from the
Ottoman expansion into the Balkans, woodcut by
Erhard Schön, c. 1530
Saracen piracy During the Middle ages,
Saracen Andalusian pirates established themselves in bases in southern France,
the Baleares, Southern Italy and Sicily, from which they raided the coasts of the Christian Mediterranean and exported their prisoners as Saqaliba slaves to the
slave markets of the Muslim West Asia. The
Aghlabids of
Ifriqiya was a base for Saracen attacks along the Spanish East coast as well as against Southern Italy from the early 9th century; they attacked
Rome in 845,
Comacchio in 875-876,
Monte Cassino in 882-83, and established the
Emirate of Bari (847–871), the
Emirate of Sicily (831–1091) and a base in
Garigliano (882-906), which became bases of slave trade. During the warfare between Rome and the
Byzantine Empire in Southern Italy in the 9th century the Saracens made Southern Italy a supply source for a slave trade to
Maghreb by the mid-9th century; the Western Emperor
Louis II complained in a letter to the Byzantine Emperor that the Byzantines in
Naples guided the Saracens in their raids toward South Italy and aided them in their slave trade with Italians to North Africa, an accusation noted also by the Lombard Chronicler
Erchempert. Moorish
Saracen pirates from
al-Andalus attacked
Marseille and
Arles and established a base in
Camargue,
Fraxinetum or La Garde-Freinet-Les Mautes (888–972), from which they made slave raids in to France; The Saracens captured
the Baleares in 903, and made slave raids also from this base toward the coasts of the Christian Mediterranean and Sicily.
Samanid Empire A major supply source to the
Samanid slave trade was the non-Muslim
Turkic peoples of
Central Asian steppe, which were both bought as well as regularly kidnapped in slave raids by the thousands to supply the Bukhara slave trade. The slave trade with Turkic people was the biggest slave supply for the Samanid Empire. Until the 13th century, the majority of Turkic peoples were not Muslims but adherents of
Tengrism,
Buddhism, and various forms of
animism and
shamanism, which made them infidels and as such legitimate targets for enslavement by Islamic law. Many slaves in the medieval Islamic world referred to as "white" were of Turkic origin. From the 7th century onward, when the first Islamic military campaigns were conducted toward Turkic lands in Caucasus and Central Asia, Turkic people were enslaved as war captives and then trafficked as slaves via slave raids via southern Russia and the Caucasus into Azerbaijan, and through Karazm and Transoxania into Khorasan and Iran; in 706 the Arab governor Qotayba b. Moslem killed all men in Baykand in Sogdia and took all the women and children as slaves in to the Umayyad Empire Turkic slaves were the main slave supply of the Samanid slave trade, and regularly formed a part of the land tax sent to the Abbasid capital of Baghdad; the geographer
Al-Maqdisi (ca. 375/985) noted that in his time the annual levy (ḵarāj) included 1,020 slaves. By the tenth and eleventh centuries the Vikings had established slave markets in Ireland's major ports. when they plundered the island of Rathlin. This island, off the northeast coast of Ireland, is home to numerous burial sites with official evidence of their existence. According to the Annals of Ulster, the first raid on this island was known as "Loscad Rechrainne o geinntib," also known as "the burning of Rechru by heathens." Sporadic raids continued until 832, after which the Norsemen began to establish fortified settlements throughout the country. Norse raids continued throughout the 10th century, but resistance to them grew. The Norsemen established independent kingdoms in Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Cork, and Limerick. These kingdoms did not survive subsequent Norman invasions, but the towns continued to grow and prosper.
Crimean–Nogai slave raids The
Crimean–Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe provided some two or three million slaves for
slavery in the Ottoman Empire via the
Crimean slave trade between the 15th century and the late 18th century. During this period the
Crimean Khanate was the destination of the
Crimean–Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe, and European and Circassian slaves were trafficked to the Middle East via the Crimea.
Kazakh and Turkmen raids The Kazakh-Russian conflicts of the 17th–18th centuries were a series of armed confrontations between the
Kazakh Khanate and the
Tsardom of Russia, later the
Russian Empire, as well as their subjects: the
Cossacks,
Bashkirs, and
Kalmyks. The
Kazakh raids into Russia were accompanied by looting and the abduction of people into slavery. The raids began during the reign of
Tauke Khan in 1690 and continued intermittently until the end of the 18th century. Isolated raids also occurred in the early and late 19th century. The captives of the Kazakh raids were among the suppliers to the
Khivan slave trade and the
Bukhara slave trade.
Turkmen tribal groups also performed regular slave raids, referred to as
alaman. Shia
Persians were considered legitimate targets by Sunni Muslim Turkmens and
Uzbek slave traders. Many of them were captured during
Turkmen slave raids into the villages of northwestern Iran. A notorious slave market for Persian slaves was located in the
Khanate of Khiva from the 17th to the 19th centuries.
Barbary pirates European slaves were acquired by
Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from
Italy to
the Netherlands,
Ireland and the
southwest of Britain, as far north as
Iceland and into the
Eastern Mediterranean. On some occasions, settlements such as
Baltimore in Ireland were abandoned following a raid, only being resettled many years later.
West Africa 's
Mossi cavalry returning with captives from a raid Raiding villages was also a method of capturing slaves in Africa, and accounted for the overwhelming majority of West African slaves. While there was some slave raiding along the African coasts by Europeans, much of the raiding that took place was performed by other West Africans powers. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from
Central Africa and
West Africa and had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids. European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at
forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Western hemisphere. These included the
Bono State,
Oyo empire (
Yoruba),
Kong Empire,
Imamate of Futa Jallon,
Imamate of Futa Toro,
Kingdom of Koya,
Kingdom of Khasso,
Kingdom of Kaabu,
Fante Confederacy,
Ashanti Confederacy, and the kingdom of
Dahomey. These kingdoms relied on a militaristic culture of constant warfare to generate the great numbers of human captives required for trade with the Europeans.
Bandeirantes depicting
bandeiras enslaving
Guaraní people in the Brazilian interior
Bandeirantes were frontiersmen and explorers in
colonial Brazil who, from the early 16th century, participated in inland expeditions to find precious metals and enslave
indigenous peoples. They played a major role in expanding Brazil's borders to its approximate modern-day limits, beyond the boundaries demarcated by the 1494
Treaty of Tordesillas. Most
bandeirantes hailed from
São Paulo. Some
bandeirantes were descended from Portuguese colonists who settled in São Paulo, but most were of
mameluco descent with both Portuguese and indigenous ancestry.
Spanish in Chile Although there was a general ban on enslavement of indigenous people by Spanish Crown, the 1598–1604
Mapuche uprising that ended with the
Destruction of the Seven Cities made the Spanish in 1608 declare slavery legal for those Mapuches caught in war. Mapuches "rebels" were considered Christian
apostates and could therefore be enslaved according to the church teachings of the day. In reality these legal changes only formalized Mapuche slavery that was already occurring at the time, with captured Mapuches being treated as property in the way that they were bought and sold among the Spanish. Legalisation made Spanish slave raiding increasingly common in the
Arauco War. The
Mapuche uprising of 1655 had parts of its background in the slave hunting expeditions of
Juan de Salazar, including his
failed 1654 expedition. Slavery for Mapuches "caught in war" was abolished in 1683 after decades of legal attempts by the Spanish Crown to suppress it.
North America The
Haida and
Tlingit peoples who lived along the
southeastern Alaskan coast were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California. From the early 18th century to the 1870s, the
Comanche were the dominant tribe of the
Southern Plains. As American settlers encroached on their territory, the Comanche waged war on the settlers and raided their settlements, as well as those of neighboring Native American tribes. They took with them captives from other tribes during warfare, using them as
slaves, selling them to the Spanish and (later) to
Mexican settlers, or adopting them into their tribe.
South African Republic and the Boer Republics The practice of slavery and slave raiding also took place along the borders of the
South African Republic by the
Boers up until at least 1870. West Transvaal Boers and
others procured women and children as slaves and used them as domestic servants and plantation workers. Boer slave raids in the South African Republic were regular and the number captured totaled in the thousands. This is despite the prohibition of slavery north of the
Vaal River under the 1852
Sand River Convention. == See also ==