this. process. this is the story of a world whose borders and territories were drawn by the slave trade where violence subjugation and profit imposed their own roots slavery did not begin in the cotton fields of the us is a far more ancient tragedy that has been going on since the dawn of humanity from the 8th century onwards for over 1000 years africa was the epicenter of a global form of human trafficking that came out i would mean. my parents were abused by those with a threat complection or. newbie and. songhai for lani. bound to pull. over 20000000 africans were deported traded and reduced to slavery this criminal system shaped our history and our world so expansive was its reach that for a long time it seemed impossible to fully explain its mechanisms. in this series we will journey back along the roots of the slave trade. the thing about the slave trade a key thing about the slave trade and i always would have to explain the store merican students who immediately would want to put it into a kind of an ethical human rights card of a contract if you have to look at an economic terms and so if you have if you're talking about a slave trade if the where is the demand where is there a demand for labor and what is the nature of america for white for. 2000 years ago slavery became an integral feature of the roman empire eventually in 476 rome collapsed under the pressure of invasions by so-called barbarians. scattered territories a range of peoples and powers fought over the empires remains this a goths and ostrogoths in the west slavs in the north east berbers in the south the byzantine empire the kingdom of new bia and arab tribes in the east just like rome before them these societies also practiced slavery. and governed suicide we see slavery and it doesn't matter where they come from but come from everywhere from a stops. to to russia to a ball of eastern europe all through the slavic countries which is where of course the word for them in most of the european allies which is comes from a comes from the words lot of. those were people that. conceptions are words label. for a long time most of slaves were white the majority of slaves being black is a relatively recent phenomenon in history. so how did a widespread practice evolve into an enormous trade which progressively focused its sights on the african continent. one of the starting points of this story is cairo on the river nile a 23000000 strong megalopolis born from the network of trade routes between the middle east and africa. today it's the continent's most important crossroads for people and goods. south of the modern city are the ruins of the 1st arab city in egypt. these remains are in the collected site and yet this is where the destinies of africa the middle east and the mediterranean converged some 1400 years ago. in $641.00 a game changing event would occur with their vast conquest campaign underway the arab armies established a junction between africa and the middle east their expansion into egypt would change the continent's entire economy and intensify the demand for slaves. slavery was crucial to the concourses self and it was crucial to the systems of the slum the empire and its expansion from the congress is self captives where turned into slaves and those slaves were recruited in da to me that conquered basically the world at that time. it was 1st and foremost a trade with economic and political stakes. the slaves were the essential source of energy. back then there was no oil. they were in effect the driving force behind these emerging empires. the arab troops pressed ahead as far as. the christian lands of. their arabs found provisions. they would enlist in their armies to pursue their expansion in $769.00 they signed a pact with the new stipulating that hostilities would change for $360.00 slaves per year in a war. through or. was related to the. order. which was. in the beginning it wasn't a trade. it was spoils of war. the conquest was swift in less than a century the arabs had occupied the mediterranean southern. border was taking shape separating the muslim world from the land. in libya and the desert region the arabs imposed the same conditions they had established in. agreement to organize the 1st deportations from africa to the middle east tire convoys of captives made their way towards the world's new center back dad. the illustrated my come on manuscripts short tales taken from arabic literature show how these 1st african slaves intermingled with muslim society. after 2 centuries of military conquest the demand for slaves evolved in the 9th century the embassy dynasty embarked on a monumental project to transform the swamps around basra into lush. instead of soldiers baghdad now needed workers to cultivate the iraqi soil to do so the empire brought in thousands of slaves. on some sides there were between 505000 workers. and there was considerable turnover because in such conditions their working life barely went beyond 10 to 15 years. it required a lot of hard labor to remove the salt in order to get to. as well as the gate for this one they needed lots. and they began to import. slaves for the from all over. where do the muslim arabs go to get slaves out of principle they pick non muslim slaves from another culture and outside the empire. color wasn't the basis for slavery culture was the slaves weren't part of the dominant culture. in the 9th century the arabs extended their trade networks from the entire mediterranean to the caucasus turkey the balkans and russia. from the horn of africa entire boatloads of ethiopian and new being captives were sailed up the nile. even further out from the high plateaus of somalia and tanzania successive waves of slaves referred to as sun streamed into mesopotamia via the indian ocean appears to be a portion of ward. and went black and when slaves began to be brought in large numbers. of what is now your rock. there were proportionately so many who are from. of course. the ones you began to be used as a name to being slaves in. little by little the number of slaves grew and became so high that rebellions broke out among the banks of the euphrates and the tigris in 1969 the stange took up arms and raised an army numbering tens of thousands of men. heading the insurrection was. a former high dignitary of the caliphate. what we know about that revolt is that many of the participants perhaps most of them were not actually african or weren't there were some newbie ans the most important leader of the revolt was. someone who is an arab whose mother had been an indian concubine so it's gives you a sense of how complicated the demography was. i believe that mohammad was quite a learned man but he began to be dissatisfied with the regime and when he went to basra he found that there were a lot of slaves there walking on these farms began to actually do investigation and found that their life conditions of the slaves were very very bad there was so much this that affection among them that you found that they're the most rebellious group the ones who could be mobilized for revolution there's kind of a shutdown because it was that slavery which lasted for about over a decade it was so disruptive it seems to have been one of the contributing factors to a kind of a shrinking of trading in the india western indian ocean. the regimes armies were deployed to brutally put down the rebellion between 500001 1000000 slaves were massacred in mesopotamia the censurable ended in a bloodbath. despite its failure the uprising precipitated the decline of baghdad in favor of another city cairo the empire's new capital. in the 10th century cairo was the mediterraneans greatest trading hub far ahead of venice general and constantinople the empire's center of gravity had shifted towards africa. this new geopolitical situation had far reaching consequences from then on the slavery routes turned toward inner africa. customs change as did the slaves position in society. slaves in egypt were reflected the wealth of cairo and so we find slaves in all levels of society to find slaves as as concubines to the caleb's. as elite court as ins and entertainers but probably the largest number of slaves were in the domestic sphere so these were household slaves. and people were purchased slaves of course to perform labor but also because those slaves had a had a symbolic value and those slaves reflected an owner's social status and increase their own prestige and in their various communities. for a long time historians had no information on the slaves who were taken to cairo but the discovery of some extraordinary documents which had been hidden for a 1000 years in the city's oldest synagogue has enabled them to find out more about the captives identities and places of origin. for almost a millennium the jews of this son of god deposited documents worn out manuscripts into a large chamber. offensively with the ultimate intention to bury beings documents and in a ritual way because those documents might have been name of god written on them and so they weren't to be disposed of casually. but the community never buried these documents and amongst these documents were hundreds of documents or relate to slavery there are dozens and dozens of bills of sale for slaves. preserved at the university of cambridge the guineas that documents reveal how moving the empire's capital to cairo altered trade routes this late from antiquity the slavs the caucasian was replaced by the african. i found it roughly 52 percent of slaves especially domestic slaves in egypt or from black africa between the late term and the 13th century. africa was exposed and vulnerable new billions ethiopians and sudanese would now make up the majority of slave contingents sold in cairo. here at the street markets most were women black women who were exhibited as trophies. destined to satisfy all of their master's requirements their prices were determined by their age and beauty. slave women have a variety of names they translated into english as things like success prosperity prodigality these are all names which reflect the way that slavery function as a kind of form of consumption and then we also have have slaves with names like. wild rose musk. names that reflect luxury items very often when you have domestic slaves a possible relationship begins to develop between the slave on us and the slaves and if it can become quite intimate for example when a child is born a guard she would be given a slave servant. who would grow up without almost like a friend although the state does it's quite different. but we're often told that in islam but then slavery was very bitter and a list with a tight relationship between slave and master and that the slave was always sure they would have benchley be friedan's and integrated into the master's amalie and if you met the last quick on the i believe it's misleading to consider slavery in this way as something that had a soft side. one of the buckle pulled you can't understand slavery if you don't relate it to the violence at its heart so soft slavery or domestic slavery you know that's nonsense slavery is the negation of being human through the use of violence . of your last pool fitness goal. as the empire expanded more and more slaves adopted their masters religion. since islam for bade the enslavement of muslims the newly converted thought they could now escape the violence of these domineer on nations these conversions posed a contradiction for the arabs on the one hand they had to enfranchise these new muslims on the other hand they would not give up their slaves. thinking from the islamic perspective it's only true and belief that you get a place that's the legal you know principle basically in the frontiers of islam is considering the people they are and believers that's the legitimate area where slaves can be produced. as the number of converts grew the arabs had to find new sources of slaves conversion in turn created demand having become muslims certain groups such as the berbers sided with the arabs and helped them find captives beyond the empires borders. to beggars themselves where in slave to buy dollars although the convert to islam they were to the does inferior and vassals. the whole of the better verse in the towns hung trade it's a fundamental the 1st knowledge we have is from out of exposes that talk about to members have been. established. that the sahar network would sub-saharan africans. what we know is that the use of the camel helped they simply increase the trade. and that knowledge was transmitted to the arabs. the better support was a crucial value. they were masters of desert survival techniques beginning with the use of camels the only rideable animals capable of doing without water for weeks. thanks to this means of transportation the arabs were able to cross the daunting sahara barrier. so heritage in some ways was a barrier but so are the oceans and in some ways are you after developer technology on ability to cross that it was always a barrier. a political issues of movement of people. trade routes formed between the north and south of the sahara to connect both ends of the desert merchants had to follow the caravan route right along babbar territory and pass through the sea wall oasis dahmus begun. before arriving in timbuktu the deserts last stop and the gateway to the mali empire. heading this immense empire west and john takeda king of kings and its founding fathers. victory in the great battle of 2 rina in 1235 enabled him to unite all of the regions peoples and form a massive commercial network along the banks of the niger. martin the. arabs and barras established a trading post in timbuktu from where they maintain trade relations with this centralized empire. they bartered salt fabric jewelry and mediterranean dates in return for ivory copper slaves and most importantly gold. reorganize trade tried to build up enter. regional relations in order to protect his empire's interests also the gov so organizing regional and to regional trade was one of his greatest accomplishments as a result it may even have provided the foundations for the mali empire fall together to. form the model not to the point. of. timbuktu's importance stemmed from its geographical location. on the banks of the niger river its port became a center for transferring luggage and goods to and from the north. this natural crossroads occupied a strategic position in the transept herron trade. the mali empire which the baggers traded with enjoyed abundant wealth thanks to the book and brain mines it possessed the world's largest gold reserves more than half of the precious metal circulating in the mediterranean originated from these deposits. throughout. the trade between north and south for the. slaves. on wetter. and gold was always in the soft one feeds the other mid-level i do know of notices that they have to get gold mining in african societies was mainly done by captives the gold trade and slavery were closely linked. while i believe the gold may have predated slavery with the chronology is unclear it's usually said that both grew in significance at the same time don't lead on to slavery was in fact hidden behind the gold trade. with d.c. . i think that. some of sunday at arcades as generals never gave up this lucrative business that you felt that but the fact is it did make a number of efforts to intervene with them. he reminded his fellow countrymen of the threat that slavery posed to the survival of the malenka country you bet the money. is going to by the comparisons are questionable but i do remember that charlemagne himself prohibited slavery but that didn't stop it you know that men will be men. of the whole of the. oral tradition credit some job as the founder of mali an identity and the symbol of the country's prosperity for a century the mali and higher reigned over all of western africa leaving behind the deserts greatest library. in timbuktu history inhabits the homes where over 360000 medieval manuscripts are preserved. these treasures are owned by wealthy local families they pass them down from generation to generation often hiding them from view in secret places. threatened with destruction tens of thousands of manuscripts are now being restored . this 11th century qur'an reveals how islam spread throughout western africa. thanks to merchant contacts between the arab areas and african elites muslim culture gradually spread among and habitants of this a hell region south of the sahara to the point where syngenta kate had declared islam to be the official religion of the mali empire. so they're now part of the slimy slimy nation and they can benefit from the flame a compiler which is access to that big market that was controlled by the islamic empire and so that business connection benefited both the millions as well as the people in the islamic community at large. her her her. her. the conversion of people in the silent region prompted merchants and chieftains to seize slaves even further away. the slave trade expanded south of the mali empire to animist populations to the arab geographer. relegated to the fringes of humanity . almost all arab writers and korean you see and the others. it's often sometimes. they don't really see them as humans or they consider them to be cannibals outside of the civilized world. or the lowest black men and practically not human. these descriptions show that reducing them to slavery was not really a problem from a theological or moral point of view. as the need to turn an individual into a slave an important element a spur trade them as an other to construct an other ness. and human societies have a broad range of criteria for doing with you to remember this school in the movies . and you can use the difference in skin complection difference in religion. in the transparent trade both were combined. lead due. to. the history of timbuktu is intertwined with that of slavery. according to legend the city took its name from an old female slave who would wash over the well where the herds drank. timbuktu supposedly comes from the word to him which means well into iraq and this woman's 1st name book to. play today northern mali remains a caste based society in timbuktu ancestry determines rank whether somebody is free or captive depends on their name and lineage. at the top of the social ladder of the light skins to our eggs former warriors who have always owned land and weapons at the very bottom of the balance descendants of slaves who have nothing apart from their capacity for physical work to rely on for survival many still cultivate their former masters fields aware of their family slave origins. who never let me through the heart of good will my name is i had a motto that i belong to the any made it out and try my parents were abused by those with the fact complection with the feeling about it but i think the budding name my father worked for them but not today while he was there herdsman but those with a fair complection abused them of the new government more than. the money flowing. mentality that made. the landowners have an interest in communicating to the workers that they are slaves not because of an old. it's a power that can be turned around because it's nature but it's a good part of suddenly they are destined to be slaves. in this industry to lose it but. it's a very powerful ideology what if your blood is considered to be servile you pass this nature on to your descendants good luck last maybe i want to end this on dogs it becomes impossible to escape slavery. in the fundamental is closest to. the. other the other. as the slave trade expanded certain peoples were forever reduced to slave status many internalized their condition and ended up viewing their situation as inevitable by creating entire lineages of slaves the transparent trade continually produced workers without resorting to physical violence. throughout the 13th century more than a 1000 slaves left the mali empire every year. they were joined by contingents from kunene boer knew he and knew beyond. all of the routes from your mouth period to really are focusing on the islamic world i'm sold the roots come from or from the periphery and i go into the center of and very often or along these routes that that brought slaves and of the islamic world use least slaves going on actually in both directions as well they tend to bowl in greater numbers toward the center of the islamic world but people are bought and sold everywhere along the way sold or play. brut itself was everywhere. on the p.c. but we don't have precise figures there are no statistics and no systematic studies but it seems that many more people died and disappeared during the crossing of the desert than of the sea. according to some hypotheses and some contingents it was 30 percent so one in 3 of those slaves being transported never made it to the other side. the atar on that the market in cairo. it was at this fruit and vegetable market on the banks of the nile that ships used to unload their goods. today no one remembers that thousands of captives arrived in egypt at this location after a 4500 kilometer trek through the desert. meanwhile this long period of slavery and its memory are a problem today because they've yet to be addressed by historians so there's widespread misunderstanding and ignorance of history and it seems this black presence is considered awkward. for example the magreb region is called the northern africa but not africa. only because we're told it's a white africa totally white. and that black tunisians algerians and moroccans are strangers men although they've been here for centuries. antony they have dreadful sayings like make god not black and our woman whose. piece. work best when. in high school i was taught this horrible poem in which black slaves are described as people born from the most appalling of all races and while . on the face the suit their lips. let the study lab the 11th hour who in the lobby the next one minute men i swear that mafia. and who. does he then hit. this left a lifelong mark on me. in the years 1324 months some mussa the new molly an emperor and son john tukey test grandnephew undertook a pilgrimage to mecca by egypt. you follow the caravan route all the way up to cairo. this journey marked the completion of a long process the establishment of a massive commercial trading zone between timbuktu and cairo. for the 1st time a leader from the south met those in power in the north. the egyptian historian and the crazy reported a man some who says spectacular arrival in cairo on the night of sunday 15 struck the 1st the moon rose completely eclipsed. and then came man's and. king of tycoon to make the pilgrimage. he. again for 3 days at the feet of the pyramids as a gas. he entered cairo on thursday $26.00 runs out ascended the citadel but the climb to kiss the ground and was in force to do so. however he was not allowed to sit in the presence of the sultan. the sultan commanded any be equipped for the pilgrimage. commands the moose i was accommodated and spend so much gold for what it is i slave girls goblins on the range of the dino fell by 60 rounds. and nobody has actually before or after done any trip like that on that scale and that and with that kind of visibility and that amount of gold you have documented they say that he took with him about 12000 slaves just for his personal service and 80 loads of gold and a very load ways like freakin cost which is basically lot of. money says voyage marked a turning point in history word of the mercantile power of the mali empire traveled back to the europeans through the mediterranean the cattle an atlas from 1375 is the 1st representation of the known world in its entirety it shows the seas the rivers and the deserts of africa. we see a camel written by a barber and another one being driven on by a black man following him on foot. in the east near the nile and the red sea is the sultan of cairo at the bottom of the parchment sits munson mussa holding all of the gold in the world in his hands. so that there's no evidence like one text that this outlaws brings us back to the great african empires of the medieval era we tend to forget the riches that were produced back then in africa so their country. an atlas maps of this commercial power of which it also become known to the europeans shifts the power of a news of it is appropriate ringback ringback. toward the end of the middle ages 6 great slave trade routes crossed the sub-saharan african desert all the way up to the mediterranean each was connected to a major port algiers tunis tripoli cairo all were departure points for shipments to the markets of southern europe venice genuine marsay and granada. some captives were even deported as far as china and japan in all 3 and a half 1000000 african captives were traded on the slavery routes between the 7th and the 14th centuries. the impact of the transcend her and slave trade has left a deeply rooted legacy mali war a tiny niger and libya are today home to $2000000.00 of slave descent. the war raging in isa hell region has enabled the light skin to our rags to reassert their authority over the ballasts. many had to flee to the capital of mali bamako among them in time out and his wife a shuttle who have tried to free themselves from slavery today they hide in the suburbs was on the ballot her father told us his children had been abducted by a trois rag named saadoun zuma assaulted. and i love i've been through terrible things i had to leave because i couldn't bear it anymore my younger brothers and a few relatives are still there. i lived there as a servant that was my job. i couldn't live with my family. i did everything they wanted. and you got money or animals in return. out of the week to learn i didn't get anything only suffering nothing but suffering. their freedom remains fragile without the protection of their former masters they often live in absolute poverty even living in anonymity in the large southern cities a mere surname can betray an individual's ancestry. this difficulty to free themselves from their caste perpetuates a 1000 year old social order. even if you were a member of government you'd still be a captive even if you were a fair skinned minister they'll still call you a slave. that's what you are the cup. you know why your dignity you have no dignity and you. know that the. illinois. at. that. time has redrawn the frontiers of states yet thousands of mali and eritreans sudanese and libyans continue to crisscross the great transfer heron roots every year fleeing poverty persecution or armed conflicts nearly 200000 sub-saharan head towards the mediterranean. once in cairo these people become easy prey for traffickers. the war in the silent region has reawakened the slave trade legacy and with it practices that ought to have been banished to the past. was. that. it happened that. that was. at. 70. 7. the history of slavery is a tragedy that keeps on repeating itself in the 14th century a new perpetrator entered the stage europe's thirst for conquest would plunge africa into a new era the slave trade would now assume unprecedented dimensions. come . the. black snow in southern side. for environmental activists it's further proof of the consequences of an air pollution. they're demanding the relocation of endangered residents. from any industry that's responsible is also a major source of reliable income focused on europe. in 90 minutes on d w. more than a 1000 years ago europe witnesses a huge construction boom. christianity from established itself. both religious and circle. leaders aren't eager to display their power. to trace speakers. who can create the tallest biggest and most beautiful structure 1st. place stone masons builders and architects compete with each other. this is how massive churches are created. a. contest of the cathedrals flame to build 12 g.w. . play. play. play play. this is you have your news live from japan marks the 10th anniversary of the country's worst disaster in living memory led by the emperor and the empress the nation mourns the more than 800000 people killed in the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck the northeast coast on this day 2011 and let the meltdown of the fukushima nuclear plant. also coming up when will the nightmare and one year after the world health organization declared the coronavirus to be a pandemic and a threat to the entire world are we any closer.