Slavery in Zanzibar
When clove and coconut plantations became a big industry on the islands, domestic slavery expanded to a point where two thirds of the populations were slaves.
[1] During the Middle Ages, the Zanzibar Archipelago became a part of the Swahili culture and belonged to the Kilwa Sultanate, which was a center of the Indian Ocean slave trade between East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula during the Middle Ages, and the islands of the Zanzibar Archipelago are known to have traded in ivory and slaves long before it became a part of Oman.
The Zanzibar slave trade focused on children "the reason given by the dealers being that children were driven more easily, like flocks of sheep...",[14] and particularly girls; while a "fresh boy" newly arrived from the mainland was sold for a price of 7-$15 in 1857, a girl between the age of seven and eight was sold for 10-$18 .
[18] In 1844 the British Consul noted that there were 400 free Arab women and 800 men in Zanzibar, and the British noted that while prostitutes were almost nonexistent, men bought "secondary wives" (slave concubines) on the slave market for sexual satisfaction; "public prostitutes are few, and the profession ranks low where the classes upon which it depends can easily afford to gratify their propensities in the slave market",[19] and the US Consul Richard Waters commented in 1837 that the Arab men in Zanzibar "commit adultery and fornication by keep three or four and sometimes six and eight concubines".
[20] Sultan Seyyid Said replied to the British Consul that the custom was necessary, because "Arabs won't work; they must have slaves and concubines".
[22] Sultan Barghash (r. 1870–1888) was only married to one wife, who made him the request to never acknowledging the children he had with his slave concubines as his own (meaning the women did not become umm walad and were not free after the death of their enslaver).
Taking the death-rate at 30 per mille, upwards of 7,000 Slaves would have to be imported annually to supply this deficiency in labour".
Sultan Seyyid Said had three legal wives, but despite all his marriages being childless, he nevertheless had 36 children, who must thus have been born to slave concubines.
[31] Emily Ruete described the multi ethnic Royal harem in her memoirs: While most enslaved women, eunuchs and children were used in urban households as domestics or concubines (sex slaves), only a minority of non-castrated male slaves were used in the city as craftsmen or porters (hamalis).
[34] In 1828 the sultan ordered his (Arab) subjects on Zanzibar to grow a certain proportion of clove; and since the original inhabitants of the islands, the shirazi, had converted to Islam and was therefore not legitimate to enslave, the growing clove industry resulted in a big import of slave labor.
[35] The sultan's order resulted in a plantation economy centered on clove and coconut plantations on particularly Unguja, Pemba and the mainland of the Sultanate, which resulted in a booming slave import for domestic use in the Archipelago, from which most slaves had previously been sold on rather than kept on the islands.
[39] Manumissions normally took place at the deathbed of an enslaver who wished to be given a reward for it in the afterlife, but was otherwise rare; slaves often attempted to escape, particularly from the plantations, and often died from the punishment when caught.
Anyone found involved in this traffic would be liable to detention and condemnation by all [British] Naval Officers and Agents, and all slaves entering the Sultan's dominions should be freed.
[56] In 1897 the British forced the Sultan to abolish slavery in Zanzibar by declaring that it lacked legal status.
[57][58] After abolition, the Slavery Commissioners court was founded staffed with British officials, to receive and enforce the manumission applications of the former slaves.
[61] The slave owners on Zanzibar attempted, often successfully, to prevent their slaves from being aware of the abolition of slavery, and ship them abroad to sell them in Muscat, Jeddah and Mecca; in April 1898, the British stopped an Arab boat in which a rich Arab male passenger had brought with him 36 male and female servants to sell in Arabia; the servants informed the British that they had been bribed in order to accompany him there.
[63] The Muslim owners of slave concubines pointed out to the British officials that single women would not be able to support themselves and were likely to become prostitutes if they were manumitted.
[64] The British excluded the concubines by officially classifying them as wives rather than slaves, but gave them the right to apply for manumission on the grounds of cruelty and abuse from their enslaver.
As late as in the Interwar period after the end of the WWI, Arab men from Zanzibar brought with them large retinues of African servants to the Hajj pilgrimage, and sold them on the slave market in Jeddah on arrival; shortly after the end of the war in 1918, the British was informed about one such case when an Arab man had brought with him a dozen young female servants on his Hajj pilgrimage, and sold them to merchants in Mecca and Medina.
