Trans-Saharan slave trade
[9] Estimates of the total number of black slaves moved from sub-Saharan Africa to the Arab world range from 6 to 10 million, and the trans-Saharan trade routes conveyed a significant number of this total, with one estimate tallying around 7.2 million slaves crossing the Sahara from the mid-7th century until the 20th century when it was abolished.
[15] These raids for prisoners of war, who subsequently became slaves, were a regular occurrence in the ancient Nile Valley and Africa.
[18] Ancient Greek historian Herodotus recorded in the 5th century BC that the Garamantes enslaved cave-dwelling Ethiopians, known as Troglodytae, chasing them with chariots.
[24] The Muslim slave traders distinguished themselves from the peoples on the other side of the Sahara, referring to these African populations as Zanj or Sudan meaning "black".
[27]Indeed, few African rulers would resist the slave trade, while many chiefs would become middlemen in the trafficking, rounding up members of nearby villages to be sold to visiting merchants.
[25] In 1353, the Berber explorer Ibn Battuta would record accompanying a trade caravan to Morocco which carried 600 black female slaves who were to be used as domestic servants and concubines.
[22] Passage through the Sahara required the expertise of ethnic groups whose lifestyles were uniquely adapted for survival in scorching, arid environments, namely the local Berber tribes and the foreign Bedouins from Arabia.
[33] The range of tasks given to slaves was varied and included servile labor utilized for "irrigation, pastoralism, mining, transport, public works, proto-industry, and construction.
[37] Eunuchs, who were around seven times more expensive than non-castrated males could be used as harem guards, administrators, tutor, secretaries, commercial agents, and even concubines.
In 641 AD during the treaty known as the Baqt was signed establishing an agreement between the Nubian Christian state of Makuria and the new Muslim rulers of Egypt, in which the Nubians agreed to give Muslim traders more privileges of trade in addition to sending 442 slaves every year to Cairo as tribute.
[41] In the late 14th century, a black king of Bornu wrote a letter to the sultan of Egypt complaining of the continual slave raids perpetrated by Arab tribesmen, which were devastating his lands and resulting in the mass enslavement of the black Muslim population of the region.
[56] According to Paul Berthier, the need for slave labor on Moroccan sugar plantations was a major reason for the 16th century Saadian invasion of the Songhai Empire.
It is estimated that, in the 17th and 18th centuries, 1.4 million slaves were forced to make the trek through the Sahara [10] Captives were enslaved and shipped to the Mediterranean coast, Europe, Arabia, the Western Hemisphere, or to the slave ports and factories along the West and North Africa coasts or South along the Ubanqui and Congo rivers.
[62] In Tripoli, G. F. Lyon recorded that from 4,000 to 5,000 slaves were processed annually with raids to areas like Kanem-Bornu providing sources of captives.
[31] As a witness to the behavior of the slave dealers, Lyon described their behavior in Libya: None of the owners were ever without their whips which were in constant use...no slave dares to be ill or unable to walk, but when the poor sufferer dies the master suspects there must have been "something wrong inside" and regrets not having liberally applied the usual remedy of burning the belly with a red hot iron" thus reconciling to themselves their cruel treatment of these unfortunate creatures.
[63]Other 19th-century European explorers recorded their perilous experiences traveling through the Saharan Desert alongside slave caravans.
The explorer Gustav Nachtigal reported finding numerous bones at desert springs that had run dry.
[32] Cold could also kill in the desert as the explorer Heinrich Barth relayed a story that the vizier of Bornu had lost forty slaves in a single night in Libya.
[67] According to Raëd Bader, based on estimates of the Trans-Saharan trade, between 1700 and 1880 Tunisia received 100,000 black slaves, compared to only 65,000 entering Algeria, 400,000 in Libya, 515,000 in Morocco and 800,000 in Egypt.
Merchant princes such as Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, appointed khedive in 1873, controlled trade in Bahr el Ghazal and the routes to Kordofan and Darfur.
[72] In 1936, the report to the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery from the French, British and Italian stated that they all surveyed the water sources along the caravan routes in the Sahara to combat the Trans-Saharan slave trade from Nigeria to North Africa.
Since the beginning of the Libyan Civil War of 2011, that saw the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi's regime by NATO-backed anti-Gaddafi forces, Libya has been plagued by instability and migrants with little cash and no papers have become vulnerable.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) published a report in April 2017 showing that many of the migrants from West Africa heading to Europe are sold as slaves after being detained by people smugglers or militia groups.
[81] Migrants who have gone through Libyan detention centres have shown signs of many human rights abuses such as severe abuse, including electric shocks, burns, lashes and even skinning, stated the director of health services on the Italian island of Lampedusa to Euronews.
[82] A Libyan group known as the Asma Boys have antagonized migrants from other parts of Africa from at least as early as 2000, destroying their property.
[83] Nigerian migrants in January 2018 gave accounts of abuses in detention centres, including being leased or sold as slaves.
[85] In June 2018, the United Nations applied sanctions against four Libyans (including a Coast Guard commander) and two Eritreans for their criminal leadership of slave trade networks.
