Slavery in Somalia

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'''Slavery in Somalia''' existed as a part of the Indian Ocean<ref name=":33">{{Cite journal |last=Bellucci |first=Stefano |date=2023 |title=Wage Labour and Italian Colonialism in Somalia, 1890s to 1910s: A Case of Capitalist Transformation without Capital |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/48776043 |journal=Africa: Rivista semestrale di studi e ricerche |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=55–74 |issn=2612-3258}}</ref> and Red Sea slave trades. 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.<ref>Miran, Jonathan, 'Red Sea Slave Trade' (20 Apr. 2022), in Thomas Spear (ed.), ''Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History'' (New York, NY, online edn, Oxford Academic, 27 Feb. 2017)</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move |date=2018-06-26 |publisher=BRILL |pages=95 |language=en}}</ref> Ethiopian Christians were among the most popular enslaved people traded by Somali merchants.<ref>Behnaz A. Mirzai. ''A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800–1929'' (2017), p. 54.</ref> 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.<ref name="Gcam2">Campbell, Gwyn (2003). ''The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia''. (1st ed.) London; Portland, OR (US): Routledge. p. ix {{isbn|9780714683881}}</ref> In Somali society, slaves were considered a source of wealth and a mark of status.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lawrance |first=Benjamin N. |title=Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa |last2=Roberts |first2=Richard L. |date=2012-08-22 |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=126 |language=en}}</ref> Somalis kept slaves for agricultural labor and herding as well as concubinage.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gallucci |first=Saverio |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/La_Somalia_italiana/Cu6PFm_zaXYC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=schiavi+boran&dq=schiavi+boran&printsec=frontcover |title=La Somalia italiana |date=1936 |publisher=Scuola tipografica Istituto pavoniano artigianelli |pages=85 |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Cinquanta_anni_di_storia_italiana/4whNAAAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=0&bsq=schiavi%20boran |title=Cinquanta anni di storia italiana |date=1911 |publisher=U. Hoepli |pages=56 |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Strouthes |first=Daniel P. |title=Law and Politics: A Cross-cultural Encyclopedia |date=1995 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |pages=246 |language=en}}</ref> {{slavery}}

==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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Damme |first=Thomas Van |date=2012-01-01 |title=Queen Hatshepsut's Punt Expedition |url=https://www.academia.edu/39084145/Queen_Hatshepsuts_Punt_Expedition |journal=Bachelor Thesis Archaeology - Ghent University}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Podany |first=Amanda H. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Brotherhood_of_Kings/JTvRCwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=chiefs+of+punt&pg=PA143&printsec=frontcover |title=Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East |date=2010-07-13 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-971829-0 |language=en}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=McLaughlin |first=Raoul |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=gzJf1KgqrWQC&pg=PA65&dq=pliny+adulis+egyptian&hl=fr&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRjbXE3qmFAxX-h_0HHSd6CzAQ6AF6BAgFEAI#v=onepage&q=pliny%20adulis%20egyptian&f=false |title=Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India and China |date=2010-07-08 |publisher=A&C Black |isbn=978-1-84725-235-7 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Campbell |first=Sir James MacNabb |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Gazetteer_of_the_Bombay_Presidency_Kol%C3%A1/LRpBAQAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=slaves+opone&pg=PA433&printsec=frontcover |title=Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency: Kolába and Janjira |date=1883 |publisher=Government Central Press |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Indian_Antiquary/g2CLRqpfg3EC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=slaves+opone&pg=RA1-PA110&printsec=frontcover |title=Indian Antiquary: A Journal of Oriental Research in Archaeology, History, Literature, Languages, Folklore Etc |date=1878 |publisher=Times of India |language=en}}</ref> Slaves were also occasionally exported from the port of Malao to India.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Saletore |first=Rajaram Narayan |title=Early Indian Economic History |date=1975 |publisher=Curzon |pages=182 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Goldenberg |first=David M. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Curse_of_Ham/1MS9AiZ74MoC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=malao+slave&pg=PA317&printsec=frontcover |title=The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam |date=2009-04-11 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-2854-8 |pages=317 |language=en}}</ref> [[File:Hafun.jpg|thumb|236x236px|The ruins of the ancient city of Opone at Hafun.]]According to the ancient writer Ptolemy: <blockquote>"''Besides aromatics, slaves of a superior description are exported from Opone, chiefly for the Egyptian markets''."<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Scottish_Geographical_Magazine/9pBIAAAAYAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=slaves+opone&pg=PA106&printsec=frontcover |title=Scottish Geographical Magazine |date=1886 |publisher=Royal Scottish Geographical Society. |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lacroix |first=W. F. G. |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=EVhxAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gb_mobile_entity&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&hl=fr&gl=BE&ovdme=1&redir_esc=y#Opone |title=Africa in Antiquity: A Linguistic and Toponymic Analysis of Ptolemy's Map of Africa, Together with a Discussion of Ophir, Punt and Hanno's Voyage |date=1998 |publisher=Verlag für Entwicklungspolitik Saarbrücken GmbH |isbn=978-3-88156-708-4 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Caire |first=Institut français d'archéologie orientale du |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Bulletin_de_l_Institut_fran%C3%A7ais_d_arch/tPxAAAAAYAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=opone+pwene&dq=opone+pwene&printsec=frontcover |title=Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale |date=1972 |publisher=Institut français d'archéologie orientale. |language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Leakey |first=Richard E. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Actes_Du_8e_Congr%C3%A8s_Panafricain_de_Pr%C3%A9/Tc0KAQAAIAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=opone+pwene&dq=opone+pwene&printsec=frontcover |title=Actes Du 8e Congrès Panafricain de Préhistoire Et Des Etudes Du Quaternaire |last2=Ogot |first2=Bethwell A. |date=1980 |publisher=International Louis Leakey Memorial Institute for African Prehistory |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Naït-Zerrad |first=Kamal |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Articles_de_linguistique_berb%C3%A8re/ENg4WiSo9OYC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=opone+punt&pg=PA30&printsec=frontcover |title=Articles de linguistique berbère: mémorial Werner Vycichl |date=2002 |publisher=L'Harmattan |isbn=978-2-7475-2706-4 |language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Allibert |first=Claude |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Documents_p%C3%A9dagogiques/ZCuf4NHbmJMC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=opone+punt&dq=opone+punt&printsec=frontcover |title=Documents pédagogiques: textes anciens sur la côte est de l'Afrique et l'océan Indien occidental |date=1990 |publisher=Institut des langues et civilisations orientales |isbn=978-2-907160-09-4 |language=fr}}</ref>

===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, sailors, and soldiers in local military and naval forces.<ref name=":40">{{Cite book |last=Freamon |first=Bernard K. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Possessed_by_the_Right_Hand/PTGbDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=yemeni+slaves+zeila&pg=PA260&printsec=frontcover |title=Possessed by the Right Hand: The Problem of Slavery in Islamic Law and Muslim Cultures |date=2019-05-20 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-39879-5 |pages=259–260 |language=en}}</ref> 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<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cuoq |first=Joseph |url=https://books.google.be/books/about/L_Islam_en_%C3%89thiopie_des_origines_au_XVI.html?id=cJFyAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y |title=L'Islam en Éthiopie des origines au XVIe siècle |date=1981 |publisher=Nouvelles éditions latines |isbn=978-2-7233-0111-4 |pages=145 |language=fr}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Tamrat |first=Taddesse |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Church_and_State_in_Ethiopia_1270_1527/8ZNyAAAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=ibn+said+zeila+slave&dq=ibn+said+zeila+slave&printsec=frontcover |title=Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270-1527 |date=1972 |publisher=Clarendon Press |isbn=978-0-19-821671-1 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":40" /> 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.<ref name=":41">{{Cite journal |last=Pankhurst |first=Richard |date=2002 |title=Across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden: Ethiopia's Historic Ties with Yaman |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40761637 |journal=Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente |volume=57 |issue=3 |pages=393–419 |issn=0001-9747}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Jonathan A. C. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Slavery_and_Islam/z6jRDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=Similarly,+slaves+from+the+Horn+of+Africa+were+brought+via+the+port+of+Zayla+in+Somalia+through+the+strait+of+the+Bab+al-Mandab+to+the+commercial&pg=PT180&printsec=frontcover |title=Slavery and Islam |date=2020-03-05 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-78607-636-6 |language=en}}</ref>

Yemeni Rasulid sources in the same period mention that most of these Abyssinian es 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.<ref name=":27">{{Citation |last=Moorthy Kloss |first=Magdalena |title=Slavery in Medieval Arabia |date=2023 |work=The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History |pages=139–158 |editor-last=Pargas |editor-first=Damian A. |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13260-5_8 |access-date=2026-01-26 |place=Cham |publisher=Springer International Publishing |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-031-13260-5_8 |isbn=978-3-031-13260-5 |editor2-last=Schiel |editor2-first=Juliane |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="LofK">{{Cite book |last=Yusuf |first=Al Malik Muzzafar |title=نور المعارف |date=1295 |pages=326–327 |language=ar |trans-title=Light of Knowledge}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Magdalena M. Kloss |title=Unfree lives: Slaves at the Najahid and Rasulid Courts of Yemen |publisher=BRILL}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":0" />

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.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Northeast_African_Studies/3ndMAQAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=sheikh+isaaq+ethiopian+slave&dq=sheikh+isaaq+ethiopian+slave&printsec=frontcover |title=Northeast African Studies |date=2003 |publisher=African Studies Center, Michigan State University |pages=55 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Mire |first=Sada |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Divine_Fertility/J6nODwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=isaaq+ethiopian+wife&pg=PT199&printsec=frontcover |title=Divine Fertility: The Continuity in Transformation of an Ideology of Sacred Kinship in Northeast Africa |date=2020-02-05 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-429-76924-5 |language=en}}</ref> The descendants of Sheikh Isaaq’s Abyssinian wife form the Habr Habusheed confederation, comprising the Habr Je’lo, Ibran, and Sanbur clans.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lewis |first=I. M. |title=Peoples of the Horn of Africa (Somali, Afar and Saho): North Eastern Africa Part I |date=2017-02-03 |publisher=Routledge |pages=40 |language=en |quote=The Habr Toljaala, also known as the Habr Habushed, referring to their Abyssinian ancestress,}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/%D9%85%D8%AC%D9%84%D8%A9_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B5%D9%88%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84/g-naJnhIk0EC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=Habr+Habusheed&dq=Habr+Habusheed&printsec=frontcover |title=مجلة الصومال |date=1954 |publisher=The Society |pages=25 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bricchetti |first=Luigi Robecchi |title=Somalia e Benadir: viaggio di esplorazione nell'Africa orientale. Prima traversata della Somalia, compiuta per incarico della Societá geografica italiana |date=1899 |publisher=Aliprandi |pages=368 |language=it}}</ref><ref name="Cerulli">Enrico Cerulli, ''Come viveva una tribù Hawiyya'', ( A Cura dell'Amministrazione Fiduciaria Italiana della Somalia; Instituto poligrafico dello Stato P.V 1959)</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tamrat |first=Taddesse |title=Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270-1527 |date=1972 |publisher=Clarendon Press |pages=86 |language=en}}</ref>250px|thumb|right|Historical routes of the Ethiopian slave trade.thumb|Ruins at Zeila

[[File:Painting of the profile of Malik Ambar of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, the founder of Khadki (later Aurangabad).jpg|thumb|Malik Ambar, influential Indian slave born in Harar.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jr |first=Everett Jenkins |title=The Muslim Diaspora (Volume 2, 1500-1799): A Comprehensive Chronology of the Spread of Islam in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas |date=2015-05-07 |publisher=McFarland |pages=74 |language=en}}</ref>]]thumb|Drawing of an Abyssinian female slave. === Christian-Muslim wars === In 1376, the Sultan Haqq al-Din II of the Walashma dynasty started a holy war against the Christian Solomonid dynasty.<ref name=":162">{{Cite book |last=Cuoq |first=Joseph |url=https://books.google.be/books?redir_esc=y&hl=fr&id=cJFyAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q= |title=L'Islam en Éthiopie des origines au XVIe siècle |date=1981 |publisher=Nouvelles éditions latines |isbn=978-2-7233-0111-4 |pages=149 |language=fr}}</ref> He was ceaselessly engaged in conflict with the Solomonid king, from whom he took many captives.<ref name=":17">{{Cite book |last=Pankhurst |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=zpYBD3bzW1wC&dq=He+brought+numerous+christian+lands+under+his+rule+and+burnt+many+of+their,+together+maqrizi+towns&pg=PA60&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=He%20brought%20numerous%20christian%20lands%20under%20his%20rule%20and%20burnt%20many%20of%20their,%20together%20maqrizi%20towns&f=false |title=The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History from Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century |date=1997 |publisher=The Red Sea Press |isbn=978-0-932415-19-6 |pages=50 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Al-Maqrizi |url=http://archive.org/details/AlilmamMa9rizi |title=الإلمام بأخبار من بأرض الحبشة من ملوك الاسلام |pages=11 |language=Arabic}}</ref> The Sultan led incursions as far as Hadiya which he plundered.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ulrich Braukämper |title=A History of the Hadiyya in Southern Ethiopia |date=2012 |pages=80}}</ref>

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.<ref name=":162" />

According to Maqrizi: <blockquote>"''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''."<ref name=":4">{{Cite book |last=Al-Maqrizi |url=http://archive.org/details/al-ilmam_bi_akhbar_man_bi_ard_al-habacha |title=الإلمام بأخبار من بأرض الحبشة من ملوك الإسلام مع دراسة عن القبائل العربية في مصر |pages=94–97 |language=Arabic}}</ref><ref name="nacrizi">{{cite book |date=1790 |orig-date=Written {{circa|1385}}–1440|location=Leiden |publisher=Samuel and John Luchtmans |pages=36|title=Macrizi Historia regum Islamiticorum in Abyssinia: ''Interpretatus est et una cum Abulfedae Descriptione regionum nigritarum e codd. Bibliotheca Leidensis, arabice edidit'' |editor-first=Friedrich Theodor |editor-last= Rinck |url=https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=mqnfBjMhK6MC&pg=GBS.RA2-PA34&hl=fr |oclc=458026923|author=Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī Taqī al-Dīn al- Maqrīzī |author-link=al-Maqrizi |language=la |trans-title=Macrizi's History of the Islamic Kings in Abyssinia. ''Interpreted together with Abulfeda's Description of the Black Regions from codices in the Library of Leiden, published in Arabic'' |translator= Friedrich Theodor Rinck}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Asante |first=Molefi Kete |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Africology_and_the_African_Diaspora/zlrCEQAAQBAJ?hl= |title=Africology and the African Diaspora: Agency, Culture, and Change |date=2026-04-16 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=979-8-7651-5272-0 |language=en |quote=It is known that Jamal ad-Din of Adal, of Somali background, became a major slave seller who traded conquered Ethiopians to Greece and India. We know that Ethiopians were to be found in Russia, Turkey, and India in succeeding centuries.}}</ref></blockquote>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.<ref name=":17" />

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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fage |first=J. D. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Cambridge_History_of_Africa/GWjxR61xAe0C?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=mahfuz+slaves&pg=PA167&printsec=frontcover |title=The Cambridge History of Africa |last2=Oliver |first2=Roland |date=1975 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-20981-6 |pages=166–167 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Pankhurst |first=Richard |title=An Introduction to the Economic History of Ethiopia, from Early Times to 1800 |date=1961 |publisher=Lalibela House |pages=374 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Burton |first=Sir Richard Francis |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=y5DuhyqzI9cC&pg=PA188&dq=Zayla+grain&hl=fr&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwie-cyalLqQAxUI1gIHHauhLqUQ6AF6BAgOEAM#v=onepage&q=Zayla%20grain&f=false |title=Premiers pas dans l'Afrique Orientale |date=1857 |publisher= |pages=188–189 |language=fr}}</ref>

According to René Basset, Mahfuz's incursions reached as far as the Dukem river near Addis Ababa.<ref>{{Cite book |last=C. F. Beckingham and G.W. B. Huntingford |title=The Prester John of the Indies: Volume I |pages=16}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Basset |first=Rene |title=Histoire de la conqûete de l'Abyssinie |pages=61}}</ref> Francisco Alvarez states that Mahfuz targeted the regions of Shewa, Amhara, and Fatagar in his raids.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Alvares |first=Francisco |url=http://archive.org/details/narrativeofportu00alvarich |title=Narrative of the Portuguese embassy to Abyssinia during the years 1520-1527 |last2=Stanley |first2=Henry Edward John Stanley |date=1881 |publisher=London : Printed for the Hakluyt society |others=University of California Libraries}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pankhurst |first=Richard |title=History of Ethiopian Towns from the Middle Ages to the Early Nineteenth Century |date=1982 |publisher=Steiner |pages=58–60 |language=en}}</ref> According to Francisco Alvares, Mahfuz carried out over twenty annual forays into the Christian interior, in the course of which he captured innumerable slaves.<ref name=":41" /> The Ottoman admiral Salman Reis also mentioned these annual raids into Abyssinia.<ref>{{Cite journal|title="Ottomans, Yemenis and the "Conquest of Abyssinia" (1531-1543)"|journal=Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Los Angeles / CFEE, Addis Ababa University|doi=|first=Amélie|last=Chekroun}}</ref> Sihab al-Din Ahmed notes that every Emir of the Barr Sa'd al-Din had the right to raise a small army and lead a raiding party into Abyssinia.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Conquest of Abyssinia: 16th Century|url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Conquest_of_Abyssinia/YgIwAQAAIAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=It+was+the+custom+in+the+land+of+Sa%27d+ad-Din+that+every+emir+had+the+dignity+of+ruling+and+of+choosing+functionaries&dq=It+was+the+custom+in+the+land+of+Sa%27d+ad-Din+that+every+emir+had+the+dignity+of+ruling+and+of+choosing+functionaries&printsec=frontcover|publisher=Tsehai Publishers & Distributors|date=2003|isbn=978-0-9723172-6-9|language=en|first=Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʻAbd al-Qādir|last=ʻArabfaqīh|first2=Richard|last2=Pankhurst}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Africa/zb5yAAAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=mahfuz+slaves&dq=mahfuz+slaves&printsec=frontcover |title=Africa |date=2002 |publisher=Associazione fra le imprese italiane in Africa |pages=410–419 |language=it}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Peacock |first=A. C. S. |url= |title=Islamisation: Comparative Perspectives from History |date=2017-03-08 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn= |pages=231 |language=en}}</ref> From the early 16th century onward, there is continuous evidence of “Habashi” Abyssinian servants in middle and upper-class Iranian households.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Thomas Ricks |first=Ph D. |date=2001-01-01 |title=Slaves And Slave Trading In Shi'i Iran, AD 1500-1900 |url=https://www.academia.edu/54680481/Slaves_And_Slave_Trading_In_Shii_Iran_AD_1500_1900 |journal=African and Asian Studies}}</ref>

Through Zeila, and to a lesser degree Berbera, passed the main stream of slaves from the Ethiopian hinterland.<ref name="tegegne">{{cite journal |date= December 2016 |at= Article 5 |volume=2 |number=2 |last1=Tegegne |first1=Habtamu M. |title=The Edict of King Gälawdéwos Against the Illegal Slave Trade in Christians: Ethiopia, 1548 |journal=The Medieval Globe |publisher=Western Michigan University |url=https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=tmg |access-date=12 June 2023}}</ref> During the 15th and 16th centuries, the port of Zeila on the Somali coast was the largest slave market in the Horn of Africa, where merchants from Arabia acquired slaves.<ref name=":26">Tegegne, Habtamu Mengistie. “''The Edict of King Gälawdéwos Against the Illegal Slave Trade in Christians: Ethiopia, 1548.''” The Medieval Globe 2, no. 2 (2016): 73-114. Published by Arc Humanities Press.</ref> Clifford Pereira states that the majority of “Habshi” slaves arriving in India during the 16th century came through the port of Zeila, the principal exporter of enslaved Ethiopians. He further notes that the oldest route by which enslaved Africans reached East Asia ran from Zeila to Oman and Hormuz, where slaves were picked up by Gujarati or Persian vessels.<ref>Pereira, Clifford. ''[http://www.themua.org/collections/files/original/af29a9e6b57a6cd81c2f1fb6374e6327.pdf Who Were the Africans in Eastern Asia? The Christian European Period, 1500–1900 AD].'' Royal Geographical Society, November 2017.</ref>

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.<ref name=":7">{{Cite book |last=Chekroun |first=Amélie |title=Le Futuḥ al-Ḥabasha : Écriture de l'histoire, guerre et société dans le Barr S'ad ad-dīn (Éthiopie, XVIe siècle) |date=2013-01-01 |pages=390}}</ref>

The military leader Imam Ahmed bin Ibrahim was raised by a slave owned by his family which he later freed.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cuoq |first=Joseph |title=L'Islam en Éthiopie des origines au XVIe siècle |date=1981 |publisher=Nouvelles Editions Latines |pages=221 |language=fr}}</ref> 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 possessed so many slaves that he was forced to order their abandonment, as they were slowing his army down.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Unbroken Chains: A 5,000-Year History of African Enslavement |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2025-08-28 |language=en |first=Martin |last=Plaut |pages=99}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Ethiopia, a Country Study |publisher=American University, Foreign Area Studies |date=1981 |language=en |first=Harold D. |last=Nelson |first2=Irving |last2=Kaplan |pages=13}}</ref><ref name=":26" />

Besides ordinary captives, several high-ranking noblemen and women were also taken prisoner and sold into slavery. Among them was the future king Minas of Ethiopia and his cousins, who were sold into slavery in 1542. According to the scholar Habtamu Mengistie Tegegne, this illustrates that practically everyone in the Christian kingdom faced the possibility of enslavement.<ref name=":26" /> Christian slaves captured by Imam Ahmed's troops were mainly sold to the Ottoman world.<ref name=":46">{{Cite book |last=Yimene |first=Ababu Minda |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=DigPvwHTqJ4C&dq=ethiopian+slaves+arabia+indian&pg=PA73&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ethiopian%20slaves%20arabia%20indian&f=false |title=An African Indian Community in Hyderabad: Siddi Identity, Its Maintenance and Change |date=2004 |publisher=Cuvillier Verlag |isbn=978-3-86537-206-2 |pages=73 |language=en}}</ref>

An innumerable number of slaves were captured during the campaigns of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, leading 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 had to 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean|publisher=Africa World Press|date=2003|language=en|first=Shihan de S.|last=Jayasuriya|first2=Richard|last2=Pankhurst|pages=200}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3, AD 1420-AD 1804|publisher=Cambridge University Press|date=2011-07-25|language=en|first=David|last=Eltis|first2=Stanley L.|last2=Engerman|first3=Keith R.|last3=Bradley|first4=Paul|last4=Cartledge|first5=Seymour|last5=Drescher|pages=73}}</ref> One such figure was Malik Ambar, an Ethiopian slave brought to serve at the Nizam Shahi court in Ahmadnagar. He rose to become a senior military commander and installed a new ruler on the throne. Supported by other Ethiopian slave soldiers and administrators, Malik Ambar remained the dominant political figure in the kingdom for the rest of his life. Between the 15h and 17th centuries, large numbers of Ethiopian slaves were imported into India to serve as soldiers in the Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan plateau, where some rose to become part of the ruling elite in states such as Bijapur.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Jonathan A. C. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Slavery_and_Islam/z6jRDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=One+such+figure+was+Malik+Ambar,+an+Ethiopian+brought+to+serve+at+the+Nizam+Shahi+court+in+Ahmadnagar&pg=PT209&printsec=frontcover |title=Slavery and Islam |date=2020-03-05 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-78607-636-6 |language=en}}</ref>

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"<ref name=":7" /></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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The history and description of Africa|publisher=London, Printed for the Hakluyt society|date=1896|others=Harvard University|first=Africanus|last=Leo|first2=John|last2=Pory|first3=Robert|last3=Brown|pages=52}}</ref> Most enslaved African women in Arabia were employed as domestic servants. Affluent Arabs showed a particular preference for Habshi concubines, a preference attributed to contemporary perceptions of their attractiveness and the linguistic ties between Habshi women and the Habshi eunuchs who guarded them.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harris |first=Joseph E. |url=https://books.google.be/books/about/The_African_Presence_in_Asia.html?id=e3VstAtw0J0C&redir_esc=y |title=The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade |date=1971 |publisher=Northwestern University Press |isbn=978-0-8101-0348-1 |pages=40 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Slaves and Slavery in Africa: Volume Two: The Servile Estate|publisher=Routledge|date=1985|language=en|first=John R.|last=Willis|first2=John Ralph|last2=Willis|pages=122}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Citation|title=Ottomans, Yemenis and the “Conquest of Abyssinia” (1531-1543)|url=https://books.openedition.org/cfee/1162|publisher=Centre français des études éthiopiennes|work=Movements in Ethiopia, Ethiopia in Movement. Volume 1 : Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies|date=2016|access-date=2026-01-30|place=Addis-Abeba|isbn=978-2-11-172313-9|pages=163–174|series=Corne de l’Afrique contemporaine / Contemporary Horn of Africa|language=en|first=Amélie|last=Chekroun|editor-first=Éloi|editor-last=Ficquet|editor2-last=Ahmed Hassen Omer|editor3-first=Thomas|editor3-last=Osmond}}</ref><ref name=":41" />

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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Pedro Paez's History of Ethiopia, 1622 (Christopher Tribe trad.)|url=https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00688394|publisher=The Hakluyt Society|date=2011|language=en|first=Hervé|last=Pennec}}</ref> Slaves pens built of stone were found by archeologists in the Medieval town of Amud in Awdal.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Somaliland Protectorate: Report|url=https://books.google.be/books?id=mVkLAQAAMAAJ&q=Amud&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false|publisher=H.M. Stationery Office|date=1956|language=en|first=Great Britain Colonial|last=Office|pages=44}}</ref>

=== 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Freeman-Grenville |first=G. S. P. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Medieval_History_of_the_Coast_of_Tan/zVMHEQAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=eunuch+mogadishu&pg=PA101&printsec=frontcover |title=The Medieval History of the Coast of Tanganyika |date=1962-12-31 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |isbn=978-3-11-270709-8 |pages=101 |language=en}}</ref> Chinese Ming dynasty records from 1423 mention the Sultan of Mogadishu having multiple concubines.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chin |first=Elizabeth Yee Yin |title=Geographical Aspects of Chinese Contacts with East Africa During the Medieval Period |date=1980 |publisher=University of London |pages=141 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Filesi |first=Teobaldo |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/China_and_Africa_in_the_Middle_Ages/255OEQAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=(the+Emperor)+ordered+(Cheng)+Ho+to+accompany+them+to+present+flowered+silk+to+the+king+and+to+his+concubines.&pg=PT50&printsec=frontcover |title=China and Africa in the Middle Ages |date=2025-05-08 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-040-33879-7 |language=en}}</ref> A manuscript recovered by Enrico Cerulli records a woman from Mogadishu freeing her slave in 1573.<ref name=":9">{{Cite book |last=Cerulli |first=Enrico |title=Somalia: Storia della Somalia, l'islam in Somalia, il libro degli zengi |year=1957 |location=Rome |pages=12–13}}</ref> The manumission deed of the slave bears the signatures of a Khatib and a Faqih.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cuoq |first=Joseph |title=L'Islam en Éthiopie des origines au XVIe siècle |date=1981 |publisher=Nouvelles Editions Latines |pages=78 |language=fr}}</ref> 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.<ref>Lucia Corno et al. Female genital cutting and the slave trade, IFS Working Papers, No. 25/22, p. 10.</ref>

Merchants from Barawa and Mogadishu reportedly imported 3000 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.<ref name=":02">Thomas Vernet. Slave trade and slavery on the Swahili coast (1500-1750). Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, Africa World Press, 2009, p. 49..</ref> Slaves from Madagascar were also sent to the Comoros islands where they were collected for shipment to Mogadishu.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Africa |first=Unesco International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Africa_from_the_Sixteenth_to_the_Eightee/Fw-1DOCXUgsC?hl= |title=Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century |date=1999 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-06700-4 |pages=424 |language=en}}</ref> According to the scholar Joseph Harris, Chinese trade with medieval Mogadishu during the Ming dynasty included supplies of slaves.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harris |first=Joseph E. |url=https://books.google.be/books/about/The_African_Presence_in_Asia.html?id=e3VstAtw0J0C&redir_esc=y |title=The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade |date=1971 |publisher=Northwestern University Press |isbn=978-0-8101-0348-1 |pages=5 |language=en}}</ref> Historian Jeremy Black writes that slaves imported into Mogadishu from Madagascar would be exported back to India.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Black |first=Jeremy |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Brief_History_of_Slavery/NqyeBAAAQBAJ?hl= |title=A Brief History of Slavery: A New Global History |date=2011-08-18 |publisher=Little, Brown Book Group |isbn=978-1-84901-732-9 |language=en}}</ref>

=== 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.<ref name=":02" /> 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.<ref name=":43">{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=82 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Ahmed |first=Ali Jimale |title=The Invention of Somalia |date=1995 |publisher=The Red Sea Press |pages=46 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |date=1993 |title=Public History and Private Knowledge: On Disputed History in Southern Somalia |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/482588 |journal=Ethnohistory |volume=40 |issue=4 |page=570 |doi=10.2307/482588 |issn=0014-1801|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Cerulli |first=Enrico |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Somalia_Diritto_Etnografia_Linguistica_C/nN4vAAAAIAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=schiavi+boran&dq=schiavi+boran&printsec=frontcover |title=Somalia: Diritto. Etnografia. Linguistica. Come viveva una tribù Hawiyya |date=1957 |publisher=Istituto poligrafico dello Stato P.V. |pages=83 |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Rivista_degli_studi_orientali/P4dEAQAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=0&bsq=schiavi%20boran |title=Rivista degli studi orientali |date=1918 |publisher=E. Loescher |pages=872 |language=it}}</ref>

People who had been captured in raids could become slaves in both the northern and the southern parts of Somalia.<ref name=":5">{{Cite web |title=Translocal Links and Women Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Somalia |url=https://brill.com/display/book/9789004365988/BP000005.xml?srsltid=AfmBOoqxIass4E9kFLK2EkjpblQaalaI3DIXOGICOKywIvtMDCglTu00 |access-date=2026-02-13 |website=brill.com}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":24">{{Cite journal |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |date=1993 |title=Public History and Private Knowledge: On Disputed History in Southern Somalia |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/482588 |journal=Ethnohistory |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=571 |doi=10.2307/482588 |issn=0014-1801|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name=":37">The Journal of Oromo Studies, Volume 17, Number 1 March 2010, pp. 13.</ref> In 1908, the Italian Giacinto Vicinanza noted that the slaves in Somalia were of two sorts: Oromo and Swahilis.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Vicinanza |first=Giacinto |title=La Somalia Italiana |date=1910 |location=Naples |pages=214}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fox|first=Mary-Jane|url=https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Roots_of_Somali_Political_Culture.html?id=bkfNjgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y|title=The Roots of Somali Political Culture|date=2015|publisher=First Forum Press|isbn=978-1-62637-541-3|pages=88|language=en}}</ref><ref name=":24" /> thumb|Slave routes in the Somalia peninsula, 1890. 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.<ref name=":38">The Journal of Oromo Studies, Volume 17, Number 1 March 2010, p. 21.</ref> Somali raids on the Tana river Oromos reached a peak in the 1870s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bunger|first=Robert Louis|url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Islamization_Among_the_Upper_Pokomo/rnkWAAAAIAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=somali+raid+tana&dq=somali+raid+tana&printsec=frontcover|title=Islamization Among the Upper Pokomo|date=1979|publisher=Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University|isbn=978-0-915984-55-8|pages=14|language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fox|first=Mary-Jane|url=https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Roots_of_Somali_Political_Culture.html?id=bkfNjgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y|title=The Roots of Somali Political Culture|date=2015|publisher=First Forum Press|isbn=978-1-62637-541-3|pages=75|language=en}}</ref> In the 19th century, the Orma Oromo tribe living in Kenya was conquered and enslaved by the Somali.<ref name=":47">{{Citation |last=Declich |first=Francesca |title=Chapter 3 Translocal Links and Women Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Somalia |date=2018-06-08 |publisher=Brill |language=en}}</ref> Through raids rather than bartering, Oromo slaves were acquired by the Ogaden and Cablalla living north of Kismayo.<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |last=Declich |first=Francesca |date=2003 |title=Dynamics of Intermingling Gender and Slavery in Somalia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41931239 |journal=Northeast African Studies |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=54 |issn=0740-9133}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hobley |first=C. W. (Charles William) |title=Kenya, from chartered company to crown colony; thirty years of exploration and administration in British East Africa |date=1970 |publisher=[London] F. Cass |others=Internet Archive |pages=177}}</ref> British explorer Harald George Carlos Swayne (1900) described a Somali raiding party of around 1,000 men near the Oromo settlement of Golbanti.<ref name=":18" /> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morton |first=Fred |title=Children Of Ham: Freed Slaves And Fugitive Slaves On The Kenya Coast, 1873 To 1907 |date=2019-03-04 |publisher=Routledge |language=en}}</ref> According to a 1894 British report on the Ogaden living in Jubaland, the Ogaden numbered around 5000 and had 2000 slaves of Oromo origin.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Portal |first=Sir Gerald Herbert |title=Reports Relating to Uganda |date=1894 |publisher=H.M. Stationery Office |pages=18 |language=en}}</ref> [[File:Somali man in Bardera with his Oromo concubine.webp|thumb|368x368px|Somali man in Bardera with his Oromo concubine, 1895.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bottego |first=Vittorio |title=Viaggi di scoperta nel cuore dell' Africa: il Giuba esplorato |date=1895 |publisher=E. Loescher |pages=483 |language=it}}</ref>]] [[File:Young Oromo girls.webp|thumb|Oromo girls rescued from a slave-dhow in the Gulf of Aden.]] thumb|Oromo slave girl, 1848.<ref>{{Cite book |last=St. John |first=James Augustus (1795-1875) Auteur du texte |url=https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b73004801 |title=Oriental album, characters, costumes and modes of life in the valley of the Nile / illustrated from designs taken on the spot by E. Prisse. With descriptive lettrer-press by James Augustus St John, author of "Egypt and Mohammed Ali", and "Manners and customs of ancient Greece"... |date=1848 |language=EN}}</ref> thumb|Drawing of a Somali raiding party.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 in order to avoid starvation, while others voluntarily sold themselves to passing caravans.<ref name=":12">{{Cite book |last=Bòttego |first=Vittorio |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/L_esplorazione_del_Giuba/zcYsEQAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=schiavi+boran&pg=PA59&printsec=frontcover |title=L'esplorazione del Giuba |date=2024-10-28 |publisher=Edizioni Theoria |isbn=978-88-5498-432-5 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":33" /> In 1896, contemporary accounts noted that Menelik’s soldiers supplied themselves with slaves in the Galla (Oromo) regions.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Digest_Review_of_Reviews_Incorporating_L/BIYgClWqhLIC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=pretty+galla+slave&pg=RA11-PA25&printsec=frontcover |title=Digest; Review of Reviews Incorporating Literary Digest |date=1896 |publisher=Funk and Wagnalls |pages=325 |language=en}}</ref> In 1913, Giuseppe Piazza documented that the Amhara sold Arsi Oromo captives to Somalis.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Piazza |first=Giuseppe |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Il_Benadir/rLwvAQAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=0&bsq=schiavi%20boran |title=Il Benadir ... |date=1913 |publisher=Bontempelli & Invernizzi |pages=325 |language=it}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hirphoo |first=Tasgaraa |title=Abbaa Gammachiis (Oneesimos Nasib): Biography : a Native of Oromiya : Enslaved, Freed, and an Envoy of the Gospel (1856-1931) |date=2007 |publisher=Asteer Gannoo Literature Society |pages=43 |language=en}}</ref> According to Bob Allen, Menelik’s wars generated many captives, including Oromo prisoners, who were sold as slaves and exported through Berbera.<ref name=":35">Robert C. Allen. Slavery in Arabia and east Africa, 1800-1913, Working Paper #0066 (June 2021), NYU Abu Dhabi</ref> 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.<ref name=":30"/>

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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tibebu |first=Teshale |title=The Making of Modern Ethiopia: 1896-1974 |date=1995 |publisher=The Red Sea Press |pages=65 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-12-09 |title='ABSTRACT OF LETTERS FROM INDIA 1873' [88r] (182/670) |url=https://www.qdl.qa/en/archive/81055/vdc_100138597906.0x0000b7 |access-date=2026-02-09 |website=Qatar Digital Library |page=123 |language=English}}</ref> By 1876, large numbers of slaves were still reportedly being exported from Zeila to Hodeida in Yemen.<ref>Administration Report of Aden for the year 1876-77, British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/V/10/553/8, p. 3.</ref> A French traveller writing from Zeila in 1881 noted that most of the slaves found there were Oromo women captured as prisoners of war.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Beachey |first=R. W. |url=https://books.google.be/books?redir_esc=y&hl=fr&id=eDHIbJNklsYC&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=florentine+bronze |title=A Collection of Documents on the Slave Trade of Eastern Africa |date=1976 |publisher=Barnes and Noble |isbn=978-0-06-490328-8 |pages=60–61 |language=en}}</ref> Due to British restrictions on the slave trade in Yemen, most slaves exported from Zeila were sent to the Hijaz rather than Aden.<ref name=":34">{{Cite journal |last=Ahmed |first=Hussein |date=2010 |title=Benevolent masters and voiceless subjects: slavery and slave trade in southern Wällo (Ethiopia) in the 19th and early 20th centuries |url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/ethio_0066-2127_2010_num_25_1_1413 |journal=Annales d'Éthiopie |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=200–201 |doi=10.3406/ethio.2010.1413}}</ref> According to a 1923 League of Nations report, Oromo captives taken as prisoners of war in the 19th century were exported by Muslim merchants to Zeila.<ref name=":32">League of Nations. ''[https://deriv.nls.uk/dcn23/1939/7133/193971333.23.pdf The Question of Slavery]''. Geneva, 10 August 1923. Council Document A.18.</ref> The number of slaves transported to the Gulf of Aden ports such as Zeila appears to have been substantially higher than the amount exported through Massawa. In 1884, the same year Britain took control of Zeila, it was estimated that between 6,000 and 8,000 slaves arrived at the port.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harris |first=Joseph E. |url=https://books.google.be/books/about/The_African_Presence_in_Asia.html?id=e3VstAtw0J0C&redir_esc=y |title=The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade |date=1971 |publisher=Northwestern University Press |isbn=978-0-8101-0348-1 |pages=46 |language=en}}</ref> Multiple European travelers documented the sale of Oromo slaves at Zeila.<ref name=":46" />

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.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Translocal_Connections_across_the_Indian/YmdjDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=oromo+slaves+somalia&pg=PA93&printsec=frontcover |title=Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move |date=2018-06-26 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-36598-8 |pages=93 |language=en}}</ref> Harar was described as a "''rendez-vous''" point for all the slave caravans in the region.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_International_Cyclopedia/Zn0WAAAAYAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=galla+slave+harar&pg=PA306&printsec=frontcover |title=The International Cyclopedia: A Compendium of Human Knowledge |date=1890 |publisher=Dodd, Mead |pages=306 |language=en}}</ref> In Burton's time, slaves were one of the principal exports from Harar to the Somali coast. The city functioned as a major transit point for enslaved people coming from Gurage and Oromo territories, with Amharas considered the most valued in slave markets.<ref>Shack, William A. “Harari Nomenclature and Tribal Grouping.” In ''The Gurage: A People of the Ensete Culture''. London: International African Institute, 1966.</ref> According to Richard Burton, slaves found in Harar were mainly Gurage and Oromo. Arsi Oromos made captive by the Ogaden were also sent directly to Berbera.<ref name=":22">{{Cite book |last=Richard F. Burton |title=First Footsteps Africa |date=1910 |pages=226}}</ref> 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.<ref>The Journal of Oromo Studies, Volume 17, Number 1 March 2010, pp. 117-118.</ref> Slaves from Harar would be exported at Zeila.<ref>Major H. Rayne. ''Sun, Sand and Somals: Leaves from the Note-Book of a District Commissioner in British Somaliland.'' London, 1921, p. 17.</ref> While in the Harar area, Burton recorded the following saying:<blockquote>"''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.''"<ref name=":22" /></blockquote>A British report from 1840 states that the northern Somali tribes carried out regular slave-raiding expeditions against Oromo populations, with captives sold in Arabian markets, female slaves reportedly sold for 15 to 35 dollars.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Department |first=India Foreign and Political |title=Precis of Papers Regarding Aden, 1838-1872 |date=1876 |publisher=Government central branch Press |pages=26 |language=en}}</ref> In the 1850s, a British crew reportedly observed hundreds of Oromo slaves for sale at the port of Berbera.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Macmillan_s_Magazine/3IlHAAAAYAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=galla+slave+girl+berbera&pg=PA393&printsec=frontcover |title=Macmillan's Magazine |date=1884 |publisher=Macmillan and Company |pages=393 |language=en}}</ref> In 1856, the British forced the Habr Awal to sign a treaty that outlawed slavery at Berbera and in the region.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Department |first=India Foreign and Political |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/A_Collection_of_Treaties_Engagements_and/ItENAAAAIAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=berbera+slave+1856&pg=RA1-PA196&printsec=frontcover |title=A Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sanads Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries |date=1892 |publisher=Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India |pages=196 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=journal |first=Chambers's |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Chambers_s_Edinburgh_journal_conducted_b/m9XYQ6EIhgAC?hl= |title=Chambers's Edinburgh journal, conducted by W. Chambers. [Continued as] Chambers's Journal of popular literature, science and arts |date=1899 |pages=161 |language=en}}</ref> However, in April 1869 the British had to free 135 young Oromo slaves being sold at Berbera, bringing them to Aden.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Balfour |first=Edward |title=Cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia, Commercial, Industrial and Scientific: Products of the Mineral, Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms, Useful Arts and Manufactures |date=1873 |publisher=Printed at the Scottish & Adelphi presses |pages=425 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":39">Behnaz A. Mirzai. ''A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800–1929'' (2017)</ref> According to Richard Burton, 6000 Oromo slaves were exported from Zeila and Berbera annually.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Burton |first=Richard |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=RLKEEQAAQBAJ&newbks=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA13&dq=galla+slave+girl+zayla&hl=fr&source=newbks_fb&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=galla%20slave%20girl%20zayla&f=false |title=Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah, Vol II |date=1857 |publisher= |isbn=978-3-563-61757-1 |pages=13 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Mirzai |first=Behnaz A. |title=A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800-1929 |date=2017-05-16 |publisher=University of Texas Press |pages=57 |language=en}}</ref> It is estimated that during the 19th century, more than 2000 slaves were shipped annually from the northern Somali coast to the Persian Gulf.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Willis |first=John Ralph |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Slaves_and_Slavery_in_Africa/HVGRAgAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=slavery+berbera&pg=PA132&printsec=frontcover |title=Slaves and Slavery in Africa: Volume Two: The Servile Estate |date=2005-08-12 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-78016-6 |pages=132 |language=en}}</ref> In 1873, Oromo slaves were reportedly being exported from Zeila to the Persian gulf, with the females costing around 75$.<ref name=":28">'ABSTRACTS OF LETTERS FROM INDIA 1874.', British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, IOR/L/PS/20/CA14, p. 65.</ref> Oromo slaves were also exported to Persia from the Banadir ports in southern Somalia.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morton |first=Fred |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Children_Of_Ham/timNDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=galla+slave+persia&pg=PT57&printsec=frontcover |title=Children Of Ham: Freed Slaves And Fugitive Slaves On The Kenya Coast, 1873 To 1907 |date=2019-03-04 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-429-71449-8 |language=en}}</ref> In the south of the peninsula, most of the Oromo slaves captured in the interior were sent to the coast via Bardera.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cassanelli |first=Lee V. |title=Patterns of Trade and Politics in the Somali Benadir, 1840-1885 |date=1969 |publisher=University of Wisconsin--Madison |pages=43 |language=en}}</ref> In the 1840s, Shaikh Abu Bakr of Bardera led several raiding expeditions against the Oromo.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cassanelli |first=Lee V. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Shaping_of_Somali_Society/YVIrEAAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=somali+jihad+oromo&pg=PA138&printsec=frontcover |title=The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 16-19 |date=2016-11-11 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=978-1-5128-0666-3 |pages=138 |language=en}}</ref> The town of Luuq was another major inland slave-market.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Chiesi |first=Gustavo |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/La_colonizzazione_Europea_nell_Est_Afric/DuI0AQAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=0 |title=La colonizzazione Europea nell'Est Africa: Italia, Inghilterra, Germania |date=1909 |publisher=Unione Tiopografico-Editrice Torinese |pages=572 |language=it}}</ref><ref name=":12" /> According to Lamberto Vannutelli, aside from the Somalis, a significant number of Borana and Arussi Oromo slaves lived in Luuq.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Vanutelli |first=L. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Seconda_spedizione_Bottego_Liomo_Viaggio/JK_4RPOZJwcC?hl=fr&gbpv=0 |title=Seconda spedizione Bottego. Liomo. Viaggio d'esplorazione nell'Africa Orientale narrato da --- e C. Citerni |last2=Citerni |first2=C. |date=1899 |publisher=Hoepli |pages=82 |language=it}}</ref> The Somali Gasaargude clan living in and around Luuq reportedly consisted of 202 men and owned 209 female slaves.<ref name=":47" /> Philip Howard Colomb noted that Oromo slave-girls were exported from the city of Barawa. He reported seeing six Oromo slaves being bought there.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Colomb |first=P. H. (Philip Howard) |url=http://archive.org/details/slavecatchingini00colo |title=Slave-catching in the Indian ocean. A record of naval experiences |date=1873 |publisher=London, Longmans, Green and co. |others=Boston University Mugar Memorial Library |pages=273}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Yimene |first=Ababu Minda |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/An_African_Indian_Community_in_Hyderabad/DigPvwHTqJ4C?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=brava+oromo+slaves&pg=PA72&printsec=frontcover |title=An African Indian Community in Hyderabad: Siddi Identity, Its Maintenance and Change |date=2004 |publisher=Cuvillier Verlag |isbn=978-3-86537-206-2 |pages=72 |language=en}}</ref> Second and third-generation slaves were reported to be living in Barawa.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Vianello |first=Alessandra |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Servants_of_the_Sharia/XO37EAAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=galla+slaves+bardera&pg=PA41&printsec=frontcover |title=Servants of the Sharia: The Civil Register of the Qadis' court of Brava 1893-1900, Volume I |last2=Kassim |first2=Mohamed M. |date=2023-12-11 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-53172-7 |pages=41 |language=en}}</ref> 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 Banadir coast, most of them in the harbours of Barawa and Merka.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/History_in_Africa/MPcEAQAAIAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=brava+oromo+slaves&dq=brava+oromo+slaves&printsec=frontcover |title=History in Africa |date=1995 |publisher=African Studies Association |pages=99 |language=en}}</ref> The Tunni Somalis living around Barawa had around 4000 Oromo and Swahili slaves.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Esplorazione_commerciale_e_l_Esploratore/Fss7AQAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=tare+gli+schiavi,+che+nella+trib%C3%B9+dei+Tuni+si+possono+calcolare+a+forse+4000,+Galla&pg=PA193&printsec=frontcover |title=Esplorazione commerciale e l'Esploratore |date=1891 |pages=193 |language=it}}</ref> Qadi court records in Barawa mention Oromo slaves.<ref name=":25" /> In the mid 19th century, contemporary European accounts stated that grain in the environs of Barawa was cultivated by Oromo slaves.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pickering |first=Charles |title=United States Exploring Expedition: 9: The races of man |date=1848 |publisher=Sherman |pages=343 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Christie (M.D.) |first=James |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Cholera_epidemics_in_East_Africa_from_18/KhkDAAAAQAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq= |title=Cholera epidemics in East Africa, from 1821 till 1872 |date=1876 |publisher=Macmillan&Company |pages=98 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Translocal_Connections_across_the_Indian/YmdjDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=rufay+galla&pg=PA112&printsec=frontcover |title=Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move |date=2018-06-26 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-36598-8 |pages=112 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Annales_des_voyages_de_la_geographie_de/mzCOEI2sJXIC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=rufay+galla&pg=PA151&printsec=frontcover |title=Annales des voyages, de la geographie, de l'histoire et de l'archeologie |date=1868 |publisher=Challamel Aine |pages=151 |language=fr}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Declich |first=Francesca |date=2003 |title=Dynamics of Intermingling Gender and Slavery in Somalia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41931239 |journal=Northeast African Studies |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=61 |issn=0740-9133}}</ref> In Mogadishu, Oromo slaves were bought to work in the textile industry. Large-scale textile weaving for export was carried out by enslaved Oromo laborers.<ref>Clarence-Smith, William Gervase, ed. ''The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century''. London/New York: Routledge, 1998, p. 4.</ref>

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.<ref name=":39" /> 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.<ref name=":29">{{Cite book |last=Krapf |first=Johann Ludwig |title=A Dictionary of the Suahili Language |date=1882 |publisher=Trubner |pages=92 |language=en}}</ref> In 19th century Zanzibar, Oromo slave girls were greatly valued and were bought by the Sultans for their harem.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Médard |first=Henri |title=Traites et esclavages en Afrique orientale et dans l'océan Indien |date=2013 |publisher=KARTHALA Editions |pages=75 |language=fr}}</ref> Somalis would also infrequently bring a few captured Oromos to Lamu.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/African_Research_Studies/eUM8AAAAIAAJ?hl= |title=African Research Studies |date=1979 |publisher=Boston University Press |pages=91 |language=en}}</ref>

Throughout the 19th century, Oromo slave girls were among the most sought-after in slave markets, second only to white slave girls from the Caucasus. However, following the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in 1864, Oromo slave girls came to occupy the highest position in the slave markets of the Muslim world and became increasingly profitable in the slave trade.<ref>Mordechai Abir. ''Ethiopia, the era of the princes: the challenge of Islam and re-unification of the Christian Empire'' (1968), p. 54.</ref> Mordechai Abir notes that most young Ethiopian concubines exported from Zeila and Berbera were of Oromo and Sidama origin.<ref>Abir'','' M. (1964). ''Trade and Politics in the Ethiopian Region 1830-1855''. [PhD thesis'','' SOAS University of London]</ref> Oromo women were so desired that "there was hardly a harem in Arabia that had no Oromo girls."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bulcha |first=Mekuria |title=The Making of the Oromo Diaspora: A Historical Sociology of Forced Migration |date=2002 |publisher=Kirk House Publishers |pages=104 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lewis |first=Bernard |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Race_and_Slavery_in_the_Middle_East/WdjvedBeMHYC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=Upon+their+arrival,+they+buy+a+female+companion,+with+the+design+of+selling+her+at+their+departure;+but+sometimes+their+stay+is+protracted;+the+slave+bears+a+child&pg=PA91&printsec=frontcover |title=Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry |date=1990 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-505326-5 |pages=91 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pankhurst |first=Richard |date=1976 |title=Ethiopian Slave Reminiscences of the Nineteenth Century |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24520289 |journal=Transafrican Journal of History |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=98–110 |issn=0251-0391}}</ref> French explorer Edmond Combes found what he described as a large number of Oromo slaves in Yemen.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Combes |first=Edmond |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Voyage_en_Abyssinie_dans_le_pays_des_Gal/7r4UAAAAQAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=On+rencontre+dans+l'Y%C3%A9men+un+grand+nombre+d'esclaves+n%C3%A8gres+et+galla.&pg=PA43&printsec=frontcover |title=Voyage en Abyssinie, dans le pays des Galla, de Choa et d'Ifat: précédé d'une excursion dans l'Arabie-Heureuse [...] : 1835-1837 |date=1838 |publisher=L. Desessart |pages=43 |language=fr}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":41" /> According to Maurice Tamisier, the Arabian port of Jeddah was inhabited in 1834 by a large number of Oromo slaves of both sexes.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Africa/KlMqAAAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=Testimony+on+the+extent+of+this+trade+was+given+by+the+French+Saint-Simonian+Maurice+Tamisier+who+reported+that+the+Arabian+port+of+Jeddah+was+inhabited+in+1834+by&dq=Testimony+on+the+extent+of+this+trade+was+given+by+the+French+Saint-Simonian+Maurice+Tamisier+who+reported+that+the+Arabian+port+of+Jeddah+was+inhabited+in+1834+by&printsec=frontcover |title=Africa |date=1976 |publisher=Associazione fra le imprese italiane in Africa |pages=171 |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pankhurst |first=Richard |date=1976 |title=The Beginnings of Oromo Studies in Europe |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40758604 |journal=Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=171 |issn=0001-9747}}</ref> According to Richard Burton, most Abyssinian slave girls in Arabia were Oromo.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Dublin_Review/P2MVAQAAIAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=galla+girl+persia&pg=PA106&printsec=frontcover |title=The Dublin Review |date=1855 |publisher=W. Spooner. |pages=106 |language=en}}</ref> Edward William Lane (1871) says something similar.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lane |first=Edward William |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Account_of_the_Manners_and_Customs_of/MNhBLwOnvTMC?hl= |title=An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians: Written in Egypt During the Years 1833, -34, and -35, Partly from Notes Made During a Former Visit to that Country in the Years 1825, -26, -27, and -28 |date=1871 |publisher=John Murray |pages=168 |language=en|quote="Abyssinian (but more properly Galla) slaves, are generally concubines.."}}</ref> In Mecca, Medina, Hail, and Boraida, enslaved Oromo people were valued for their height, and the men served as bodyguards for local amirs. Ethiopian slaves were likewise regarded as effective soldiers by the chiefs of Bahrain.<ref name=":39" />

In 1865, the British Consul at Zanzibar was cited as having stated that:<blockquote>"''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.''"<ref name=":31">{{Cite book |last=Britain) |first=Royal Geographical Society (Great |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=MiR9XPWfA5gC&pg=RA1-PA101&dq=Mr.+John+Crawfurd+asked+the+fact+whether+Somalis+being&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Mr.%20John%20Crawfurd%20asked%20the%20fact%20whether%20Somalis%20being&f=false |title=The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London |date=1865 |publisher=J. Murray. |pages=101 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>

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:<blockquote>"''-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''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Slaves |first=Great Britain Royal Commission on Fugitive |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Report_of_the_Commissioners_Minutes_of_t/rg8qAAAAYAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=You+say+that+generally+speaking+there+is+as+much+slave+trade+as+ever.+Where+do+the+slaves+go+now?+They+are+absorbed+north.&pg=PA11&printsec=frontcover |title=Report of the Commissioners, Minutes of the Evidence, and Appendix, with General Index of Minutes of Evidence and Appendix |date=1876 |publisher=George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode |pages=11 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>

In July 1891, during his exploration of the Juba River, British Captain Frederick George Dundas saw Oromo slave girls living among Somalis: <blockquote>"''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.''"<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Scottish_Geographical_Magazine/HotIAAAAYAAJ?hl= |title=Scottish Geographical Magazine |date=1893 |publisher=Royal Scottish Geographical Society |pages=118 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>According to Ainslee's Magazine of August 1900:<blockquote>"''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.''"<ref>{{Cite book |title=Ainslee's Magazine |date=1900 |publisher=Howard, Ainslee & Company |pages=469 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote> === Other groups ===

==== Masai & Bajuni ==== 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.<ref name=":19">{{Cite journal |last=Curtin|first=Patricia Romero|date=1985|title=Generations of Strangers: The Kore of Lamu|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/218648|journal=The International Journal of African Historical Studies|volume=18|issue=3|pages=455–472|doi=10.2307/218648|issn=0361-7882}}</ref> Until 1903, the Somalis also occasionally launched slave-raids into the Bajuni archipelago.<ref name=":322"/><ref>{{Cite book |last=Salim |first=Ahmed Idha |title=The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Kenya's Coast, 1895-1965 |date=1973 |publisher=East African Publishing House |pages=107 |language=en}}</ref> Bajuni slaves were sold in Somalia as early as 1624, as documented by Jeronimo Lobo.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Anneaux de la mémoire |first=Thomas Vernet |title=De l'Afrique à l'Extrême-Orient |date=2006 |publisher=Anneaux de la mémoire de Nantes |pages=86 |language=fr}}</ref>

==== Other Cushitic-speaking slaves ==== 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.<ref>Mordechai Abir. ''Ethiopia, the era of the princes: the challenge of Islam and re-unification of the Christian Empire'' (1968), p. 76.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Pierre |first=Ballarin Marie |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Traites_et_esclavages_en_Afrique_orienta/8s-oDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=gurage+berbera&pg=PA184&printsec=frontcover |title=Traites et esclavages en Afrique orientale et dans l'océan Indien |last2=Marie-Laure |first2=Derat |last3=Henri |first3=Medard |last4=Thomas |first4=Vernet |date=2013-06-17 |publisher=KARTHALA Editions |isbn=978-2-8111-2066-5 |pages=184 |language=fr}}</ref> Enslaved Cushitic-speaking Sidama and Agew people constituted a portion of the slaves exported from Zeila and Berbera.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tibebu |first=Teshale |title=The Making of Modern Ethiopia: 1896-1974 |date=1995 |publisher=The Red Sea Press |pages=65 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Willis |first=John Ralph |title=Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa: The servile estate |date=1985 |publisher=Psychology Press |pages=128 |language=en}}</ref> Somali slave merchants also imported slaves from the Kebena.<ref>Clarence-Smith, William Gervase, ed. ''The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century''. London/New York: Routledge, 1998, p. 118.</ref>

==== Omotic slaves ==== Slaves from the Kingdom of Wolaita and Kaffa were also imported into Somalia.<ref>Bombe, Bosha. ''[https://iris.unipv.it/bitstream/11571/1522055/2/PhD%20Dissertation_Bosha-%20Final%20Version.pdf An Historical Anthropology of Slavery and Gäbbar Servitude System in Wolaita of Southern Ethiopia, 1894–1975]''. University of Pavia, 2022, p.102.</ref><ref name=":46" />

===Bantu slave trade=== {{Main|Zanzibar slave trade|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.<ref name="Refugee Reports">{{cite news |last1=Chanoff |first1=Sasha |title=After Three Years: Somali Bantus Prepare to Come to America |work=Refugee Reports |volume =23 |number=8 |url=https://www.ecoi.net/en/file/local/1412161/nz259_00957som.pdf |publisher=Immigration and Refugee Services of America |date=November 2002 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20240803105833/https://www.ecoi.net/en/file/local/1412161/nz259_00957som.pdf |archive-date=3 August 2024|location=Washington, DC |pages=1–11}}</ref><ref name="Gcam">Campbell, Gwyn (2003). ''The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia''. (1st ed.) London; Portland, OR (US): Routledge. p. ix {{isbn|9780714683881}}</ref>

In the 19th century, the 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 Zanzibar to supply the necessary labor.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=42sWAQAAIAAJ |title=Middle Jubba: Study on Governance |date=1999 |publisher=United Nations Development Office for Somalia |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Somali Bantu History |url=https://somalibantumaine.org/somali-bantu-background/ |access-date=2024-07-08 |website=The Somali Bantu Community Association |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Somali Bantu Refugees |url=https://ethnomed.org/resource/somali-bantu-refugees/ |access-date=2024-07-08 |website=EthnoMed |language=en-US}}</ref> 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.<ref>Henry Louis Gates, ''Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience'', (Oxford University Press: 1999), p.1746</ref> 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 the year 1800, when slaves from Tanzania were brought to Barawa. In 1833, the British naval officer W.F.W. 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=54 |language=en}}</ref>

According to scholar Esmond Bradley Martin, the Banadir coast was one of the major slave markets in the world during the 19th century. Most Bantu 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 the enslaved people to 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.<ref name=":322">{{Cite journal |last=Martin |first=Esmond B. |last2=Ryan |first2=T.C.I. |date=1980 |title=The Slave Trade of the Bajun and Benadir Coasts |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24328553 |journal=Transafrican Journal of History |volume=9 |issue=1/2 |pages=103–132 |issn=0251-0391}}</ref> According to Luigi Robecchi, the Tunni Somalis owned many plantation slaves.<ref name=":13">{{Cite book |last=Bricchetti |first=Luigi Robecchi |title=Somalia e Benadir: viaggio di esplorazione nell'Africa orientale. Prima traversata della Somalia, compiuta per incarico della Societá geografica italiana |date=1899 |publisher=Aliprandi |pages=522 |language=it}}</ref>[[File:Servant or slave woman in Mogadishu.jpg|thumb|upright|A Bantu servant woman in Mogadishu (1882–1883)]] [[File:A pokomo family.webp|thumb|Pokomo family on the Tana river.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Roy |first=Alexandre Le |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=YXwLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA266&dq=pokomo+somalis&hl=fr&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiD_MLpyraPAxUTg_0HHTkYOGYQ6AF6BAgLEAM#v=onepage&q=pokomo%20somalis&f=false |title=Sur terre et sur l'eau: voyage d'exploration dans l'Afrique orientale |date=1898 |publisher=A. Mame |pages=269 |language=fr}}</ref>]]The Somali Bantus belong to several ethnic groups, namely Majindo, Mnyasa, Mkuwa, Mzihuwa, Mushunguli, and Molima, each consisting of numerous sub-tribes. Their ancestral roots can be traced back to various historical and modern African nations, including many in Central Africa, the Congo, Mozambique, Malawi, and Tanzania.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |date=2023-09-09 |title=Who are the Somali Bantus? |url=https://globalhistorydialogues.org/projects/who-are-the-somali-bantus/ |access-date=2024-07-08 |website=Global History Dialogues |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Kusow |first=Abdi |title=Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Contested Nationalism and the Crisis of the Nation-state in Somalia |date=2004 |publisher=Red Sea Press |pages=137 |language=en}}</ref> According to Sasha Chanoff, most of the Bantu slaves sold to Somalis were from the Makua, Nyasa, Yao, Zaramo and Zigua ethnic groups of Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi.<ref name="Refugee Reports" /> 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.<ref name="Calp">{{citation |last1= Van Lehman |first1=Dan |last2=Eno |first2=Omar |date=February 2003 |url=http://www.cal.org/co/bantu/somali_bantu.pdf |title=The Somali Bantu: Their History and Culture |access-date=18 October 2011 |url-status=dead |id=Culture Profile No. 16 |archive-date=16 October 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111016024128/http://www.cal.org/co/bantu/somali_bantu.pdf |publisher=CAL: Center for Applied Linguistics – The Cultural Orientation Resource Center }}</ref><ref>L. Randol Barker et al., ''Principles of Ambulatory Medicine'', 7th edition, (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins: 2006), p. 633</ref> While traveling through the Somali country in 1900, Colonel Harald George Carlos Swayne met some of these Bantu slaves: <blockquote>"''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.''"<ref name=":18">{{Cite book |last=Swayne |first=Harald G. C. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Seventeen_trips_through_Som%C3%A1liland/Zrv3u4T3KVcC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=somali+raid+tana&pg=PA21&printsec=frontcover |title=Seventeen trips through Somáliland |date=1900 |publisher=R. Ward |pages=21 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>In the second half of the 19th century, 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.<ref>McMahon, E. (2013). Slavery and Emancipation in Islamic East Africa: From Honor to Respectability. Storbritannien: Cambridge University Press. p. 47</ref>

Most of the Bantu living in southern Somalia are descendants of Bantus who were enslaved by the Sultanate of Zanzibar in the 18th century.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Webersik |first=Christian |date=2004 |title=Differences That Matter: The Struggle of the Marginalised in Somalia |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3556840 |journal=Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |volume=74 |issue=4 |pages=525 |doi=10.2307/3556840 |issn=0001-9720}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Geographical_Journal/mLyRAAAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=0 |title=The Geographical Journal |date=1894 |publisher=Royal Geographical Society. |pages=99 |language=en}}</ref> By 1898, the Pokomo began building new villages in inaccessible jungle areas due to frequent Somali slave-raids.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fitzgerald |first=William Walter Augustine |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=bxMUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA334&dq=pokomo+somalis&hl=fr&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFsYrBybaPAxWRzAIHHdfNAuoQ6AF6BAgNEAM#v=onepage&q=pokomo%20somalis&f=false |title=Travels in the Coastlands of British East Africa and the Islands of Zanzibar and Pemba: Their Agricultural Resources and General Characteristics |date=1898 |publisher=Chapman & Hall |pages=334 |language=en}}</ref> The Somalis also purchased Mijikenda slaves in the hundreds from Lamu in 1884 to be exported northwards until the Lamu-Banadir route was closed in 1893 by the British. Wituland was also reportedly raided by the Somalis for cattle and slaves.<ref name=":322"/>

In 1912, a French explorer described Somali slave raids into the Pokomo region: <blockquote>"''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.''"<ref>{{Cite web |last=Institution secondaire libre (Saint-Pé-de-Bigorre |first=Hautes-Pyrénées) Auteur du texte |date=1912 |title=Annuaire de l'Institution secondaire libre de Saint-Pé |url=https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9629238r |access-date=2026-04-10 |website=Gallica |page=351 |language=EN}}</ref></blockquote>

== Prices of Slaves == Prices of female slaves in Mogadishu according to Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti (1904)<ref name=":6" /> {| class="wikitable" |+ !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)<ref name=":6" /> {| class="wikitable" |+ !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 |} Prices of slaves in Somalia in Maria Theresa dollars according to the economic historian Robert C. Allen.<ref name=":35" /> {| class="wikitable" |+ !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$ |} General price range of slaves in the 19th century according to the scholar Ababu Minda Yimene.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Yimene |first=Ababu Minda |title=An African Indian Community in Hyderabad: Siddi Identity, Its Maintenance and Change |date=2004 |publisher=Cuvillier Verlag |pages=74 |language=en}}</ref> {| class="wikitable" |+ !Enslaved group !Price (MT$) |- |Old man |6-7$ |- |Old woman |8-12$ |- |Young boy aged 10-14 years old |18-22$ |- |Young girl aged 10-13 years old |22-27$ |- |Young eunuch |80-100$ |- |Young woman |50-150$ |} Cost per kilometer of shipping slaves across the sea (MT$/km), according to the economic historian Robert C. Allen.<ref name=":35" /> {| class="wikitable" |+ !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 wood-cutters or 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.<ref name=":14">{{Cite journal |last=Javan Zaumambo Mokebo |date=June 2020 |title=Gender, Slavery and Slave Trade in the Horn of Africa, 1800-1935 |journal=International Journal for Innovative Research in Multidisciplinary Field |volume=6 |issue=6 |pages=168 |issn=2455-0620}}</ref>

Robert C. Allen notes that 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.<ref name=":35" />

Iranian historian Behnaz Mirzai states that Ethiopian women, mostly Oromos, 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.<ref name=":39" /> Enslaved women in Somalia were generally valued more highly than enslaved men, and those considered attractive or beautiful were often bought as concubines and domestic servants.<ref name=":45">{{Cite book |last=Kusow |first=Abdi |title=Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Contested Nationalism and the Crisis of the Nation-state in Somalia |date=2004 |publisher=Red Sea Press |pages=142 |language=en}}</ref>

The following is a list of slave prices reported by various other sources. {| class="wikitable" |+ !Enslaved group !Location and date !Prices !Sources |- |Uncastrated Amhara and Tigrayan boys |Zeila, 13th century |10-20 uqiyyah |<ref name=":27" /> |- |Oromo/Gurage slaves |Berbera, 1841 |30-60$ |<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=cxARAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA264&dq=Berbera+price+Galla&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Berbera%20price%20Galla&f=false |title=The Church of England Magazine |date=1841 |publisher=J. Burns |pages=264 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=wn0oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA53&dq=Berbera+price+Galla&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false |title=Missionary Register |date=1841 |publisher=Seeley, Jackson, & Halliday |pages=53 |language=en}}</ref> |- |Oromo/Gurage boys |Berbera, 1850 |25-35$ |<ref name=":30">{{Cite book |last=Society |first=Bombay Geographical |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=UYo6AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA130&dq=according+to+the+somal,+the+price+varies+from+25+to+35+dollars&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false |title=The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society |date=1850 |pages=130 |language=en}}</ref> |- |Oromo/Gurage women |Berbera, 1850 |80-120$ |<ref name=":30" /> |- |Amhara women |Northern Somali region, 1855 |100-400 ashrafis |<ref>{{Cite book |last=Burton |first=Richard F. |title=First Footsteps In East Africa |date=1910 |pages=227}}</ref> |- |Oromo women |Zeila & Berbera, 1872 |100-125$ |<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.be/books?id=D6w9AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA318&dq=Berbera+price+Galla&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&ovdme=1&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false |title=The African Repository ... |date=1872 |publisher=American Colonization Society. |pages=318 |language=en}}</ref> |- |Oromo women |Zeila, 1873 |75$ |<ref name=":28" /> |- |Oromo women |Southern Somali region, 1882 |100$ |<ref name=":29" /> |}

== 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.<ref name=":25">{{Cite journal |last=Kapteijns |first=Lidwien |last2=Vianello |first2=Alessandra |date=2020 |title=Enslaved People in the Qāḍī’s Record Book of Brava (1893-1900) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/48684822 |journal=Africa: Rivista semestrale di studi e ricerche |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=79–100 |issn=2612-3258}}</ref> In the 1980s, Somalis also commonly referred to the descendants of former slaves in Somalia using the term ''galla,'' a historical exonym for the Oromo people.<ref name=":37" /> The term “habash” is also still used in the Somali language as a general designation for slaves and the descendants of slaves.<ref name=":34" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Ronald Segal |title=Islam's Black slaves : the other Black diaspora |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |year=2001 |location=New York |pages=189}}</ref><ref name=":36">Nuredin Hagi Scikei. SOMALIA: UN'INVENZIONE ITALIANA, Africana, 2001: 95-108, p. 103.</ref><ref name=":16">DeClich, Francesca. “''Historical Memories on Slavery in Southern Somalia and Cabo Delgado, Mozambique: Slavery versus Forced Labor.''” Università di Urbino Carlo Bo.</ref>

The following is a list of terms used by different Somali clans to denote slaves or slave-descended populations.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move |date=2018-06-26 |publisher=BRILL |pages=102 |language=en}}</ref> {| class="wikitable" |+ !Isaaq !Darod !Hawiya !Rahanweyn |- |''horowa'' |''adoon'' |''habash, beerey, shambereey'' |''ukkub, donad, adoon'' |} 250px|thumb|right|19th century illustration depicting a Somali master (holding the spear) watching over enslaved individuals.<ref>Le Tour du Monde: Nouveau Journal des Voyages, Édouard Charton (ed.), 1885, premier semestre, p. 136.</ref>

== Hierarchies == Bantu agricultural slaves were bought to work on plantations, they did undesirable work, and 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 involved in relations of greater intimacy with their Somali masters and seen as legitimate sexual partners. They were taken into households and worked side by side with their masters.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=84 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":5" /> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Northeast_African_Studies/3ndMAQAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=oromo+girls+sorije&dq=oromo+girls+sorije&printsec=frontcover |title=Northeast African Studies |date=2003 |publisher=African Studies Center, Michigan State University |pages=54 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":5" /> 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.<ref name=":5" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Declich |first=Francesca |date=2003 |title=Dynamics of Intermingling Gender and Slavery in Somalia at the Turn of the Twentieth Century |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41931239 |journal=Northeast African Studies |volume=10 |issue=3 |page=62 |issn=0740-9133}}</ref><ref name=":23">{{Cite journal |last=Kapteijns |first=Lidwien |last2=Vianello |first2=Alessandra |date=2017 |title=Women's Legal Agency and Property in the Court Records of Late Nineteenth-Century Brava |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26362155 |journal=History in Africa |volume=44 |pages=133–197 |issn=0361-5413}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Declich |first=Francesca |date=2000 |title=Fostering Ethnic Reinvention: Gender Impact of Forced Migration on Bantu Somali Refugees in Kenya (Invention de l'ethnicité et modification des rapports de genre chez les réfugiés somali du Kénya) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4393013 |journal=Cahiers d'Études Africaines |volume=40 |issue=157 |pages=33 |issn=0008-0055}}</ref> Children could begin working as servants as young as eight years old. Italian censuses show 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.<ref name=":5" /> In general, Bantu slaves were considered much stronger than the Oromo and were reputed to be more enduring and persevering at work.<ref name=":6" /> Oromo slaves were almost never bought for agricultural work in part due to their lack of agricultural knowledge.<ref name=":42">{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=82 |language=en}}</ref> According to the Somali scholar Abdi Kusow, plantation workers were divided into two groups; cultivation and weaving were assigned to the men, and easier tasks of gathering the seeds and cleaning the husks to the women.<ref name=":45" />

== Treatment of Slaves == The British Lieutenant Christopher (1844) described a plantation on the Shabelle valley as such:<blockquote>"''The hospitality of our Somali host produced excellent mutton boiled with rice; the only peculiarity being that the slaves, seated at some distance, were eager to receive the bones picked by their masters, which underwent a second, third, and fourth gnawing from successive hungry mouths before they were finally scattered as useless... The slaves and their wives are the labourers, housed miserably in small half-roofed huts, their usual food parched Indian corn and fish from the river... There were many thousands of men employed in cultivation here, their only shelter is formed by the loose stalks of the common millet piled up in a conical shape, and allowing three or four persons to sit together in the interior. They are thus screened from the sun, but exposed, of course, to the rain, and whole families thus pass their lives.''"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=76 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote> According to Vittorio Bottego: <blockquote>"''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.''"<ref name=":15">{{Cite book |last=Bottego |first=Vittorio |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/L_esplorazione_del_Giuba/NIcSAAAAYAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=Un+ragazzetto,+molto+macilento,+vorrebbe+venir+meco.+Racconta+che+%C3%A8+Galla,+che+fu+rubato+dai+Som%C3%A1li+un+anno+prima+ed+ora+%C3%A8+schiavo+d'una+donna+che+gli&pg=PA51&printsec=frontcover |title=L'esplorazione del Giuba: viaggio di scoperta nel cuore dell' Africa, eseguito sotto gli auspici della Società geografica italiana ... |date=1900 |publisher=Società ed. nazionale |pages=320 |language=it}}</ref></blockquote>On another occasion, he encountered an Oromo slave boy who was being abused by his mistress:<blockquote>"''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''."<ref name=":15" /></blockquote>The Italian explorer Ugo Ferrandi was surprised by the extent of trust that masters in Luuq placed in their slaves :<blockquote>"''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''."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ferrandi |first=Ugo |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Seconda_spedizione_B%C3%B2ttego/ZdgLAAAAYAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=schiavi+boran&dq=schiavi+boran&printsec=frontcover |title=Seconda spedizione Bòttego: Lugh, emporio commerciale sul Giuba |date=1903 |publisher=Società Geografica Italiana |pages=111 |language=it}}</ref></blockquote>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.<ref name=":5" /> According to Francesca Declich, despite the fact that female slaves could be easily accessed by their masters for sexual intercourse, 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.<ref name=":5" /> One common punishment for disobedient Oromo slaves was assignment to agricultural or farm labour, which was considered less desirable than their usual roles as pastoral workers and concubines. According to Catherine Besteman, it is unlikely that herder slaves such as the Oromo were subjected to the same level of harsh treatment experienced by plantation slaves.<ref name=":42" /> According to the scholar Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, Oromo slaves in Somalia occupied the lowest position in the social hierarchy, lacked legal rights, and could not inherit property.<ref>Pérouse de Montclos, Marc-Antoine. “[https://www.observatoire-humanitaire.org/etudes/etude_gb_Etude2UK.pdf Exodus and Reconstruction of Identities: Somali ‘Minority Refugees’ in Mombasa.]” 1999.</ref>

Plantation 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.<ref name=":21">{{Cite book |last=Campbell |first=Gwyn |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Abolition_and_Its_Aftermath_in_the_India/xmU2Dr_-WxsC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=hawiya+habash&pg=PT63&printsec=frontcover |title=Abolition and Its Aftermath in the Indian Ocean Africa and Asia |date=2013-01-11 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-77078-5 |language=en}}</ref>

Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti writes that 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 inland groups such as the Bimal, where slaves were reportedly kept in iron ankle restraints.<ref name=":36" /> According to the historians Benjamin Lawrance and Richard Roberts, the compilers of the Barawa qadi court manuscripts note that the documents indirectly suggest slaves in the city of Barawa were “comparatively well treated” with light punishments for transgressions and relatively few recorded cases of violence.<ref name=":44">{{Cite book |last=Lawrance |first=Benjamin N. |title=Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa |last2=Roberts |first2=Richard L. |date=2012-08-22 |publisher=Ohio University Press |pages=125-126 |language=en}}</ref>

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 in rural areas 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. Generally, slaves in Somalia received the worst treatment among pastoral nomadic people and in agricultural estates close to the river banks, out of fear that they would escape.<ref name=":5" />

== 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.<ref name=":322"/> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Martin |first=Esmond B. |last2=Ryan |first2=T.C.I. |date=1980 |title=The Slave Trade of the Bajun and Benadir Coasts |journal=Transafrican Journal of History |volume=9 |issue=1/2 |pages=103–132}}</ref>

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.<ref name=":322" /> thumb|279x279px|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.<ref name=":322" /> 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.<ref name=":322" />

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.<ref name=":33"/>

== 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.<ref name=":5" /> Vittorio Bottego also observed that slaves who had served faithfully over a long period often regained their freedom upon the death of their master.<ref name=":20">{{Cite book |last=Bottego |first=Vittorio |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/L_esplorazione_del_Giuba/NIcSAAAAYAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=Schiavo+boran&pg=PA338&printsec=frontcover |title=L'esplorazione del Giuba: viaggio di scoperta nel cuore dell' Africa, eseguito sotto gli auspici della Società geografica italiana ... |date=1900 |publisher=Società ed. nazionale |pages=320–321 |language=it}}</ref> However, cases of slaves purchasing their own freedom were extremely rare, and they were mostly liberated by masters or colonial government officials.<ref name=":21" /> During his short stay in Somalia in 1903, Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti witnessed the emancipation of around 50 slaves, he also personally purchased the freedom of two slaves.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kusow |first=Abdi |title=Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Contested Nationalism and the Crisis of the Nation-state in Somalia |date=2004 |publisher=Red Sea Press |pages=144 |language=en}}</ref>

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.<ref name=":5" />

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.<ref name=":5" /> According to Catherine Besteman, without their own animals or grazing land, manumitted pastoral slaves such as the Oromo were much more likely to remain in a relationship with their former masters.<ref name=":43" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Patterson |first=Orlando |title=Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study, With a New Preface |date=2018-10-15 |publisher=Harvard University Press |pages=228 |language=en}}</ref> In Barawa, a case recorded in qadi court manuscripts involved a slave girl named Zeinab who was kidnapped and later escaped after being sold by her kidnappers to another master. She voluntarily returned to the household of her original owner, which led to litigation before the qadi court between the original owner and the alleged bona fide purchaser. The purchaser lost the case, although the judge ordered the return of his purchase money.<ref name=":44" />

== 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.<ref name=":20" />

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.'' ''The rape of a slave woman is not regarded as an offence.''"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Court |first=Kenya Supreme |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Law_Reports_Colony_and_Protectorate_of_K/cAk0AQAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=If+a+Somali+kills+a+man+of+a+non-somali+tribe&pg=PA147&printsec=frontcover |title=Law Reports - Colony and Protectorate of Kenya |date=1909 |publisher=Government Press |pages=147 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>Legal cases involving the transfer of slaves, including marriages, gifts and disputes were adjudicated by a qadi. During the colonial period, qadis were sometimes assisted in their decisions by Italian consular officials.<ref name=":44" /> According to locally applied interpretations of the sharia, a concubine who bore a child from her master 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.<ref name=":5" />

== Female Participation == Slaves were also owned by Somali women. A document 1575 describes a woman from Mogadishu freeing her slave.<ref name=":9" /> 19th century records from Barawa highlight the fact that women owned a large number of slaves. A court case documents a woman donating her 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.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Translocal_Connections_across_the_Indian/YmdjDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=oromo+concubine+somali&pg=PA103&printsec=frontcover |title=Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move |date=2018-06-26 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-36598-8 |pages=105 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":23"/>

== 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.<ref name=":11">{{Cite book |last=Campbell |first=Gwyn |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Abolition_and_Its_Aftermath_in_the_India/xmU2Dr_-WxsC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=somalis+resisted+the+abolition&pg=PT65&printsec=frontcover |title=Abolition and Its Aftermath in the Indian Ocean Africa and Asia |date=2013-01-11 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-77078-5 |language=en}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ahmed |first=Ali Jimale |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Invention_of_Somalia/XpdAzRYruCwC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=oromo+gosha&pg=PA48&printsec=frontcover |title=The Invention of Somalia |date=1995 |publisher=The Red Sea Press |isbn=978-0-932415-99-8 |pages=49 |language=en}}</ref> Catherine Besteman also argues that, in the Somali context, slave owners were expected to ensure the conversion of enslaved people to Islam.<ref name=":33"/>

However, according to Vittorio Bottego, slaves weren't forcefully converted and were allowed to keep their faith :<blockquote>"''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.''"<ref name=":12" /></blockquote>

== Enslavement of Ethnic Somalis == According to Somali scholar Ahmed Samatar, the historiography provides little evidence of Somalis being enslaved.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Samatar |first=Ahmed Ismail |title=Socialist Somalia: Rhetoric and Reality |date=1988 |publisher=Institute for African Alternatives |pages=14 |language=en}}</ref> Among Somalis, enslaving a fellow Somali was long regarded as a deeply entrenched customary taboo.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fox |first=Mary-Jane |title=Political Culture in Somalia: Tracing Paths to Peace and Conflict |date=2000 |publisher=Uppsala University / Department of Peace and Conflict Research |pages=93 |language=en}}</ref> The only documented case occurred when Muhammad ibn Abdullah Hassan’s enemies bitterly accused him of capturing their women.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clarence-Smith |first=William |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Islam_and_the_Abolition_of_Slavery/vGXXDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=taboo+somali+enslave+another+somali&pg=PT157&printsec=frontcover |title=Islam and the Abolition of Slavery |date=2020-02-19 |publisher=Hurst |isbn=978-1-78738-415-6 |language=en}}</ref> According to Herman Jeremias Nieboer, a Somali could never become the slave of another Somali, and prisoners of war were not enslaved.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nieboer |first=Dr H. J. |title=Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches |date=1900 |publisher=Springer Netherlands |pages=289 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":5" />

As longtime free Muslims, Somalis could not be enslaved in the Islamic world.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=51 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wilson |first=Arnold |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Persian_Gulf/rDeSMJRh11YC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=sale+of+somalis+punishable+as+piracy&pg=PA217&printsec=frontcover |title=The Persian Gulf |date=2011-02-25 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-60849-7 |pages=217 |language=en}}</ref><ref>J.G. Lorimer. Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf. Vol I. Historical. Part II. (1915), p. 2477.</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Zdanowski |first=Jerzy |title=Speaking With Their Own Voices: The Stories of Slaves in the Persian Gulf in the 20th Century |date=2014-06-12 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |pages=17 |language=en}}</ref>

Colonel Charles Henry Rigby, British Consul in Zanzibar, is cited as having stated that:<blockquote>"''The Somalis being Mohaminedans could not be made slaves, therefore they had not the same reason for distrusting strangers.''"<ref name=":31" /></blockquote>In 1876, Sir George Campbell is quoted as having said:<blockquote>"''May I be permitted to speak about the case of 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.''"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Slaves |first=Great Britain Royal Commission on Fugitive |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Report_of_the_Commissioners_Minutes_of_t/2CwoAAAAMAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=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?&pg=PA29&printsec=frontcover |title=Report of the Commissioners, Minutes of the Evidence, and Appendix, with General Index of Minutes of Evidence and Appendix |date=1876 |publisher=George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode |pages=29 |language=en}}</ref></blockquote>

==Abolition==

=== Impact of abolitionism in the 19th century === In the last decades of the 19th century, due to increased restrictions imposed by European powers on slave trading along the coast, more enslaved women were retained as concubines by the Somalis in the interior.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cassanelli |first=Lee V. |title=Patterns of Trade and Politics in the Somali Benadir, 1840-1885 |date=1969 |publisher=University of Wisconsin--Madison |pages=44 |language=en}}</ref> During the abolition period, slaves exports from southern Somalia to Arabia had to be diverted to the small port of Burgabo, as it remained unguarded by both the Italians and the British.<ref name=":5" />

=== 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.<ref name="miers 20th">{{cite book |last1=Miers |first1=Suzanne |title=Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem |date=2003 |publisher=AltaMira Press |location=Walnut Creek, CA (US) |isbn=978-0759103405}}</ref> The abolition of slavery in Italian Somaliland was carried out through a series of decrees issued between 1897 and 1907.<ref name=":33" />

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.''"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fox |first=Mary-Jane |title=Political Culture in Somalia: Tracing Paths to Peace and Conflict |date=2000 |publisher=Uppsala University / Department of Peace and Conflict Research |pages=129 |language=en}}</ref> The first 45 slaves were freed by the Italian colonial administration in 1895.<ref name=":21"/> 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.<ref name=":11" /></blockquote>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.<ref name=":33" /> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":33" /><ref>{{Cite book |title=Translocal Connections across the Indian Ocean: Swahili Speaking Networks on the Move |date=2018-06-26 |publisher=BRILL |pages=96 |language=en}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bunting |first=Annie |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Marriage_by_Force/9YBEDAAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=On+December+2,+1903,+around+twenty+women,+some+of+whom+were+slaves+asking+for+manumission+certificates,+went+to+the+government+offices+to+request+permission+to+accompany+the+caravan+of+the+explorer+Ugo+Ferrandi+from+Brava+as+far+as+Bardera&pg=PT136&printsec=frontcover |title=Marriage by Force?: Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa |last2=Lawrance |first2=Benjamin N. |last3=Roberts |first3=Richard L. |date=2016-06-15 |publisher=Ohio University Press |language=en}}</ref> Italian explorer Lamberto Vannutelli also recounts meeting Oromo and Sidama slaves at Luuq who had begged for his help to escape from the Somalis and return to Ethiopia, though the exact number of captives he encountered remains unclear.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Scikei |first=Nuredin Hagi |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Exploring_the_Old_Stone_Town_of_Mogadish/HH9IDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=sidama+slave+somali&pg=PA19&printsec=frontcover |title=Exploring the Old Stone Town of Mogadishu |date=2018-01-23 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=978-1-5275-0685-5 |pages=19 |language=en}}</ref> In 1903, almost half of Mogadishu's population was made up of slaves or freed slaves.<ref name=":5" /> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dugassa |first=Begna |title=Colonial Pathology: The Experience of the Oromo People |date=2025-02-02 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |pages=124 |language=en}}</ref>

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.<ref name=":5" /> 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.<ref name="miers 20th" /> 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.<ref name=":8">{{Cite journal |last=Cassanelli |first=Lee |date=1988-01-01 |title=The End of Slavery and the "Problem" of Farm Labor in Colonial Somalia |journal=Il Pensiero Scientifico Editore eBooks}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":33" /> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ronald Segal |title=Islam's Black slaves : the other Black diaspora |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |year=2001 |location=New York |pages=187}}</ref>

According to historian Gwyn Campbell:<blockquote>"''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.''"<ref name=":21"/></blockquote>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.<ref name="miers 20th" /> 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.<ref name="Laitin">{{cite book|first=David D. |last=Laitin|title=Politics, Language, and Thought: The Somali Experience|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LR8A4tEYZUAC&pg=PA98|access-date=2 July 2012|date=1 May 1977|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-46791-7}}</ref>

Most of the freed slaves went on to work in Italian owned plantation or as client-farmers for Somalis.<ref name=":8" /> The Italians regarded Somalis as naturally disinclined toward agricultural labor :<blockquote>"''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.''"<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Declich |first=Francesca |date=2000 |title=Fostering Ethnic Reinvention: Gender Impact of Forced Migration on Bantu Somali Refugees in Kenya (Invention de l'ethnicité et modification des rapports de genre chez les réfugiés somali du Kénya) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4393013 |journal=Cahiers d'Études Africaines |volume=40 |issue=157 |pages=32 |issn=0008-0055}}</ref> </blockquote>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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Arif |first=Akbarudin |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Proceedings_of_the_International_Confere/MXVfEQAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=bantu+italian+plantations&pg=PA211&printsec=frontcover |title=Proceedings of the International Conference on Multidisciplinary Studies (ICoMSi 2024) |last2=Hidayat |first2=Agung |last3=Handoko |first3=Chanel Tri |last4=Khoiriyah |first4=Siti |last5=Saptaningtyas |first5=Haryani |date=2025-05-22 |publisher=Springer Nature |isbn=978-2-38476-406-8 |pages=211 |language=en}}</ref> In 1937, a law was passed that allowed Italians to keep enslaved concubines.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kusow |first=Abdi |title=Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Contested Nationalism and the Crisis of the Nation-state in Somalia |date=2004 |publisher=Red Sea Press |pages=161 |language=en}}</ref>

The Italians definitionally separated the ex-slave population from the Somali population for purposes of conscripting laborers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=88 |language=en}}</ref> According to Kenyan historian Ahmed Idha Salim, Somali men generally avoided plantation labour due to an aversion to manual labour.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Salim |first=Ahmed Idha |title=The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Kenya's Coast, 1895-1965 |date=1973 |publisher=East African Publishing House |pages=37 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Declich |first=Francesca |date=2000 |title=Fostering Ethnic Reinvention: Gender Impact of Forced Migration on Bantu Somali Refugees in Kenya (Invention de l'ethnicité et modification des rapports de genre chez les réfugiés somali du Kénya) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4393013 |journal=Cahiers d'Études Africaines |volume=40 |issue=157 |pages=33–34 |issn=0008-0055}}</ref>

Abuses against conscripts on plantations under the fascist administration were common, as many of the Italians sent to Somalia were violent or corrupt individuals with criminal records. In one documented case, workers who failed to complete assigned labor were punished by being tied to a pole and exposed to the sun for hours. Among descendants of slaves in Somalia, memories of forced labor under the fascist regime often overshadowed earlier memories of slavery in southern Somalia. In local recollections, traumatic memories associated with slavery were largely linked to forced conscriptions in the fascist period.<ref name=":16" /> At an Italian-owned plantation known as Avai, numerous Bantu laborers were drowned in the irrigation canals.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Kusow |first=Abdi |title=Putting the Cart Before the Horse: Contested Nationalism and the Crisis of the Nation-state in Somalia |date=2004 |publisher=Red Sea Press |pages=147 |language=en}}</ref>

The British abolished this system after defeating the Italians in WW2. One British official described the scheme to be indistinguishable from slavery.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ali |first=Zeynab |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Cataclysm/fTSqDQAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=bantu+italian+plantations&pg=PT71&printsec=frontcover |title=Cataclysm:: Secrets of the Horn of Africa |date=2016-11-30 |publisher=Xlibris Corporation |isbn=978-1-5245-6408-7 |language=en}}</ref> At least one Italian plantation overseer was later interned by the British in a prison camp in Kenya following the British conquest.<ref name=":16" />

=== 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=59 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":38" />

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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Campbell |first=Gwyn |title=Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World |date=2018-01-10 |publisher=Springer |pages=238–239 |language=en}}</ref>

Things became more difficult for slave merchants when European powers, particularly the British Empire, expanded into the region in the 1880s.<ref name=":32" /> The British occupied Zeila in 1884, followed in the same year by the French move on Obock, and in 1885 the Italians seized Massawa. In addition, the Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888-1892 disrupted slave exports. Together, these developments made it increasingly difficult for merchants to export slaves from the northern Somali coast.<ref>Clarence-Smith, William Gervase, ed. ''The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century''. London/New York: Routledge, 1998, p. 100.</ref> After suppressing the slave trade on the northern Somali coast, the British promoted commerce in textiles and natural products as an alternative source of trade.<ref>Major H. Rayne. ''Sun, Sand and Somals: Leaves from the Note-Book of a District Commissioner in British Somaliland.'' London, 1921, p. 18.</ref>

== 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.<ref name=":10">{{Cite book |last=Besteman |first=Catherine |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=2014-01-27 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |pages=83 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref name=":13" />

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.<ref name=":23" />

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.<ref name=":10" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Little |first=Peter D. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Somalia/N5pND1MAICcC?hl=fr&gbpv=1&bsq=oromo+gosha&dq=oromo+gosha&printsec=frontcover |title=Somalia: Economy Without State |date=2003 |publisher=International African Institute |isbn=978-0-85255-865-2 |pages=29 |language=en}}</ref> Bantu ex-slaves settled along the Juba and Shabelle rivers, but also the inter-riverine regions of Bay and Bakool.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Menkhaus |first=Ken |date=2003 |title=Bantu ethnic identities in Somalia |journal=Annales d'Éthiopie |volume=19 |issue=1 |page=329 |doi=}}</ref>

Some freed female slaves practiced prostitution. Prostitution as a female slave activity was first documented in Somalia by Robecchi Bricchetti.<ref name=":5" /> 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 :<blockquote>"''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.''"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Parlamento |first=Italy |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Atti_parlamentari/3jFRAAAAYAAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=schiavi+boran&pg=RA18-PA30&printsec=frontcover |title=Atti parlamentari |date=1913 |publisher=Tip. E. Botta |pages=30 |language=it}}</ref></blockquote>In British Somaliland, the administration employed emancipated slaves, the jail master of Zeila under the British was an ex-slave.<ref>Major H. Rayne. ''Sun, Sand and Somals: Leaves from the Note-Book of a District Commissioner in British Somaliland.'' London, 1921, p. 23.</ref> According to the colonial administrator Major H. Rayne, after the abolition of slavery in British Somaliland, both former slaves and those formerly involved in the slave trade tended to avoid discussing the subject, preferring to keep their past experiences of slavery and emancipation private.<ref>Major H. Rayne. ''Sun, Sand and Somals: Leaves from the Note-Book of a District Commissioner in British Somaliland.'' London, 1921, pp. 88-92.</ref>

In the 20th century, freed slaves were generally held in an unequal and inferior legal status compared to those considered ethnic Somali.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Declich |first=Francesca |date=2000 |title=Fostering Ethnic Reinvention: Gender Impact of Forced Migration on Bantu Somali Refugees in Kenya (Invention de l'ethnicité et modification des rapports de genre chez les réfugiés somali du Kénya) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4393013 |journal=Cahiers d'Études Africaines |volume=40 |issue=157 |pages=31 |issn=0008-0055}}</ref>

== 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.<ref name=":37" /> 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 slaves as "Habash"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lata |first=Leenco |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/The_Horn_of_Africa_as_Common_Homeland/odPfAgAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=somalis+enslaving+other+somali&pg=PT169&printsec=frontcover |title=The Horn of Africa as Common Homeland: The State and Self-Determination in the Era of Heightened Globalization |date=2010-10-30 |publisher=Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press |isbn=978-1-55458-727-8 |language=en}}</ref> or "Jareer" meaning kinky hair.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Minahan |first=James B. |url=https://www.google.be/books/edition/Encyclopedia_of_Stateless_Nations/5BbHEAAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=jareer+former+slaves&pg=PA388&printsec=frontcover |title=Encyclopedia of Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups around the World |date=2016-08-01 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-1-61069-954-9 |pages=388 |language=en}}</ref>

== 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.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2017-05-24 |title=The sex slaves of al-Shabab |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40022953 |access-date=2026-04-07 |work=BBC News |language=en-GB}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2019-11-01 |title=Report: Kenyan Women Held as Sex Slaves in Somalia |url=https://mwakilishi.com/article/kenya-news/2019-11-01/report-kenyan-women-held-as-sex-slaves-in-somalia |access-date=2026-04-07 |website=Mwakilishi.com |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Ngugi |first=Fredrick |date=2017-08-29 |title=Kenyan Women Kidnapped by Terror Group Al-Shabaab Recount Their Experiences as Sex Slaves |url=https://face2faceafrica.com/article/kenyan-women-kidnapped-terror-group-al-shabaab-recount-experiences-sex-slaves |access-date=2026-04-07 |website=Face2Face Africa |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>[https://cdn.walkfree.org/content/uploads/2023/09/28085737/GSI-Snapshot-Somalia.pdf Modern slavery in Somalia. Global Slavery Index 2023: Country Snapshot]</ref>

==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== {{reflist}}

===Works cited=== *{{cite book |last1=Besteman |first1=Catherine Lowe |title=Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery |date=1999 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |location=Philadelphia |isbn=978-0812216882}}

{{Human rights in Somalia}} {{Africa topic |Slavery in }}

Category:African slave trade Category:Slavery by country Category:Society of Somalia Category:History of Somalia by topic Category:History of slavery Category:Slavery in Africa Category:Human rights abuses in Somalia Category:Islam and slavery Category:Indian Ocean slave trade