BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE IN EGYPT :

The most favored of all Arabic Slaves seem to have been the military slave although performers were the most privileged. By the ninth century slaves armies were in use across the whole of Arabic Empire. The early slave armies tended to be white, taken from Russian and Eastern Europe. How ever the first independent Arab Rulers of Egypt relied on Black Slaves and at his death is said to have left 24,000 white and 45,000 black military slaves. In North Africa the source of Black Slaves from the Nubia and Sudan were too convenient to ignore. At the time of the Fatmid defeat, in the twelfth century, black troops formed the majority of the army. By the fifteenth century black military slaves were being favored with the use in battle of fire arms. In some of the North African Arab States, the Sultan of Morocco is recorded as having an army of 250,000 black slaves. Even as late as the mid-nineteenth century Egyptian rulers actively recruited black slaves into their army.

They included the Egyptian expeditionary force sent by Sa id Pasha to Mexico in support of the French icoast against such Arab Slave Traders.

n 1863. The Trans Atlantic slave trade sent Arab slave traders into over drive, here was a new market which could be exploited. When the Europeans abolished slavery in the 1800's the taking of slaves in Africa continued. The education of such practices was cited as a major justification by European for the colonization of Africa, certainly Britain had a significant fleet of ships patrolling the