The Sahara is the world’s largest desert, and crossing it is only possible thanks to scattered oases that provide life-sustaining water to travelers along the way. For those untrained in handling it, the Sahara is a place of death and despair. This was certainly true for millions of slaves who were dragged in chains across that burning desert for a thousand years. This Trans-Saharan slave trade is easily overlooked thanks to its more famous Atlantic cousin, but the exchange of unfree people across the desert was a longer-lasting and possibly larger system that deserves much more attention.
Today, on A Day in History, we look at the brutality of the Trans-Saharan slave trade and how this institution of slavery and suffering stood for over a thousand years. Slavery within and around the Sahara is as ancient as civilization. Ancient Egyptians extracted slaves from adjacent regions in modern-day Sudan and Libya. Later, Phoenician settlers along the fertile Mediterranean coast, most notably Carthage, established slave-trading networks that included slaves taken from all areas of the Mediterranean Basin.
But the scattered inhabitants of the Sahara could not satisfy the growing demand for slaves forever. Eventually, traders began using the Sahara as a passageway to access and enslave the people of sub-Saharan Africa. Historians are unsure who began the Trans-Saharan slave trade or when. Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, described a people called the Garamantes from Libya who allegedly used their chariots to hunt down Ethiopian slaves, and some historians say they were the first Trans-Saharan slavers. However, there is no material evidence of these vast slave-trading networks, and it’s more likely these were just slave raids deeper into the Sahara and not a true Trans-Saharan slave-trading system.
Small numbers of sub-Saharan African slaves existed in Roman North Africa by the 300s. Artwork recovered from Roman villas shows figures who seem to be black Africans working in fields and hunting, showing that at least some slave trading across the desert existed by this point. However, it wasn’t until the arrival of Islam and the Arabs to North Africa that a larger, sustained system of slave trading emerged. Arab armies conquered most of North Africa by the early 8th century. The unified Abbasid Caliphate connected the Islamic world religiously and economically, and slaves would soon move along these connections.
Like every major contemporary society, the Islamic world had a great need for slaves and quickly found that the rural Berbers of North Africa were not enough to satisfy the demands of their interconnected world. In time, they would also become suppliers to Christian Europe as well. There were six main routes utilized in the Trans-Saharan trade, and each was at various times bound to the power of various kingdoms. The westernmost trade route ran from modern-day Ghana to Morocco and was initially established by traders working with the Ghanaian Empire. Later, another trade route from the famous city of Timbuktu in Mali sold slaves that mostly ended up in Algeria, all under the protection of a succession of powerful medieval empires like the Mali Empire and the Songhai.
The Niger Valley was a third major source of slaves, primarily to Libya. The Lake Chad Basin also supplied Libya with slaves, chiefly funneled through the successive empires of Kanem and Bornu in central Africa. There were also land routes from Sudan into Egypt, and last but not least, a significant trade of slaves along the Nile from Sudan and Ethiopia into Egypt. The conversion of sub-Saharan African kingdoms to Islam intensified the trade. Firstly, the conversion of the rulers and ruling ethnic groups created a clear distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims, the latter of which could be enslaved under Islamic law. Secondly, pilgrimages to Mecca encouraged rulers to make safe routes across the Sahara that doubled as avenues for the slave trade.
The scale of the trade fluctuated over time. During the medieval period, an average of about 10,000 slaves were transported across the Trans-Saharan routes. These slaves ended up across the Muslim world and beyond: in North Africa, the Levant, Iran, Arabia, and Anatolia. Eventually, especially during the Mughal period, sub-Saharan Africans could end up as far as India. Some would also end up in Europe, chiefly Muslim-controlled Spain, until the Europeans began acquiring their own African slaves directly from the 16th century.
Selection, acquisition, and transportation were the starting points of the trade. Islamic law forbade a Muslim from enslaving another Muslim. In reality, this did happen on occasion, but it was not tenable to create a mass market of Muslim slaves. In the case of Saharan trade, the slaves were overwhelmingly African pagans. On top of the religious difference, race was a component of slavery as well, although much less important to Saharan trade than later Atlantic trade. Black Africans were labeled “Zanj” or “Sudan” to distinguish them from the Arabs or North African Muslims, and there was a widespread acceptance that skin color was a sufficient basis for enslavement.
Not all black Africans involved in the trade were themselves slaves. Of course, as the Europeans did in Atlantic slavery, the Arab traders relied mostly on the African kingdoms in the slaving areas to acquire slaves for them. States like the Malian Empire or the Kanem Empire subdued and enslaved surrounding tribes and minor kingdoms, retaining some of the slaves for domestic use and selling others to Trans-Saharan traders. With the conversion to Islam of many of these kingdoms, they added a religious justification to the expansion of their empires and the enslavement of their enemies.
The Empire of Kanem and its successor Empire of Bornu were typical examples of how a state might sustain itself through Trans-Saharan trade. These empires stretched across the central Sahara, reaching from Libya down to modern-day Cameroon, creating a reliable passageway for slave trading. Their wars and conquests created many slaves that could then be sold on to the Arab merchants. Cities like the now-lost Njimi became centers of trade where slaves, along with other important goods like ivory and gold, would be bought up by Trans-Saharan traders. These empires also secured the trade routes from raiders and built rest stops along the route to ease the burden of traveling merchants in exchange for extracting taxes and custom duties from passing traders.
The scale of slave trading contributed to the rise of many cities across Africa. Cities like Njimi and Timbuktu became important centers through their role in the slave trade. Meanwhile, in Northern Africa, settlements like Sijilmasa in Morocco, Ghat in Libya, or Asyut in Egypt gained importance as markets for slaves brought along the Trans-Saharan routes. Transport across the Sahara was done on foot in massive caravans composed of camels, merchants, overseers, and bound slaves. They relied on local knowledge from Tuareg and other desert peoples to navigate to the life-saving oases that made the journey possible.
The Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta joined one such march from Mali to Morocco in 1354, where 600 female slaves were made to march for almost three months before reaching slave markets in Sijilmasa. Thanks to exhaustion, searingly hot days, cold nights, limited supplies, and the chance that oases would run dry, casualty rates were understandably massive. One European explorer estimated that out of every four slaves that began the Trans-Saharan journey, only one reached the other side. Not all estimates agree on that, though, and it certainly varied by region, route, and time period. Slaves trudging across the central Sahara during summer must have had a higher death rate than those taken from Sudan along the Nile, for example. Still, like in the Atlantic passage, a substantial portion of slaves would have met a miserable end before reaching their destination.
Even if they survived, the life that awaited them was usually one of servitude and suffering. One of the grimmest realities of Trans-Saharan slavery was the castration of men. A substantial number of male slaves were castrated before arriving in the Islamic world. Since castration was technically illegal, it had to be performed before entering Muslim territory. That meant quick and crude castration, far from civilization, often resulting in deaths from infection and blood loss. Some estimates put the fatality rate at 60% or higher, but the high value of even a single eunuch slave made up for the relatively cheap cost of catching and castrating several who would never make it.
There were several reasons for castration. It was seen as a way to emasculate the male slaves and make them less likely to rebel. It also deprived them of the chance to start a family, meaning they would not have conflicting loyalties. Another reason was that since so many slaves were domestic slaves and thus had close access to the women of a household, castration eliminated the risk of improper sexual activity. Throughout history and all over the world, the idea of a noble woman seeking her pleasure with a male slave was hardly unheard of; after all, it was almost expected for men to sexually exploit female slaves, so why would it be any different the other way around?
The primary use for slaves was domestic slavery. Elites would maintain a number of slaves to perform daily tasks on their estates like cleaning, gardening, and servant’s work. This was especially true for female slaves who often ended up in forms of sexual slavery. While prostitution was frowned upon, Islamic law did allow for the ownership of ma malakat or concubines, and slaves provided a vast supply of them. As a result, most young women in the slave system found themselves sold for their bodies and the sexual gratification of elite men.
An 11th-century slave-buying manual by the Baghdadi scholar Ibn Butlan describes how the girls were sold and selected en masse. Sellers prided themselves on offering customers girls from all corners of the world, from sub-Saharan Africans to Indians to Europeans, all to cater to the desires of their new owners. The fate of most of these girls was a life of exploitation by a minor noble or official, then relegated to a sheltered life in the harem or domestic work after their master lost interest. A small number of these concubines, those who ended up in the power of the caliph or a powerful sultan, might enjoy a comfortable life. This was especially true if they birthed a son and became a umm al-walad, or “mother of the child.” However, while some concubines did rise to have formidable powers in court, they were almost entirely Arab or Persian in origin, not from sub-Saharan Africa.
Agricultural labor was another common destination for slaves, although this was mostly men. Tunisia had an especially high concentration of slave labor working on agricultural estates, but they could be found as far away as Bahrain, which reported around 30,000 black slaves on farms there in the 10th century. Morocco’s sugar industry also relied upon sub-Saharan African slaves for labor, which led the Moroccan Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur to launch an invasion across the Sahara to conquer the Songhai Empire and take direct control of the vital slave routes that originated there.
Male slaves could also become soldiers. Islamic prohibitions on spilling the blood of fellow believers encouraged Muslim rulers to acquire large armies of non-Muslims to settle things on the battlefield. These slave soldiers were called Mamluks and could earn a surprisingly comfortable life for themselves if they survived and fought well, and many earned their freedom through their work. The Sultan as-Salih Ayyub of Cairo was possibly the largest single purchaser of slaves in history and assembled an army of Mamluks so massive that after his death in 1249, these Mamluks were able to seize power and establish the Mamluk Sultanate that stood for over two centuries.
The best hope for a slave was for freedom by manumission. In theory, slaves who converted to Islam should usually be manumitted, although the practical ability of slaves to have their conversion recognized or the law enforced was not so reliable. In most cases, manumission came as a reward for a particularly loyal slave or bestowed in the will of a deceased slave owner. The Quran permits slavery, but it also recognizes the freeing of slaves as a virtuous act in itself. The Quran also explicitly calls for all slave owners to offer slaves the chance to buy their own freedom, which many did achieve, although this would usually take years of work.
The Trans-Saharan trade continued unabated throughout the Renaissance and even into the modern period. The arrival of Europeans did little to slow the trade, as they mostly opened their own networks from the western coasts while the Arabs monopolized inland trade. The abolition of Atlantic slavery had some influence on the course of Trans-Saharan trade. The 19th century was the most intense period of Trans-Saharan slavery, with around 1.2 million slaves in those 100 years. It appears that following the abolition of Atlantic trade, states and societies geared towards slavery chose to sell to the Arab traders instead of the European ones.
In the latter half of the 19th century, the European zeal for abolition was used to justify colonization of slave-trading African kingdoms, which deprived the Trans-Saharan traders of their suppliers. The new colonizers were not pleased at the idea of slave raiders kidnapping their new colonial subjects either, and so Arab slave raids also slowed. Britain used diplomatic pressure to force the abolition of slavery in Tunisia in 1846, and the Ottomans conceded some abolition in Libya in the 1850s, alongside France’s abolition of slavery in Algeria in 1848. The market for Trans-Saharan slave trading was severely reduced but not eliminated.
The Ottoman Empire still allowed slavery in most of its territory and continued to export slaves to the Middle East into the 20th century, but the sharply rising prices of those slaves showed the declining supply. Meanwhile, in Iran, the population of Tehran was still 12% black slaves as late as 1868, and an estimated 80,000 black slaves were still present in Iran in the mid-19th century. A combination of abolition and colonization brought the Trans-Saharan trade to a close gradually. Technological changes like the introduction of railways and the improvement of steamships also reduced the need for vast caravan trains across the desert.
While we cannot point to a single date where the last Trans-Saharan slave caravan traveled, it’s safe to say that any significant slave trade across the Sahara had been all but eliminated by the 20th century. The end of the Trans-Saharan slave trade brought to a close a system that had stood for over a thousand years. In its way, the trade left an indelible mark on its victims. Kingdoms rose and societies collapsed in the face of the demands of the trade. Millions were taken from their homes, and many of those were castrated, prevented from ever forming families or communities that would remember their story.
Slavery itself outlasted the Trans-Saharan trade in many of the places it involved. Countries like Libya, Morocco, Mali, and Niger still face major problems of domestic and sexual slavery that persist to this day. They join the estimated 6 to 10 million victims of one of the longest-lasting slave-trading networks in history, and like their historical forbears, are all too easily forgotten.
