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The trans-Saharan slave trade, part of the Arab slave trade,[1][2][3] was a slave trade in which slaves were mainly transported across the Sahara. Most were moved from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations; a small percentage went the other direction.[4]
Estimates of the total number of black slaves moved from sub-Saharan Africa to the Arab world range from 6 to 10 million, and the trans-Saharan trade routes conveyed a significant number of this total, with one estimate tallying around 7.2 million slaves crossing the Sahara from the mid-7th century until the 20th century when it was abolished.[5][6] The Arabs managed and operated the trans-Saharan slave trade,[7] although Berbers were also actively involved.[8]
Alongside Black Africans, Turks, Iranians, Europeans and Berbers were among the people traded by the Arabs, with the trade being practised throughout the Arab world, primarily in Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and Europe.[9]
Trans-Saharan slave trade was conducted within the ambits of the trans-Saharan trade, otherwise referred to as the Arab trade. Trans-Saharan trade, conducted across the Sahara Desert, was a web of commercial interactions between the Arab world (North Africa and the Persian Gulf) and sub-Saharan Africa.
Africans experienced three distinct types of slave trades: (1) The European Slave Trade that took Africans across the Atlantic from the mid-fifteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century; (2) the Arab Slave Trade across the Sahara and the Indian Ocean that predated European contact with Africa; and (3) domestic slavery.
In West Africa, the Arab slave trade encompassed a vast region from the Niger valley to the Gulf of Guinea. This traffic followed the trans-Saharan roads.
While the Europeans organized the West African slave trade, the Arabs managed the East African and trans-Saharan counterparts.