The Islamic slave trade from Africa over 1200 years brought blacks to the
Middle East in numbers the same as those that were trans****ted across the
Atlantic to the Americas. The 'racial' evidence of the trade in blacks to
North and South America is patent, but where are the blacks and mulattos
that should be found in the Middle East? Bernard Lewis re****ts that there
ARE small communities of blacks tohttp://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/lm/311/
be
found in Arab countries; they are isolated and turned in on themselves -
so
much for the myth that Islam is not subject to racialism.
I have previously suggested that the absence from the Middle East of
people
visibly descended from an Arab father and an African mother implies
infanticide. I have discovered confirmation of this in the following
article
(http://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/lm/311/)
from the New York Daily Times
Aug
6 1856:
Horrible Traffic in Circassian Women-Infanticide in Turkey
>From the Correspondence of the London Post
There has been lately an unusually large number of Circassians going about
the streets of Constantinople. Many of them no doubt belonged to the
deputation which came to petition the ****te that their country might be
taken under the suzerainty of the Sultan. A considerable ****tion, however,
of the Circassians now in the capital have quite another mission than a
political one to fulfill. They are here as slave dealers, charged with the
disposal of the numerous parcels of Circassian girls that have been for
some
time pouring into this market. Perceiving that when the Russians shall
have
reoccupied the coast of the Caucasus this traffic in white slaves will be
over, the Circassian dealers have redoubled their efforts ever since the
commencement of the peace conferences to introduce into Turkey the
greatest
possible number of women while the op****tunity of doing so lasted. They
have
been so successful, notwithstanding the prohibition of the trade by the
****te, and the presence of so many of Her Majesty's ****ps in the Black
Sea,
that never, perhaps, at any former period, was white human flesh so cheap
as
it is at this moment. There is an absolute glut in the market, and dealers
are obliged to throw away their goods, owing to the extent of the supply,
which in many instances has been brought by steam under the British flag.
In
former times a "good middling" Circassian girl was thought very cheap at
100
pounds, but at the present moment the same description of goods may be had
for 5 pounds! In fact, the creatures are eating their heads off, and must
be
disposed of at any sacrifice, however alarming. Independently of all
political, humane and Christian objections to this abominable state of
things, there are several practical ones which have even forced themselves
on the attention of the Turks. With low prices a low class of purchasers
come into the market. Formerly a Circassian slave girl was pretty sure of
being bought into a good family, where not only good treatment, but often
rank and fortune awaited her; but at present low rates she may be taken by
any huxter who never thought of keeping a slave before. Another evil is
that
the temptation to possess a Circassian girl at such low prices is so great
in the minds of the Turks that many who cannot afford to keep several
slaves
have been sending their blacks to market, in order to make room for a
newly-purchased white girl. The consequence is that numbers of black
women,
after being as many as eight or ten years in the same hands, have lately
been consigned to the broker for disposal. Not a few of t hose wretched
creatures are in a state quite unfit for being sold. I have it on the
authority of a respectable slave-broker that at the present moment there
have been thrown on the market unusually large numbers of negresses in the
family way, some of them even slaves of pashas and men of rank. He finds
them so unsalable that he has been obliged to decline receiving any more.
A
single observation will explain the reason of this, which might appear
strange when compared with the value that is attached even to an unborn
black baby in some slave countries. In Constantinople it is evident that
there is a very large number of negresses living and having habitual
intercourse with their Turkish masters-yet it is a rare thing to see a
mulatto. What becomes of the progeny of such intercourse? I have no
hesitation in saying that it is got rid of by infanticide, and that there
is
hardly a family in Stanboul where infanticide is not practiced in such
cases
as a mere matter of course, and without the least remorse or dread.
Source: New York Daily Times, August 6, 1856, p. 6.
The presnece of Circassian women in Turkey was due to the Russian military
successes in the Caucasus: half a million people left for Turkey in the
1860s, many were sold into slavery.
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