The Oil Drum

161 comments on DrumBeat: June 2, 2007

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GreyZone on June 2, 2007 - 5:40pm

http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa101101a.htm

Wikipedia disagrees with Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

And they still do it (even in that liberal do-no-wrong fascist state called Iran):
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/iran_sex_slave_trade

10 centuries purely for Muslim countries then 4 more centuries for the rest of the world:
http://mondediplo.com/1998/04/02africa

MIT documents the extent of slave trade by western nations in conjunction with Arab slavers.
http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/History/21H-912The-World-Since-1492Sprin...

Of course you are free to believe whatever you choose to believe. Facts rarely change minds around here.

In evaluating the African slave trade, there was another "Middle Passage" often neglected by most scholars—the Arab slave trade. It is often forgotten that the Arab slave trade in East Africa and the slave trade from North Africa into Inner West Africa was protracted and ruthless. Sometimes the Arabs from the north who were Moslem enslaved Africans in the south who were also Moslems, thereby violating one of the most basic customs of their faith—that no Moslem should enslave another Moslem. There is a small library of books on this subject that most scholars have chosen not to read, thereby making the Arab slave trade the best kept secret in history—although it is not a secret at all. Of the many books and documents that I have read on the subject, Slavery in the Arab World by Murray Gordon, 1987, and The African Slave Trade From the 15th to the 19th Century, in The General History of Africa: Studies and Documents 2, UNESCO,1979. I find the most informative the UNESCO book, especially the chapter, "The Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean."

I am not saying that Muslims were the sole source of slavery but those of you who keep holding up the Islamic nations as some sort of utopian do-gooders need to study your history. The history does not and has never supported that notion. The Islamic states have a history as contorted and ugly as any of the west. And given sufficient time and resources, they will assert their own version of Iraq and its horrors somewhere.

Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett

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chemE on June 2, 2007 - 8:04pm

A link with detailed description of Slave trading by Sultan's from Afganistan.

http://voi.org/books/mssmi/ch10.htm

An excerpt

"Alauddin Khalji�s Market Control has become famous in medieval Indian history. He fixed the price of every commodity, including slaves. The sale price of slaves was like this. The standard price of a working girl was fixed at from 5 to 12 tankahs, and that of a good looking girl suitable for concubinage from 20 to 30 and even 40 tankahs. The price of a man slave (ghulam) usually did not exceed 100 to 200 tankahs. The prices of handsome boys were fixed from 20 to 30 tankahs; the ill-favoured could be obtained for 7 to 8. The price of a child slave (ghulam bachchgan naukari) was fixed at 70 to 80 tankahs. The slaves were classified according to their looks and working capacity. In the case of bulk purchases by traders who had ready money and who had the means to carry their flock for sale to other cities,19 prices were fixed accordingly."

Another excerpt

"Low Price of Indian Slaves

Ziyauddin Barani reckons regulations regarding sale of �horses, slaves and quadrupeds� under one category. T.P. Hughes quoting the Hidayah says that slaves, male and female, are treated merely as articles of merchandise, and �very similar rules apply both to the sale of animals and bondsmen.�29 A milch buffalo cost 10-12 tankahs., a working girl was cheaper. The price of a good quality horse was 90-120 tankahs, that of a ghulam was 100 on an average. A handsome boy could be had for 20 to 30 tankahs.30 .."

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plucky underdog on June 3, 2007 - 11:04am

Wooooah there GZ!

I was rebutting your original point about the New World slave trade. As oilmanbob points out, industrial-scale slavery wasn't invented in 18th-Century Benin, nor was it invented in 6th-Century Hejaz - the Prophet's family owned slaves before he became the Prophet. Placing the blame for Dixie on Islam is a breathtaking example of historical revisionism (chutzpah). Nevertheless, I'll concede that the Berber Muslim-syncretist slave traders of the Maghreb were probably quite capable of spotting a profitable market and selling to the white middleman when he was offering a competitive price for their dark-skinned merchandise.

In any case, when the poor wretches got to their final destination, I suspect they found that their new owners went to Church on Sunday rather than Mosque on Friday. Though in that shadowy alternative timeline, maybe we would have been spared the unbearable torture of Whitney Houston's choral vibrato. Win some, lose some.

A word of advice: get a grip on that childish compulsion to Wikibomb any poster who points out that Islam isn't the only source of all the evil that there has ever been or ever will be in the world. Get some historical perspective; Islam (a certain recently-invented aspect of) is merely a convenient label for the Imperium's enemy du jour. Remember who sponsored the Talibs back in the 1980s. And remember who the Talib were fighting against, and what they could have done to the United States in the course of a few hours. And lighten up, for Clapton's sake.

Gotta go and do some of that oil-field stuff now. Isn't that what we were originally discussing? And not a slave in sight. Lots of crop-top blondies on the other side of that chainlink fence down at the airport, though.

Aleikum as'Salam,

PUD.