Coll 34/3 'Slavery and Slave Trade: Red Sea and Arabia: Attitude of Ibn Saud' [‎35r] (74/886)

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failed to trace the seller. An element of doubt, however, existed even here, for
it is no uncommon thing in this country for two persons to obtain money on false
pretences from a third, by one of them passing off the other as his slave and
selling him to an unsuspecting third party, after which the £ £ slave ’ ’ runs away
and shares the proceeds of the sale with the seller.
(iii) Imports from the Yemen.
40. A small but steady flow of slaves overland from the Yemen itself to the
Heiaz continues, and now forms almost the whole of the importation of slaves
from outside the country. The continuance of this supply results from two
causes. The journey is a comparatively easy one, and is unimpeded by any
official control, except on the frontier, where, according to Fuad Bey Hamza, the
importer is compelled to produce a declaration, with photograph attached, that
his slave has grown up in slavery. The average price of the slaves is also low, in
common with that of all commodities in the Yemen, where taxation is said to be
light and the general standard of life primitive, and has recently been rendered
even more so by the desire of the Yemeni camel-drivers, who are large slave
owners and have been hit by trade depression, to reduce their stock of slaves.
(iv) Imports from the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. .
41. Importations into Arabia from across the Persian Gulf The historical term used to describe the body of water between the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. , and in
particular from Persian Makran, were stated by the late Sir H. V. Biscoe in 1930
to form a <£ steady trickle," but he suggested that the slaves were mostly absorbed
in the Oman date gardens and Bahrein pearl fisheries, and that slaves came
also from Nejd to these points. No recent information is available, but the
probabilities are all against any steady flow of slaves into Saudi Arabia from
this direction; it is, indeed, far more likely that the movement is, if anything, the
other way and that slaves are sent out of Nejd to the pearl fisheries and date
gardens mentioned above. . .
42. Importations of girls from Malay, Java and the Far East, mentioned m
paragraph 49 of Mr. Bond's memorandum of 1930, have ceased entirely; the only
case of which any evidence exists is that of the Sheybi, the Keeper of the K 0 ys
of the Kaaba, who apparently developed an exotic taste in Chinese girls and
imported three or four some years ago.
The Red Sea Slave Trade.
43. This trade, once of considerable extent, has of late years dwindled to
insignificance, but continues to attract an exaggerated amount of attention
through periodic journalistic outbursts. ...
44. Its former importance, in the days of slave-raiding in the Sudan and
before His Majesty’s Government started active measures for its suppression m
the Red Sea, is clearly shown from many sources. Jedda despatch to the Foreign
Office, Slave Trade No. 8, of the 14th May, 1879, speaks of over 700 slaves having
been landed near Jedda in the first half of that month alone,- despite the anti-
slavery edicts of the Porte. More striking, because more recent, testimony is
afforded by the manumission analysis forming appendix 1 to this memoranduin.
Of 209 slaves manumitted by this Legation between 1926 and 1933, 171, of which
all but one or two were Africans, had been kidnapped and enslaved during
childhood in their country of origin. Almost all had thus been brought across
the Red Sea by slave-traders. The following are the histories of two cases, taken
at random from the Legation records : —
{a) Abyssinian (Kaffa), about 17 years old. He could no longer remember
the name of his original village in Abyssinia, from which he was
captured by slave-traders when he was young (say, about 19 ) anc
sent up to Addis Ababa to be the slave of a Christian notab e. e
was captured in the streets of Addis Ababa by the servants of ano er
well-known man, who sent him blindfolded and manacled mo e
Hanakil country and sold him to a slave-trader. The latter b rou S
him to Tajura and thence by sanbuq to Medi, in the Yemen, w eie e
was sold to a Syrian merchant. He was subsequently broug
Mecca and sold to a Mecca resident, from whose home he e o e
Legation.
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