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82-723: The British were involved in the scramble for (East) Africa to safeguard a range of British interests, such as commercial superiority, the crusade against the East African Slave trade , apprehension over the control of territory that served as a route to India, and rivalry with the German and French governments. They opted to exercise indirect control over East Africa by establishing the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA) led by William Mackinnon in 1888. Despite significant investments,

164-588: A 10- and 8-year-old pair of Javanese Christian girls to family in Singapore, but enslaving them instead. Muslim men sometimes sold their own wives into slavery while on pilgrimage to Mecca, after pretending to be religious to trick the women into marrying them. The slave trade continued into the 20th century. Slavery in Saudi Arabia , Yemen , and the United Arab Emirates did not end until

246-464: A Jewish homeland. Leopold Greenberg acted as Herzl's main representative in the negotiations, and together they hoped to gain de facto diplomatic recognition from Great Britain, making the proposal's political value immense. Despite East Africa's lack of moral and historical significance to Jews, the East Africa plan held the most promise compared to the other plans. Greenberg successfully obtained

328-602: A Syrian Arab girl from Damascus who was held as a slave of a black African governor in Mali . Ibn Battuta engaged in conversation with her in Arabic. The black man was a scholar of Islam named Farba Sulayman. He was openly violating the rule in Islam against enslaving Arabs. Syrian girls were trafficked from Syria to Saudi Arabia until shortly before World War II. They were married to Arab men in order to legally bring them across

410-728: A basis of education in Romania . In 1887 Gaster was appointed hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese Congregation in London , in which capacity he presided over the bicentenary of Bevis Marks Synagogue . He was invited to give the Ilchester Lectures at Oxford which were published in 1887 as Ilchester Lectures on Greeko-Slavonic literature . Appointed as principal of Judith Lady Montefiore College , Ramsgate , from 1891 to 1896, he wrote valuable collection of essays accompanying

492-597: A few runaway slaves did join the revolt, the majority of the participants were Arabs and free Zanj. He believes that if the revolt had been led by slaves, they would have lacked the necessary resources to combat the Abbasid government for as long as they did. In Somalia, the Bantu minorities are descended from Bantu groups who had settled in Southeast Africa after the initial expansion from Nigeria/Cameroon. To meet

574-411: A harmonized 5% import duty for any merchandise entering into his empire. He abolished export duties. Thirdly, he took advantage of Zanzibar's and Pemba's fertile soil to establish plantations of coconut and cloves. Fourthly, he revitalised and extended the "old Arab-caravan trade" with mainland East Africa to acquire slaves and ivory. He signed “commercial treaties with western capitalist countries, such as

656-614: A heated debate that challenged fundamental beliefs and sparked passionate reactions. Some delegates viewed it as a betrayal of the Basel Program and a conflict between Palestine and Uganda. The discord threatened to divide the organization, with some Eastern European delegates dramatically walking out of the meeting and others expressing their loss of trust in Herzl and the steering committee. The emotional tension remained high, with some delegates falling on each other's necks, weeping, and

738-763: A letter from the Foreign Office expressing the British government's willingness to establish a Jewish colony with considerable land, local autonomy, and religious and domestic freedom under its general control. In the Sixth Zionist Congress, which took place in 1903 in Basel, Herzl presented the proposal and the Congress voted in favor of sending a fact-finding group to East Africa with 295 delegates in favor and 178 against. Herzl's announcement sparked

820-646: A rabbinical dynasty which included Rabbi Levi Isaac ben Meir. After having taken a degree in his native city (1874), he proceeded to Leipzig , where he received the degree of PhD in 1878 and then to the Jewish Seminary in Breslau , where he gained the Hattarat Hora'ah (rabbinical diploma) in 1881. His history of Romanian popular literature was published in Bucharest in 1883. He was lecturer on

902-531: A series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 AD near the city of Basra (also known as Basara), situated in present-day Iraq , is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj who had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa . The rebellion grew to involve more than 500,000 slaves and free men who had been imported from across

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984-583: A short Hebrew Bible history. Gaster believed in a scientific study of folklore and did not sympathize with those believing that preserving folklore should mostly serve a political nationalist purpose. His study of Romanian folklore led Gaster to conclusions at odds with those shared by most scholars of his time, who found there traces of pre-Christian beliefs. Gaster argued that nothing found in Romanian folklore pre-dated Christianity, and that what appeared as pre-Christian to other scholars in fact derived from

1066-500: A significant number of hardworking settlers to the area, hindering the profitability of the railway. Additionally, during a journey on the Uganda Railway through what was described as "the white man country" in East Africa (modern Kenya), Chamberlain's opinion on the suitability of the tropical climate for Europeans changed. While on the trip, Chamberlain thought that this "would be just the country for Dr. Herzl" and even proposed

1148-612: A special study of the Samaritans and became a recognised authority on their language and literature. He visited Nablus in the Ottoman Beirut Vilayet, the headquarters of the Samaritan community, and induced them to part with manuscripts covering the whole range of their literature. Where he could not secure the originals he had copies made for him by Samaritan priests. Gaster was among the most active leaders of

1230-455: A young student fainting. However, Herzl reassured delegates that Palestine would remain Zion and threatened to resign, preventing the organization's division. Though he believed the attachment to Palestine was remarkable, he thought the reaction was unreasonable.  "These people have a rope around their necks, but they still refuse," Herzl commented. Despite concerns about the East Africa scheme,

1312-486: Is an Arabic title for Lord) Said made deliberate efforts to "revive old Arab-caravan trade" with mainland Africa, which became the major source of slaves. Said bin Sultan took six major initiatives which facilitated growth and expansion of his commercial empire. He firstly introduced a new currency “Maria Theresa Dollar” to supplement the exiting “Spanish Crown”, which simplified commercial activities. Secondly, he introduced

1394-703: Is unknown. The European slave trade in the Indian Ocean began when Portugal established Estado da Índia in the early 16th century. From then until the 1830s, c. 200 slaves were exported annually from Mozambique; similar figures have been estimated for slaves brought from Asia to the Philippines during the Iberian Union (1580–1640). According to Francisco De Sousa, a Jesuit who wrote about it in 1698, Japanese slave girls were still owned by India-based Portuguese (Lusitanian) families long after

1476-780: The Cairo Geniza (the genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo ); some 350 Hebrew codices and scrolls including prayer-books of many Jewish communities, apocryphal writings, commentaries, treatises, letters, marriage contracts , piyyutim , and thirteen scrolls of the Law; some 350 Samaritan manuscripts, among them manuscripts of the Pentateuch , commentaries and treatises, and liturgical , historical, chronological and astronomical codices, detailed census lists of

1558-838: The Colombo fortress in Dutch Ceylon . Bali and neighbouring islands supplied regional networks with c.  100,000–150,000 slaves 1620–1830. Indian and Chinese slave traders supplied Dutch Indonesia with perhaps 250,000 slaves during the 17th and 18th centuries. The East India Company (EIC) was established during the same period; in 1622 one of its ships carried slaves from the Coromandel Coast to Dutch East Indies . The EIC mostly traded in African slaves but also some Asian slaves purchased from Indian, Indonesian and Chinese slave traders. The French established colonies on

1640-654: The Doukhobors , and doubts about Jews' ability to engage in profitable farming. The British media also joined in the objection, amplifying these concerns. The response of the native population to the offer is unknown, and the Indians who came to build the Uganda Railway did not entirely reject the proposal. In December 1904, the Zionist Organization dispatched a special commission to Uasin Gishu to assess if

1722-668: The English Zionist Federation . Gaster was born in Bucharest into a renowned Jewish Austrian family which had settled in Wallachia at the beginning of the 19th century. He was the eldest son of Chevalier Abraham Emanuel Gaster, who was the consul of the Netherlands in Bucharest and the grandson of Asriel Gaster, a prosperous merchant and community leader. His mother, Pnina Judith Rubinstein, came from

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1804-685: The Hindu kingdom of Sri Vijaya in Java . The 12th-century Arab geographer al-Idrisi recorded that the ruler of the Persian island of Kish "raids the Zanj country with his ships and takes many captives." According to the 14th-century Berber explorer Ibn Battuta , the sultans of the Kilwa Sultanate would frequently raid the areas around what is today Tanzania for slaves. The Zanj Rebellion ,

1886-637: The Muslim empire and claimed "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq". The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work. As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, they began to consider agriculture and other manual labor work as demeaning. The resulting labor shortage resulted in an increased slave market. It is certain that large numbers of slaves were exported from eastern Africa ;

1968-523: The Romanian language and literature at the University of Bucharest (1881–85), inspector-general of schools, and a member of the council for examining teachers in Romania. He also lectured on the Romanian apocrypha , the whole of which he had discovered in manuscript. Gaster was a central figure of Hibbat Zion in Romania and played a central role in the 1882 establishment by Jews from Moineşti of

2050-598: The Uganda Railway , which ended up costing taxpayers a total of £5,244,000. Unfortunately, the return on investment from the railway was not as substantial as anticipated. This shortfall, combined with the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa , sparked growing unease within the Foreign Office. Immigration to the protectorate was viewed as a potential solution to the mounting debt. In summary, the British had

2132-715: The Zionist movement in England, and even while in Romania he assisted in establishing the first Jewish town in Israel , Zichron Ya'akov . Rising in worldwide Jewish affairs he became vice-president of the First Zionist Congress in Basel , and was a prominent figure in each succeeding congress. Gaster's residence, "Mizpah" 193 Maida Vale in London served as the venue for early talks between prominent Zionists and

2214-512: The silk route in the 8th century. As the power and size of the Muslim trading networks grew, merchants along the routes were motivated to convert to Islam, as this would grant them access to contacts, trade routes and favour regarding trading rules under Muslim governance. By the 11th century, Kilwa , on the coast of modern-day Tanzania , had become a fully-fledged affluent center of a Muslim-governed trade in slaves and gold. Exports of slaves to

2296-475: The 1636 edict by Tokugawa Japan had expelled Portuguese people. The establishment of the Dutch East India Company in the early 17th century resulted in a quick increase in volume of the slave trade in the region; there were perhaps up to 500,000 slaves in various Dutch colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries in the Indian Ocean. For example, some 4000 African slaves were used to build

2378-636: The 1960s and 1970s. In the 21st century, activists contend that many immigrants who travel to those countries for work are held in virtual slavery The East African slave trade flourished greatly from the second half of the nineteenth century, when Said bin Sultan , an Oman Sultan, made Zanzibar his capital and expanded international commercial activities and plantation economy in cloves and coconuts. During this period demands for slaves grew drastically. The slaves were needed for local use mainly to work in plantations in Zanzibar and for export. Sultan Seyyid (seyyid

2460-535: The 19th century to European plantations in the Western Indian Ocean. Moses Gaster Moses Gaster (17 September 1856 – 5 March 1939) was a Romanian, later British scholar , the Hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish congregation , London, and a Hebrew and Romanian linguist . Moses Gaster was an active Zionist in Romania as well as in England, where in 1899 he helped establish

2542-620: The Comorian Archipelago to ports on the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Swahili Coast, Zanzibar and the Horn of Africa. From 700AD to 1600AD, an estimated two to three thousand East African and Malagasy slaves were trafficked annually from the Indian Ocean coast to slave ports along the Red Sea and Southern Arabia. By the mid-1600s, this number had increased to five to six thousands slaves trafficked each year from Madagascar alone (not including

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2624-807: The Comoros) to the Middle-east by non-European Muslim slave traders (Swahili, Comorian, Arab, Hadrami, Omani and Ottoman). Some historians estimate that during the 1600s as many as 150,000 Malagasy slaves were exported from Boeny in Northwest Madagascar to the Muslim World including the Red Sea Coast(Jeddah), Hejaz (Mecca), Arabia (Aden), Oman (Muscat), Zanzibar, Kilwa, Lamu, Malindi, Somalia (Barawa), and possibly Sudan (Suakin), Persia (Bandar Abbas), and India (Surat). Given

2706-714: The El Arish plan with Lord Lansdowne , the Foreign Secretary, believing it could gain the support of world Jewry for Britain. Chamberlain left London in December 1902 to tour South Africa and stopped in Mombasa before continuing to South Africa. After a warm welcome, White British settlers in the region presented their grievances to the Colonial Secretary about the Foreign Office's failure to attract

2788-573: The Foreign Office in 1917. The first draft of the Balfour Declaration was written at the Gaster home on 7 February 1917 in the presence of Chaim Weizmann , Nahum Sokolow , Baron Rothschild , Sir Mark Sykes and Herbert Samuel . Other visitors to the Gaster home included Winston Churchill , Vladimir Lenin , and Sigmund Freud . He was a great collector of manuscripts, having over two thousand, mainly Hebrew, Samaritan and Slavonic. At

2870-558: The Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA) began to fail by mid-1895. Poor infrastructure, financial instability, huge debts, and inadequate management led to this downfall. As a result, the British government proclaimed the protectorate, and its administration was transferred to the Foreign Office . With the aim of exploiting the commercial potential of the interior regions, the British built

2952-695: The Japanese consul Miyagawa Kyujiro said these Japanese women were taken by Malay and Chinese men who "lead them off to wild and savage lands where they suffered unimaginable hardship." One Chinese man paid 40 British pounds for 2 Japanese women, and a Malay man paid 50 British pounds for a Japanese woman in Port Darwin, Australia after they were trafficked there in August 1888 by a Japanese pimp, Takada Tokijirō. The buying of Chinese girls in Singapore

3034-442: The Jewish World was willing to take the risk, particularly in light of the Kishinev incident. However, some members, such as Reverend Dr. Moses Gaster and Lucien Wolf , strongly opposed the plan, believing it went against the principles of Zionism and was an unwise experiment with Jewish self-government. The Zionists' proposal was met with equal controversy in the British colony. The white British settlers were openly hostile toward

3116-418: The Jewish settlement, the main reason for the rejection of the Plan in 1905 was partly due to the opposition by the former high commissioner of East Africa and the white settlers in the area. This led the British to withdraw the offer. The East Africa plan was a significant turning point in Zionist history. Despite its rejection in 1905, the plan paved the way for the emergence of the territorialist ideology and

3198-433: The Mascarane Islands from 1670 until 1848. In all, Europeans traders exported 567,900–733,200 slaves within the Indian Ocean between 1500 and 1850, and almost that same number were exported from the Indian Ocean to the Americas during the same period. The slave trade in the Indian Ocean was, nevertheless, very limited compared to c.  12,000,000 slaves exported across the Atlantic. Some 200,000 slaves were sent in

3280-399: The Muslim world from the Indian Ocean began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar ). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in the present-day lands of Kenya , Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast. There, the slaves gradually assimilated in

3362-418: The Persians bought in India: Persees, Ientews (gentiles [i.e. Hindus]) Bannaras [Bhandaris?], and others." brought to Bandar Abbas via ship from Surat in 1628. In the 1760s, the Arab Syarif Abdurrahman Alkadrie enslaved other Muslims en masse while raiding coastal Borneo in violation of sharia , before he founded the Pontianak Sultanate . Raoul du Bisson was traveling down the Red Sea when he saw

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3444-460: The Red Sea (presumably Jeddah) where they were sold to Arab Muslim traders to be further sold and enslaved in Mecca, Medina, Mocha, Aden, al-Shihr and Kishn. At different times and to varying degrees, Portuguese, French, Dutch, English and Ottoman merchants were known to have taken part in the Malagasy slave trade too. The slave trade was taking place in the eastern Indian Ocean well before the Dutch settled there around 1600. The volume of this trade

3526-425: The Romanian government cancelled the decree of expulsion, presented him with the Romanian Ordinul Naţional "Pentru Merit" of the first class (1891), and invited him to return; however, he declined the invitation, and in 1893 became a naturalised British citizen. In 1895, at the request of the Romanian government, he wrote a report on the British system of education, which was printed as a "green book" and accepted as

3608-464: The Sahara. The captives were sold throughout the Middle East and East Africa. This trade accelerated as higher capacity ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year. Slave labor in East Africa was drawn from the Zanj , Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast. The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Muslim traders to all

3690-432: The Samarin (Zamarin) settlement, known since 1884 as Zichron Ya'akov . Having been expelled from Romania by the Ion Brătianu government in 1885 for allegedly "being a member of an irredentist society", he went to England, where he held a lectureship, 1886 and 1891, in Slavonic literature at the University of Oxford , his lectures being later published as Greco-Slavonic Literature , London, 1886. A few years after,

3772-431: The Samaritans and lists of manuscripts in their possession; and almost 1,500 uncatalogued Arabic fragments on paper from the Synagogue of Ben Ezra. In 1954 the collection was purchased by the John Rylands Library (since 1972 part of the University of Manchester), where it remains. The Rylands Cairo Genizah Project has been in progress for a number of years on the identification of fragments and digitisation of images of

3854-553: The Sharif to replace the drowned concubines. Emily Ruete (Salama bint Said) was born to Sultan Said bin Sultan and Jilfidan, a Circassian slave concubine (some accounts note her as Georgian ) a victim of the Circassian slave trade . An Indian girl slave named Mariam (originally Fatima) ended up in Zanzibar after being sold by multiple men. She originally came from Bombay. There were also Georgian girl slaves in Zanzibar. Men in Egypt and Hejaz were customers for Indian women trafficked via Aden and Goa. Since Britain banned

3936-428: The Tigris-Euphrates delta, which had become abandoned marshland as a result of peasant migration and repeated flooding, [and] [ sic ] could be reclaimed through intensive labor. Wealthy proprietors "had received extensive grants of tidal land on the condition that they would make it arable." Sugar cane was prominent among the crops of their plantations, particularly in Khūzestān Province . Zanj also worked

4018-459: The United States of America in 1833, with Great Britain in 1839, and France in 1844. Finally, he invited Asian merchants and experts who dealt with financial matters. It was not until 1873 that Sultan Seyyid Barghash of Zanzibar, under pressure from Great Britain, signed a treaty that made the slave trade in his territories illegal. The British played a significant role in ending slavery in East Africa. They made treaties with African rulers to stop

4100-434: The best evidence for this is the magnitude of the Zanj revolt in Iraq in the 9th century, though not all of the slaves involved were Zanj. There is little evidence of what part of eastern Africa the Zanj came from, for the name is here evidently used in its general sense, rather than to designate the particular stretch of the coast, from about 3°N. to 5°S., to which the name was also applied. The Zanj were needed to cultivate:

4182-461: The border but then divorced and given to other men. Syrians Dr. Midhat and Shaikh Yusuf were accused of engaging in this traffic of Syrian girls to supply them to Saudis. The Gulf of Bengal and Malabar in India were sources of eunuchs for the Safavid court of Iran, according to Jean Chardin . Sir Thomas Herbert accompanied Robert Shirley in 1627-9 to Safavid Iran. He reported seeing Indian slaves sold to Iran, "above three hundred slaves whom

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4264-406: The chief black eunuch of the Sharif of Mecca being brought to Constantinople for trial for impregnating a Circassian concubine of the Sharif and having sex with his entire harem of Circassian and Georgian women. The chief black eunuch had not been castrated correctly so he was still able to impregnate. Bisson reported that the women were drowned as punishment. Twelve Georgian women were shipped to

4346-444: The coasts, such as the Swahili Coast and the Horn of Africa , and through the Indian Ocean . The areas impacted included East Africa , Southern Arabia , the west coast of India , Indian ocean islands (including Madagascar ) and southeast Asia including Java . The source of slaves was primarily in sub-saharan Africa , but also included other parts of Africa and the Middle East, Indian Ocean islands, as well as south Asia. While

4428-401: The conditions were suitable for Jewish settlement. The commission was composed of Major Alfred St Hill Gibbons, a British veteran of the Boer War and a well-known explorer; Alfred Kaiser, a Swiss orientalist and advisor for the Northwest Cameroon Company ; and Nachum Wilbush, a Zionist engineer. Although there were disparities in their final reports, with the climate used to argue for and against

4510-409: The countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were revolts of Zanj slave soldiers in Iraq. A 7th-century Chinese text mentions ambassadors from Java presenting the Chinese emperor with two Seng Chi (Zanj) slaves as gifts in 614. 8th and 9th century chronicles mention Seng Chi slaves reaching China from

4592-577: The demand for menial labor, Bantus from southeastern Africa captured by Somali slave traders were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Somalia and other areas in Northeast Africa and Asia . People captured locally during wars and raids, mostly of Oromo and Nilotic origin, were also sometimes enslaved by Somalis. However, the perception, capture, treatment and duties of these two groups of enslaved peoples differed markedly. From 1800 to 1890, between 25,000 and 50,000 Bantu slaves are thought to have been sold from

4674-527: The escape of many slaves from the city; this was where most slaves in Arabia were located. Muslims often ignored Islamic prohibitions against enslaving other Muslims. Arab slave traders fooled both Javanese Muslims and Javanese Christians, tricking them into sending their children to slavery by lying and promising to escort the children to different places. A 4- and 3-year-old pair of Javanese Muslim boys were enslaved after they were purportedly to be taken to Mecca to learn Islam. An Arab lied, claiming he would take

4756-414: The establishment of the Jewish Territorial Organisation (ITO). The ITO emphasized the pressing need to find a solution to the Jewish problem, even if it meant giving up the return to the Land of Israel. Indian Ocean slave trade The Indian Ocean slave trade , sometimes known as the East African slave trade, involved the capture and transportation of predominately black African slaves along

4838-456: The following motive in offering the protectorate to the Zionists: Joseph Chamberlain and Theodor Herzl were acquainted through the Rothschild brothers. Initially, Herzl proposed a plan to the Colonial Secretary for Jewish settlement in Cyprus , the Sinai peninsula , or El Arish . However, Chamberlain deemed Herzl's proposal impractical since these territories were either inhabited or not under British control. Nevertheless, he agreed to discuss

4920-407: The idea of a Jewish homeland in East Africa to Dr. Herzl but did not pursue it further, assuming Herzl's interest would lie only in Palestine or nearby. Initially, Herzl was not interested in the offer of a Jewish homeland in East Africa, as his focus was primarily on Palestine and its surrounding area. However, everything changed after the Kishnev Pogrom after which he redoubled his efforts to secure

5002-453: The interior to Byzantine Egypt via the Red Sea. He also mentioned the import of eunuchs by the Byzantines from Mesopotamia and India. After the 1st century, the export of black Africans from Tanzania, Mozambique and other Bantu groups became a "constant factor". Under the Sasanians, Indian Ocean trade supported not only the transport of slaves, but also of scholars and merchants. The Muslim world expanded along trade routes, such as

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5084-415: The islands of Réunion and Mauritius in 1721; by 1735 some 7,200 slaves populated the Mascarene Islands , a number which had reached 133,000 in 1807. The British captured the islands in 1810, however. Because the British had prohibited the slave trade in 1807, a system of clandestine slave trade developed to bring slaves to French planters on the islands; in all 336,000–388,000 slaves were exported to

5166-399: The main supply of slaves to India and the Middle East. Ethiopian slaves, both females imported as concubines and men imported as eunuchs, were imported in 19th-century Iran. Sudan, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zanzibar exported the majority of slaves traded to 19th-century Iran. The principal sources of these slaves, all of whom passed through Matamma, Massawa and Tadjoura on the Red Sea, were

5248-410: The offer and formed the "Anti-Zionist Immigration Committee," which rejected the proposal through the African Standard . They believed that British poor people deserved the land more than the Jews and expressed concerns about how the black natives would react to the Jewish immigrants. Furthermore, there were worries about granting a special territory to an alien community after the troubles in Canada with

5330-427: The outbreak of the second World War his collection was moved for safekeeping to cellars in the centre of London. However, water used to quench London fires saturated a large part of the collection, which made some of the items illegible in whole or in part. Fortunately many of them had previously been transliterated into Hebrew typescript. The collection comprised over 10,000 fragments in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic from

5412-452: The port of Adulis and other ports in the Horn of Africa . Pliny the Elder 's Natural History (published in 77 CE) also describes Indian Ocean slave trading. In the 1st century CE, Periplus of the Erythraean Sea advised of slave trading opportunities in the region, particularly in the trading of "beautiful girls for concubinage." According to this manual, slaves were exported from Omana (likely near modern-day Oman ) and Kanê to

5494-421: The rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands. Muslim merchants traded an estimated 1000 African slaves annually between 800 and 1700, a number that grew to c.  4000 during the 18th century, and 3700 during the period 1800–1870. William Gervase Clarence-Smith writes that estimating the number of slaves traded has been controversial in the academic world, especially when it comes to

5576-425: The salt mines of Mesopotamia , especially around Basra . Their jobs were to clear away the nitrous topsoil that made the land arable. The working conditions were considered to be extremely harsh and miserable. Many other people were imported as slaves into the region, besides Zanj. Historian M. A. Shaban has argued that the rebellion was not a slave revolt, but a revolt of blacks ( zanj ). In his opinion, although

5658-470: The slave market of Zanzibar to the Somali coast. Most of the slaves were from the Majindo , Makua , Nyasa , Yao , Zalama , Zaramo and Zigua ethnic groups of Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi . Collectively, these Bantu groups are known as Mushunguli , which is a term taken from Mzigula , the Zigua tribe's word for "people" (the word holds multiple implied meanings including "worker", "foreigner", and "slave"). 14th-century traveler Ibn Battuta met

5740-465: The slave trade at its source and offered protection against slave kingdoms like Ashanti. The Royal Navy was instrumental in capturing slave ships and freeing enslaved Africans. Between 1808 and 1860, around 1,600 slave ships were captured, and more than 150,000 enslaved Africans were freed. Britain also made suppressing the Atlantic slave trade a part of its foreign policy. Arab Muslim traders also trafficked Malagasy and Comorian slaves from Madagascar and

5822-497: The slave trade in its colonies, 19th-century British-ruled Aden no longer legally received slaves. Those slaves sent from Ethiopia to Arabia were shipped to Hejaz instead for sale. Eunuchs, female concubines, and male laborers were the chief roles of slaves sent from Ethiopia to Jidda and other parts of Hejaz. The southwest and southern parts of Ethiopia supplied most of the girls being exported by Ethiopian slave traders to India and Arabia. Female and male slaves from Ethiopia made up

5904-523: The slave trade in the Indian Ocean started 4,000 years ago, it expanded significantly in late antiquity (1st century CE) with the rise of Byzantine and Sassanid trading enterprises. Muslim slave trading started in the 7th century , with the volume of trade fluctuating with the rise and fall of local powers. Beginning in the 16th century, slaves were traded to the Americas , including Caribbean colonies, as Western European powers became involved in

5986-632: The slave trade in the areas of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea . When estimating the number of people enslaved from East Africa , author N'Diaye and French historian Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau estimate 8 million as the total number of people transported from the 7th century until 1920, amounting to an average of 5,700 people per year. Many of these slaves were transported by the Indian Ocean and Red Sea via Zanzibar. This compares with their estimate of 9 million people enslaved and transported via

6068-563: The slave trade. Trade declined with the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. Slave trading in the Indian Ocean goes back to 2500 BCE. Ancient Babylonians , Egyptians , Greeks , Indians , and Persians all traded slaves on a small scale across the Indian Ocean (and sometimes the Red Sea ). Slave trading in the Red Sea around the time of Alexander the Great is described by Agatharchides . Strabo 's Geographica (completed after 23 CE) mentions Greeks from Egypt trading slaves at

6150-695: The slavery business in Mombasa , Zanzibar and, to some extent, in the Southern African region. Indonesians were also participants, and brought spices to trade in Africa. They would have returned via India and Sri Lanka with ivory, iron, skins, and slaves. After the Byzantine and Sasanian empires entered into slave trading in the 6th century AD, it became a major enterprise. Cosmas Indicopleustes wrote in his Christian Topography (550 CE) that Somali port cities were exporting slaves captured in

6232-770: The southwestern parts of Ethiopia, in the Oromo and Sidama country. Both non-Muslims and Muslims in Southeast Asia during the end of the 19th century bought Japanese girls as slaves ; they were imported by sea to the region. The Japanese women were sold as concubines to both Muslim Malay men and non-Muslim Chinese and British men of the British-ruled Straits Settlements of British Malaya . They had often been trafficked from Japan to Hong Kong and Port Darwin in Australia . In Hong Kong,

6314-635: The texts. The 'Gaster Collection,' a number of mainly Karaite and Yemenite manuscripts were purchased from the library of Dr. Moses Gaster in 1927, and are currently housed at the British Library . An important early Hebrew codex called the First Gaster Bible was also acquired by the British Library from his collection. Moses Gaster was the father of Jack and Theodor Gaster and the grandfather of Marghanita Laski . He

6396-464: The unique racial composition of Madagascar, which was populated by a mix of Austronesian and Bantu settlers, the Malagasy slaves included people with Southeast Asian, African and hybrid phenotypes. European traders participated in the lucrative slave trade between Madagascar and the Red Sea as well. In 1694, a Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship trafficked over 400 Malagasy slaves to an Arabian port on

6478-516: The west coast of India. The ancient Indian Ocean slave trade was enabled by building ships capable of carrying large numbers of human beings in the Persian Gulf using wood imported from India. These shipbuilding activities go back to Babylonian and Achaemenid times. Gujarati merchants evolved into the first explorers of the Indian Ocean as they traded slaves and African goods such as ivory and tortoise shells. The Gujaratis participated in

6560-751: The yearly reports of that institution. He was a member of the councils of the Folklore, Biblical, Archaeological, and Royal Asiatic societies, writing many papers in their interest. He was the only ordained rabbi ever to become president of The Folklore Society , in 1907–1908. In 1925, Gaster was appointed one of the six members of the honorary board of trustees (Curatorium) of the Yiddish Scientific Institute ( YIVO ) in Vilnius alongside Simon Dubnow , Albert Einstein , Sigmund Freud , Edward Sapir and Chaim Zhitlowsky . Gaster made

6642-504: Was also son-in-law to Michael Friedländer and father-in-law to Neville Laski . Gaster's major work, in which he invested ten years of his life, was a Romanian chrestomathy and glossary covering the period from the dawn of Romanian literature down to 1830. Gaster also wrote various text-books for the Jewish community of Romania , made a Romanian translation of the Siddur , and compiled

6724-788: Was forbidden for Muslims by a Batavia (Jakarta)-based Arab Muslim Mufti, Usman bin Yahya , in a fatwa . He ruled that in Islam it was illegal to buy free non-Muslims or marry non-Muslim slave girls during peace time from slave dealers, and non-Muslims could only be enslaved and purchased during holy war (jihad). In Jeddah , Kingdom of Hejaz on the Arabian peninsula , the Arab king Ali bin Hussein, King of Hejaz had in his palace 20 Javanese girls from Java (modern day Indonesia ). They were used as his concubines. The Saudi conquest of Hejaz led to

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