Slavery in Palestine

However, the former slaves and their children still continued to work for their former enslavers, and were reported to still live in a state of de facto servitude in the 1930s.

[4] The sex slave-concubines of rich Urban men who had given birth to the (acknowledged) son of their enslaver were counted as the most privileged, since they became an Umm walad and became free upon the death of their enslaver; the concubine of a Beduoin mainly lived the same life as the rest of the tribal members and the women of the family.

[9] William Hepworth Dixon noted slaves in various tasks in the Jerusalem of the 1860s, such as in his depiction of Jaffa Gate, when he mentioned "Yon negro dozing near his mule is a slave from the Upper Nile, and belongs to an Arab bey who lets him out on hire", and the servants in the coffee houses: “Enter this coffee house, where the old sheikh is smoking near the door; call the cafigeh, the waiter, commonly a negro slave; command a cup of black comfort, a narghiley [water pipe], and a morsel of live charcoal", and "Saïd is a Nubian, a negro, and a slave; and like the mule and horses is the property of an Arab gentleman, not too proud to let his people and his beasts earn money by trade.

"[10] Randal William MacGavock from Tennessee visited Ramla in the 1850s, described the custom regarding the children of the Palestinian slaves and compared it to slavery in the United States:[11] During our visit the subject of slavery was suggested by the appearance of a likely negro boy bearing coffee and pipes, which resulted in my gaining some information that I wouldn't have otherwise.

They are black people from Nubia, and having been brought up as slaves and knowing no other kind of life, they, in many cases, remain with their old masters.

[13] According to the British, the Palestina Bedouin tribes did own African servants called Abid, but that they now had the same rights as the rest of the tribe members and should be regarded as former slaves, and that the same term should apply to the African female domestic servants of the Arab noble families.

[13] When the League of Nations ratified the 1926 Slavery Convention, the British were expected to enforce it in their colonies and other dependent land.

[13] In 1931, the police and the Welfare Inspector Margaret Nixon conducted an investigation on behalf of the British government regarding the enslaved servant girls of private Arab households.

[13] The result of the investigation showed that after the slave trade to Palestine stopped, the African abid-slaves of the Bedouin tribes of the Jordan Valley sold their children (primarily their daughters) as domestic servants and maidservants.

The British limited themselves with introducing the 1933 Employment of Girls Ordinance, which made all contracts stipulating more than one year of service automatically illegal.