The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam

by (Historian) Simon Webb

In the seventh century AD, the newly-created Arab religion of Islam began to be forcibly spread to the countries contiguous to Arabia, the area roughly equivalent to modern-day Saudi Arabia. Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt adopted the new faith and it was also carried west, along the Mediterranean coast to the Berber tribes which occupied what are today Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya. Between the years 642 and 708, Arab armies conquered the whole of North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean and imposed Islam upon the region. The Berbers were crushed and most converted to Islam. In the course of the 70 years or so which it had taken to subdue this vast area, hundreds of thousands of slaves had been acquired. These were those defeated by the Arab armies (Pipes, 1981).