Talk:Indian Ocean slave trade

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Annual figures for the trade

The article says "17 million as the total number of people transported from the 7th century until 1920, amounting to an average of 6,000 people per year". But 17M/(1920 - 600) = 13k not 6k, so something is amiss. Shouldn't it be 13,000 per year? Daycot (talk) 20:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

You are correct. But the error is in the original source. That source (itself the review of a book which appears to be only in French) does mention that the 17 million is comprised of 9 million via the Sahara, 4 million via the Red Sea and 4 million from the East African coast. If the latter two were considered 'Indian Ocean' then that would amount to 8 million, which is approx 5,700 per year. I have altered the text accordingly, and added in the estimate of 9 million over the Sahara, just for clarity. LastDodo (talk) 11:44, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

End?

There is nothing here about when or how the Indian Ocean slave trade ended. Not even a sentence. Someone with knowledge should add something at the end ideally. LastDodo (talk) 11:26, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

The Indian Ocean slave trade was one route that provided slaves to Slavery in Saudi Arabia and Slavery in Oman, were slavery was not abolished until 1962 and 1970 respectively.--Aciram (talk) 21:06, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

History

East African kingdoms — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.210.155.1 (talk) 19:30, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Refs

• Ref

Bookku (talk) 03:51, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

References

European Indian Ocean slave trade

The text says: Slave trade occurred in the eastern Indian Ocean before the Dutch settled there around 1600. The volume of this trade is unknown. European slave trade in the Indian Ocean began when Portugal established Estado da Índia in the early 16th century. From then until the 1830s, c. 200 million slaves were exported from Mozambique averagely and similar figures have been estimated for slaves brought from Asia to the Philippines during the Iberian Union (1580–1640).

The figures are doubtful, especially without any source and reference. It is not clear what "averagely" should mean. "Similar figures have been estimated..." without a reference to a source is as bad as it can get regarding facts ... 93.237.20.189 (talk) 09:28, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Misused Evidence for Claim

"Ibn Battuta met a Syrian Arab girl from Damascus who was a slave of a black African governor in Mali. Ibn Battuta engaged in a conversation with her in Arabic. The black man was a scholar of Islam and his name was Farba Sulayman. He was openly violating the rule in Islam against enslaving Arabs. Syrian girls were trafficked from Syria to Saudi Arabia right before World War II and married to legally bring them across the border but then divorced and given to other men."

Here an anecdote from the 14th century traveller, Ibn Battuta, is used to explain the trafficking of Syrian women to Saudi Arabia in the 20th century. This information is not entirely relevant, but is misplaced. Moreover, Ibn Battuta's accounts do not confirm that the girl was in fact Muslim, but the source is cited anyway.

The sectioned needs to be restructured and the claim that the Arican governor was violating the rule in Islam needs to be fact checked. Aadyaagrawal (talk) 05:07, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

@Aadyaagrawal thanks for pointing out. Agree that section needs closer look and may need some restructuring for better clarity .

As of now tried to divide paragraph and mention century for better clarity. Bookku (talk) 10:27, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Slave trade

indian ocean trade 102.85.75.171 (talk) 13:43, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

What was the gold used for in indian ocean slave trade to do 2C0F:E818:4000:ED:116A:4E3A:AE4C:5550 (talk) 01:19, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

"part of the Islamic slave trade"

@Andrevan added that Indian Ocean slave trade "was part of the Islamic slave trade"[1]. But that is categorically false, as the Indian Ocean Slave trade predates Islam. Of course, Muslims did participate in it, but to consider it entirely a Muslim endeavor is simply untrue. VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 09:15, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

The statement is sourced. It can have such a name and still predate Islam. Andre🚐 13:50, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

At least one of the sources is missing the page number, so I can't check it. Can you indicate what the sources say exactly? I'd be surprised to see them arguing that only Muslims participated in the Indian Ocean slave trade, and even if some sources did, it would be a highly WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim, as we have plenty of sources that suggest otherwise.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 16:21, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

It's not only Muslims participating, it's just a name. Muslim merchants, and Arabized persons, many of which were not Muslim, ran the trade. I'll quote the sources for you later. Andre🚐 19:57, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

You quote four sources.

• The first I responded to here
• The second doesn't mention "Islamic slave trade".
• The third is a book without a page number.
• The fourth also doesn't mention "Islamic slave trade".

I'm undoing your edits until such a time you can substantiate them with quotes from the sources.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 21:53, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I'll respond more fully later, but I don't agree. Ctrl+F for a phrase doesn't mean the material was not discussed, so perhaps a fuller in-depth read of the sources will help. I'll quickly provide a partial response now to substantiate my position, though I haven't reverted your revert since we are discussing, but I don't want you to think I'm shooting from the hip here, because there's a ton of substantiation and more that I didn't include.

As you see in the diff, I added several sources and I added two terms (not one), "Arab slave trade" and "Islamic slave trade." In this particular article I jumbled the sources together which may explain some confusion. So it may be easier to separate out the two and source them separately. If I knew this would be so controversial I would have done that initially.

• In the first source (Alexander), as you quoted your own response it does explicitly mention "Islamic slave trade." It discusses BOTH the Indian Ocean and trans-Saharan trade. It discusses the long duration of the Islamic slave trade to Asia and the Dar el Islam in North and East Africa. It discusses the recruitment of chattel-slaves for North and West Africa and identifies three phases in the trade in slaves northwards, which includes raids by Muslim nomads and trade with indigenous kingdoms of the savannahs. entions Arabs in the context of the development of mixed Arab-Zanj communities along the coast, where the Arabic/Bantu language Ki-swahili became the lingua franca. It also discusses the role of Arabs in the slave trade and their interactions with indigenous rulers. Therefore, it's clearly relevant and substantiates the incusion of both terms and their meanings.
• The second source (Reilly) is explicitly about the Arab slave trade. It does not mention Islam explicitly, but it does discuss the Arab slave trade in depth.
• The third is a collection of essays. It contains Austen which is cited below. I could probably have cited the specific chapter, not the whole book.
• The fourth (Stanziani) absolutely does discuss both Arab and Islamic slave trade. It discusses how most slaves from about 1000 AD to the end of the trade were conveyed across the Sahara Desert and the Indian Ocean by Muslim merchants, marketed to Muslims, and employed in societies where Islam was a key force. It also highlights the role of Islam in connecting Eastern Africa to India and the Arabian or Persian Gulf, with significant numbers of slaves traded during this period. t discusses how between 1400 and 1900, approximately 2.5 million slaves were traded by sea along the coast of the Indian Ocean, with a significant number of these slaves being part of the Arab slave trade. It also cites Austen, “The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade,” 66, table 2.8; Ralph Austen, “The Nineteenth-century Islamic Slave Trade from East Africa (Swahili and Red Sea Coasts): A Tentative Census," as well as Esmond B. Martin, T. C. Ryan, “A Quantitative Assessment of the Arab Slave Trade of East Africa, 1770–1896,” Kenya Historical Review 5, 1 (1977): 71–91. Andre🚐 22:32, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

All of that supports that idea that Arab Muslims played a role in the Indian Ocean slave trade, and of course we must include that both in the body and the lead. But a name very much must be found by Ctrl + F, else its not a name, it's a description. I'm really not seeing any substantiation for the exact name "Islamic slave trade", but rather a description of facts.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 00:04, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

It's literally in the title of one of the sources and used explicitly by your own admission in the text of another, right? If it's a question of quantity and we don't dispute any of the actual content, then I can find more sources? Andre🚐 00:07, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

"used explicitly by your own admission in the text of another" It is used explicitly in the text to describe a different topic. "It's literally in the title of one of the sources". "Islamic Slave Trade from East Africa" is not the same as "Islamic slave trade".

We also have a book called "European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850" but we wouldn't say that an alternative name for this topic is "European Slave Trading" (inaccurate) or "European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850" (accurate but undue). We would, however, mention the role of Europeans both in the body and the lead. Likewise, we should mention the role of Muslims in the body and the lead without making up names that are not given in sources.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 00:28, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

That is not correct. The sentence "the Islamic slave trade to Asia and of the Dar el Islam in North and East Africa" is about this topic. How do you think the traders from the Swahili coast got to Asia? That route is the Indian Ocean. "Islamic Slave Trade from East Africa," of course is this topic. That source reads Efforts to estimate the number of slaves taken by Muslims out of the various regions of East Africa... How could they be talking about something else?

Here are several more sources for the Indian ocean slave trade being Islamic and part of the broader topic of the Islamic slave trades:

• [2] he historic evidence indicates that in the areas of Africa that were part of the older Islamic slave trades there .........major slave destinations of the Indian Ocean slave trade
• [3] Statistics for Islamic slavery are notoriously scarce and untrustworthy, but recent unpublished calculations suggest that the Islamic slave trade may have been almost twice as large as the better documented and more notorious slave trade to the Americas
• [4] The history of the Islamic slave trade, dating back to the seventh century, has long been overshadowed by scholarship on the Atlantic slave trade
• [5] the spread of Islam in the 7th and 8th centuries led to increases in long-distance trading in both the Middle East and Indian Ocean regions...The Indian Ocean and Middle Eastern slave trades developed due to long interactions between indigenous African cultures and outsiders... cites the Austen source as well.
• [6] There was little that was “Islamic” about the “Islamic slave trade” from east Africa to Arabia and the Gulf in the late‐nineteenth and early‐twentieth centuries
• [7] British missionaries moved into Malawi, the place of origin of the Indian Ocean Islamic slave trade

Andre🚐 00:41, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I notice you didn't address my point about ""European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850". Can you please do that? Hopefully that'll show you why your reasoning is incorrect.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 01:11, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

The "European slave trade" would conventionally refer to what is also called the "Atlantic slave trade." That is not relevant at all, and doesn't in any way rebut the many sources which use "Islamic slave trade" Andre🚐 01:15, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Excuse me, but how can you say that it is not relevant, when we have an entire book on the topic of European slave trade in the Indian Ocean. Are you saying its not reliable? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 01:17, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I never said anything about the reliability of the book. The common meaning of "European slave trade" is the Atlantic slave trade. That there is another lesser discussed European slave trade is not relevant to the Indian Ocean slave trade or the Arab/Muslim descriptors for that slave trade. Andre🚐 01:30, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes and the common meaning of "Islamic slave trade" is simply slave trading conducted by Muslims from the 7th century until the abolition. By contrast, Indian Ocean slave trade started centuries before then.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 04:41, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

As for the sources, once again none of them are saying that "Indian Ocean Slave trade" was synonymous with "Islamic slave trade". At best, they are saying the two topics were related and overlapped, but not the same thing.

• First source I've already addressed above.
• Davis is clearly including Trans-Saharan slave trade as part of the "Islamic slave trade" when he points out "the Islamic slave trade also involved lengthy and often deadly travel by desert caravan".
• Your quote of Loiseau doesn't mention Indian Ocean at all.
• Rue doesn't mention "Islamic slave trade" anywhere. He does mention the role of Muslims in the Indian Ocean slave trade, and as I've already said many times, that is what we should be mentioning.
• Hopper appears to be making the opposite argument as you think he's making. In any case, Hopper too qualifies it by calling "Islamic slave trade from east Africa".
• See WP:BRITANNICA.

VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 01:20, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Where did you address Nunn? What do you mean?

Davis explicitly mentions the Indian Ocean in the context of the Islamic slave trade, specifically referring to voyages from East Africa to regions such as Oman, the Persian Gulf, and India. Do you not agree?

I'll withdraw Loiseau because on inspection that belongs in the parallel conceptual discussion of the Red Sea slave trade.

Rue explains the concept, cites the Austen source that I offered above, which you claimed was unrelated to this.

Hopper is arguing that the Islamic slave trade was not so Islamic, in doing so though, he uses the phrase you claimed was made up and not found in sources.

Britannica: ntries should be evaluated on an individual basis. This one looks good to me. It's written by a named professor and fact-checked by them. Andre🚐 01:26, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

The phrase "Islamic slave trade" is found in the sources, but it is not synonymous at all with "Indian Ocean slave trade" as I'll explain below. Davis does refer to a part of the Indian Ocean slave trade, namely that conducted by Muslims, but as this article and other sources indicate, European conducted Indian Ocean slave trade too. Can you find me any sources that refer to this European slave trade as "Islamic slave trade"? Of course not. VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 04:39, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, to be clear, you're moving the goalposts in saying the sources must claim the Indian Ocean trade was synonymous as I've never asserted that, rather, I asserted the Islamic slave trade(s) have the Indian Ocean trade as one of them, along with others. Andre🚐 01:28, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to explain the following concept once again succinctly. "Islamic slave trade" is not synonymous with "Indian Ocean slave trade", you seem to agree above. In addition,

• Indian Ocean slave trade is not a subset of Islamic slave trade because it involves centuries of slave trade by Babylonians, Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, and then later on Western European colonial powers. In other words, large parts of Indian Ocean slave trade have nothing to do with Islamic slave trade.
• Islamic slave trade is not a subset of Indian Ocean slave trade because Muslims engaged in slave trade in places other than the Indian Ocean, for example see Trans-Saharan slave trade, Barbary slave trade. In other words large parts of Islamic slave trade have nothing to do with the Indian Ocean slave trade.

Now certainly the role of Muslims in the Indian should be mentioned in the article (it already is) and should also be mentioned in the lead. If you disagree with the above, you should explain clearly which part exactly. And lets also seek a third opinion.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 04:48, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

There seems to be a nearly identical discussion here, so let me ping the participants there: TybenFree, Alfedda. We can also seek WP:3O.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 04:51, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, let's note that it's not an identical discussion, but a related parallel discussion, with different sources and different arguments. Andre🚐 04:53, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

The same applies: the Trans-Saharan slave trade was not a subset of Islamic slave trade, nor vice versa.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 05:33, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, they're analogous, in the sense of a proper subset. Also, in each case, bounded by time, operatively, the Trans-Saharan was a leg or a trade within the larger topic. Andre🚐 05:57, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't have any significant problems with your formulation. You're right, Indian Ocean slave trade can also refer to things that aren't a subset of Arab/Islamic slave trade, and Arab/Islamic slave trade also refers to several other things. However, one of the possible subsets of the Arab/Islamic slave trade during the period of time, starting around I guess the 8th century until the 19th century, was the Indian Ocean slave trade. I'm perfectly fine with workshopping the precise text since we seem to have made it past the quibbling into a common ground of some sort. Perhaps we can frame it bounded by geography and bounded by time. Andre🚐 04:55, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

First paragraph

I'd propose using a scholarly and also very high level source to formulate the first paragraph, such as this chapter in the Cambridge World History of Slavery or this Oxford bibliography. Based on that:

The Indian Ocean slave trade involved the capture, transportation and slaves along the coasts and through the Indian ocean. The areas impacted included East Africa, Southern Arabia, the west coast of India, Indian ocean islands (including Madagascar) and sometimes southeast Asia. The source of slaves was primarily in Africa, but also included Indian Ocean islands, as well as south Asia. While slave trade in the Indian Ocean started 4,000 years ago, it expanded significantly in the late antiquity (1st century CE) with the rise of Byzantine and Sassanid trading enterprises. Muslim slave trading started in the 7th century, with the volume of trade fluctuating with the rise and fall of local powers. After 1500, Western European powers became involved in the slave trade. Finally, the trade declined with the abolition of slavery in the 19th century.

Then 2nd and 3rd paragraphs can go into details as to the nature of the slave trade.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 07:05, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

No specific objection, nicely done. I'll sleep on it and see how it tastes tomrorow after coffee. Andre🚐 07:19, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Support. This proposal looks good and seems like a reasonable compromise, especially since Andre appears to have no objections. I hope we see a similar solution for the Trans-Saharan slave trade issue. Thank you, @Vice regent. Tyben^Welcome 20:56, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, no objections Andre🚐 05:00, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Implemented, feel free to further edit. Andre🚐 03:12, 17 September 2024 (UTC)