The slave trade and the population drain
from Black Africa17130 years later a Minister of Morocco discussing a trade treaty with the British Ambas-
sador, or, even more likely, the little black girl, born in a filthy hovel and exchanged in
the shade of an oasis for a skin of eau de vie, can find herself while still almost a child,
bedecked with jewels and richly perfumed, in the arms of the Sultan.u
In any case, in Muslim countries the Negress was regarded as an object of
pleasure. She was also a musician and a highly esteemed cook.
The fate of the men, with a few individual exceptions, was less enviable.
Madame Valensi, in her study of the black slaves living in Tunisia in the nine-
teenth century, observes that their condition was lowly.^12 There are no known
cases of social ascension among them. Some did become saints, and their
miracles are reported in the hagiography; but here there was no escape from
slavery, no hope of ever being redeemed or repatriated.
At best, they were freed, mainly on the death of their owner. In this way
blacks could put down new roots in Tunisia and, before slavery was abolished,
merge with the Tunisian population and even own property. But their status
was always one of inferiority.
At times even black slaves had to endure hardships reminiscent of those
suffered by their brothers in misfortune on the plantations of tropical America.
According to G. Mouette, the black slaves in Morocco during the reign
of the Sultan Mouley Archy (eighteenth century) were very badly off.^13 They
were put to death for the slightest mistake. The workshops were full of them,
in irons and covered in wounds.
But the fate of the eunuch slaves was even worse. At the end of the nine-
teenth century, there was still a vast establishment at Messfoua (Morocco)
preparing eunuchs for the Sultan. Eight out of ten of those who were operated
on died. Léon Frank records that between 100 and 200 men were turned into
eunuchs annually at Abu Tig, a small town in Upper Egypt.^14
One of the last bastions of black slavery in the Muslim world was the
army. From the earliest days of the Hegira, Islam employed what Mangin
calls the 'black force'.^15
'Amr', the second Caliph's lieutenant, conquered Egypt and Nubia and
there raised black troops. It was these troops that were the backbone of the
army which invaded North Africa. It was this force that provided the sover-
eigns of Spain and the Maghreb with the disciplined, loyal and brave element
which their armies lacked. In the eighth century, the Omayyad Caliph Adb-ar-
Rhaman I (755-87), founder of the Caliphate of Spain, rescued the Spanish
peninsula from anarchy with the help of a 40,000-strong black army. The last
of the sovereigns of this dynasty also had many blacks brought from the interior
of Africa and shaped them into a formidable cavalry corps.
The ostentatious Harun Al-Rashid himself bought a great number of
black slaves, whom he armed. In Egypt, the Tulunids and later the Fatimites
had black troops.