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61
The African Diaspora within Africa and the
Impact of Slavery and Stigma in the Islamic
Society: A Case Study of Somalia
Omar A. Eno
Atlas University of Somalia
jareer2030@yahoo.com
Mohamed A. Eno
St Clements University Somalia; & Atlas University of Somalia
Abstract
Certain proponents of slavery in the Islamic world assert that
slaves exported from East Africa to the Arabian Peninsula or
areas under Arabian domain within Africa were in fact acquired
not for agricultural economic purposes but rather for domestic
labor. According to some scholars, this facilitated the
integration of former slaves more thoroughly into Islamic
communities than into the Atlantic slaveholding communities.
However, while the theory of integration may hold true, at least
in part, historical evidence suggests this may not be true in the
case of the Bantu/Jareer1 population in the Horn of Africa, the
main focus of this paper. Therefore, using the Bantu/Jareer
population of southern Somalia as a case study, this paper
explores the contradictions prevalent in integration theory, the
impact of slavery as a social institution, and the economic
functions the slaves performed in Islamic countries.
J
OURNAL OF SOMALI STUDIES
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2014
P
p
61-89
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Introduction
… an intellectual is one who attempts to identify problems, reflects
on them, and does not shy away from asking hard and unpleasant
questions, and who suggests, not imposes, some type of solution to
the problem under his/her scrutiny. An intellectual is also one who
understands the validity of Somali poet Qamman Bulhan’s words:
“Maashaan la saarin waa dambeey sare kacaantaaye” (“Pus that is
not tended to and cared for timely, will eventually suppurate with
devastating consequences”). – Ali Jimale Ahmed (1995, 136).
Islam is considered to be the guiding doctrine equalizing all
Muslims regardless of their race, color, or social status. When
discussing the issue of integration and equality, one of the most
favored Qur’anic verses often referred to by many Muslims is
this: “The Believers are but a single brotherhood” (The Holy
Qur’an, 49:10), suggesting egalitarianism among Muslims. But,
as we argue, the brotherhood and equality stipulated in this
ayah or verse exist only as ideals of the faith, in that
marginalization, discrimination, and other forms of degradation
are employed explicitly in practice in many Muslim countries
and societies. In fact, the reality of the situation in most of the
Islamic world is, as Ahmad Sikainga (1996,118), citing Bernard
Lewis, writes: “The slave is not brother to the Godly freeman,
even though he be born in the clothes of the free. Do not buy a
slave without buying a stick with him, for slaves are filthy and
of scant God.”
The purpose of this paper is to examine this neglected area
of Islamic slavery, particularly from the perspective of the
diaspora within Africa. We specifically argue against the myth
of integration and egalitarianism of the emancipated slaves in
Somali society under the pretext of being adherents to the
Islamic faith. The study employs the qualitative approach as its
methodological guide. It also considers a triangulation of data
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collection tools including interviews and study of available
primary and secondary data obtained from various scholarly as
well as archival materials and oral historians. Before we
proceed to the essence of the paper, we will attempt to lay out a
brief historical background on the origins of the enslaved, the
slaver, and the slave trade in the Benadir coast of Somalia. This
will be followed by an overview of slavery among Muslim
societies and a discussion of the situation of slavery along the
southern Somalia coast. This will be followed by a discussion on
the impact of slavery on the enslaved and voidness of the
integration literature before we present our concluding
remarks.
Origins and Historical Background
Historically and ethnically, Somalia is like any other African
nation that holds together diverse communities of distinct
ethnic and cultural backgrounds. However, for the purpose of
this essay, we group the Somali community into three ethnic
categories: (a) the mercantile coastal people of Arabian and
Persian descent—the “Somali-Arabs”; (b) the sedentary
agriculturalists consisting of indigenous and emancipated
slaves—the “Somali Bantu/Jareer”; and (c) the Somali pastoral
nomads of the interior—the “Somali Pastoralists or nomads,”
likely of Ethiopian descent (Oromo). These three groups pursue
distinct cultures, traditions, and languages, and are theoretically
supposed to practice the same Islamic religion. Accordingly, the
next section describes the three groups.
The Mercantile Coastal Dwellers of Somalia
Mohamed H. Mukhtar (1995, 1–27), in his essay “Islam in
Somali History,” is one of the first Somali scholars who
The African Diaspora within Africa and the Impact…
64
observed that “Although Somalis claim they are homogeneous
[of Arab descent], the exact origin of their race remains
mysterious,” or rather remains an unsolved mystery in social
history. Similar to that of the Somali society, the exact origin of
the mercantile coastal people of the Benadir coast of Somalia
remains somewhat ambiguous. Some writers have described
them as immigrants from Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria. Some
scholars suggest that they migrated to their present location in
southern Somalia around the tenth century (Cerulli 1957).
Others suggest that portions of these communities were traders
from Shiraz in the Persian Gulf who settled in Banadir and later
moved to other places on the Somali coast (Were and Wilson
1968, 18). One of the most recent comments about the origin of
Somali coastal communities comes from Catherine Besteman
(1999, 49). Based on information derived from some natives
from Brava, Besteman suggests that “immigrants from the
Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf settled [around] the
Benadir ports by the tenth century, intermarrying with Somalis
to produce commercially oriented ‘Arab-Somali’ towns within a
few generations.” While the Arab influence was growing in
Somalia’s coastal cities, the Somali nomads from the interior
had already wrested control of native Bantu land along the
Shabelle River and parts along Juba River, attempting to
establish themselves there (Hess 1966, 7).
The Sedentary Agriculturalists of Somalia
The Bantu people are predominantly sedentary agriculturalists
who, according to many scholars (I.M. Lewis 1955, 45; Cerulli
1919), are indigenes who lived in the territory, especially along
the Juba and Shabelle rivers and the interior, before the arrival
of the pastoral Somalis. They consist of mixed groups of natives,
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runaway slaves, and emancipated slaves. The runaway slaves
established their own independent entity in Goshaland along
the Juba River in southern Somalia. Most of the runaways were
from the Wazigwa clan who were originally imported from
parts of Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Pemba (modern Tanzania),
as well as others from parts of Mozambique, by Arab slave
merchants (Grotanelli 1953, 249–260). Although there were
locally captured slaves in southern Somalia, the number was
insignificant because some of the local Bantu natives were
already allied and incorporated into larger Somali groups for
protection.
Early in the twentieth century, Italy emancipated all the
slaves in southern Somalia, some of whom joined the local
Bantu natives along the Shabelle River. In general, however,
most of the emancipated slaves moved to reside with the
runaway slaves in Gosha-land and their indigenous
Bantu/Jareer hosts along the Juba River before becoming
assimilated into the dominant culture there. The assimilation of
the emancipated slaves into the native Bantu/Jareer along the
Shabelle River seems to have created ambiguity on the origins
of the local Bantu/Jareer natives, and probably led to the
indiscriminate labeling of all as ex-slaves, mainly because of
their similar physical characteristics and the avoidance of
Somali scholars in their attempts to investigate the
phenomenon. As for the authenticity and differences between
the Gosha Bantu (runaway slaves) and the native Bantu in
Somalia, a group of anthropologists from the United Nations
who studied the origins of the Bantu/Jareer people in southern
Somalia writes:
The African Diaspora within Africa and the Impact…
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According to their origin, we may distinguish between the two types
of Somali Bantu [Jareer]. To the first belong those tribes (e.g., Liberti
Gosha) who grew out of cores of fugitive slaves, either run-away or
liberated, who had been transported north over the course of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Previously, their home would
have been Tanganyika, their affinity Yao, Zegua, etc. To the second
group, we may reckon those tribes that, in all probability, represent
remnants of pre-Somali populations going back to the first
millennium of the Christian era. (“Bulletin of the International
Committee” 1960, 28–29)
The Pastoral Nomadic Somalis
Although the Somali ethnic groups of the pastoral type trace
back and claim a genealogical lineage that links them to Prophet
Mohammed’s family, the Quraishite, a disagreement recently
emerged, possibly as a result of the Islamic faith, among those
who study Somalia over the link between Somali origin and
Arabia. A majority of them suggest that Somali nomads
migrated from parts of present day southern Ethiopia around
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to their present location in
Somalia before migrating to the north and then back to the
south (Schlee 1994, 33; Kusow 1995). These were predominantly
pastoralists who, as certain scholars suggest, originally
migrated from Ethiopia (Murdock 1959). However, Turton,
citing H. S. Lewis, writes:
... Somali traditions concerning their origins are suspect: first,
because of the great time-depth involved; secondly, because the
contention that they came from the north can be seen as a necessary
accompaniment to their myths of descent from Arabian migrants.
People who trace their ancestry back to the Prophet's uncle are not likely
to admit that they came from southern Ethiopia. (Turton 1975, 521)
Regardless of their origin, however, and as soon as they
gathered enough power, they expropriated the existing
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Bantu/Jareer land between the rivers Juba and Shebelli in
southern Somalia. According to Hess, “as early as the
[thirteenth] century, the Somali ethnic groups of the interior had
begun to wrest control of the land from its Bantu ...” (Hess 1966,
9).
A Glimpse at Slavery and Slave Trade in Islamic Societies
Slave markets in East Africa were scattered all along the coastal
towns of Cape Guardafui, Merca, Mogadishu, Brava, Lamu,
Malindi, Pangani, Bagamoyo, Dar es Salaam, the islands of
Pemba, Zanzibar, and Madagascar, as well as Qualimane and
Sofala in Mozambique (Harris 1971, 19). In fact, during the
middle of the nineteenth century, a significant part of the
economy of Somalia’s southern coastal cities came from their
participation in the Indian Ocean slave trade as a transit point
between southeast Africa and southern Arabia and the Gulf
regions. According to A. I. Salim, (1973, 20), “Slaves were run
into Port Durnford, Tula and other offshore isles, and later
shipped to the Benadir ports, from where they were smuggled
across to Arabia and the Gulf.” Salim further states that the
Somali-Arab merchants played an important role in the slave
business as middlemen for Indian traders, thus enjoying large
profits from the barter system of trading (18).
We should note here that slaves from East Africa were used
not only in the Benadir coasts of Somalia but also in the Arab
Islamic world, Persian Gulf, and India. Most of the slave
suppliers to the Arab Islamic world were Omani merchants.
According to Abdul Sheriff, the slave demand was only from
the seventh to the ninth century in the Persian Gulf, where slave
labor was badly needed to reclaim the marshlands of southern
Iraq. He also acknowledges severe exploitation and oppression
The African Diaspora within Africa and the Impact…
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of a large number of slaves in Basra that led to a series of slave
revolts beginning at the end of seventh century, which
culminated in the famous Zanj rebellion (1987, 13). Despite this
acknowledgment, however, Sheriff argues that the Persian Gulf
economies did not rely on slaves and that the region did not
import large or growing numbers of slaves from East Africa
with the exception of the period from the seventh to the ninth
century. According to Jwaideh and Cox (1988, 50), the
involvement of blacks in nineteenth century Mesopotamian
agriculture was minimal and incidental at most, and in no
instances did they actually work the land. Jwaideh and Cox
further maintain that slaves had become fully integrated into
their respective tribes, except that local Arabs would not
intermarry with them [blacks]. In fact, slaves were an integral
part of the household (53).
Before endorsing Jwaideh and Cox’s argument that
integration was successfully accomplished, one should seek an
explanation of why the local Arabs would not intermarry with
these members of society if genuine integration actually was
accomplished. This is because accomplishment theoretically
should be gauged according to the value of satisfaction each
sector of the society feels in its accommodation with the others.
Our contention is that the rejection of free intermarriage
probably was based on the theory that the superior should not
mingle with the inferior. Analyzing the superficial nature of
such integration, Sikainga (1996, 101) hypothetically coins what
he calls “the family metaphor,” which in theoretical terms
would suggest “that slaves were treated as members of their
masters’ families,” with a societal belief that “former slaves
were still considered inferior members of the lineage and still
found it hard to marry freeborn women” (105).
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Looking at the nineteenth century Persian Gulf, Thomas
Ricks’s study attempts to confront one of the pertinent
conundrums of slavery in the Islamic world. Disagreeing with
Sheriff (1987) and Jwaideh and Cox (1988), Ricks (1989) argues
that slavery and the slave trade were central to the economic
transformation of the Persian Gulf. In the nineteenth century,
Ricks asserts, the region did indeed import increasing numbers
of slaves. Profiting from the slave trade, Omani merchants
expanded the enterprise by becoming the financiers of the Gulf.
This move encouraged other merchants, as well as landowners
and officials, to purchase slaves and exploit them in a wide
range of agricultural, artisanal, maritime, military, and
commercial activities.
Although Jwaideh and Cox (1988) and Sheriff (1987) oppose
the hypothesis that many African slaves were used on date
farms and other agricultural and economic activities in the
Persian Gulf, Harris (1971) clearly indicates that slaves were
used in the Arab Islamic world, including Mesopotamia. Harris
contends that between the 1780s and 1870s slaves were
vigorously imported from East Africa to fill the growing labor
shortage in Iran, Ottoman, and in the Arabian lands of the Gulf
coastal villages. Detailing the specific nature of slave activities
involved, Harris corroborates that demand for slaves in Asia
was for workers on the date plantations in Basra, Bandar Abbas,
Minab, and Lingeh in the Persian Gulf. Slaves also were used in
the army and as pearl divers, dock workers, dhow crews, and
so on (Harris 1971, 5). Ricks (1988) adds that slaves were even
sold to Indian and Turkish merchants. He says that these slaves
belonged to Omani merchants and came through Oman’s major
towns of Masqat and Sur, where they benefited the Omanis
directly.
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70
In support of Ricks, Cassanelli’s (1988) work on slavery in
Somalia contributes an important point that around 1903,
Salemi, a runaway slave in Somalia who sought refuge and safe
haven to the Italian abolitionists, said he and about forty
companions were captured on the Mrima coast of Mozambique
and transported into Somalia through the port of Merka some
twenty years earlier by Arab traders of Sur. This speaks to the
fact that slaves had a good idea about the ethnicity of their
captors, and supports Ricks’s argument that Omani traders did
not benefit only from slaves sold to Arabia, the Persian Gulf,
India, and Turkey but also benefited from slaves sold within
Africa itself.
According to Bernard Lewis (1990), “Black slaves were
brought into the Islamic world by a number of routes—from
West Africa across the Sahara to Morocco and Tunisia, from
Chad across the desert to Libya, from East Africa down the Nile
to Egypt, and across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to Arabia
and the Persian Gulf.” Lewis in fact maintains that the black
slaves in the Arab Muslim countries experienced, “a much
harder life, they used to drain the salt flats of southern Iraq, and
the blacks were employed in the salt mines of the Sahara and
the gold mines of Nubia” (14). However, the ultimate benefit of
slaves would stay with the actual user of their physical services
for agriculture, domestic, and industrial purposes. In sum,
therefore, the benefit of a slave goes to both the seller and buyer
who, in the Somali and other Islamic contexts, exploited slave
labor of Muslims for gain.
The immorality of the Arab Muslim slave traders knew no
bounds. It was so extreme that pretty slave women were
recruited for prostitution, an immoral decadence that, like
slavery itself, is contrary to the Islamic doctrine. The stigma
attached to this crime was permanent because the children
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begotten from a concubine or from the practice of prostitution
were rejected as bastards; while so called Muslim people
justified one vicious immorality with another. According to
Harris, wealthy Arabs even ordered pretty Ethiopian women
for concubinage and prostitution through Omani slave traders
(1971, 14; 40), which is a strong contradiction to Islamic
doctrine, specifically the rules of enslavement within the Islamic
context, as elaborated below by Hunwick (1993, 292). Harris’s
comment about pretty women being ordered by wealthy Arabs
is supported by Michael Le Gall, who pointed out that
“Abyssinian women were more liked in many areas in the
Islamic Arab world than the Negresse with wide flat nose [and]
thick upturned lips” (1999, 77).
Documents obtained from Italian archives also indicate the
slave traders’ preference of Ethiopian women for prostitution,
as noticed by the Italian colonial officials in Somalia who said:
“Le donne Galla sono le piu` ricercate. [Perche`], tutte le schiave, se il
padrone non se ne serve in casa, debbono fare le prostitute per procurarsi il
tributo …” (ASMAI 1903, 256)
Translation by authors:
Ethiopian women of the Galla clan were the most sought after
because when they were no longer needed by the master’s
household for domestic use, they could be recruited into prostitution
to generate income be used as payment for the masters’ tribute.
This explains why the slave women’s beauty was necessary
to the slave owners in Somalia and elsewhere, partly because of
the type of service, in this case prostitution, which these women
had to perform to boost the master’s income.
Although beautiful slave women were more valuable than
slave men in Somalia and also in other parts of the Islamic
The African Diaspora within Africa and the Impact…
72
world, enslaved women’s problems were considerably more
serious. As Sikainga (1999, 62) reveals, “If a concubine was
manumitted, she could not have a legal status as a wife; she
would be living with her master as his mistress and her children
would be regarded as bastards.” Mernissi, citing the
Encyclopedia of Islam, enlightens us further regarding the ways
that slaves were obtained in the Islamic world and clarifies the
commercial factors underlying the institution: “Slavery in Islam
could only subsist through ‘the constantly renewed
contributions of peripheral or external elements, either directly
captured in war or imported commercially, under the fiction of
Holy War, from foreign territory’” (1991, 151).
Merchants brought almost all imported slaves from East
Africa into the Arabian Islamic world for profit. It would be
rather ironic and simplistic to trust that these merchants were
importing into the Persian Gulf or even from one country to
another within Africa human cargo of “unbelievers” captured
for proselytization and subsequent integration into their
societies. Commenting on the moral guidance of the slave
traders, Hunwick (1999, 63), citing Ahmed b. Khalid al-Nasiri,
states: “One should not put any confidence in what the slave
merchants say for they are ‘men of no morals, no manly
qualities and no religion,’ and the evil nature of the age and
wickedness of its people are apparent.” The scholarly analyses
here provide a reflection that the legalities of enslavement
against blacks from East Africa who were transported to the
Arab Islamic world or elsewhere within Africa under Arabian
domination is a subject that cries for further study. In view of
those realities, it becomes necessary to delve into the symbolic
significance of slave ancestry in modern Somalia. In the next
section we will analyze the various historical circumstances that
contributed to the continuing social and political marginalization of
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those suspected and/or accused of being slave descendants
among the Somali Muslims.
Islam and the Stigma of Slavery in Somalia
In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Somali clans
who lived along the coastal cities of Benadir increased their
trade in ivory, cattle, hides, woven clothes, gum, and other
commercial goods. However, the main product in demand—in
fact, greater demand than the available supply—was grain.
Being the traders in the region, the Benadir coastal tribes were
expected to respond to this strong regional demand for grain
(Menkhaus 1989). Apart from other economic factors, grain
production was probably one of the main economic factors that
lay behind the expansion of the slave system on the East African
coast, and its influence on the southern coast and the inter-
riverine area of Somalia as well (Sheriff 1987, 71).
The inter-riverine area in southern Somalia comprises the
fertile land between the rivers Juba and Shebelli. It is the only
area in Somalia where irrigated agriculture is possible, indeed
with the potential for surplus production. Because the yields of
other regions, which depend on rainwater, are not sufficient to
satisfy the food demand of the local markets, it is safe to assume
that the settlements in and around the inter-riverine area
assured abundant supplies of agricultural produce to the local
towns. They also supplied caravans, which crossed this region
in considerable numbers to transport their goods to the nearby
towns on the coast.
Late in the nineteenth century, the increased demand for
agricultural produce on the world market boosted production
in the inter-riverine area. The towns along the Somali coast
(Mogadishu, Merca, Brava) had always been important sites for
The African Diaspora within Africa and the Impact…
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the export of ivory, aromatic gums, woven cloth, and other
products, but the importance of these goods was superseded by
the export of grain to South Arabia, Zanzibar, and other parts of
the world (Christopher 1844). The agrarian tradition is centered
on the periodic twice-yearly high-water level of the river on
which the gravitation-based irrigation system relies. By this
means, water can be guided along canals through the
agricultural plains.
Besides grain, the inter-riverine region produces items like
durra, sesame seeds, peanuts, cotton, and a variety of fruits and
vegetables in quantities sufficient to meet the needs of the local
market and, to an increasing extent, to those of the foreign
market. Production of almost all of these items in the Shebelli
and the Juba valley economy was facilitated by the tapping of
the large reservoir of male and female labor supplied by the
slaves of the inter-riverine and its environs. As a result, in the
first half of the nineteenth century, slave plantations were
established along the Shebelli River to meet the increasing
demand for grain, particularly sorghum, maize, and sesame
seeds (Cassanelli 1982, 166). By the 1840s, European travelers
were amazed at the large amount of grain produced along the
Shebelli River, which was destined for markets in Zanzibar and
in Arabia.
The transformation of the Shebelli valley economy was
simplified by the continued supply of paid labor provided by
the resident Bantu population (Menkhaus 1989, 103–104).
Moreover, part of the profits generated by the exploitation of
these lands was used to purchase more slaves, which in turn led
to a further expansion of the cultivated lands (Bricchetti 1904,
63; 107). Unlike in Mombasa, where production of grain in the
plantations was limited because of the scarcity of arable land
(Lovejoy 1983, 226), cultivable land was abundant in the
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Benadir. Apart from their involvement in the lucrative
commerce of slave trade, the coastal people of southern Somalia
also maintained two types of slaves for their own personal gain,
domestic and plantation slaves. As a result, plantation workers
were further divided into two groups; cultivation and weaving
were assigned to the men and the easier tasks of gathering the
seeds and cleaning the husks were for the women (Luling,
1971). Frequently, though, beautiful female slaves were used as
household domestics and concubines (Besteman 1991, 67–78).
Although Italy in theory had abolished slavery and the
slave trade in southern Somalia early in the twentieth century,
the use of slave labor lasted until the end of the first quarter of
the century. Sikainga (1999, 65) aptly points out that “as
elsewhere in Africa, the official abolition neither led to the
sudden death of slavery nor brought a substantial change in the
relationship between freed slaves and their former owners. In
Muslim countries, the problem was compounded by the fact
that servitude was sanctioned by the Shari’a.” That is probably
why the Somali slave traders and slave owners, bearing in mind
that servitude was sanctioned by the Shari’a, grew more
resentful toward Zanzibar and the British authorities for
stopping the slave trade (Morton 1990, 29). While both the
Somali Arabs of the coastal cities and the Somali nomads from
the interior were slave owners, slave trading was dominated
almost entirely by the Somali Arabs of the coast. The slaves in
Somalia also included small numbers imported from the
interior of Ethiopia through Lugh, Doolow, and the Baardere
area; most of the slaves came into Somalia through Benadir and
the coastal cities of southern Somalia—Merca, Brava, Kismayu,
Mogadishu, and Warsheek. More about the situation of slavery
in the context of Somalia will be discussed in the following
section.
The African Diaspora within Africa and the Impact…
76
The Myth of Integration and Egalitarianism in Somalia
In the background of all these commercial transactions,
including the sale and purchase of humans, is this question:
What does Islam say about slavery and enslavement?
According to Hunwick (1993, 292), “…a person could be
enslaved only if he/she were a non-Muslim whose people had
no pact (‘ahd) with the Muslims and had been taken captive in a
Jihad [holy war] launched after a rejection of the summons to
Islam.” The reasons used to capture and enslave the
Bantu/Jareer people were contrary to Islamic law because they
were already Muslims. Furthermore, most of the locally
renowned religious scholars in southern Somalia belong to the
Bantu/Jareer ethnic groups; this includes Sheikh Nur Hussein,
Sheikh Farhan, Sheikh Ooyaaye, Sheikh Murjian, and Sheikh
Muhiddin among others, as well as the distinguished scholar
Sheikh Uways Al-Barawi.
In any case, it is probably the pastoral Somalis’ persistent
claim of Arabian descent that has reinforced the ties among the
Arab slave traders from the Islamic world such as Yemen and
Oman, the local Somali coastal immigrants allegedly from parts
of Arabia, and the Somali nomads themselves. Therefore, this
superficial ligament of Arabized brotherhood assumedly led to
Omani Arab political control and trade of the Omani sultan of
Zanzibar in the coastal cities of southern Somalia in the 1840s,
under the leadership of Sayyid Said. In accordance with this
notion of same Arab ancestry, the Omanis “... exerted no
authority [against non-Bantu/Jareer Somalis] but that of the
influence of their name and character as Shariffs. Every Arab,
young or old, poor or rich, receives this designation from the
credulous and ignorant Somali community; they are also the
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wealthiest in the land” (Christopher 1844, 284–291). Cassanelli’s
(1988, 312) analysis that “most slaves in Somali towns belonged
to wealthy Arabs …” tends to validate the firm alignment
between the non-Bantu groups controlling slaves and slave
markets, despite distinct levels of participation in the slavery
enterprise.
In 1842, the Arab intervention in the coastal cities of
southern Somalia came through the invitation of one of the
ruling Somali factions, which later became allied to the Omanis
as a means to gain supremacy over Mogadishu (of then
Benadir) and their rival factions (Alpers 1983). Three or more
factions struggled for control of the coastal cities and its
environs at the time such as the inhabitants of the Shingaani
area, the Hamarwein/Biayamal community, and the ssultanate
of Geledi established in the town of Afgoye.
Among the rival elders, those from the Hamarwein (Arab
descent) area invited the sultan of Zanzibar, Seyyid Said, to
intervene and put to an end to the rivalry between the
aforementioned factions by taking control of the Banadir region
and incorporating it into his sultanate. Consequently, the
Banadir coastal cities fell under the protectorate of the sultan of
Zanzibar. The takeover took place under the pretext of forming
an alliance with the Hamarwein elders for their support and
protection against more powerful enemies (Shingaani, Biyamal,
and the Geledi sultanate). But in reality it was territorial
expansion by Sayyid Said of Zanzibar.
According to Hunwick (1999, 44), Islamic law is clear, “once
the black slave had been manumitted, he or she was [should
have been] received into the community of the faithful and
shared, at least in legal theory, in both the privileges and the
duties of other believers of whatever color or race.” To discover
whether or not Hunwick’s explanation is in practice in the
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78
Islamic world, one needs to examine the social histories of a few
individual Muslim communities. While doing so, David Ayalon
(1999) noticed discrimination within the Mamluk military
ranking of the Ottoman Empire between those from Central
Asia and the black Africans. Ayalon (44) says that because the
Mamluks from Central Asia were fair skinned, they could
ascend to high ranks while those with darker skin could not
form part of the Muslim military elite. They often were kept to
perform menial labor.
In the case of Somalia, although discrimination and the
denial of integration was not official, demeaning actions and
degrading attitudes of Somali society against the suspected
emancipated slaves speak louder than the rhetoric of
egalitarianism under the pretext of being brothers within the
Islamic framework. Catherine Besteman (1999, 113) argues,
“Despite [some] touted indications of equality, assimilation, and
homogeneity, however, Gosha villagers [of Bantu origin] and
other slave descendants continued to hold marked identities
which stigmatized them in Somali society. Overt signs of
inequality, status distinctions, and social differentiation were
readily apparent to any visitor in the 1980s.” Martina Steiner
(1994) similarly argues that the Jareer people in southern
Somalia are a stigmatized and marginalized group that is
ostracized and not allowed to intermingle or intermarry with
the other Somalis because of their deemed inferior status to the
Somali nomads.
As stated by Virginia Luling (1983, 39), “Traditional Somali
society is famous for its egalitarian character, and yet it is
known that some of its members were much less equal than the
rest. [The] category of people whose status was traditionally
inferior was the farming villagers of inter-riverine [Bantu]
area.” Examining the anomalous situation of concentrating
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79
Somali studies on the ethno-cultural learning of the nomadic
groups, Mukhtar (1995, 20–21) criticizes:
Efforts were made to carefully glorify nomadic language, culture,
and history and destroy or denigrate the history and culture of the
sedentary societies. Institutions were created to propagate the
nomadic tradition, ascribing to it a greater antiquity … Efforts have
been made to discourage scholars from studying other Somali
themes. Valuable sources for the study of Somalia’s past were
ignored, among them, Arabic, Italian, French, and German sources
… The oral tradition of non-nomadic Somalia was systematically
ignored, and their languages were not studied. Historical sites were
set up where there were no signs of history. Religious heroes were
made up where the practice of Islam had been insignificant … The
aim was, under the guise of nationalism, to safeguard the interests of
certain clans and suppress the aspirations of others. [emphasis in
original]
After examining harsh situations against emancipated black
slaves in the Islamic world, a similar situation of oppression of
slaves is mirrored in the modern-day Somalia as elsewhere.
According to Hunwick (citing Bernard Lewis), “… although
Muslims of the Middle East never practiced the kind of racial
discrimination and oppression that persons of European
descent practiced in apartheid South Africa, and ‘until recently
in the United States,’ Muslim societies were never idyllic havens
of racial innocence” (1999, 43). Supporting the above argument,
one of our interviewees, an elderly Jareer woman from the town
of Afgoye in Somalia who was living in Tilbruq, Holland, at the
time, explained in detail about the agonizing and unbearable
racial discrimination that she had experienced in Somalia: “…
we, the Jareer people, do not need to commit a crime for
punishment because being born as a Jareer is a sufficient crime
in Somalia.”
The African Diaspora within Africa and the Impact…
80
Mernissi (1991, 151) censures the hypocrisy of the Muslim
society and asserts, “Muslim society remained a slave society
for centuries and only renounced it under pressure from the
colonial powers in the twentieth century,” and that despite all
the Qur’anic revelation and the guidance of Prophet
Mohammad against slavery and mistreatment of Muslims. In
the Somali situation, when the Italian colonial authority gave an
ultimatum to end the practice of slavery in the country, some of
Somalia’s religious leaders, who were themselves slave owners,
protested against abolition and the treatment of emancipated
slaves as equal to other Muslims. In fact, abolition was
denounced by many slave-owning Somalis who felt their status
and commercial enterprises threatened. In particular, Sheikh
Hagi Hassan,2 the religious leader, argued that he and his
followers would:
... not accept your [un-Islamic] order. We will not come to you at any
cost because you have broken our pact. All our slaves escaped and
went to you and you have set them free. We are not happy with the
[abolitionist] order. We abandoned our law, for according to our
law, we can put slaves in prison and force them to work. The
[Italian] government has its law and we have ours. We accept no law
other than our own. Our law is that of God and the Prophet. (De
Vecchi 1935, 25–27)
Surprisingly, the law that Sheikh Hagi Hassan is invoking is
the Islamic law; yet, “although Islam forbids, among others, any
kind of violation of another Muslim’s basic civil rights to
freedom and equality, both in principle as well as in practice, a
tremendous malpractice and misinterpretation is evident
among most of the Muslim communities,” as stated by Sheikh
Maxamed Abuukar, known as Maxamed Alooweey, a Somali
vicar and Imam of one of the mosques in Ras As Khaima,
United Arab Emirates. Because Sheikh Hagi Hassan was a
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81
Koranic teacher (Mu’allim), he was considered one of the Somali
Ulama, clergymen, whose duty it was to guide and usher the
Somali society toward the right path of Islam. Instead, he
preferred to pursue his own personal gains to exploit free
human labor from slaves. Noting a similar situation in Islamic
Morocco, Sikainga (1999, 61) stresses that “although the role of
the ‘Ulama’ may be compared with that of Gramsci’s
intellectuals, who play a major role in shaping the cultural
norms that ratify the structure of the society, yet the ‘Ulama’
were not a monolithic group,” especially those of Sheikh
Hassan’s mentality. The Somali nomads not only mimicked the
behavior and attitude of Arab slave owners but actually claimed
to be descendants of Prophet Mohammed’s family, Quraysh.
In Somalia, the elders are the vanguards of communal
settings and societal systems in general and have conspicuously
indicated their lust for superiority to the African identity (Eno
and Eno 2009; Eno 2008; The East African Standard 1930). This
imperceptive ideology makes integration and egalitarianism
among communities within the country difficult and has left a
far-reaching legacy in the perception of young generations. This
perception was to look down upon all black Africans as Adoon
(slaves), which has been modified these days as madow (black),
an equally pejorative epithet that has an undertone of slave or
descent from slaves. Michael Maren provides a perfect example
of Somalis’ feeling of superiority over black Africans in an
episode concerning Victor Gbeho, a Ghanaian national who was
UN Special Representative to Somalia. Maren (1994) comments:
Gbeho, who is from Ghana, has another problem not of his making:
Somalis in general show little respect for Africans. When speaking
English, people around Aidid and Ali Mahdi refer to Gbeho as “that
Ghanaian.” When speaking Somali they use the word adon, which
The African Diaspora within Africa and the Impact…
82
means slave, a term in common use to describe Africans with darker
skin and coarser hair.
Stereotypes of this nature are not unique to Somalia. An
obvious similarity also exists in Arab Islamic North Africa,
where blackness is synonymous with servitude. As Sikainga
(1999, 63) comments, “… the association of blackness and
unbelief with servitude was deeply rooted among North
Africans.” The ideology is also one firmly rooted in Somali
social culture where superiority to Africanness is proudly sung
by even Somali poets such as Ali Dhuux, who glorifies Somalis
and mocks madowga—blacks or black Africans—in his verse:
Suldaan caadil ah, cuqaal talisa, iyo culumada diinta Ilaaha caadiloow
kaaga cabanmeyno, Annagu caddaankaanu la loolannaa madow ma cisayno.
Translated:
Wise kings, governing intelligentsia and religious clergymen, Oh
Wise Almighty! You blessed us with them and have no dearth of that
for, we race with the white men and give no respect to the black
men.
An examination of the attitudes and stereotypes of other
Islamic societies toward their compatriots of African descent
discloses similar types of discrimination. As Bernard Lewis
states, a demeaning “… kind of discrimination is well attested
in Arabic literature; so too is the resentment of its victims,
[blacks]” (1990, 39). In a similar way, William John Sersen (1985,
92–105): tells us that there is a series of derogatory and
demeaning proverbs in Arabic literature against blacks such as:
“I love my friend, though he be a black slave,” “Your friend
(darling) is he whom you love, though he be a Nubian slave,”
“Dear to a slave is he who overworks him,” “Do not caparison
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83
the mule, and do not pamper the black slave,” and “The secret
of the mistress is in the box, and the secret of the slave girl is in
the market.”
Further examining the myth of integration and
egalitarianism in the Islamic world, Sikainga (1999, 59), citing
Ennaji, picks Morocco and says: “while some scholars have held
the view that Moroccan slaves were treated well and were
integrated into the owner’s household, Mohamed Ennaji has
argued that the condition of slaves in Morocco was a complex
web of paternalism and oppression.” In the same way, today’s
Muslim society in Somalia can be seen as anything but
egalitarian and integrative because in many Somalis’ minds
reverberates the idea that slaves are less valuable than camels.
Traditionally, discrimination comes in different forms, the
major one being based on color. In the case of Somalia, where
everybody is black, the dominant groups, the slavers and their
descendents, discriminate based on ethnic background and
physical appearance. To validate claims of ethnic supremacy,
such groups have developed a set of low status related corpus
to qualify the Bantu/Jareer. We present some of them here: Jareer
is a derogatory name for the Bantu people in Somalia; it refers
to the texture of their hair. Adoon means slave, a common and
more open term. Xawash denotes a negroid type of person and
Qabaan refers to servitude. Bidde is the equivalent of slave, one
who serves the royal household; the term is commonly used
only in the nomadic north of Somalia. Sankadhuudhi and Beyla-
sanbuur are other terms popular among northern Somalis and
refer to the broad and flat nose (that Somalis associate with
ugliness) with the connotation of a slave, or one of black African
descent. Among the Digil-Mirifle confederation of clans in
southern Somalia, because the language is Af Maay and quite
distinct from the Af Maxaa spoken in the north and even some
The African Diaspora within Africa and the Impact…
84
parts of the south, they too have developed their own codes to
symbolize the Bantu/Jareer people as inferior. They use such
expressions as Boon, Meddo, and Ooji, among many more, all of
which are not only derogatory and demeaning but are explicitly
designed to corroborate ethnic inferiority related to black
Africanness.
Conclusion
This paper has attempted to demonstrate the gap between the
theoretical belief of equality within Islam and the pragmatic
realities that contradict the ideals of that philosophy. The study
used various examples of situations in which emancipated
blacks within an Islamic society, particularly in Somalia, have
been and still are alienated and mistreated as unequal, despite
the fact that their free labor was used commercially for the
prosperity of dominant communities among which Islam was
supposed to be the unifying as well as equalizing factor. This
paper has also tried to show that slaves in the Islamic world
were required to perform tasks that were not only for economic
but also for military purposes. Although more study is needed,
it seems that the desire to maintain a superior idiosyncrasy and
a “status quo” among slave owners has always been apparent.
As a result, egalitarianism among Muslims will continue to be a
myth and an inaccessible phenomenon because former owners
do not tend to respect the egalitarian doctrine of their faith. To
explore more about the hidden inequalities of the communities
suffering under dominant former slave owners, we recommend
more research and straightforward practice of Islam rather than
continuing to maintain a false status quo.
Omar A. Eno & Mohamed A. Eno /JOSS, Volume 1, Issue 2, 2014, Pp 61-89
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Note
1. The words Bantu and Jareer are used interchangeably as
they both describe the same category people in the
discussion.
2. The sheikh in discussion is Sheikh Hassan Barsane, after
whom, for calculated political and nationalist interests, the
military regime of Mohamed said Barre named a school. He
has been described as a national hero who resisted
colonialists when actually his resistance was not against
colonialism but against their abolition of slavery and the
slave trade which, according to his words, he sounds to be a
strong stakeholder.
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