How did the arrival of the Muslim Arabs affect the practice of slavery in Africa?

Answer 1

Prior to the Trans-Saharan Slave trade in Islamic Empires, slavery in Africa was relatively simple. Tribe A fought Tribe B and if Tribe A defeated Tribe B, then the captured soldiers and civilians of Tribe B became the slaves of Tribe A. Slaves stayed relatively local to where they were and there were no slave markets (even though there may have been an informal buying and selling of slaves).

By contrast, Islamic States pioneered many of the quintessential parts of what would define the European Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in the 16th-19th centuries when they created the Trans-Saharan Slave Trae. This included long-distance travel between the slave acquisition and the market, the use of large competitive marketplaces in urban centers to auction slaves, the development of legal doctrines about what rights owners had to transfer slaves to other owners, and, contrary to Islamic teachings and modern science, that Blacks had a more beastial nature, making them better-suited to the rigors of hard work and enslavement. It should not be surprising that the Spanish and Portuguese (who had lived under Islamic States for centuries) were the first European States to re-create a complex enslavement system. Unlike the Europeans, though, Arab Muslims saw fit to castrate all of their male African slaves so that they could not form a large Black population in the Arab countries. African female slaves were often sexually abused by their masters.