Slavery in Somalia existed as a part of the East African slave trade and Arab slave trade. Ethiopians, especially Habesha and Oromo peoples, were captured and sold to foreign traders in the Middle-East and beyond. Later in the mid 18th century, to meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves from the Congo, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, and Kenya began to be exported from Zanzibar and were sold in large numbers to Somali customers.
The Land of Punt maintained long-standing trade relations with Ancient Egypt in which a variety of goods were exchanged, including enslaved people. Pharaoh Djedkare is known to have kept a Congoid (pygmy) slave acquired through Punt at his court for entertainment, the young Pharaoh Pepi II was likewise intrigued by another Congoid slave procured through Punt.
In the 1st century CE, Barbaroi pirates launched raids on Adulis attacking ships and capturing Habesha people who were then sold as slaves primarily at the city-state of Opone, from which Roman and Greek merchants transported them to Roman Egypt.
According to the ancient writer Ptolemy: <blockquote>"Besides aromatics, slaves of a superior description are exported from Opone, chiefly for the Egyptian markets."</blockquote>Many scholars have suggested the name of the city-state Opone derives from the ancient Egyptian term Pwene, referring to the Land of Punt, which exported both frankincense and enslaved people.
Al-Idrisi is the earliest author to mention the slave trade, noting that slaves constituted one of the most important exports of Zeila. Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi and Ibn Fadlallah al-Umari state that slaves captured in Abyssinia were taken to a town called Washilu which was located near Ganz in the Ifat Sultanate there they were prepared for export. The male captives were rendered eunuchs and then sent to Hadiya for medical treatment, after which they were transported to the Somali port of Zeila.
Yemeni Rasulid sources in the same period mention that most of these Abyssinian concubines and eunuchs brought to Yemen were Jazli, Amhara and Saharti (Tigrayans). Habesha slaves were priced at roughly twice the value of Zanji slaves.
These Habesha mamluks often rose to positions of power in Yemen. The Jazli seized power from the Ziyadids and established the Najahid dynasty, Faraj al-Saharti and Surur al-Amhari ruled successively as Wazirs of Zabid between 1133 and 1157 and other Habeshas participated in the state as military leaders such as Ishaq bin Marzuq al-Saharti.
In 1376, the Sultan Haqq al-Din II of the Walashma dynasty started a holy war against the Christian Solomonid dynasty. He had won 20 battle in 10 years and took many captives according to al-Maqrizi.
His successor Sultan Sa'ad al-Din raised bigger armies, increased the amount of raids into the Christian kingdom and captured many spoils. The Sultan won many battles during his reign and led incursions as far as Hadiya which he plundered.
After winning a battle against Negus Yeshaq and routing his forces, the Sultan Jamal al-Din II of the Barr Sa'd al-Din chased him throughout Abyssinia for three days, killing many and taking numerous captives along the way. He then remained in the region for 3 months, during which he burned churches and houses, seized wealth, and took numerous women and children captive, before returning home to his realm.
The Sultan later sent one of his generals to Bali, where he killed, captured, and enslaved countless people, acquiring immense booty in the process. So numerous were the captives that each poor man was given three slaves, and because of their sheer number, a single slave was sold for a bundle of paper or a single ring.
During his reign, Sultan Jamal al-Din captured and sold such large numbers of slaves that his name became known across the Muslim world. Habesha captives from his campaigns filled the lands of Yemen, Hijaz, Persia, Syria, India, and even Greece.
His successor, Sultan Badlay, followed in his footsteps and launched multiple military expeditions into the Amhara region. He captured and enslaved so many people that his followers grew extremely wealthy from the plunder.
Sultan Badlay sent his brother, Khair al-Din, to fight the Amhara. Khair al-Din conquered several regions and plundered many Christian lands, destroying six major churches and seizing large amounts of wealth. The campaigns were ultimately cut short by a severe plague that affected both kingdoms.
Throughout the reign of Negus Eskender and Na'od, the Emir Mahfuz of Zeila launched annual incursions into the Christian kingdom during Lent, killing the men and taking women and children captive.
According to R. Basset, Mahfuz's incursions reached as far as the Dukem river near Addis Ababa. Francisco Alvarez states that Mahfuz targeted the regions of Shewa, Amhara, and Fatagar in his raids.
Emir Mahfuz concluded agreements with several Arabian rulers, under which they supplied him with horses, arms, and "everything he wanted" in exchange for the annual delivery of large numbers of Abyssinian slaves to Mecca. On one occasion, Mahfuz reportedly carried off 19,000 slaves, whom he sent as gifts to his friends and supporters in Arabia. The Ottoman admiral Salman Reis also mentioned these annual raids into Abyssinia. Sihab al-Din Ahmed says that every Emir in the Barr Sa'd al-Din had the right to raise a small army and lead a raiding party into Abyssinia.
Christian slaves captured by Mahfuz were converted to Islam after being sold in Arabia. Abyssinian slaves were regarded by Arabs as more loyal and more skillful than other enslaved peoples.
Ludovico di Varthema, who visited Zeila in 1503, was surprised by the âÂÂvery greatâ number of slaves sold there, noting that they had been captured in battle and were mainly shipped to Mecca, Yemen, Persia, Cairo, and India. Through Zeila, and to a lesser degree Berbera, passed the main stream of slaves from the Ethiopian hinterland.
According to Amélie Chekroun, raids carried out into the neighboring Christian kingdom enabled forces based in the Bar Saÿad ad-Dën to seize livestock and slaves, while also serving as a reminder to Muslim populations of the persistent threat posed by renewed hostilities. These expeditions combined economic motives with a strategic function.In 1525, the Somali military general Imam Ahmed bin Ibrahim al-Ghazi started his invasion of Ethiopia with a Somali army. At the Battle of Shimbra Kure the Ethiopian forces were decisively defeated, opening the way for Imam Ahmed to conquer Ethiopia, Imam Ahmed and his forces were able to penetrate the heartland of the Christian state in Northern Shewa, Amhara, and Tigray. In some of his campaigns, his soldiers had so many slaves and loot that he was forced to make them abandon it as it was slowing them down.
In the course of these military campaigns, Imam Ahmad captured an innumerable amount slaves, this led to a vast, though incalculable, increase in the number of Habesha slaves arriving in the Indian subcontinent. João de Castro wrote that Ethiopian slaves serving as soldiers in India were held in high regard to such a degree that there was a proverb throughout India that good soldiers or servants must be Abyssinian. He added that they were so highly regarded in Bengal, Cambay, Balagate, and other parts of India that those who commanded armies or held high rank were all drawn from among them. The war was considered a major reason for the importation of Ethiopian slaves into India during the sixteenth century. Abyssinians of slave origin played a major role in the politics of Mughal India, where they were called Habshis.
Imam Ahmed is recorded saying to his troops:<blockquote>"If you encounter enemies, fight them, seize their wealth, enslave their women, and kill the men.."</blockquote>Leo Africanus writes in the early 16th century that Muslims from the Barr Sa'd al-Din waged war against the Christian Abyssinians, capturing many slaves and sending them to the Ottomans and other rulers in Arabia.
In the early 17th century, Pedro Paez notes that the invading Oromos captured Amharas from as far as Gojjam and sold them to the Imamate of Awsa.
Young Ethiopian female slaves were in high demand in the markets of the Muslim world, but the supply of young Ethiopian males was even more important to the Arabian rulers, whose power depended on private armies composed largely of Ethiopian slaves. The Tahirid Sultans of Yemen had 300 Abyssinian slave bodyguards, all captured from Abyssinia.
Slaves pens built of stone were found by archeologists in the Medieval town of Amud in Awdal.
In the 16th century, the Oromos invaded the Horn of Africa. A manuscript recovered in Mogadishu by Enrico Cerulli may preserve the earliest reference to Oromo captives in Somalia. In 1573, it records a woman from Mogadishu freeing her slave.
In the 19th century, Somalis raided Oromo settlements, killing most men and taking women and children as slaves. The captives were incorporated into household life while remaining subjects. Oromo women, valued for their beauty, were kept as concubines, used as domestic servants, or married to other slaves. People who had been captured in raids could become slaves in both the northern and the southern parts of Somalia. Somali pastoralists in southern Somalia had control over a substantial numbers of pastoral slaves by the turn of the century. These slaves were primarily, if not entirely of Oromo origin.
Through raids rather than bartering, Oromo slaves were acquired by the Ogaden and Cablalla living north of Kismayo. In 1848, the Somalis launched a great invasion attacking the Oromos living south of the Juba river, 80,000 women and children were enslaved and the survivors fled south. By 1899, 600 survivors were rescued by the British and resettled to the Tana river area. One 19th century Ogaden slave trader recounted a series of battles that resulted in the capture of 30,000 livestock and 8,000 Oromo women and children. The heavy traffic in Oromo slaves led one historian to describe the period as a âÂÂgolden ageâ for slave traders.
Richard Pankhurst estimated that between 1800-1850, 1.25 million Oromo, Gurage and Sidama slaves were exported from the ports of Massawa, Tadjura, Zeila, and Berbera. The slaves taken in the western Oromo regions were usually sent to Massawa, while Zeila served as the main market for those captured from the eastern Oromo areas.
During his travel to Harar, Richard Burton met several Oromo slave girls. In the mid 19th and early 20th centuries, Oromo slaves were more common than Bantu slaves in the interior of northern Somali speaking regions. Harar was a "rendez-vous" for all the slave caravans in the region.
A British report from 1840 states that the northern Somali tribes also carried out regular slave-raiding expeditions against Oromo populations, with captives sold in Arabian markets, female slaves reportedly sold for 15 to 35 dollars. In the 1850s, a British crew reportedly observed hundreds of Oromo slaves for sale in the port of Berbera. The British forced the Habr Awal to sign a treaty that outlawed slavery at Berbera and in the region in 1856. However, in April 1869 the British freed 135 young Oromo slaves from Berbera, bringing them to Aden. According to Richard Burton, 6000 Oromo slaves were exported from Zeila and Berbera annually.
In 1873, Oromo slaves were being exported from Zeila to the Persian gulf, with the females costing around 75$. By 1876, large numbers of slaves were still reportedly being exported from Zeila to Hodeida in Yemen. A French traveller writing from Zeila in 1881 said that most of the slaves found there were Oromo women captured as prisoners of war.
In the south of the peninsula, most of the Oromo slaves captured in the interior were sent to the coast via Bardera. Philip Howard Colomb noted that Oromo slave-girls were exported from the city of Barawa. He reported seeing six Oromo slaves being bought there. Second and third-generation slaves were reported to be living in Barawa. In the decades following the 1860s, nearly half of the 82 slave-carrying dhows captured by the British in East-Africa were caught along the Banaadir coast, most of them in the harbours of Barawa and Merka.
In 1908, the Italian noted that the slaves in Somalia were of two sorts: Oromo and Swahilis. The Tunni Somalis living around Barawa had around 4000 Oromo and Swahili slaves. In the mid 19th century, contemporary European accounts stated that grain in the environs of Barawa was cultivated by Oromo slaves.
Young Oromo girls were greatly preferred as concubines. Concubines of Oromo origin could more easily than others acquire important roles within a household after having borne children for the master. Slaves of Cushitic origin, such as the Oromo, may have been considered more akin to the masters, and their children were probably integrated more easily among Somalis, to whom they also bore a resemblance in physiognomic terms.
Johann Ludwig Krapf noted that the Oromo slave girls sold at Somali ports were in great demand in the Swahili coast and sold for up to a hundred dollars, often ending up in the harems of prominent people. In 19th century Zanzibar, Oromo slave girls were greatly valued and were bought by the Sultans for their harem. Oromo women were also common in the harems of Egypt. In the 19th century, Oromo women were so desired that "there was hardly a harem in Arabia that had no Oromo girls."
Bantu men were used for agricultural activities and other physical intensive labour, whereas Oromo men reportedly due to their "scarce endurance and their stubbornness" were used especially in pastoral activities. In general, Bantu slaves were considered much stronger than the Oromo because they were reputed to be more enduring and persevering at work.
Prices of Oromo slaves in Somalia according to Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti (1904)
To satisfy the demands of the market for agricultural produce in the Arabian Peninsula and cater to the local needs, Somali clans in the Lower Shabelle region and along the ancient Banadir coast began the procurement of Bantu slaves from Arab slave traders to provide labor and serve as client farmers for the Somali clans :<blockquote>"The farming was performed by local client-farmers, boon, or low status groups of the dominant Biimaal, Geledle, Hintirre, Murosade, Mobileyn and other predominantly pastoral clans which had established control of small portions of the valley. They produced mainly to serve local markets. Ample, fertile land remained uncultivated, due to a chronic shortage of farm labor. In order to respond to market demands for grain in South Arabia, the local Somali clans of the Lower Shabelle began purchasing slaves from Arab and Swahili slave ships. These slaves came first from Zanzibar (the Zegua or Mushunguli people)."</blockquote>The Bantus residing in Somalia are the descendants of Bantu individuals who were taken captive and transported to Somalia by Arab slave merchants during the 18th and 19th centuries to work as agricultural laborers. The Somali Bantus belong to several ethnic groups, namely Majindo, Mnyasa, Mkuwa, Mzihuwa, Mushunguli, and Molima, each consisting of numerous subclans. Their ancestral roots can be traced back to various historical and modern African nations, including many in Central Africa, those of the Congo region (such as the then-Kingdom of Kongo, modern Angola, DR Congo and RotC), Mozambique, Malawi, and Tanzania.
Bantus are ethnically, physically, and culturally distinct from Somalis and Ethiopians and they have remained marginalized ever since their arrival to the Horn of Africa.
All in all, the number of Bantu inhabitants in Somalia before the civil war is thought to have been about 80,000 (1970 estimate), with most concentrated between the Juba and Shabelle rivers in the south. Recent estimates place the figure as high as 900,000 people, however, lower estimates place the figure between 500,000 and 600,000.
The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves were captured from southeastern Africa and sold in cumulatively large quantities over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, Somalia, Persia, India, the Far East, and the Indian Ocean islands.
From 1800 to 1890, between 25,000 and 50,000 Bantu slaves are thought to have been sold from the slave markets of Zanzibar alone to the Somali coast by Somali slave traders. Most of the slaves were from the Makua, Nyasa, Yao, Zaramo and Zigua ethnic groups of Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. Collectively, these Bantu groups are known as Mushunguli, which is a term taken from Mzigula, the Zigua tribe's word for "people" (the word holds multiple implied meanings including "worker", "foreigner", and "servant").
Bantu adult and children slaves (referred to as jareer by their Somali handlers) were purchased in the slave markets explicitly to do undesirable work on plantations with oversight. They were made to work in plantations exclusively owned by the Italian government along the southern Shebelle and Jubba rivers, harvesting lucrative cash crops such as grain and cotton. Bantu slaves toiled under the control of the Italian government.
The Bantus were conscripted to forced labor on Italian-owned plantations since the Somalis themselves were averse to what they deemed menial labor, and because the Italians viewed the Somalis as racially superior to the Bantu. Catherine Lowe Besteman notes:<blockquote>"While upholding the perception of Somalis as distinct from and superior to the European construct of "black Africans", both British and Italian colonial administrators placed the Jubba valley population in the latter category. Colonial discourse described the Jubba valley as occupied by a distinct group of inferior races, collectively identified as the WaGosha by the British and the WaGoscia by the Italians. Colonial authorities administratively distinguished the Gosha as an inferior social category, delineating a separate Gosha political district called Goshaland, and proposing a "native reserve" for the Gosha."</blockquote>
According to the Italian explorer Vittorio Bottego, a slaveâÂÂs owner was liable for the slaveâÂÂs actions; if a slave committed theft his master had to pay back for the stolen item, if a slave killed another slave, the owner compensated either in money or with another slave, if a free person was killed, the owner paid the dia or faced retribution. Slaves who killed their master or relatives were usually punished by beating rather than executed due to their economic value. If a runaway slave was capture, he had to be chained. Slaves who served faithfully over a long period often regained their freedom upon their masterâÂÂs death.
Captain Salkeld, a British officer in Jubaland in the early 20th century documented the following laws regarding slavery among the Somali :<blockquote>"If a Galla or slave strikes a Somali woman he may be killed wherever met. If a Somali kills another owner's slave he pays 15 heifers. The killing of slaves is not regarded as an offence."</blockquote>
Slaves were also owned by Somali women. A document 1575 describes a woman from Mogadishu freeing her slave. 19th century records from Barawa highlight the fact that women owned a large number of slaves. A court case reports a woman who donated a slave. A census describes a mistress whose 14-year-old male slave paid her 3 besa per day. In Lugh, some women were served by slaves. Freeborn women of the family had authority over slaves, who performed tasks such as fetching firewood and water or cooking.
Despite the Brussels conference of 1890 where the colonial apowers abolished the legal status of slavery in the colonies, the slave trade in Somalia continued unabated. From 1893, the Italian colonial authorities in Somalia did not recognize the legal status of slavery and slaves were thus legally free to leave their owners, but the Italians often returned fugitive slaves to their owners. After pressure from humanitarians, the Italians officially banned the slave trade and declared that all slaves born after 1890 were legally free.
In 1893, a shocking report revealed that the Italian government had failed to adhere to the signed obligations of 1890 : <blockquote>"The administration handed fugitive slaves from the interior to those who claimed to own them, and sometimes with cruelty, imprisoning and chastising them before consigning them to those who came to claim them, in open contravention of the explicit directions of the Brussels Act. It was found convenient to call slavery domestic. Records of the purchase and sale of slaves, their succession to new owners, their transfer, mortgage and pawning were inscribed in the records of the Qadi Courts. All of this was done without the government in Rome or the Royal Commissioner Sorrentino."</blockquote>The Italian administrators in Somalia at the turn of the century did nothing to discourage slavery. In fact, several Italian administrators, including the royal commissioner, purchased female slaves from the Somalis to be used as concubines. By 1903, one third of Barawa and Mogadishu's population and nearly one fifth of Marka's population were slaves. From 1905 to 1908, the colonial government negotiated the freedom of 2300 slaves, however these ex-slaves were told to remain in their master's homes as servants.
In December 1903, around twenty Oromo women, some of whom were slaves asking for manumission certificates, went to the colonial government offices to request permission to accompany a caravan from Barawa to Bardera. The Italian officials denied them the certificates on the grounds that caravans were forbidden to travel with women and that such women could only have one intention; to practice prostitution. The women wanted to travel closer to their own original homelands in Oromia, where they had been caught as slaves. The Italian officials rejected their petition again on the grounds that the Oromo-speaking area was continuously being raided by Somali slave traders and therefore unsafe.
In 1906, the Italians did free slaves in urban territories via compensation to the masters, but did not act to free slaves in the interior of the country and in fact tried to stop the wave of fugitives who left their owners as news of the Italian emancipation reached the rural interior. By 1910, the colonial government was reluctant to free all the slaves in Somalia because freeing all the slaves at once would force the free Somalis, unaccustomed to working their own field, to abandon them and resume the nomadic way of life, which the Italians did not want to happen.
The Italians reported to the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery in the 1930s that the slavery and slave trade in Somalia had now been abolished. Although the Italians freed some Bantus, some Bantu groups remained enslaved well into the 1930s and continued to be despised and discriminated against by large parts of Somali society. Most of the freed slaves went on to work in Italian owned plantation or as client-farmers for Somalis.
By 1935, the Italians in collaboration with former Somali slave owners introduced coerced labor laws and the forced conscription of the freed slaves in the agricultural industry, with over 100 Italian plantations in the river valleys. The emancipated Bantu were forced to abandon their own farms to work solely as farm laborers on plantations owned by the Italian colonial government. The Italians definitionally separated the ex-slave population from the Somali population for purposes of conscripting laborers. The British abolished this system after defeating the Italians in WW2. One British official described the scheme to be indistinguishable from slavery.
As did the Italians, The British government of the East Africa protectorate consistently intervened on the side of the somalis to maintain the servitude status of the Oromos. Despite their official actions, the British clearly recognized that the position of the Oromo living among the Somalis amounted to slavery. Summarizing the situation of Oromo living under Somalis in 1930, the district commissioner of Garissa District wrote that every Oromo living with the Somalis is virtually a slave and therefore exploitable. To bury the issue, in 1936 the British falsely declared that the Wardey (Oromo slaves) had ceased to exist as an ethnic entity, having been fully assimilated as Somalis.