religion
he major juristic schools of Islam traditionally accepted the institution of slavery.[1] Muhammad and many of his companions bought, sold, freed, and captured slaves. Slaves benefited from Islamic dispensations which improved their situation relative to that in pre-Islamic society.[1][2] At the end of 19th century a shift in Muslim thought and interpretation of the Qur'an occurred, and slavery is widely viewed to be opposed to Islamic principles of justice and equality.[3] This interpretation has not been accepted by Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia.[4]
In Islamic law, the topic of Islam and slavery is covered at great length.[1] The Qur'an and the hadith consider manumission of a slave to be a meritorious deed, and see slavery as an exceptional circumstance - a condition that can be entered into only under certain limited circumstances.[4] For a variety of reasons, internal growth of the slave population was not enough to fulfill the demand in Muslim society. This resulted in massive importation, which involved enormous suffering and loss of life from the capture and transportation of slaves from non-Muslim lands.[5] In theory, slavery in Islamic law does not have a racial or color component, although this has not always been the case in practice.[6]
The Arab slave trade was most active in eastern Africa, and by the end of the 19th century such activity had reached a low ebb. In the early 20th century (post World War I) slavery was gradually outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, largely due to pressure exerted by Western nations such as Britain and France.[4] However, slavery claiming the sanction of Islam is documented presently in the African republics of Chad, Mauritania and the Sudan.[7][8][9]
Traditional Islamic jurisprudence
[edit] Principles
In Islamic jurisprudence, slavery was an exceptional condition, with the general rule being a presumption of freedom (al-'asl huwa 'l-hurriya — "The basic principle is liberty") for a person if his or her origins were unknown[4], though enslavement was sanctioned by God as punishment for unbelief.[29] Lawful enslavement was restricted to two instances: capture in war (on the condition that the prisoner is not a Muslim), or birth in slavery. Islamic law did not recognize the classes of slave from pre-Islamic Arabia including those sold or given into slavery by themselves and others, and those indebted into slavery.[4] Though a free Muslim could not be enslaved, conversion to Islam by a non-Muslim slave did not require that he or she then should be liberated. Slave status was not affected by conversion to Islam.[30]
[edit] Treatment
In the instance of illness it would be required for the slave to be looked after. Manumission is considered a meritorious act. Based on the Quranic verse (24:33), the Islamic law permits a slave to ransom himself upon consent of his master through a contract known as mukataba.[4] Azizah Y. al-Hibri, a professor of Law specializing in Islamic jurispundence, states that both the Qur’an and Hadith are repeatedly exhorting Muslims to treat the slaves well and that Muhammad showed this both in action and in words.[31] Levy concurs, adding that "cruelty to them was forbidden."[32] Al-Hibri quotes the famous last speech of Muhammad and other hadiths emphasizing that all believers, whether free or enslaved, are siblings.[31] Lewis explains, "the humanitarian tendency of the Qur'an and the early caliphs in the Islamic empire, was to some extent counteracted by other influences,"[1] notably the practice of various conquered people and countries Muslims encountered, especially in provinces previously under Roman law (even the Christianized form of slavery was still harsh in its treatment of slaves). In spite of this, Lewis also states, "Islamic practice still represented a vast improvement on that inherited from antiquity, from Rome, and from Byzantium."[1] Murray Gordon writes: "It was not surprising that Muhammed, who accepted the existing sociopolitical order, looked upon slavery as part of the natural order of things. His approach to what was already an age-old institution was reformist and not revolutionary. The Prophet had not in mind to bring about the abolition of slavery. Rather, his purpose was to improve the conditions of slaves by correcting abuses and appealing to the conscience of his followers to treat them humanely."[33] The adoption of slaves as members of the family was common, according to Levy. If a slave was born and brought and brought up in the master's household he was never sold, except in exceptional circumstances.[32]
[edit] Legal status
A boy slave in the slave trade market of Zanzibar punished by chaining to a 32 pound log. c.1890. From the Moresby Treaty of 1822, slave trade through Zanzibar became exclusive to Arab and Islamic traders as the sale of slaves to European powers had become illegal
A boy slave in the slave trade market of Zanzibar punished by chaining to a 32 pound log. c.1890. From the Moresby Treaty of 1822, slave trade through Zanzibar became exclusive to Arab and Islamic traders as the sale of slaves to European powers had become illegal[34][35]
Within Islamic jurisprudence, slaves were excluded from religious office of from any office involving jurisdiction over others.[36] Freed slaves are able to occupy any office within the Islamic government, and instances of this in history include the Mamluk who ruled Egypt for almost 260 years and the Eunuchs (castrated human males) who have held military and administrative positions of note.[37] With the permission of their owners they are able to marry.[38] Annemarie Schimmel, a contemporary scholar on Islamic civilization, asserts that because the status of slave under Islam could only be obtained through either being a prisoner of war (this was soon restricted only to infidels captured in a holy war)[1] or born from slave parents, slavery would be theoretically abolished with the expansion of Islam.[37] Islam's reforms stipulating the conditions of enslavement seriously limited the supply of new slaves.[1] In the early days of Islam, a plentiful supply of new slaves were brought due to rapid conquest and expansion. But as the frontiers were gradually stabilized, this supply dwindled to a mere trickle. The prisoners of later wars between Muslims and Christians were commonly ransomed or exchanged.
According to Lewis, this reduction resulted in Arabs who wanted slaves having to look elsewhere to avoid the restrictions in the Qur'an, meaning an increase of importing of slaves from non-Muslim lands,[39] primarily from Africa. These slaves suffered a high death toll.[39][1] Patrick Manning states that Islamic legislations against the abuse of the slaves convincingly limited the extent of enslavement in Arabian peninsula and to a lesser degree for the whole area of the whole Umayyad Caliphate where slavery had existed since the most ancient times. He however notes that with the passage of time and the extension of Islam, Islam by recognizing and codifying the slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse.[40]
In theory free-born Muslims could not be enslaved, and the only way that a non-Muslim could be enslaved was being captured in the course of holy war.[41] (In early Islam, neither a Muslim nor a Christian or Jew could be enslaved.[42]) Slavery was also perceived as a means of converting non-Muslims to Islam: A task of the masters was religious instruction. Conversion and assimilation into the society of the master didn't automatically lead to emancipation, though there was normally some guarantee of better treatment and was deemed a prerequisite for emancipation.[43] The majority of Sunni authorities approved the manumission of all the "People of the Book". According to some jurists -especially among the Shi’a- only Muslim slaves should be liberated.[44] In practice, traditional propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.[45]
[edit] Rights and restrictions
"Morally as well as physically the slave is regarded in law as an inferior being," Levy writes.[46] Under Islamic law, a slave possesses a composite quality of being both a person and a possession.[4] The slave is entitled to receive sustenance from the master, which includes shelter, food, clothing, and medical attention. It is a requirement for this sustenance to be of the same standard generally found in the locality and it is also recommended for the slave to have the same standard of food and clothing as the master. If the master refuses to provide the required sustenance, the slave may complain to a judge, who may then penalize the master through sale of her or his goods as necessary for the slave's keep. If the master does not have sufficient wealth to facilitate this, she or he must either sell, hire out, or manumit the slave as ordered. Slaves also have the right to a period of rest during the hottest parts of the day during the summer.[47]
Evidence from slaves is rarely viable in a court of law. As slaves are regarded as inferior in Islamic law, death at the hands of a free man does not require that the latter be killed in retaliation.[48] The killer must pay the slave's master compensation equivalent to the slave's value, as opposed to blood-money. At the same time, slaves themselves possess a lessened responsibility for their actions, and receive half the penalty required upon a free man. For example: where a free slave would be subject to a hundred lashes due to pre-marital relations, a slave would be subject to only fifty. Slaves are allowed to marry only with the owner's consent. Jurists differ over how many wives a slave may possess, with the Hanafi and Shafi'i schools allowing them two, and the Maliki school allowing four. Slaves are not permitted to possess or inherit property, or conduct independent business, and may conduct financial dealings only as a representative of the master. Offices of authority are generally not permitted for slaves, though a slave may act as a the leader (Imam) in the congregational prayers, and he may also act as a subordinate officer in the governmental department of revenue.[4][49] Masters may sell, bequeath, give away, pledge, hire out or compel them to earn money.[50]
By the view of some madh'hab (but not others), a master may compel his/her slave(s) to marriage and determine the identity of their marriage partner(s)[51][52]
The mahr that is given for marriage to a female slave is taken by her owner, whereas all other women possess it absolutely for themselves[53]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_Slavery#Islamic_jurisprudence
How much evidence do you need?
