This is the last thing I will say.
I'm going to make this clearly explained post about this here, since Somalis really and truly cannot believe that there were Somalis were used as slaves during the Arab Slave Trade. The Arab Slave Trade in general is not something discussed because it’s one of those events that is swept under the rug by the Muslim world, perhaps due to shame and embarrassment, however it did happen, as ill documented as it might be.
Firstly, let's talk about how in the 21st century Somalis are still enslaved by Arabs and how the ummah NEVER cares about Somali issues. This is an issue clearly documented by the U.S. Department of State in the following words:
"Somali men are subjected to conditions of forced labor as herdsmen and menial workers in the Gulf states, while children are reportedly smuggled to Saudi Arabia through Yemen and then placed into forced begging." [
X] Saudi Arabia who abuses domestic workers, just last year aimed to recruit 15,000 Somalis to be maids. [
X] [
X] And Somali women are often forced into prostitution in Yemen. [
X] Video [
X] Al-Jazeera also just published this video in 2015 about Somalis being treated harshly by Arabs in Yemen and working slave labor intensive jobs only to be paid dollars a month. Video [
X] That's in the 21st century.
Furthermore the book “Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora” by Ronald Segal, he notes how in 1966 "at least three hundred Somali women had been imported into southern Arabia as slaves" (Page 202). On top of this Arabs still call Somalis "Abeed" because to them, Somalis are just like all other Black Africans. So if you think Arabs didn't enslave Somalis because some became Muslim, think again, they were and still are ruthless and don't care that Somalis/Africans are Muslim.
In my video [
X] I very clearly explain that the term "Somali" was not used by Arabs, in fact the word "Somali" was not recorded in writing until the 15th century. Somalis were often grouped with "Habesha", that's why in Arabic literature and even Islamic hadiths, the term "Somali" is never used. They knew of a portion of the horn of Africa as the "Land of Barbar" or Berber. In the book "Race and Color in Islam" by Benard Lewis he explains that "Africans are called either Habash or Sudan, the former designating the Ethiopians and their immediate neighbors in the Horn of Africa, the latter (an Arabic word meaning black) denoting blacks in general. It sometimes includes Ethiopian, but never Egyptians, Berbers, or other peoples north of the Sahara. Later, after the Arab expansion into Africa, other and more specific terms are added, the commonest being Nuba, Bujja (or Beja), and Zanj" (Page 30) This means Arabs did not say the word "Somali" even if they were talking about Somalis, who were located in the Horn.
The East African Slave Trade started during the 7th century. Moving onto where it explicitly states that Somalis were also sold as slaves in the Arab Slave Trade of East Africa is in the book “The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: AD 500-1000” by Timothy Power, Archeologist and Historian of Arabia and the Islamic World. He writes, “The African slaves exported from Zayla’ included both broadly ‘Ethiopian’ peoples brought down to the coast from the interior, and ‘Berbers’ from the regions of modern Somalia. Muslim merchants were apparently active in the procurement of slaves from the interior, as already noted with reference to al-Istakhri. Al-Muqaddasi observes that ‘the slaves [khadam]…exported to Aden, consist of Barbar and these are the worst of slaves.”
Lastly, because people keep implying that I'm saying Somalis were only slaves and did not sell slaves, I never said Somalis did not have slaves, because Arabs used the land of what is now Somalia, because it was convenient for them and therefore used Somalis to obtain slaves. This does not take away from the fact that Arabs also used Somalis as slaves, as I said, Arabs were ruthless in their slave trade, which started during the 7th century. Somalis had Oromo slaves and Bantus which was entirely orchestrated by Arabs, just like how in the Americas some Blacks became plantation owners and enslaved other Blacks and how in many parts of West Africa, slavery was a normalized act in society, especially when captives of war were seized, though Europeans exploited this practice, much like Arabs. Africans do get used under systems of White and Arab supremacy in case you forgot...Furthermore, Somalia was used to sale Bantus because of it’s location or its proximity to Arabia. In the book "Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery" By Catherine Besteman she talks about the constant wars between Somalis and Oromos saying “Local lore tells of many great battles in the late nineteenth century between Somali and Oromo west of Jubba – battles that were finally halted by British involvement in the area at the turn of the century. British colonial authorities were very concerned about Somali expansionist tendencies and Somali-Oromo wars, and carefully documented population movements and social relationships between the two groups” (Page 57). She further explains the nature of their relationship talking about enslavement saying “In the Somali raids on Oromo settlements during the nineteenth century, Oromo women and children were claimed as slaves, while men were usually killed. These women and children were taken into family life of their abductors, while still, of course, remaining subjects. Oromo women, valued for their beauty, were kept as concubines or as domestic servants or were given in marriage to other slaves” (Page 82). In addition to this “The Abyssinians captured Harar in 1884 and started raiding Ogaden Somali villages in that area, killing men and selling women and children as slaves” [
X].
In the Book “Slavery in the Arab World” by Murray Gordon, he explains “A jihad, mounted from the Islamic sultanate of Adal from the 1520s to the 1640s, temporarily overran Ethiopia and resulted in the deportation of thousands of slaves across the Red Sea into Arabia. Thereafter, it was the Muslims’ turn to be enslaved following a recovery by Ethiopia which checked the Muslim advance” (Page 131). All this means is that slavery in East Africa was happening on multiple levels and we know that even today, Somalis are not limited to the political geographical space that is Somalia today, but rather Somalis exist outside those boundaries, residing in Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and there are even small populations of Somalis in Tanzania and Eritrea.
Gordon also explains that “By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the East Coast had achieved a modest degree of urban growth. Along the coastal strip between the Kilwa group of islands and Mogadishu, some thirty-seven towns managed to develop and maintain a degree of prosperity and urbanity. Because they were more conscious of their differences than what they shared in common, they were never able to unite into a single confederate or state. Several of these towns, notably Kilwa (Present day Tanzania) and Mogadishu and to a lesser extent, Mombasa, prospered. Islam, which managed to take hold on the coast in the thirteenth century, was the religion that people of these towns professed. [That means the majority of them embraced Islam]. When Ibn Battuta came to the coast in 1331, he chose to visit Kilwa and Mogadishu. He could not help observe the piety of its inhabitants. No less significant, Ibn Battuta was made aware of the large number of slavers that made up their populations. The sultan of Kilwa [Present day Tanzania], he noted, carried out frequent raids in search of slaves. So plenty were they that he presented twenty of them as a gift to an indigent faqir from Yemen. Both Kilwa and Mogadishu, in fact, owed part of their prosperity to the slaving activities carried on by their sultans” (Page 125). In analyzing this, one should understand that cities on the coast of East Africa partook in slavery using their natives in the Arab Slave Trade. Furthermore, in “The Mysterious and the Foreign in Early Modern England” by Helen Ostowich and others, she expresses “In addition to ‘white’ women slave markets of the Ottoman Empire carried African women, who were sold for either concubinage or labor. Murray Gordon, in Slavery in the Arab World, finds that African slaves women came from Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Joseph Harris points out in The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade that with the onset of European colonization in the Maghrib, which slowed the slave trade, African women were gathered from as far south as Kenya and Tanzania. Throughout the Islamic world, Ethiopian and other slave women from the Horn of Africa became the concubines of men who could not afford to buy a ‘white’ woman, who cost three times as much as an Ethiopian. Though not ‘white’, Ethiopian women were considered the ‘second best’ option because their facial features and skin tone were seen a somewhere between ‘white’ and ‘black’ and therefore were marginally acceptable” (Page 62-63). Again, we must realize that the borderlines of geographical names did not inherently limit the locations of ethnic groups in East Africa, as I said previously Somalis spill well beyond the physical boundaries of the nation state Somalia, into “Ethiopian” “Kenyan” “Djibouti” areas, etc.
In the chapter Slavery in Arabian Societies at the Turn of the 20th Century, in the book “Slavery and Manumission: British Policy in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf by Jerzy Zdanowski, he writes “The second source of slave importation was the Upper Nile Valley and Abyssinia. Approximately half a million people from these regions were taken to Egypt and another half to ports of the Red Sea for export to Arabia and the Persian Gulf. A large majority of the slaves were youths, mostly girls, aged under 15. European travelers recounted in their diaries that slaves were to be seen practically everywhere in Arabia. The Swiss traveler Jean Louis Burckhardt, who travelled in the early 19th century with a slave caravan from Shendi to Suakin, stated that some 5,000 slaves passed through this town each year. He admitted that the slave-girls were commonly prostituted by the slave traders. In 1838, for instance, an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 slaves arrived each year in Egypt alone; some of them were bound for domestic service there, other for export to undertake similar work, yet others to be used as concubines, construction and factory workers, porters, dockers, clerks, soldiers and cultivators. Many of the East African slaves were sent to the Persian Gulf…” (Page 17).
Eventually the British had to form a treaty with the Omani sultan to stop Arabs from enslaving East Africans in the 1800s and this is talked about in the book “The Persian Gulf” by Arnold Wilson. Furthermore it is noted in this book that Somalis had to be deemed as “free” and Arabs had to be banned from enslaving them, although there are still specific accounts of Arabs enslaving Somalis afterwards. In the book “Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire” by Matthew S. Hooper, he mentions an account of a Somali man describing his experience being caputured, “’I was born in Barbara (Present day Somalia). While I was in my tenth year of my age I was kidnapped by one Ahmed, a slave broker, who brought me to Waqra near Qatar and sold me to Rahid bin Hamad’” (Page 115). He also mentions how ambiguous certain geographical terms are because borderlines which are often only seen on drawn maps are man-made and have been changing throughout time. This is because, for example, you could be what’s considered an ethnic Somali, but be born in Ethiopian territory and therefore be referred to as “Ethiopian” or “Abyssinian”.
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This is part of the reason why Somalis are still called “Abeed” and the Arab slave trade is still a mentality Arabs have to date. Just because we are Muslim does not mean Arabs, will stop having their warped mentality or stop acquiring slaves. As stated previously, in Islamic towns in East Africa (which means the inhabitants were Muslim), they were still sold their natives to Arabs. All this means is that they were used by Arabs, hence why it’s referred to as the “Arab” slave trade.
It's not about being self hating or trying to gain the approval of anyone, it's about seeking to understand history and how it effects us today.
not mad at me. 
It all comes together
