Slave Trades: Why the Term “Arab-Muslim Slave Trade” Must Be Examined

The term “Arab-Muslim slave trade” regularly comes up in discussions about slavery. It is often compared with the transatlantic slave trade, sometimes to rank forms of violence, sometimes to shift the issue of historical responsibility. Yet the history of slave trades cannot be reduced to an opposition between peoples, religions, or continents.

The major systems of slave trading involved African, European, Mediterranean, Muslim, and Christian powers, as well as merchants of varied status and origin. Enslaved populations, for their part, were never merely objects of this history: they resisted, fled, negotiated for their survival, and led revolts.

Slavery and the slave trade: two related but distinct realities

Slavery is a system of domination in which one person is considered the property of another. They may be bought, sold, given away, or inherited. This condition deprives the individual of a large part of their rights and frequently tears them away from their family, social, and cultural ties.

The slave trade refers more specifically to organized networks for the capture, purchase, sale, and forced movement of people reduced to slavery. Prisoners of war long constituted a major source of enslavement. Other situations also existed, including convictions and, more marginally, enslavement linked to debt.

Historians often distinguish between societies where slavery was present without forming the main foundation of the economy and slave societies, where forced labor heavily structured production, the social order, and power. These categories must nevertheless be used with caution: even a small number of enslaved people may hold a decisive place in the functioning of a state.

Multiple eastern slave trades, not a uniform bloc

The phrase “Arab-Muslim slave trade” is generally used to group together the trans-Saharan slave trade and the Indian Ocean slave trade. This shorthand is problematic because it creates the impression of a single system, exclusively driven by Arabs and Muslims. Historical realities were more diverse.

The trans-Saharan slave trade notably connected sub-Saharan Africa to the Maghreb. Arab or Amazigh traders played a role in it, often in connection with African rulers and intermediaries. Historian Ralph Austin estimates that around nine million people were deported along this route.

The Indian Ocean slave trade primarily ran from the coasts of East Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf, India, and sometimes China. It is associated with an estimate of around eight million deportations. These figures are historical estimates, not final counts: the available sources are fragmentary, the periods involved were very long, and the routes shifted over time.

Other eastern routes existed. Europeans captured or raided by Vikings, Tatars, or Maghrebi corsairs were sold to Egypt and other regions. Networks also connected Central Asia, the Volga basin, China, and India. The etymology of the word “slave,” linked to the Slavs, is also a reminder that the victims of enslavement never belonged to a single human group.

Islam, religious status, and color hierarchies

Islam did not create slavery, which was already deeply established around the Mediterranean before its emergence. It nevertheless regulated and legitimized an existing institution without abolishing it. The prohibition against enslaving Muslims also helped shift the search for captives toward populations living beyond the borders of Islamized territories.

Religious criteria therefore mattered in Muslim worlds. This does not mean that all enslaved people were treated identically there, nor that skin color was absent from social hierarchies. Sources and historical research point to a frequently more disadvantaged position for Black people in certain markets and social imaginaries.

Religious or pseudo-historical justifications were used to naturalize these forms of domination. The Curse of Ham was notably invoked to associate Black populations with an alleged condition of servitude. These interpretations were challenged, but they long fueled demeaning representations. Other theories based on climate also claimed to rank peoples, including Black and Slavic populations.

Reducing the history of Muslim worlds to slavery would nevertheless be just as misleading as erasing this reality. The societies concerned were shaped by power relations that varied according to period, state, status, and region.

Captivity and slavery in precolonial Africa

In many precolonial African societies, kinship ties and integration into a community were essential. The loss of these ties could place an individual in a situation of captivity. Captives taken in conflicts could be incorporated into their master’s group and, in some contexts, assimilated over several generations, while retaining a subordinate position.

This reality should not lead to minimizing coercion, violence, or exploitation. It does, however, remind us that local forms of captivity did not automatically correspond to the racial and hereditary slavery that took hold on plantations in the Americas.

External demand profoundly transformed African political balances. The arrival of firearms fueled a cycle of wars, capture, and exchange: states sought weapons to defend themselves or expand their power, while merchants demanded captives as payment. Some kingdoms thus organized part of their economy around warfare and the production of captives.

It is therefore not enough to say that “Africans sold Africans” to explain the phenomenon. Political, social, religious, and family affiliations did not correspond to a unified Black identity. The participation of certain African elites existed, as did the many African forms of resistance to enslavement.

The specificity of the transatlantic slave trade

The transatlantic slave trade developed alongside the expansion of plantations, particularly those centered on sugar production. European powers built societies in the Americas that relied heavily on the forced labor of Black people deported from Africa.

Its central specificity lies in the establishment of racialized and hereditary slavery. In this system, servile status was assigned to Black people and passed on to their descendants. Religious conversion or social integration did not offer the same prospect of leaving slavery as in other historical contexts.

Christian institutions and European states participated in legitimizing and organizing this order. In France, the Code Noir legally regulated colonial slavery. This history is inseparable from national history and its social, political, and memorial consequences. It also sheds light on the struggles led by figures such as Jean-Baptiste Belley, a formerly enslaved man who became a member of parliament during the Revolution.

Why comparisons quickly become misleading

Comparing slave trades solely on the basis of a total number of victims risks erasing their differences: duration, routes, the status of victims, working conditions, the possibility or impossibility of assimilation, the role of race, the hereditary transmission of slavery, and contemporary consequences.

The trans-Saharan, eastern, intra-African, and Atlantic systems were violent. They were also connected by economic and political interests. But discussing them should serve neither to deny the responsibility of European powers in the Atlantic slave trade nor to absolve those who participated in other slave trades.

Moreover, the denunciation of slavery in African or Muslim worlds was exploited by European colonizers to justify a supposed “civilizing mission.” Once established, colonial administrations did not immediately put an end to every form of servitude and made extensive use of forced labor to exploit conquered territories.

This discrepancy requires distinguishing between the need to document historical violence and the political use that can be made of it. Recognizing one slave trade does not grant the right to render another invisible, just as memory should not be used to assign inherited guilt to present-day populations.

Making room for all memories without competing victimhood

The history of slavery requires a precise examination of responsibilities, resistance, and legacies. It cannot be reduced either to eternal perpetrators or to passive victims. The major slave trades were made possible by alliances, conflicts, economic constraints, and relations of domination that changed over the centuries.

In France, the memory of the Atlantic slave trade and colonial slavery remains especially important because it directly concerns the history of the state, the colonies, and overseas populations. Studying other slave trades can enrich this understanding, provided it does not become a tool for avoidance.

This need for nuance echoes other reflections on mechanisms of racial hierarchy, particularly colorism and the social valuing of light skin. Understanding these legacies helps avoid simplistic narratives and better grasp the persistence of certain representations.

FAQ

Why is the term “Arab-Muslim slave trade” contested?

It groups highly diverse networks under a single label and implicitly assigns responsibility to a people and a religion. The trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades involved multiple actors, including Africans, Arabs, Amazighs, Muslims, and non-Muslims.

Did African societies participate in the slave trades?

Yes, certain African authorities and elites captured, held, or sold captives. This participation took place within local political contexts and in response to strong external demand. It sums up neither the history of Africa nor that of resistance to slavery, which was widely led by Africans.

Can the transatlantic and eastern slave trades be compared?

They can be compared methodically, but they should not be reduced to a competition of numbers. Their mechanisms, timelines, the statuses imposed on victims, and the role of racialization differed profoundly.