Tribute 117Despite the large number of Sahelian African people—
possibly millions—transported across the Saharan desert
during the fi rst millennium ce, there does not exist today
an African Diaspora in the Mediterranean region or in
West Asia that rivals the size and visibility of that created in
the Americas and the Caribbean by the transatlantic slave
trade. Scholars speculate that the relatively lower number
of men transported out of Africa during the Saharan slave
trade, the isolation of African slaves from one another, high
rates of disease and mortality among Africans enslaved in
the Muslim world, and a history of social and marital inte-
gration is what has prevented the proliferation of African
diasporic communities in Mediterranean regions. How-
ever, the apparent absence of a visible African Diaspora,
particularly in the Mediterranean world, is a question that
historians continue to pursue.
See also: Atlantic Slave Trade; SahelLindsay SumnerBibliography
Cordell, Dennis. Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-
Saharan Slave Trade. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1985.
Savage, Elizabeth, ed. Th e Human Commodity: Perspectives on the
Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. London: Frank Cass, 1992.
Shillington, Kevin. History of Africa. New York: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2005.Tribute
Tribute was the practice among Atlantic African kingdoms
and city-states of demanding payment in form of labor or
produce from the kingdoms, city-states, or rural villages
and other territories or polities they conquered or extended
their political and economic infl uence. Th is payment of
tribute—whether in kind of specie—has come to be closely
associated with the Atlantic slave trade as surplus urban la-
bor—derived in part from individuals forced to pay off trib-
ute obligations owed by their polity—was siphoned off and
sold to Europeans. It was also a principal means by which
kingdoms and smaller polities generated their wealth since
it meant owning or controlling one of the few truly valuable
commodities in Atlantic Africa—human labor.
Th e concept of tribute may have evolved from the need
to create wealth from the land. For most agricultural-based
polities, wealth lay not in the abundance of land, but ratherbegan to seek out other populations for the purposes of
enslavement.
Most of the people who were captured, enslaved, and
transported during the trans-Saharan trade originated in the
Sahel region south of the Sahara, stretching from the area
that is now Chad and Sudan, west to what is now Senegal and
Gambia. Most slaves were transported north, across the Sa-
hara desert to Muslim-controlled areas along the Mediterra-
nean coast, both in North Africa and in southern Europe and
points east. Slaves transported during the trade were usually
obtained via raids or kidnapping, oft en by the Tuareg, a no-
madic Saharan people. Slaves transported along these routes
endured excruciatingly long journeys with little water, in
one of the earth’s most extreme climates. Th e mortality rate
among enslaved persons during these journeys was high, and
the physical and emotional consequences experienced by
slaves as a result of their forced departure from home, their
strenuous voyage across a vast desert, and their introduction
to a strange new world would have been intensely painful.
Th e people transported north across the desert and
into slavery during the trans-Saharan slave trade were
largely women. Women were highly valued in the slave
trade because of the relatively wider range of roles they
were able to fulfi ll when compared to men. Many of them
were employed in domestic labor positions, and as concu-
bines and sex workers when they arrived at their destina-
tion. Th us, sexual exploitation was a salient feature of the
trans- Saharan slave trade.
In Islamic societies, slaves were not necessarily en-
slaved for life, though many certainly were, but sometimes
had the possibility of freedom if manumitted by their mas-
ters. Enslaved women who gave birth to children fathered
by their masters were sometimes freed, and children born
under such circumstances were free. However, children fa-
thered by an enslaved man and born to enslaved women
generally inherited the condition of slavery. Other means of
manumission included the purchase of one’s own freedom,
and in a few cases, conversion to Islam.
Trade in slaves, salt, and gold continued to fl ourish in
the Saharan for centuries, expanding trading networks in
multiple directions, many of which eventually linked the
Saharan slave trade to Atlantic ports where European de-
mand for slaves developed beginning in the 15th century
and growing signifi cantly in the years that followed. Al-
though the Atlantic slave trade offi cially ended in the early
19th century, the trans-Saharan slave trade persisted for
nearly another century aft erward.