Slavery in Somalia

Slavery in Somalia existed as a part of the Indian Ocean and Red Sea slave trade. Ethiopians, especially Habesha and Oromo peoples, were captured and sold to foreign traders in the Middle-East and beyond. Enslaved women and children formed a significantly higher share than men. Ethiopian Christians were among the most popular enslaved people traded by Somali merchants. Later in the 19th century, to meet the demand for menial labor, Bantu slaves began to be exported from Zanzibar and were sold in large numbers to Somali customers. Somalis kept slaves for agricultural labor and herding as well as concubinage.

History

Antiquity

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. Slaves were also occasionally exported from the port of Malao to India.

The ruins of the ancient city of Opone at Hafun.

According to the ancient writer Ptolemy:

"Besides aromatics, slaves of a superior description are exported from Opone, chiefly for the Egyptian markets."

Many scholars have suggested the name of the city-state Opone to be derived from the ancient Egyptian term Pwene, referring to the Land of Punt, which exported both frankincense and enslaved people.

Early Habesha slave trade

During the medieval period, the Somali port of Zeila was the site of an important slave market where traders from Arabia purchased Abyssinian slaves who were then transported to Yemen and the Hijaz to serve as domestic slaves, agricultural laborers, concubines, sailors, and soldiers in local military and naval forces. Al-Idrisi is the earliest author to mention the slave trade, noting that slaves constituted one of the most important exports of the Somali port 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 where 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. According to al-Idrisi, slaves exported from Zeila were then taken to a major slave depot in Zabid. The city, according to the modern Yemeni historian Huseyn al-Amri, had for many centuries a large population of Abyssinian slaves.

Yemeni Rasulid sources in the same period mention that most of these Abyssinian concubines and eunuchs brought to Yemen from Zeila were Jazli, Amhara and Saharti (Tigrayans). Habesha slaves were priced at roughly twice the value of Zanji slaves. Habesha slaves 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.

Some of the children of Sheikh Isaaq bin Ahmad, the 13th century founder of the Isaaq clan, were reportedly born in the Somali country to a Habesha woman, described as a servant. The descendants of Sheikh Isaaq’s Abyssinian wife form the Habr Habusheed confederation, comprising the Habr Je’lo, Ibran, and Sanbur clans. Some of the descendants of Sheikh Ahmed Hawiye in southern Somalia also trace descent from an Ethiopian woman, namely the Gurgate, Gugundhabe, and Jambelle clans.

According to the Ethiopian historian Tadesse Tamrat, Ethiopian slaves sold at Zeila originated from the non-Muslim regions of Ethiopia, namely the Tigray and Amhara regions. He notes that the revival of Christian political power in Ethiopia during the 14th century reduced the export of Christian captives into Arabia, though instances of Habesha Christians being taken into slavery continued to be recorded afterward.

Historical routes of the Ethiopian slave trade.

Ruins at Zeila

Malik Ambar, influential Indian slave born in Harar.

Christian-Muslim wars

In 1376, the Sultan Haqq al-Din II of the Walashma dynasty started a holy war against the Christian Solomonid dynasty. He was ceaselessly engaged in conflict with the Solomonid king, from whom he took many captives. According to al-Maqrizi, his successor Sultan Sa'd al-Din raised bigger armies, increased the amount of raids into the Christian kingdom and captured many spoils. The Sultan led incursions as far as Hadiya which he plundered.

Raids continued during the Bar Sa'd al-Din. In the 1420s, an emir serving under the Sultan Jamal al-Din II had captured such a large amount of Ethiopian captives that slaves became highly abundant in the Muslim kingdom, Abyssinian slave-girls were reportedly sold for the value of a ring. Each Fakir was also given three slaves.

According to Maqrizi:

"The great conquests of Jamal al-Din are magnified, and his great battles are numerous, and his deeds, spoils, captives, those he killed, and those he took captive are many.. He killed and captured countless of the Amhara, until the lands of India, Yemen, Hormuz, the Hijaz, Egypt, the Levant, Rome, Iraq, and Persia were filled with the Abyssinian slaves he had captured in his conquests."

His successor, Sultan Badlay, followed in his footsteps and launched multiple military expeditions into the Ethiopian kingdom. According to Richard Pankhurst, he brought numerous Christian lands under his rule, and burnt at least six churches. He killed many Christian leaders, and made their subjects captive. The Sultan soon grew immensely wealthy, accumulating gold, silver, fine garments, armour, and a large number of slaves.

In the second half of the 15th century, 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 Rene 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. According to Francisco Alvares, Mahfuz carried out over twenty annual forays into the Christian interior, in the course of which he had captured innumerable slaves. 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 “very great” number of slaves sold there, noting that they had been captured in battle and were mainly shipped to Mecca, Yemen, Persia, Cairo, and India. From the early 16th century onward, there is continuous evidence of “Habashi” Abyssinian servants in middle- and upper-class Iranian households.

Through Zeila, and to a lesser degree Berbera, passed the main stream of slaves from the Ethiopian hinterland. According to Amelie Chekroun, raids carried out into the neighboring Christian kingdom enabled forces based in the Bar Saʿd al-Din 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.

The military leader Imam Ahmed bin Ibrahim was raised by a slave owned by his family which he later freed. In 1525, Imam Ahmed 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:

"If you encounter enemies, fight them, seize their wealth, enslave their women, and kill the men.."

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. 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 at the age of eight or nine, and trained to be soldiers.

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. Slaves pens built of stone were found by archeologists in the Medieval town of Amud in Awdal.

Early slave-trade in southern Somalia

In 14th century Mogadishu, the Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta was served by a eunuch belonging to the ruler of the city. Chinese Ming dynasty records from 1423 mention the Sultan of Mogadishu having multiple concubines. A manuscript recovered by Enrico Cerulli records a woman from Mogadishu freeing her slave in 1573. The manumission deed of the slave bears the signatures of a Khatib and a Faqih. According to Joao de Santos (1609), slave merchants from Mogadishu had a custom of sewing up the genitals of young female slaves to prevent conception, as it increased their value both for their chastity and for the greater confidence buyers placed in them.

Merchants from Barawa and Mogadishu reportedly imported 3,000 slaves a year from the island of Madagascar. As noted by the French historian Thomas Vernet, Portuguese accounts document merchants from Barawa and Mogadishu traveling to Madagascar to acquire Malagasy slaves. This slave-trade is documented by Portuguese chroniclers as early as 1506. Slaves from Madagascar were also sent to the Comoros islands where they were collected for shipment to Mogadishu. According to historian Jeremy Black, slaves from Madagascar were shipped by boat to East African ports, slaves imported into Mogadishu from Madagascar would be exported back to India.

Oromo slave trade

In the second half of the 16th century, the Oromo people expanded from present-day northern Kenya into the Horn of Africa, initiating a major wave of migrations across the region. According to the scholar Thomas Vernet, captured Oromo women could've been sold in Somalia as early as the 17th century.

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. In 1908, the Italian Giacinto Vicinanza noted that the slaves in Somalia were of two sorts: Oromo and Swahilis. According to the scholar Catherine Besteman, the Somalis dominated in warfare during the 19th century, conquering and enslaving the Oromo, the Oromo also constituted the principal source of slaves in Somalia.

By the mid-1860s, a smallpox epidemic weakened Oromo tribes in the Juba-Tana area, after which Darod and Ajuran Somali clans expanded into Oromo territories through sustained conflict, leading to the seizure of land and livestock and the enslavement of most Oromos in the region. Somali raids on the Tana river Oromos reached a peak in the 1870s. By the 1870s, the steadily increasing number of Oromo slaves from present-day Kenya was estimated at around 10,000 annually crossing the Juba River into the Kismayo area. Those who carried out slave raids and those who traded in slaves were often distinct, belonging to different Somali clans. Contemporary accounts described Somali slave raiders as particularly feared, with reports that even rumors of their approach could prompt entire villages to flee or attempt negotiations with Somali elders. In at least one case, town gates were deliberately reinforced in response to the threat of such raids. There were also reports of Somali attacks on entire settlements to obtain captives.

Somali man in Bardera with his Oromo concubine, 1895.

Drawing of an Abyssinian female slave (1878).

Oromo slave-girl in Egypt.

Through raids rather than bartering, Oromo slaves were acquired by the Ogaden and Cablalla living north of Kismayo. According to the colonial administrator Charles William Hobley, the Somalis attacked the Oromo in 1842 but were repelled. Peace was concluded in 1845, though fighting resumed in 1848, when the Somalis reportedly gained the upper hand, killing about 2,000 Oromo elders and chiefs and capturing about 80,000 women and children. British explorer Harald George Carlos Swayne (1900) described a Somali raiding party of around 1,000 men near the Oromo settlement of Golbanti.

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 'golden age' for slave traders. According to a 1894 British report on the Ogaden living in Jubaland, the Ogaden numbered around 5000 and had 2000 slaves of Oromo origin.

Somali traders also obtained Oromo captives through other means. According to Vittorio Bottego, livestock losses would often lead Oromo families to sell relatives to the Somalis to avoid starvation, while others voluntarily sold themselves to passing caravans. The Italian historian Stefano Bellucci notes that some slaves in the region may also have originated from present-day central Ethiopia, captured during the Abyssinian wars of expansion in the second half of the 19th century. In 1896, contemporary accounts noted that Menelik’s soldiers supplied themselves with slaves in the Galla (Oromo) regions. In 1913, Giuseppe Piazza documented that the Amhara sold Arsi Oromo captives to Somalis. Mohammed Hassen estimated that more than a million Oromos were seized and enslaved during the reign of Menelik II, largely through military campaigns and slave-raiding practices carried out by his forces. According to Bob Allen, Menelik’s wars generated many captives, including Oromo prisoners, who were sold as slaves and exported through Berbera. In 1850, Afar slave merchants reportedly acquired slaves from the Wello Oromo and transported them to Berbera, which was considered a more profitable market than Tadjoura.

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. 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 noted that most of the slaves found there were Oromo women captured as prisoners of war. Due to British restrictions on the slave trade in Yemen, most slaves exported from Zeila were sent to the Hijaz rather than Aden.

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 described as a "rendez-vous" point for all the slave caravans in the region. According to Richard Burton, slaves found in Harar were mainly Gurage and Oromo. Arussi Oromos made captive by the Ogaden were also sent directly to Berbera. In Harar, Philipp Paulitschke reported that Oromo captives were brought into the city and then taken by caravan to Zeila and Berbera to be sold. The Emir Abdullahi also launched slave-raids on Oromo villages surrounding the city. While in the Harar area, Burton recorded the following saying:

"If you want a brother (in arms), says the Eastern proverb, buy a Nubian, if you would be rich, an Abyssinian, and if you require an ass, a Sawahili."

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 at 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 had to free 135 young Oromo slaves being sold at Berbera, bringing them to Aden. Berbera was one of the most significant slave-trading ports in the 19th century. Merchants from various regions travelled long distances there to exchange goods such as agricultural produce, coffee, copperleaf, and cotton textiles in exchange for enslaved people. For each enslaved person sold at Berbera, the governor of Zeila received a duty of 3/4 of a dollar, while the sultan of Tadjoura received the remaining quarter. No fewer than half of the enslaved people sold at Berbera were transported to ports such as Mokha, Hodeida, and Jeddah. The remainder were taken to coastal towns in present-day Yemen, including Shuqra, Mukalla, and Shihr before being redistributed to ports in the Persian Gulf and Oman Gulf, and in some cases as far as the Kathiawar coast of India.

According to Richard Burton, 6000 Oromo slaves were exported from Zeila and Berbera annually. It is estimated that during the 19th century, more than two thousand slaves were shipped annually from the northern Somali coast to the Persian Gulf. In 1873, Oromo slaves were reportedly being exported from Zeila to the Persian gulf, with the females costing around 75$. Oromo slaves were also exported to Persia from the Banadir ports. A member of the Anti-Slavery Society in Tehran reported in 1898 that between 30,000 and 50,000 enslaved Africans were living in Iran, roughly half of whom were Oromo women. Oromo women commanded some of the highest prices in Iranian slave markets and were often purchased as concubines. Enslaved Oromo and Gurage people introduced several cultural traditions into Iranian society, including the Zar, Liwa, and Gowat ceremonies. According to the Iranian historian Behnaz Mirzai, the most valued African harem servants in Persia were Ethiopian women. The children born to these concubines were treated as having equal rights to those of children born to free women. As young women, they served their mistresses, but as they grew older they were often treated by their masters as wives rather than as servants.

In the south of the peninsula, most of the Oromo slaves captured in the interior were sent to the coast via Bardera. In the 1840s, Shaikh Abu Bakr of Bardera led several raiding expeditions against the Oromo. The town of Luuq was another major inland slave-market. According to Lamberto Vannutelli, aside from the Somalis, a significant number of Borana and Arussi Oromo slaves lived in Luuq. Enslaved individuals who escaped servitude in southern Somalia were reported to have fled to the Bajun Archipelago. In the 19th century, around one thousand escaped Oromo slaves were said to have lived in Burgabo.

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. The Tunni Somalis living around Barawa had around 4000 Oromo and Swahili slaves. Qadi court records in Barawa mention "Galla" (Oromo) slaves. In the mid 19th century, contemporary European accounts stated that grain in the environs of Barawa was cultivated by Oromo slaves.

According to Luigi Robecchi, the Tunni owned many plantation slaves. When British Captain Smee visited the southern Somali coast in 1811, he described a flourishing slave trade, with enslaved people being transported down the Jubba River and brought to Barawa and other Somali ports for shipment. French vessels at that time were also reported to have taken on slave cargoes at these Somali ports. In 1866, the German explorer Richard Brenner met in Barawa a man with what he described as two "very pretty" Oromo concubines, with one of them living in his plantation.

In 1865, the British Consul in Zanzibar was cited as having stated that:

"The Gallas are a warlike and vast nation in the interior, and their hand is against every stranger simply because they know strangers only as slave-hunters. The Arabs, the Abyssinians, and the Somalis all hunt them and take them into slavery."

In 1876, British Admiral Sir Francis William Sullivan was interviewed by the British Royal Commission on Fugitive Slaves, during which he described the Somali slave trade as follows:

"-You say that generally speaking there is as much slave trade as ever. Where do the slaves go now? -They are absorbed north. Do they go to Asia? -Yes, they must go to Asia. They gradually go up the Somali coast, which only wants a certain number of them; they can only absorb a certain number of them, and they must go on. It is a very fertile country, with a large population, and Somalis must have slaves; but it is a very warlike tribe, and they make slaves of the conquered people, often of the Galla tribe. -Do they import slaves largely ? -Yes, but chiefly for export again. -The Somali trade in slaves is large ? -Very large. I liberated 320 off Brava, which is on the Somali coast. -Do the Somalis themselves carry on the same trade by sea ? -Yes. There is the case of a dhow which I took, bound from the Somali country to Makullah, with 60 negroes on board, out of whom there were 11 Somalis who declared that all the other negroes were their domestic slaves. -Were there no Arabs on board that vessel ? -There was one Arab, the captain; but the dhow was subsequently restored at the instigation of the Indian government on the strength of the Somali's story. -Do the Somalis as a rule navigate their own vessels ? -Yes; it is only coast navigation in those dhows.

In July 1891, during his exploration of the Juba River, British Captain Frederick George Dundas saw Oromo slave girls living among Somalis:

"As we came alongside the right bank at Hadjowen, the natives crowded down to look at the vessel.. I noticed numbers of Galla slave-girls about, the different features and lighter colour marking them out from the Somalis, who are very black."

In April 1919, a US diplomat wrote that much of the slave-raiding still taking place in East Africa was said to occur in the Oromo country. According to Ainslee's Magazine of August 1900:

"The favorite girls are those captured from the Boran Gallas, whose charms appeal to Arabian Moslems somewhat as those of the Circassian women do to the Turks. The Boran are particularly renowned for their beauty, and a slave thief will risk his life to obtain one."

Johann Ludwig Krapf noted that the Oromo slave girls sold at Somali ports were in great demand in the Swahili coast, 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. Somalis would also infrequently bring a few captured Oromos to Lamu.

Oromo women were also common in the harems of Egypt. Edward William Lane writes that many Egyptians had long maintained a custom of keeping Oromo female slaves instead of marrying local women, which he claimed led to a darkening of their complexion over time.

German ethnographer Friedrich Ratzel (1897) stated that Oromo women were highly sought after in the harems of Egypt, Nubia, and Zanzibar:

"The Abyssinian women, so highly valued in the harems and dancing-saloons of Egypt and Nubia, are frequently of noble Galla blood. In Zanzibar too, Galla girls are in demand both with Europeans and with Indians."

In the 19th century, Oromo women were so desired that "there was hardly a harem in Arabia that had no Oromo girls." In Mecca, the widespread practice of keeping female slaves led to a mixture of Abyssinian ancestry, which was said to give the Meccawis a distinct complexion compared to desert Arabs. The British traveller Charles Doughty noted that there were so many Oromos in Mecca and Medina that “Habashy” was commonly spoken from house to house. French explorer Edmond Combes found what he described as "a large number of Oromo slaves" in Yemen. Historian Richard Pankhurst noted that large numbers of Oromo slaves were present in Mokha and throughout Yemen in the 19th century, many of them exported via Zeila. According to Maurice Tamisier, the Arabian port of Jeddah was inhabited in 1834 by a large number of Oromo slaves of both sexes. According to Richard Burton, most Abyssinian slave girls in Arabia were Oromo. Edward William Lane (1871) says something similar. In Mecca, Medina, Hail, and Boraida, enslaved Oromo people were valued for their height, and many served as bodyguards for local amirs. Ethiopian slaves were likewise regarded as effective soldiers by the chiefs of Bahrain.

Other groups

In the 19th century, the Somalis raided and enslaved the Kore and Laikipiak Masai in Kenya, captives were sent to the city of Kismayo in Somalia to be sold to Somali traders. Portuguese missionary Leon des Avanchers mentioned seeing Masai among the Harti Somali when he visited the southern coast of Somalia in 1858. These Masai were freed by the British in the 1890s. Until 1903, the Somalis also occasionally launched slave-raids into the Bajuni archipelago.

According to the historian Mordechai Abir, Gurage slaves were commonly sold at Berbera, particularly women taken as concubines. Contemporary accounts describe Gurage girls as being valued by buyers for their lighter complexion and features. The explorer Antoine d’Abbadie reported that Gurage slave girls were considered among the most desirable in the Somali country, "Quraqa" was general term used for slaves in Berbera. Enslaved Cushitic-speaking Sidama and Agew people also constituted a portion of the slave exports from Zeila and Berbera.

Bantu slave trade

Main articles: East African slave trade and Somali Bantu

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.

In the late 18th and 19th century, growing demand for agricultural produce in the Arabian Peninsula drove Somalis to expand farming, however labor shortages in southern Somalia left much fertile land uncultivated, leading Somalis to purchase Bantu slaves from Arab in Zanzibar to supply the necessary labor. Bantu slaves were made to work in plantations owned by Somalis along the Shebelle and Jubba rivers, harvesting lucrative cash crops such as grain and cotton. According to Catherine Besteman, the maritime trade in Bantu slaves to Somalia expanded significantly during the early 19th century. Lee Cassanelli traced some of the earliest documented imports to around 1800, when slaves from Tanzania were brought to Barawa. In 1833, the British naval officer WFW Owens reported that Mogadishu imported slaves, while Lieutenant William Christopher observed slaves working in large numbers around Barawa, Marka, and Mogadishu during his 1843 expedition.

According to scholar Esmond Bradley Martin, the Banadir coast was one of the major slave markets in the world during the nineteenth century. Most Swahili slaves destined for Somalia were first shipped from Zanzibar to Lamu, where Somali traders acquired them before transporting them northwards to the Banadir region. Throughout the 19th centiry, an estimated 300,000 slaves were imported into the Banadir coast from East Africa. Sources report exports of around 1,900 individuals leaving Lamu for Somalia in 1871, along with 2,804 individuals recorded as being sent to Barawa the same year. Additional accounts note approximately 1,800 people leaving the Lamu district overland for Somalia between 1873 and 1874, while Admiral Cumming reported in 1874 that about 12,000 slaves had arrived overland into Somalia. Somalis also occasionaly kidnapped slaves from plantations around Lamu. During the famine of 1884–85, Somali traders travelled to Lamu and pressured the Liwali to sell slaves at reduced prices in exchange for cattle. These traders then transported enslaved people to the Somalia, where they were sold for profit. The ruler of Witu also sold slaves to the Somalis between 1870 and 1890 in exchange for cattle, gunpowder, and firearms. From the mid-1840s to the 1880s, agricultural land along the Webi Shebelle expanded considerably, supported by the growth of the slave trade. Most of the labourers on farms and plantations were enslaved people from the Swahili coast. With the establishment of the Imperial British East Africa Company and the subsequent British control of the Lamu archipelago in the 1890s, the kidnapping and sale of slaves to Somali traders in Lamu declined.

A Bantu servant woman in Mogadishu (1882–1883)

Pokomo family on the Tana river.

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, 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. While traveling through the Somali country in 1900, Colonel Harald George Carlos Swayne met some of these Bantu slaves:

"On the Webbe Shabeleh, a river race called the Adone, also negroes, were working in the fields and punting rafts on the river for their masters, the Somalis."

From 1800 to 1890, between 25,000 and 50,000 Bantu slaves are thought to have been sold from the slave markets of Zanzibar to the Somali coast. Most of the slaves were from the Makua, Nyasa, Yao, Zaramo and Zigua ethnic groups of Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. When the slave trade from Zanzibar to the Arabian peninsula was banned, the slaves captured by Zanzibari slave traders in East Africa were no longer transported from the Swahili coast to the Arabian peninsula on sea via Zanzibar due to the naval blockade, but instead forced to walk by land to Somalia, from which they could enter the slave dhows to Arabia away from British eyes.

Most of the Bantu living in southern Somalia are descendants of Bantus who were enslaved by the Sultanate of Zanzibar in the 18th century. However, the Somalis also sometimes raided and enslaved neighboring Bantu groups in Kenya, especially the Pokomo. British reports in 1894 described how the Somalis would come to the Pokomo country nearly every year during the dry season, carrying off women and children into slavery, while the Pokomo reportedly never dreamed of offering any resistance. By 1898, the Pokomo began building new villages in inaccessible jungle areas due to frequent Somali slave-raids. The Somalis also purchased Mijikenda slaves in the hundreds from Lamu in 1884 to be exported northwards until the Lamu-Banadir route was close in 1893 by the British. Wituland was also reportedly raided for cattle and slaves.

In 1912, a French explorer described how the Pokomo region had been so ravaged by the Somalis that it was nearly deserted :

"If the Ndura was so sparsely inhabited, it was because the Somalis had ravaged it in every way, stealing, pillaging, kidnapping women and children as slaves, and killing those who defended themselves."

Prices of Slaves

Prices of female slaves in Mogadishu according to Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti (1904)

Enslaved group	Age range	Prices
Oromo woman (as a concubine)	15-20 years old	90 thalers
Bantu woman (for work)	18-20 years old	65 thalers
Oromo woman (for work)	18-20 years old	60 thalers
Oromo teenager (for domestic work)	10-15 years old	50 thalers
Bantu teenager (for work)	10-15 years old	40 thalers
Girl child	8-10 years old	30 thalers

Prices of male slaves in Mogadishu according to Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti (1904)

Enslaved group	Age range	Prices
Strong Bantu adult	20-25 years old	89 thalers
Strong Oromo adult	20-25 years old	70 thalers
Bantu teenager	15-20 years old	60 thalers
Oromo teenager	15-20 years old	50 thalers
Bantu boy	8-10 years old	40 thalers
Oromo boy	8-10 years old	30 thalers

Cost of slaves in Somalia in Maria Theresa dollars according to the economic historian Robert C. Allen.

Enslaved group	Date & Location	Price (MT$)
Young adult male	Berbera (1830s-1840s)	40$
Young adult female (domestic servant)	Berbera (1830s-1840s)	40$
Young adult female (concubine)	Berbera (1830s-1840s)	70$
Young adult female (concubine)	Mogadishu (1890-1913)	90$

Cost of raising a newborn slave to age 16 according to the economic historian Robert C. Allen.

Age	1840s cost (MT$/year)
0	6.26$
1	4.44$
2	4.40$
3	4.08$
4	3.81$
5	3.55$
6	3.50$
7	3.46$
8	3.43$
9	3.39$
10	2.55$
11	2.53$
12	2.51$
13	2.49$
14	2.47$
15	2.42$
Total	55.30$

Cost per kilometer of shipping slaves across the sea (MT$/km), according to the economic historian Robert C. Allen.

Route	Enslaved Group & Year	Cost per km
Mogadishu-Muscat	Enslaved men (1900)	0.0204 $
Berbera-Muscat	Domestic slaves (1840)	0.0102 $
Berbera-Muscat	Concubines (1840)	0.0233 $
Berbera-Muscat	Enslaved men (1840)	0.0122 $
Berbera-Mokha	Concubines (1840)	0.0532 $
Berbera-Mokha	Enslaved men (1840)	0.0399 $

According to historian and scholar Javan Mokebo, slave prices in Somalia were influenced by factors such as ethnic group, gender, and assigned roles. Oromo women were considered to be more sexually attractive and were highly valued for reproductive functions and entertainment, while Bantu women were more commonly associated with agricultural labor. As a result, Oromo women were reportedly priced at around 90 thalers, compared to approximately 65 thalers for a Bantu woman. Similarly, Bantu male slaves were valued at about 89 thalers, compared to roughly 60 thalers for Oromo male slaves. This difference in price was explained by the types of labor each group was expected to perform, Bantu men were more frequently assigned to intensive agricultural work and other physically demanding tasks, whereas Oromo men were allocated relatively less physically demanding tasks such as herding, based on contemporary perceptions that they were less able to sustain endurance-intensive labor. Age also determined the prices of slaves, young girls were generally valued at lower prices and were assigned to lighter household chores or grazing. However, as they reached adolescence, they were often considered suitable for concubinage. The same was true for young boys, who were commonly assigned to service roles such as acting as messengers. Physical appearance was an important factor in both the selection and pricing of female slaves designated for concubinage in Somalia. The buyer’s preferences also played a role, and where the interest was primarily erotic, female slaves were more likely to be acquired than male slaves. The existing literature places Oromo women among lighter-skinned female slaves who were frequently selected for concubinage in parts of the Horn of Africa. According to Robert C. Allen eunuchs and concubines commanded the highest prices in slave markets. Women were divided into two categories. Many were assigned menial domestic work and sold at relatively low prices, while those considered attractive were purchased as concubines or wives and fetched much higher prices, this was especially true for Oromo women, who were particularly valued in slave markets due to their perceived lighter skin and attractiveness, and were also regarded as hardworking and trustworthy. According to the Iranian historian Behnaz Mirzai, Ethiopian women, mostly Oromo, were among the most highly valued in 19th century slave markets, where they were consistently described as especially desirable for their beauty and able to command higher prices. However, the value of these enslaved women reportedly declined after the age of 20.

The following is a list of slave prices reported by various other sources.

Enslaved group	Location and date	Prices	Sources
Uncastrated Amhara and Tigrayan boys	Zeila, 13th century	10-20 uqiyyah
Abyssinian women	Northern Somali region, 1420s	"for the value of a ring"
Oromo/Gurage slaves	Berbera, 1841	30-60$
Oromo/Gurage boys	Berbera, 1850	25-35$
Oromo/Gurage women	Berbera, 1850	80-120$
Amhara women	Northern Somali region, 1855	100-400 ashrafis
Oromo women	Zeila & Berbera, 1872	100-125$
Oromo women	Zeila, 1873	75$
Oromo women	Southern Somali region, 1882	100$

Slave names

For individual names, enslaved individuals in 19th-century Somalia were commonly given names by their masters. Court records indicate the use of Muslim-Arabic, Swahili-Bantu, and Oromo names, alongside common Somali names such as Abdi. In the 1980s, Somalis also commonly referred to the descendants of former slaves in Somalia using the term galla, a historical exonym for Oromo people. The term “habash” is also still used in the Somali language as a general designation for slaves.

The following is a list of terms used by different Somali clans to denote slaves or slave-descended populations.

Isaaq	Darod	Hawiya	Rahanweyn
horowa	adoon	habash, beerey, shambereey	ukkub, donad, adoon

19th century illustration depicting a Somali master (holding the spear) watching over enslaved individuals.

Hierarchies

Bantu agricultural slaves were bought to work on plantations, they did undesirable work, and often lived separately from their masters. Sexually and juridically their bodies were devalued, and strong social taboos discouraged unions between plantation slaves and Somali masters. According to Cerulli, among the Majerteen Somalis, sexual relations with female Bantu slaves were negatively viewed and socially stigmatized. However at times, less wealthy individuals also kept enslaved Bantu concubines. In contrast, herder slaves, mostly Oromo, were taken into households as adopted children or legitimate partners, worked side by side with their masters, and were sexually desired. Young Oromo women were much sought after and were referred to as suriya/sorije, a term meaning concubine in the Islamic world. Slaves of Cushitic origin, such as the Oromo, were regarded by Somalis as more physically similar to themselves than Bantus, particularly due to perceptions of straighter hair and narrower noses, features that contributed to Oromo women being considered more desirable and more readily integrated into Somali society. Concubines of Oromo origin could more easily than others acquire important roles within a household after having borne children for the master. In plantations along the Shebelle river, enslaved concubines occupied key supervisory roles within plantation households. Because of the sexual or marital bond with their owners, they were regarded as more trustworthy than other enslaved workers and were sometimes placed in charge of overseeing labour and production. Borana Oromo women captured by the Marehan Somalis could reportedly gain equal status to other wives if they became pregnant with their master's child. Children could begin working as servants as young as eight years old. Italian censuses shows clear gender divisions in slave labour. Men worked across a wide range of roles including domestic service, agriculture, skilled crafts, and transport such as sailing and carrying goods. Women were mainly assigned to domestic and agricultural tasks like childcare, looking after cattle, water carrying, farm work, processing animal products, and concubinage. 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. In general, Bantu slaves were considered much stronger than the Oromo and were reputed to be more enduring and persevering at work.

Treatment of Slaves

According to Vittorio Bottego, slaves were generally well treated :

"Slaves call their master "father"; they speak to him with great familiarity and are generally treated well. Their daily allowance is usually about a kilo and a half of dura per day. Slaves living with their master gather for meals in the courtyard. One slave carries a large pot of dura cotta and another the plates. The mistress of the house divides the portions. On Fridays, a Muslim holiday, slaves are given meat and milk in addition to the dura. Three times a year, for religious and solemn holidays, they receive a new top as a gift and, depending on the wealth of the household where they serve, an ox or a sheep to share in the meal. On these solemn occasions, they are also given plenty of milk and butter. There are coastal Somalis who try to improve the breed by carefully feeding them and mating them according to certain criteria, as cattle breeders do among us."

But on another occasion, he encountered an Oromo slave boy who was being abused by his mistress :

"A very thin little boy wanted to come with me. He said that he was a Galla, that he had been captured by the Somalis a year earlier, and that he was now the slave of a woman who made him suffer from hunger and forced him to work beyond his strength. I accepted him into the caravan."

The Italian explorer Ugo Ferrandi was surprised by the extent of trust that masters in Luuq placed in their slaves :

"Slaves in Lugh are generally well treated, and it is often the case that they are considered members of the family. Indeed, I have seen some masters mourn the death of a slave as if it were that of their own son. Several times I have seen slaves sent on business for their masters to the coast as far as Zanzibar, returning from whence."

Slave women could own their own commodities, although at times it was not easy to keep their rights over them, and negotiations were needed. Some enslaved women were able to accumulate limited personal wealth in the form of gold, silver, and other small valuables that could be discreetly hidden. According to Francesca Declich, despite the fact that female slaves could be easily accessed by their masters for sexual purposes, there are documented cases of concubines refusing to comply with sexual demands. Abortions were common, concubines aborted pregnancies using strong indigenous abortifacients prepared from pepper, colza seeds, colba, and honey. Some concubines were also afraid of what might happen should they deliver children after seeking abortions so persistently, as masters could separate children from their mothers to sell them. Among the Majerteen for instance, the prohibition in Muslim law against selling mothers separately from their small children was not always applied.

Slaves were generally permitted to form family units. However, certain nomadic Somali clans, notably the Gaaljel, Wadaan, Bimal, and Mobileen, developed a reputation for comparatively harsher treatment of slaves, both locally enslaved individuals and those imported.

According to Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti, slaves in Mogadishu and other Benadir cities appeared deeply devoted to their masters, and he claimed to find few testimonies of abuse among them. He contrasted this with the treatment of slaves among other inalnd groups such as the Bimal, where slaves were reportedly kept in iron ankle restraints. Francesca Declich argues that the institution of slavery in Somalia was not solely of the “soft” type described by some observers. In certain regions it involved an absolute lack of personal freedom, with plantation slaves chained to prevent their escape, and in the case of women, this also entailed a loss of control over their bodies. Masters could also severely beat slaves who attempted to flee and subject them to chains.

Runaway slaves

There is little evidence of Bantu-speaking communities along the Juba and Shabelle rivers before 19th century. Increased slave imports to the Banadir coast in the 1800s led to the emergence of Bantu communities of escaped slaves mainly on the Juba river. The major growth of the fugitive slave population began after 1841.

Around 1829, a large number of Zigua people from northern Tanzania were enslaved and transported to Lamu and the Banadir coast via Zanzibar. By 1844, many had escaped and established a settlement about 75 miles up the Juba River. During the visit of Arcangelo, an Italian traveler, their population was estimated at around 1,500. They lived in a main village divided by the river, along with several smaller settlements. Arcangelo reported that the communities were steadily increasing through the arrival of runaway slaves, and that the main settlement was fortified with a double stockade of thorn branches for protection against Somali attacks. The inhabitants were sedentary and produced a form of cotton cloth. In 1863, Claus von der Decken travelled up the Juba river, where he recorded a fortified settlement of about 600-700 people made up of former slaves from diverse East African groups, mainly engaged in agriculture and trade with the Somali, they traded maize, millet, bananas, and other plant foods to Somali groups in exchange for guns, powder, lead, tools, and beads, adding variety to the mainly meat-based Somali diet. Further upstream, he found Zigua-inhabited villages. their inhabitants traced origins to northern Tanzania and were estimated at around 4,000 people in total, practising mixed farming. By 1891, F. G. Dundas described the “Gosha” as expanding communities of escaped slaves along the river, cultivating a wide range of crops and trading with the Somali city of Kismayo. He estimated their population at 30,000–40,000. By the late 19th century, colonial observers noted a continuous belt of Gosha settlements along the river, which over time became increasingly integrated into surrounding Somali society and adopted the Somali language by the early 20th century.

Sultan Osman of the Majerteen.

Although these communities later became known as the WaGosha, the term itself does not appear before the 1870s, when Nasib Bundo, a freed slave, proclaimed himself Sultan of the WaGosha. At times, Nasib Bundo made agreements with certain Somali clans to return escaped slaves to their owners, namely the Bimal, who were heavily dependent on slave labour for cultivation. Earlier European travelers instead identified riverine cultivators by their respective ethnic or tribal origins. Besides the Gosha settlements on the Juba river, escaped slave communities also existed along the lower Shabelle river. In 1843, William Christopher noted runaway slave villages, including one at Golweyn on the Shabelle, though their ethnic origins remain uncertain. Later, the Italian ethnographer Vincenzo Colucci reported the existence of about 15 small villages which were used as transit points for slaves fleeing toward the Gosha settlements along the lower Juba river.

Later during the Italian colonial administration, evidence shows continued disputes over slavery and fugitive labor on the Banadir coast. In 1900, Italian Governor Emilio Dulio reported that slaves had escaped from Ras Aseir using a Somali ship, with some reaching Mogadishu and Marka. Mohamed Osman, Sultan of the Majeerteen, requested their return, but Dulio refused, citing Italy’s obligations under international law and the absence of any agreement with the Sultan.

Emancipation

Francesca Declich noted that an Oromo man regarded as docile and useful, unlike one considered troublesome, could often be emancipated and attain the status of a freedman. Vittorio Bottego also observed that slaves who had served faithfully over a long period often regained their freedom upon the death of their master. However, cases of slaves purchasing their own freedom were extremely rare, and they were mostly liberated by masters or colonial government officials.

For female slaves, manumission was more complex. Under Islamic law, slave women who bore children to their owner were to be freed upon the master’s death on account of maternity, though in practice this status often provided limited protection, mainly restricting their sale, pledge, or transfer rather than granting full independence, as they typically remained bound to household duties, including cohabitation with the master. Emancipation in practice depended heavily on the master’s consent, Italian records describe a case in which a slave woman who had borne three children by her master’s son was not freed despite legal expectations, as the master demanded 100 talleri for her manumission.

Concubines often remained dependent on their masters rather than pursuing or purchasing freedom, with only their children generally recognized as free. Among the Majerteen, concubines could receive allowances for themselves and their children without being emancipated. In some cases, slave women who had borne several children acquired informal advantages within the household, such as exemption from agricultural labor or the ability to keep income from selling milk, making negotiation for better conditions more common than escape or self-purchase. For a slave woman, the primary objective was not necessarily to attain the formal status of a “freed woman” but rather to secure a stable relationship with a wealthy patron capable of providing better care and protection. In the city of Barawa for example, remaining in slavery rather than attempting escape could in some cases have been a more effective strategy for improving living conditions and overall quality of life for enslaved women.

Legal traditions

According to the Italian explorer Vittorio Bottego, a slave’s owner was liable for the slave’s 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 captured, he had to be chained.

Captain Salkeld, a British officer in Jubaland in the early 20th century documented the following laws regarding slavery among the Somali:

"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."

According to locally applied interpretations of the sharia, a concubine who bore at least one child to her master, or even who miscarried or aborted a pregnancy, could no longer be sold, pledged, or given away, although her other obligations to the master remained intact. In practice, this marked a transition from a marketable slave to a more permanent and domestically integrated position within the household, frequently involving a closer personal relationship with the master.

Female Participation

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 Luuq, 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. Qadi court records suggest that women, like men, frequently manumitted their slaves. Freedwomen were often identified by the name of the person responsible for their emancipation, regardless of whether the former owner was male or female. One documented case refers to a woman, Mana Ado bint Bakar, who granted freedom to a female slave whom she had also named Mana Ado.

Religious Justifications

Early Italian colonial attempts to abolish slavery largely failed, as the Somalis argued that Islamic law gave them the right to hold slaves.

Somali scholar Ali Jimale Ahmed argued that slave raids against the Oromo were framed as jihad, and that masters were religiously expected to convert enslaved people to Islam. Somalis frequently referred to raids on Oromo settlements as jihad. The British explorer John Speke recorded that the Somalis believed the slave trade to be their Quranic right. Catherine Besteman also argues that, in the Somali context, slave owners were expected to ensure the conversion of enslaved people to Islam.

However, according to Vittorio Bottego, slaves weren't forcefully converted and were allowed to keep their faith :

"Some of the slaves are Muslim, others idolaters or fetish worshippers; the latter are not forced to abjure their faith; however, almost all are subjected to the environment and voluntarily convert to the religion of Muhammad."

Enslavement of Ethnic Somalis

According to Somali scholar Ahmed Samatar, the historiography provides little evidence of Somalis being enslaved. Among Somalis, enslaving a fellow Somali was long regarded as a deeply entrenched customary taboo. The only documented case occurred when Muhammad ibn Abdullah Hassan’s enemies bitterly accused him of capturing their women. According to Herman Jeremias Nieboer, a Somali could never become the slave of another Somali, and prisoners of war were not enslaved. Italian scholar Enrico Cerulli observed that Somali customary law differed from Oromo law in that it forbade the enslavement or sale of fellow Somalis under any circumstances. According to Francesca Declich, slaves in Somalia were understood to be foreigners by definition.

As longtime free Muslims, Somalis could not be enslaved in the Islamic world. In Arabia, the kidnapping or enslavement of Somalis was strictly prohibited and punished as piracy on the grounds that Somalis were by nature free and belonged to an "unenslaveble" race. An Abyssinian ex-slave in the early 20th century recounted being taken from Zanzibar and offered for sale in Oman, where nobody dared to buy him as he was mistaken to be a Somali.

Colonel Charles Henry Rigby, British Consul in Zanzibar, is cited as having stated that:

"The Somalis being Mohaminedans could not be made slaves, therefore they had not the same reason for distrusting strangers."

In 1876, Sir George Campbell is quoted as having said:

"May I be permitted to speak about the case of a who are popularly called slaves, Africans, or are there any others who are called slaves? There are Galla slaves and Abyssinians. I have not known an instance of a half-bred Arab being a slave. Are the Somalis ever slaves? Very rarely. The Somalis steal slaves, but I have never seen a Somali slave, there may, however, be rare instances."

Abolition

Italian colonial government

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. The abolition of slavery in Italian Somaliland was carried out through a series of decrees issued between 1897 and 1907.

In 1893, a shocking report revealed that the Italian government had failed to adhere to the signed obligations of 1890 :

"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." The first 45 slaves were freed by the Italian colonial administration in 1895. In the 1896, Italians tried to forcibly confiscate the slaves of the Somalis but failed, and top colonial administrator Antonio Cecchi was killed during the military expedition in the interior. The Somalis resisted abolition, arguing that Islamic law allowed them to hold slaves. Somali religious leaders denounced Italian orders, insisting that Somali law, based on the Quran and the Prophet, took precedence over colonial regulations.

Italy’s position on the protection of enslaved fugitives remained that such people would not be handed back to their owners, however, in a letter from 1900, Italian Governor Emilio Dulio reported that fugitive slaves were sometimes returned to their owners, particularly in cases involving domestic servants, on the condition that they would not be mistreated. 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, nearly half of Mogadishu's 7000 population was enslaved, as well as one third of Barawa's population and one fifth of Marka's population. In 1904, only a few hundred slaves had been manumitted since the arrival of the Italians. 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. Italian explorer Lamberto Vannutelli also recounts meeting Oromo and Sidama slaves at Luuq who begged for his help to escape from the Somalis and return to Ethiopia, though the exact number of captives he encountered remains unclear.

In 1904, a scandal broke out when a concubine committed suicide rather than consent to sexual relations with a prominent Italian officer. It was later reported that he had frequently sought sexual favours from enslaved women through their masters. 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. In 1910, the number of freed slaves had risen to several thousand. By 1916, the general governor of Italian Somaliland, Giovanni Cerrina Feroni, estimated that about one-tenth of the colony’s population were still slaves, roughly 300,000 out of 3 million. According to Ronald Segal, Italy's Benadir Company was openly collaborating with local slave dealers and wealthy Somali merchants still owned slaves by in the first half of the 20th century. The Italians adopted a conciliatory approach toward slave owners in the interior. Colonial tribunals often encouraged slaves to reach agreements with their masters as a condition for freedom, leading many to remain as dependent client laborers rather than slaves.

According to historian Gwyn Campbell:

"However, as in other recently established colonial regimes in Africa, there was no immediate challenge to slavery. Although it was part of the Italian colonial obligation in the Belgium treaty to abolish slavery and the slave trade, Italy's initial concern was to promote efficient colonial administration in Somalia. The issue of slavery was ignored until the administrative structure was strong enough to enforce abolition. Indeed, Italian officials tolerated the maintenance of slavery on the large plantations created by Italian planters on the confiscated land between the Juba and Shebelli rivers, and frequently returned fugitive slaves to their former masters.. slavery throughout the colony was officially outlawed only in the first years of the twentieth century, in response to pressure from other European governments and within Italy from the Italian anti-slavery group led by the abolitionist Robecchi Bricchetti who, through a media campaign in Milan, aroused Italian public opinion against the government's lassitude towards abolition in Somalia."

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. The Italians regarded Somalis as naturally disinclined toward agricultural labor :

"Hand power in the Benadir is scarce for a complex series of reasons of a moral, economic and demographic kind.. overall there is a natural slothfulness of pure Somalis towards work in the fields. Only slaves and freed slaves practice this dishonourable activity, it is only among them that we gather the small amount of manpower which is available."

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 leave 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. According to Kenyan historian Ahmed Idha Salim, Somali men generally avoided plantation labour due to an aversion to manual labour. Almost all the people conscripted into these forced plantations were former slaves or related to former slaves. The colonial government tasked ethnic Somalis with drafting these former slaves under their control to work on plantations. Several demonstrations against conscription took place and many conscripted men fled the estates. As a result, the Italians promised men conscripted into forced labor the right to choose any woman on the plantation as a wife, without her consent. Contemporary informants reported that without the company of a woman, most young men would have fled conscription.

The British abolished this system after defeating the Italians in WW2. One British official described the scheme to be indistinguishable from slavery.

British colonial government

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 Oromos living under the 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. The enslavement of Oromo populations in the Northern Frontier District continued into the British colonial period in Kenya, where British officers often classified Oromo groups as assimilated Somalis rather than enslaved communities, thereby avoiding the issue of slavery.

Officially, slavery in Northern Somalia was abolished during the British Somaliland protectorate. However, at the turn of the 20th century, British naval officers routinely ignored orders to police the slave trade, and slave running from the British Somaliland coast went virtually unchecked as a result. Severe infighting among northern Somalis during the Dervish Wars led to the decline of the slave trade, as groups turned on each other instead of carrying out slave raids, contributing to a sharp population decrease in the process.

Life after Enslavement

Different members of a Somali clan could have slaves of both Oromo heritage and Bantu heritage. and once these slaves attained their freedom, they and their children could then be affiliated with the same Somali clan, despite their separate areas of origin. In this way, villages formed along Somali clan lines in the Jubba valley could contain people of both Oromo and Bantu heritage, who claimed affiliation to the same Somali clan. One example is Shaikh Hajji Ali bin Isa al-Bimali of Merca, an Oromo ex-slave of the Bimaal, despite not being ethnically Somali, he identified himself with the Bimaal clan.

Qadi court records indicate that freedwomen sometimes married their former owners or the sons of their former owners. One example is the case of an Oromo freedwoman named Hawa, who had married an Isaaq Somali man in Barawa with a recorded mahr (dower) of 3 qirsh, the lowest recorded amount. More commonly, freedwomen received a mahr of around 10 qirsh, compared to approximately 30–60 qirsh for freeborn women. Former owners and their freed slaves often remained connected through social and economic obligations. In one case, a freedwoman, possibly a former concubine, was sufficiently trusted that upon her patron’s death she was found in possession of a large amount of gold and silver, which she subsequently handed over to the guardian of the deceased’s minor heirs. In another case, a freed person remained legally tied to their former patron, such that upon the freed person’s death, the patron inherited their estate.

After emancipation, Oromos ex-slaves settled in large numbers in the mid-valley area around Buale and the middle Juba region as well as the upper Shabelle. Bantu ex-slaves settled along the Juba and Shabelle rivers, but also the inter-riverine regions of Bay and Bakool.

Some freed female slaves practiced prostitution. Prostitution as a female slave activity was first documented in Somalia by Robecchi Bricchetti. According to records of the Italian parliament, by the 1910s most emancipated individuals were described as living in vagrancy, with many women engaged in prostitution :

"The slave, Swahili, Borana, Galla, Arussi, means by freedom only the right to do nothing. Except for the few who join the freedmen's villages on the Shabelle or Juba Rivers and take up farming on their own, most, if men, turn to idleness and vagrancy; if women, to prostitution. Mogadishu, Merca, and Brava are overflowing with prostitutes, and, with a few exceptions, they are all freed slaves."

In the 20th century, freed slaves were generally held in an unequal and inferior legal status compared to those considered ethnic Somali.

Discrimination in Modern Somali Society

The term “Galla” has been documented in modern contexts as a pejorative exonym for Oromo descended people in Somalia, at times used in association with the legacy of slavery in Somalia. In one recorded instance from the 1990s, a Somali interpreter used the term during an asylum application in the Netherlands to refer to a woman described as descending from formerly enslaved families, reportedly emancipated during the colonial period. Despite adopting Islam, affiliating with Somali clans, and speaking Somali, descendants of Oromo and Bantu slaves in Somalia continue to face discrimination. Somalis commonly refer to these decendants of Ethiopian and Bantu slaves as "Habash" or "Jareer" meaning kinky hair.

Modern Slavery

A 2017 investigation by the BBC reported that young Kenyan women from Mombasa, both Christian and Muslim, were being lured and subsequently trafficked by al-Shabaab into Somalia, where they were subjected to sexual slavery. As of 2023, Somalia had around 98,000 people living in modern slavery and ranked 14th in terms of prevalence of modern slavery within Africa.

See also

• Slavery in Kenya
• Slavery in Ethiopia
• Red sea slave trade
• Zanzibar slave trade
• Arab slave trade
• Habesha people
• Oromo people
• Bantu people

References

Works cited

• Besteman, Catherine Lowe (1999). Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0812216882.