Before Europe came to Africa with chains, someone else had already been there.

Before Europe came to Africa with chains, someone else had already been there.

Let me tell you about the Arab slave trade. The one nobody talks about.

It started around 650 AD. Long before Christopher Columbus. Long before the first European slave ship crossed the Atlantic. Arab traders had already established extensive networks across East Africa, West Africa and the Sahara, capturing, buying and selling African people for over a thousand years.

Between 650 AD and 1900 AD historians estimate that between 17 and 20 million Africans were taken through the networks of the Arab slave trade. That number is difficult to pin down precisely because unlike the transatlantic trade which was heavily documented for commercial reasons the Arab trade was less systematically recorded.

But here is what we know.

Arabs preferred female slaves over male slaves. Women were taken as concubines and domestic servants. Many were used for sexual exploitation in Arab households. Many male slaves destined for certain roles were castrated. Not surgically. Brutally. Without medical care. Mortality rates were extremely high. Most men who underwent the procedure died from it. Those who survived left no descendants.

That is one of the most important answers to a question most people never think to ask.

Where are the Black descendants of the Arab slave trade?

In America we have African Americans. Millions of people who are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans brought across the Atlantic. Their presence is visible, documented and acknowledged even when the full weight of that history is not.

But in much of the Arab world there are no large concentrated communities comparable to African Americans. And that difference is not an accident.

Male slaves were often castrated so they could not reproduce. Female slaves were taken as concubines and their mixed-race children were frequently absorbed and assimilated into wider Arab societies over generations. Historians estimate that millions of Africans died during raids, transport across the Sahara or Indian Ocean, or in the conditions of slavery itself. Those who survived were absorbed, dispersed or left with little opportunity to preserve distinct African identities across the centuries.

As a lecturer at the University of Nairobi put it, the castration of Black male slaves in the most inhumane manner altered an entire generation as these men could not reproduce. The Arab masters sired children with Black female slaves. Those who survived the castration committed suicide from devastation. This is one explanation for why only relatively small communities of Black Arabs remain visible in countries such as Sudan, Mauritania and Somalia today.

The Arab slave trade lasted over 1,200 years. Historians estimate that millions of Africans passed through its networks, making it one of the largest and longest slave systems in human history. It left fewer visible descendant communities able to preserve and tell their stories. And it remains one of the least discussed chapters in the history of African suffering.

Now here is where history becomes uncomfortable.

The Arab slave trade officially ended.

But some of the attitudes and systems that allowed Africans to be treated as disposable have not disappeared completely.

Modern day Libya and the Sahara

Every year thousands of Africans make the decision to cross the Sahara Desert through Libya trying to reach Europe for better opportunities. This is a choice made out of desperation. Poverty. Failed systems at home. The dream of something better across the Mediterranean.

And it is a choice that comes with devastating consequences.

Libyan militias have turned these migrants into a commodity. In 2017 CNN broadcast footage of an actual open air slave auction happening in Libya. Black African migrants were being sold to Libyan buyers for as little as 400 dollars each. The footage shocked the world.

In February 2025 two mass graves were discovered in the Libyan desert city of Kufra. Nineteen African bodies dumped on a private farm. Sub-Saharan Africans trying to reach Europe are being kidnapped, tortured, sold and killed by Libyan militias today. Research published in Frontiers in Political Science in 2025 found that sub-Saharan Africans are disproportionately targeted and face severe racial discrimination and abuse.

Now I want to be honest about something.

Some people will say these Africans are illegal migrants and deserve what they get for crossing illegally. And yes it is true that these are people moving without documentation through countries that did not invite them.

But being undocumented does not make a person a slave. It does not make them property to be auctioned. It does not make their torture acceptable or their deaths disposable. These are human beings who made a desperate choice. The fact that their desperation was exploited does not make the exploitation justified.

The Gulf States and domestic workers

Libya is not the only place where African migrants remain vulnerable.

In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates hundreds of thousands of African women work as domestic servants under a system called Kafala. This system ties a worker's legal status entirely to their employer. They cannot leave the job without permission. They cannot report abuse without risking deportation. Many have their passports confiscated the moment they arrive.

The Uganda government banned its citizens from taking domestic work in Saudi Arabia and Jordan because conditions were so dangerous. The Ethiopian ambassador in Beirut once publicly said he was no longer running an embassy but a morgue because of how many Ethiopian domestic workers were dying in Lebanon.

A Kuwaiti woman once filmed her Ethiopian maid falling from a window instead of helping her.

Saudi Arabia only abolished slavery in 1962. Mauritania did not abolish it until 1981. And abolition on paper did not always mean abolition in practice.

The silence

We talk about the transatlantic slave trade constantly and rightly so. We talk about European colonialism. We talk about what the West did to Africa. All of that conversation is necessary and important.

But we are largely silent about the Arab slave trade. We are largely silent about what is happening to Black Africans in Libya right now. We are largely silent about what happens to Nigerian and Ethiopian and Ghanaian domestic workers in Arab households today.

Critics argue that the African Union's response to the crisis in Libya has been far more muted than the scale of the problem would seem to warrant, despite years of reports about abuse, trafficking networks and migrant deaths.

Why are we silent?

Partly because many Africans share Islam with Arab neighbours and that shared faith can create reluctance to criticise. Partly because African governments are economically dependent on Arab investment. Partly because western media often focuses more on western crimes against Africa than Arab ones.

But silence is not neutrality. Silence is a choice.

The transatlantic slave trade left visible descendants, museums, memorials and a global conversation.

The Arab slave trade left fewer memorials, fewer public discussions and far less global awareness.

Yet for more than a thousand years, millions of Africans passed through its networks.

Their stories matter.

Their suffering mattered.

And whether the world is comfortable discussing it or not, their history deserves to be remembered too.

Sources:

1. WardheerNews February 2025 — confirmed Arab slave trade figures

2. FairPlanet — confirmed University of Nairobi lecturer testimony on castration and cultural erasure

3. New African Magazine — confirmed absence of Black descendants in Arab world and reasons

4. Tidiane N'Diaye Le Génocide voilé 2008 and Paul Lovejoy Islam's Black Slaves 2001 — confirmed 17 to 20 million figure

5. Development and Cooperation Journal — confirmed cultural and social impact

6. CNN 2017 — confirmed footage of slave auctions in Libya

7. Frontiers in Political Science May 2025 — confirmed current treatment of Black Africans in Libya

8. Modern Diplomacy May 2025 — confirmed 2025 mass graves in Kufra and African Union response debate

9. HuffPost — confirmed Uganda ban on domestic workers in Saudi Arabia

10. Global Slavery Index 2023 — confirmed modern slavery statistics in Arab states