Slavery in Oman

Slavery existed in the area which was later to become Oman from antiquity onward. Oman was united with Zanzibar from the 1690s until 1856, and was a significant center of the Indian Ocean slave trade from Zanzibar. Slavery was later abolished in the 1970s.

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African slave trade in the Medieval Africa
Dhows were used to transport goods and slaves to Oman.
Slave-catching in the Indian Ocean (1873) (14783922793)
Capture of a Arab slave dhow by H. M. S. 'Penguin' off the Gulf of Aden - ILN 1867
Slave-catching in the Indian Ocean (1873) (14764052205)

Omani Empire

During the Omani Empire (1692–1856), Oman was a center of the Zanzibar slave trade. Slaves were trafficked from the Swahili coast of East Africa via Zanzibar to Oman. From Oman, the slaves were exported to the Arabian Peninsula and Persia.

A second route of slave trade existed, with people from both Africa and East Asia, who were smuggled to Jeddah in the Arabian Peninsula in connection to the Muslim pilgrimage, Hajj, to Mecca and Medina. These slaves were imported from the Hejaz to Oman.

Muscat and Oman

In 1856, the Omani Empire was divided into the Sultanate of Zanzibar (1856–1964) and Muscat and Oman (1856–1970), but the slave trade continued. In 1873 the British and Sultan Turki signed a treaty that obliged Turki to end the import of slaves. This included "slaves who were destined for transport from one part of the Sultan's dominion to another, or using his land for passing them to foreign dominions. Anyone found involved in this traffic would be liable to detention and condemnation by all [British] Naval Officers and Agents, and all slaves entering the Sultan's dominions should be freed."[1] Zanzibar nominally abolished the slave trade in 1876. In practice, however, the slave trade continued, though at a reduced level.

The slave trade from Africa became smaller in the late 19th-century, but the slave trade from Hejaz continued. In 1927 a trial reveal a slave trade organization in which Indian children of both sexes were trafficked to Oman and Dubai via Persia and Gwadar.[2] In the 1940s, a third slave trade route was noted, in which Balochis from Balochistan were shipped across the Persian Gulf, many of whom had sold themselves or their children to escape poverty.[3]

Function and conditions
See also: History of concubinage in the Muslim world, Islamic views on concubinage, Ma malakat aymanukum, Qiyan, Jarya, and Abd (Arabic)

Male slaves where used in a number of tasks: as soldiers, pearl divers, farm labourers, cash crop workers, maritime sailors, dock workers, porters, irrigation canal workers, fishermen, and domestic servants, while women functioned as domestic servants or concubines.[4]

Female slaves were primarily used as either domestic servants, or as concubines, while male slaves were primarily used within the pearl industry as pearl divers.[5] In 1943, it was reported that Muslim Baloch girls were shipped via Oman to Mecca, where they were popular as concubines since Caucasian (Circassian) girls were no longer available, and were sold for $350–450.[6]

Black African women were primarily used as domestic house slaves rather than exclusively for sexual services, while white Caucasian women (normally Circassian or Georgian) were preferred as concubines (sex slaves); when the main slave route of white slave girls became harder to access after Russia's conquest of the Caucasus and Central Asia in the mid 19th-century, after which Baluchi and "Red" Ethiopian (Oromo and Sidamo) women became the preferred targets for sexual slavery.[7] Non-African female slaves were sold in the Persian Gulf where they were bought for marriage; these were fewer and often Armenian, Georgian, or from Baluchistan and India. In 1924, the law prohibited the enslavement of white girls (normally Armenian or Georgian) on Kuwaiti territory, but in 1928 at least 60 white slave girls were discovered.[8]

Female slaves were often used for sexual services as concubines for a period of time, and then sold or married off to other slaves; the slave owners would arranged both marriages and divorce for their slaves, and the offspring of two slaves would become slaves in turn.[9] It was common for slave owners to claim sexual services of married female slaves when the slave husband was away for long periods of time, to hunt for pearls or fish or similar labor, and sexual abuse was a common reason given when female slaves applied for manumission at the British Agency.[9] It was common for Arab men to use the sexual services of enslaved African women, but a male African slave who had sexual relations with a local "pure blood" Arab woman would be executed to preserve tribal honor and social status, regardless if the couple had married or not.[10]

The number of female slaves in the Gulf was as high or higher than that of male slaves, but the number of female slaves who made applications for manumission at the British Agencies in the Gulf was significantly lower (only 280 of 950 documented cases in 1921–1946), likely because in the Islamic society of the Gulf, were women were excluded from wage labour and public life, it was impossible for a freedwoman to survive without a male protector.[11]

After slavery had been abolished in Bahrain in 1937, in Kuwait in 1949 and in Saudi Arabia in 1962, it still flourished in Oman: by this time, the Sultan himself reportedly owned around 500 slaves, an estimated 150 of whom were women, who was kept at his palace at Salalah; a number of his male slaves were rumoured at the time to have been physically deformed due to abuse.[12]

Activism against slave trade

The British Empire, having signed the 1926 Slavery Convention, was obliged to fight slavery and slave trade in all land under direct or indirect control of the British Empire. Muscat and Oman was defined by the British as having a special relationship with the British Empire. As was the case with the rest of the Gulf states, the British considered their control over the region insufficient to do something about the slavery and the slave trade. The British India Office advised the British authorities that any attempts to enforce any anti slavery treaty in the region could cause economic and political unrest, since slavery was "deeply rooted in religious and political history".[13] The British policy was therefore to assure the League of Nations that the region followed the same anti slavery treaties signed by the British, but in parallel prevent any international observations of the area, which would disprove these claims.[14]

In 1929 the Sultan of Muscat, Taimur bin Feisal, expressed himself willing to abolish slavery, but that it would be impossible to enforce such a ban, since he claimed not to have actual control over the tribes in the Omani hinterland and Bathina.[13]

In 1936, the British acknowledged to the League of Nations that there was still ongoing slavery and slave trade in Oman and Qatar, but claimed that it was limited, and that all slaves who sought asylum at British Agents Office in Sharjah were granted manumission.[15] In the 1940s, there were several suggestions made by the British to combat the slave trade and the slavery in the region, but none was considered enforceable.

Abolition

After World War II, there was a growing international pressure from the United Nations to end the slave trade. In 1948, the United Nations declared slavery to be a crime against humanity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, after which the Anti-Slavery Society pointed out that there were about one million slaves in the Arabian Peninsula, which was a crime against the 1926 Slavery Convention, and demanded that the UN form a committee to handle the issue.[16]

The British were given criticism in the UN for supporting the Sultan of Oman, who were known to be a slave owner, but they did not wish to stop doing that for economic reasons.[17] In 1951 the British founded the Trucial Oman Levies or Trucial Oman Scouts in Sharjah to fight the slave trade.[18]

The British and the Sultan both preferred to give the impression that slavery was in fact no longer an issue in Oman. When asked about the house slaves common of Oman in 1963, the reply was that the slaves where in fact nowadays "unpaid family retainers who, being unpaid, represent wealth to their employers" and had chosen to remain with their former owners of their own free will.[17]

After the revolt in Dhofar was contained by the British in 1965, the Arab representatives at the UN condemned the British at the UN in 1966; they did not mention the fact that the British tolerated the slavery in Oman, which was a sensitive issue in the Arab World, but rather focused on Colonialism; however, the Anti-Slavery Society did adress the issue of slavery in Oman at this time. On 23 July 1970, the Sultan of Oman Said bin Taimur was deposed in the 1970 Omani coup d'état and his successor Qaboos bin Said initiated a number of reforms, of which the abolition of slavery was one.[17]

Slavery was formally abolished in Oman in 1970. Many members of the Afro-Omani minority are descendants of the former slaves.

See also

References
  1. Yusuf Abdallah Al Ghailani: [https://www.asjp.cerist.dz/en/downArticlepdf/16/6/1/213+The Anglo-Omani Action over the Slave Trade: 1873-1903], p.12-13
  2. Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 165
  3. Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 304-06
  4. Zdanowski J. Slavery in the Gulf in the First Half of the 20th Century : A Study Based on Records from the British Archives. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Askon; 2008
  5. Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 265-66
  6. Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 304-07
  7. Women and Slavery: Africa, the Indian Ocean world, and the medieval north Atlantic. (2007). Grekland: Ohio University Press.
  8. ZDANOWSKI, J. The Manumission Movement in the Gulf in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Middle Eastern Studies, 47:6, 2011, p. 871.
  9. ZDANOWSKI, J. The Manumission Movement in the Gulf in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Middle Eastern Studies, 47:6, 2011, p. 864.
  10. THESIGER, W. The Marsh Arabs. Penguin Classics, London, 2007, p. 69.
  11. Magdalena Moorthy Kloss, « Jerzy Zdanowski, Speaking with their Own Voices. The stories of Slaves in the Persian Gulf in the 20th Century », Arabian Humanities [En ligne], 5 | 2015, mis en ligne le 31 décembre 2015, consulté le 20 août 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cy/2971 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/cy.2971
  12. Cobain, Ian, The history thieves: secrets, lies and the shaping of a modern nation, Portobello Books, London, 2016
  13. Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 204-205
  14. Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 164-66
  15. Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 265-67
  16. Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 310
  17. Suzanne Miers: Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem, p. 346-47
  18. Kamøy, K. (2020). Diversity of Law in the United Arab Emirates: Privacy, Security, and the Legal System. Storbritannien: Taylor & Francis. p.
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