What the Arab Slave Trade Did to African Women Was Worse Than Death
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The Silent Scream of Jaria
In the blistering heat of the Sahel, you kneel in the sand, your knees burning against the unforgiving ground. An iron collar around your neck constricts tightly, making it difficult to swallow. You are chained to eleven other women, each one breathing heavily, some quietly sobbing, while one murmurs prayers in a language you cannot understand. The sun blazes down, and for a brief moment, a man’s shadow blocks your view of the harsh light.
Relief is fleeting. His hands grip your jaw, forcing your mouth open. Fingers probe your teeth, press against your gums, and dig into the back of your throat. You gag, but he continues his examination, checking your tongue for signs of disease, scrutinizing your eyes, pulling down your lip as if you are nothing more than livestock at an auction. Because that is exactly what you are now—a commodity, stripped of your humanity.
Just twelve days ago, you were the cherished daughter of a village chief, surrounded by the love of your family. You had a mother who called your name every morning, a woman who filled your life with warmth and laughter. But now, she is dead. You watched helplessly as the men with swords made it clear: stop moving, and you would join her in death.
In Arabic, they have a word for what you have become: Jaria. It translates to “slave girl.” Yet, this translation is too clean, too soft. It conceals the brutal reality of your existence. Your body is now merchandise, your future dictated entirely by the whims of buyers who see you as nothing more than a tool for their desires.
The man examining you steps back, nodding to another who holds a leather pouch. Coins change hands, and you realize with a sinking feeling that you have just been sold for the third time this month. The place they are taking you is a dark chapter in history, one that historians would spend centuries trying to erase: the Arab slave trade.
Over the course of 300 years, between 14 and 17 million Africans were forcibly taken from their homes and transported to the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. This trade began in the 7th century, shortly after the rise of Islam, and it did not officially end until the 20th century. Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962; Mauritania followed in 1981. These dates are not relics of ancient history; they are within living memory.
In America today, there are 45 million people of African descent, living proof of the Atlantic slave trade’s legacy. Their existence keeps the memory alive, ensuring that their struggles for equality are never forgotten. In stark contrast, the Middle East bears almost no trace of the millions who were taken. Small communities exist in Yemen and scattered populations in southern Iraq and Morocco, but where are the descendants of 14 million people?
The answer lies in the darkest part of this story: the men were castrated. This is not speculation; it is documented across centuries. Arab slave traders systematically castrated African males at staggering rates, between 80 and 90%. This horrific procedure was performed along trade routes, often in Egyptian monasteries where Coptic Christian monks developed techniques that slightly improved survival rates. For every man who survived, three to five died from blood loss, infection, or shock.
If a trader needed 100 living eunuchs to sell at market, he might start with 400 or 500 men, knowing that the rest would die screaming in the sand. The economics were brutal yet logical: castrated slaves could not reproduce, could not form families, and could not create communities that might resist. They worked, aged, and died, replaced by fresh captives from the next raid.
The women, however, faced a different fate. They were kept intact, fertile, and valued for what their bodies could produce. The records tell a chilling story, often using euphemisms to hide the horrors they describe. Arab merchants were not raiders; they were businessmen, creating economic systems that incentivized Africans to capture and sell each other. Guns flowed into the continent, traded for human lives, creating a cycle of misery that fed on itself.
The Kingdom of Dahomey, in what is now Benin, became a major supplier of slaves, its economy dependent on annual raids against neighboring peoples. The Sultanate of Zanzibar controlled East African trade routes, while various Tuareg groups dominated the Trans-Saharan routes. African kingdoms waged war not for land but for human merchandise, capturing survivors and marching them to collection points to be sold to Arab traders.
The raids were swift and brutal, often occurring at dawn when resistance was weakest. Families were torn apart in moments of unimaginable grief. Mothers were separated from their children, husbands from wives, and sisters from brothers. The screams of those trying to hold onto their loved ones echoed across the continent, haunting the hearts of those who witnessed them.
Once captured, the journey through the Sahara was a death march. Picture the distance from New York to Denver, but instead of a road, you have a vast desert, chained and with almost no water. The Sahara, the largest hot desert on Earth, is unforgiving. Daytime temperatures soar above 120°F, while nights plunge below freezing. Water is rationed brutally; camels, which are expensive and essential for carrying goods, are prioritized over human lives.
Lips crack and bleed, tongues swell, and the maddening knowledge of the miles of burning sand ahead drives many to madness. Mortality rates during these crossings were catastrophic, with estimates suggesting that 20 to 30% of slaves died along the way. Those who collapsed were left behind as the caravan moved on, abandoned alive, waiting to die in the sand.
For those who survived the journey, arriving at a North African port meant the immediate suffering had stopped, but their ordeal was far from over. The slave markets were ancient institutions, refined over centuries. Buyers came from across the Islamic world, evaluating women with cold detachment, examining them as one might assess livestock.
Prices varied based on origin, appearance, and intended use. Women with desirable features commanded higher prices, while those deemed less attractive were sold for modest sums. The highest prices were paid for young virgins from preferred backgrounds, who could fetch the equivalent of several years’ wages. The markets were organized, systematic, and terrifyingly efficient.
For the women who endured this harrowing journey, their identities were systematically erased. They received new names, their languages were forbidden, and their pasts were obliterated. Trainers taught them new customs, behaviors, and expectations, molding them into what their owners desired. For every woman like you, there were countless others whose names and stories were lost to history.
Some women navigated this new life successfully, achieving power and influence, but for the vast majority, they became mere property. They cooked, cleaned, and submitted to their owners’ desires. The intimacy that occurred was compelled, not chosen. Even those who bore children for their masters remained slaves unless explicitly freed.
As the years passed, the descendants of these women blended into Arab populations, their African heritage diluted until it became invisible. The final eraser of their existence was not just the deaths of individuals but the erasure of their descendants.
The Arab slave trade did not end with a dramatic proclamation of emancipation. Instead, it faded slowly under external pressure. British naval power gradually closed East African routes in the late 1800s, and colonial administrations suppressed the Trans-Saharan trade. The legacy of this trade is not memorials or monuments but a haunting silence.
Today, there are virtually no descendants of the 14 million Africans taken during this trade. The men were castrated, and the women’s children were absorbed into Arab populations, their heritage erased. In 2020, archaeologists in Libya discovered a mass grave of sub-Saharan Africans who died during their journey, their remains marking the paths of a tragedy the world chose to forget.
The Atlantic slave trade has monuments, museums, and days of remembrance, while the Arab slave trade left only silence. You, the woman in the market, whose humanity was stripped away, will never be remembered by name. You might have ended up in a Cairo harem, competing for attention, or in a Baghdad household, cooking and cleaning. You might have died in the desert, your bones joining countless others, marking the roots of civilization that has tried to forget.
But you existed. You suffered. You endured horrors no human should ever face. For 300 years, millions like you fed a machine designed to consume them completely. Remember her not as a statistic, but as someone’s daughter, someone who laughed once, someone who had a name before it was erased. This is the only memorial these 14 million will ever receive.
