Slavery in Somalia

Prices of Slaves

Prices of female slaves in Mogadishu according to Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti (1904)

Prices of male slaves in Mogadishu according to Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti (1904)

Prices of slaves in Somalia in Maria Theresa dollars according to the economic historian Robert C. Allen.

General price range of slaves in the 19th century according to the scholar Ababu Minda Yimene.

Cost per kilometer of shipping slaves across the sea (MT$/km), according to the economic historian Robert C. Allen.

According to historian and scholar Javan Mokebo, slave prices in Somalia were influenced by factors such as ethnic group, gender, and assigned roles. Oromo women were considered to be more sexually attractive and were highly valued for reproductive functions and entertainment, while Bantu women were more commonly associated with agricultural labor. As a result, Oromo women were reportedly priced at around 90 thalers, compared to approximately 65 thalers for a Bantu woman. Similarly, Bantu male slaves were valued at about 89 thalers, compared to roughly 60 thalers for Oromo male slaves. This difference in price was explained by the types of labor each group was expected to perform, Bantu men were more frequently assigned to intensive agricultural work and other physically demanding tasks, whereas Oromo men were allocated relatively less physically demanding tasks such as herding, based on contemporary perceptions that they were less able to sustain endurance-intensive labor. Age also determined the prices of slaves, young girls were generally valued at lower prices and were assigned to lighter household chores or grazing. However, as they reached adolescence, they were often considered suitable for concubinage. The same was true for young boys, who were commonly assigned to service roles such as acting as wood-cutters or messengers. Physical appearance was an important factor in both the selection and pricing of female slaves designated for concubinage in Somalia. The buyer's preferences also played a role, and where the interest was primarily erotic, female slaves were more likely to be acquired than male slaves. The existing literature places Oromo women among lighter-skinned female slaves who were frequently selected for concubinage in parts of the Horn of Africa.

Robert C. Allen notes that eunuchs and concubines commanded the highest prices in slave markets. Women were divided into two categories. Many were assigned menial domestic work and sold at relatively low prices, while those considered attractive were purchased as concubines or wives and fetched much higher prices, this was especially true for Oromo women, who were particularly valued in slave markets due to their perceived lighter skin and attractiveness, and were also regarded as hardworking and trustworthy.

Iranian historian Behnaz Mirzai states that Ethiopian women, mostly Oromos, were among the most highly valued in 19th century slave markets, where they were consistently described as especially desirable for their beauty and able to command higher prices. However, the value of these enslaved women reportedly declined after the age of 20. Older women were purchased primarily for work rather than for sexual or reproductive purposes. Enslaved women in Somalia were generally valued more highly than enslaved men, and those considered attractive or beautiful were often bought as concubines and domestic servants.

The following is a list of slave prices reported by various other sources.

Slave names

For individual names, enslaved individuals in 19th-century Somalia were commonly given names by their masters. Court records indicate the use of Muslim-Arabic, Swahili-Bantu, and Oromo names, alongside common Somali names such as Abdi. Tribal affiliations and paternal names were often not recorded for Bantu slaves, whereas they were more frequently documented for Oromo slaves in the records. In the 1980s, Somalis commonly referred to the descendants of former slaves in Somalia using the term galla, a historical exonym for the Oromo people. According to multiple scholars, the term habash, previously used to refer to Abyssinian slaves, is also still used in the Somali language as a general designation for slaves, freed slaves, and the descendants of slaves.

The following is a list of terms used by different Somali clans to denote slaves or slave-descended populations.

Slave Attires

Writing in 1909, the Italian journalist Gustavo Chiesi observed that women of slave origin favoured brightly coloured printed garments and described them as adorning themselves with various forms of jewellery:

"..It contrasts with the brightly coloured printed tops and the Banadir cloth wraps that women of slave origin preferred to wear. The same distinction was said to apply to adornment. While women of slave origin were described as favouring large silver bracelets and anklets and as wearing large metal earrings or curious ornaments made of coloured paper, Somali girls and women were said to prefer as their chief adornment strings of small beads or marine shells worn around the neck or chest."

Roles & Hierarchies

Bantu agricultural slaves were bought to work on plantations, they did undesirable work, and lived separately from their masters. Sexually and juridically their bodies were devalued, and strong social taboos discouraged unions between plantation slaves and Somali masters. According to Cerulli, among the Majerteen Somalis, sexual relations with female Bantu slaves were negatively viewed and socially stigmatized. However at times, less wealthy individuals also kept enslaved Bantu concubines. In contrast, herder slaves, mostly Oromo, were involved in relations of greater intimacy with their Somali masters and seen as legitimate sexual partners. They were taken into households and worked side by side with their masters. Young Oromo women were much sought after and were referred to as suriya/sorije, a term meaning concubine in the Islamic world. Slaves of Cushitic origin, such as the Oromo, were regarded by Somalis as more physically similar to themselves than Bantus, particularly due to perceptions of straighter hair and narrower noses, features that contributed to Oromo women being considered more desirable and more readily integrated into Somali society. Concubines of Oromo origin could more easily than others acquire important roles within a household after having borne children for the master. In plantations along the Shebelle river, enslaved concubines occupied key supervisory roles within plantation households. Because of the sexual or marital bond with their owners, they were regarded as more trustworthy than other enslaved workers and were sometimes placed in charge of overseeing labour and production. Borana Oromo women captured by the Marehan Somalis could reportedly gain equal status to other wives if they became pregnant with their master's child. Children could begin working as servants as young as eight years old. Italian censuses show clear gender divisions in slave labour. Men worked across a wide range of roles including domestic service, agriculture, skilled crafts, and transport such as sailing and carrying goods. Women were mainly assigned to domestic and agricultural tasks like childcare, looking after cattle, water carrying, farm work, processing animal products, and concubinage. Since slaves of Cushitic origin such as the Oromo were considered more akin to their masters, their children were probably integrated more easily among Somalis, to whom they were also believed to bear a resemblance in physiognomic terms. In general, Bantu slaves were considered much stronger than the Oromo and were reputed to be more enduring and persevering at work. Oromo slaves were almost never bought for agricultural work in part due to their lack of agricultural knowledge. Majority of domestic slaves in the Banadir were of Ethiopian origin. The Somali scholar Abdi Kusow writes that plantation workers were divided into two groups; cultivation and weaving were assigned to the men, and easier tasks of gathering the seeds and cleaning the husks to the women. According to William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Oromo slaves were bought to work in the textile industry of Mogadishu. Large-scale textile weaving for export was carried out by enslaved Oromo laborers. Nuredin H. Scikei however argues that while it is true that Ethiopian slaves were used in textile production, the majority of weavers were Somali.

According to Italian records, enslaved Oromo (Galla) women in Somalia were bought to serve as concubines and later employed in domestic service:

"The slaves are for the most part of Swahili origin, but there are also many female slaves of Galla origin, who, because of their almost European features, are highly desired first to serve as the master’s concubines and later to be assigned to domestic household work."

Writing in 1909, the Italian journalist Gustavo Chiesi described the role of slave women in Barawa as follows:

"The gossip of Barawa eventually makes its way to the wells, which serve, if not as a newspaper, then at least as the source of daily news. Nine-tenths, if not the entirety, of the women and girls who draw water from the wells and carry it to the houses belong to the slave population. They are Galla (and are considered the most beautiful), Borana, and Swahili (considered the least attractive), but they either were slaves, are slaves, or are the daughters of slaves. Yet, judging by their noisy cheerfulness and their ringing, silvery laughter over the slightest thing, one must conclude that they bore with great ease and nonchalance their unfortunate condition as human property.. the slave women grind the sorghum and maize from which bread is made to feed the whole family; they carry the water from which everyone drinks; and they make the butter that we take to the markets to be sold across the sea in exchange for the cotton cloth with which we all dress."

Treatment of Slaves

The British Lieutenant Christopher (1844) described a plantation on the Shabelle valley as such:

"The hospitality of our Somali host produced excellent mutton boiled with rice; the only peculiarity being that the slaves, seated at some distance, were eager to receive the bones picked by their masters, which underwent a second, third, and fourth gnawing from successive hungry mouths before they were finally scattered as useless... The slaves and their wives are the labourers, housed miserably in small half-roofed huts, their usual food parched Indian corn and fish from the river... There were many thousands of men employed in cultivation here, their only shelter is formed by the loose stalks of the common millet piled up in a conical shape, and allowing three or four persons to sit together in the interior. They are thus screened from the sun, but exposed, of course, to the rain, and whole families thus pass their lives."

According to Vittorio Bottego:

"Slaves call their master "father"; they speak to him with great familiarity and are generally treated well. Their daily allowance is usually about a kilo and a half of dura per day. Slaves living with their master gather for meals in the courtyard. One slave carries a large pot of dura cotta and another the plates. The mistress of the house divides the portions. On Fridays, a Muslim holiday, slaves are given meat and milk in addition to the dura. Three times a year, for religious and solemn holidays, they receive a new top as a gift and, depending on the wealth of the household where they serve, an ox or a sheep to share in the meal. On these solemn occasions, they are also given plenty of milk and butter. There are coastal Somalis who try to improve the breed by carefully feeding them and mating them according to certain criteria, as cattle breeders do among us."

On another occasion, he encountered an Oromo slave boy who was being abused by his mistress:

"A very thin little boy wanted to come with me. He said that he was a Galla, that he had been captured by the Somalis a year earlier, and that he was now the slave of a woman who made him suffer from hunger and forced him to work beyond his strength. I accepted him into the caravan."

The Italian explorer Ugo Ferrandi was surprised by the extent of trust that masters in Luuq placed in their slaves :

"Slaves in Lugh are generally well treated, and it is often the case that they are considered members of the family. Indeed, I have seen some masters mourn the death of a slave as if it were that of their own son. Several times I have seen slaves sent on business for their masters to the coast as far as Zanzibar, returning from whence."

In 1909, Italian journalist Gustavo Chiesi observed that:

"The truth is that in Barawa, although there existed, as in all the other Benadir settlements, a slave population, the outward forms and customs of slavery in the relations between masters and slaves were so greatly softened that one was scarcely aware of its existence."

According to Robecchi Bricchetti:

"Every well-off Somali generally has a slave. In the villages of Banadir, there are still today, not less than two or three thousand slaves, they live with their masters who treat them just like any other household member, and they dress and eat like all Somalis, so much so that I am convinced that offering them liberty many of them would refuse immediately."

Giacinto Vicinanza, in his book "La Somalia Italiana" (1910) describes slavery in Somalia as such:

"The law of retaliation does not apply in the case of homicide when it is committed by a free man upon a slave. The slave is not obliged to fight in war, even if ordered to do so by the master, he also cannot be subjected to taxes, nor can his master be taxed on his behalf. The slave owes blind obedience to the master, he has no right to ask him for anything, the master may kill him without giving justification to anyone, the master may, with chains, prevent his escape or idleness. If the master wishes to sleep with one of his slave women, even if she is a virgin, the slave woman must be content with it."

Slave women could own their own commodities, although at times it was not easy to keep their rights over them, and negotiations were needed. Some enslaved women were able to accumulate limited personal wealth in the form of gold, silver, and other small valuables that could be discreetly hidden. According to Francesca Declich, despite the fact that female slaves could be easily accessed by their masters for intercourse, there are documented cases of concubines refusing to comply with sexual demands. Abortions were common, concubines aborted pregnancies using strong indigenous abortifacients prepared from pepper, colza seeds, colba, and honey. Some concubines were also afraid of what might happen should they deliver children after seeking abortions so persistently, as masters could separate children from their mothers to sell them. Among the Majerteen for instance, the prohibition in Muslim law against selling mothers separately from their small children was not always applied. One common punishment for disobedient Oromo slaves was assignment to agricultural or farm labour, which was considered less desirable than their usual roles as pastoral workers and concubines. According to Catherine Besteman, it is unlikely that herder slaves such as the Oromo were subjected to the same level of harsh treatment experienced by plantation slaves. According to the scholar Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, Oromo slaves in Somalia occupied the lowest position in the social hierarchy, lacked legal rights, and could not inherit property.

Evidence from qadi court records indicates that marriages between free men and slave women involved the payment of mahr by the groom to the enslaved woman's master, who retained the sum rather than the bride herself. Enslaved women experienced many difficulties in claiming rights over their own property, masters could to some extent negotiate rights over the offsprings of their female slaves, even if these women married free men. According to Italian records, masters could continue to have sexual relations with enslaved women even after they were married.

Plantation slaves were generally permitted to form family units. However, certain nomadic Somali clans, notably the Gaaljel, Wadaan, Bimal, and Mobileen, developed a reputation for comparatively harsher treatment of slaves, both locally enslaved individuals and those imported.

Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti writes that slaves in Mogadishu and other Benadir cities appeared deeply devoted to their masters, and he claimed to find few testimonies of abuse among them. He contrasted this with the treatment of slaves among other inland groups such as the Bimal, where slaves were reportedly kept in iron ankle restraints. According to the historians Benjamin Lawrance and Richard Roberts, the compilers of the Barawa qadi court manuscripts note that the documents indirectly suggest slaves in the city of Barawa were “comparatively well treated” with light punishments for transgressions and relatively few recorded cases of violence.

Francesca Declich argues that the institution of slavery in Somalia was not solely of the “soft” type described by some observers. In certain regions it involved an absolute lack of personal freedom, with plantation slaves in rural areas chained to prevent their escape, and in the case of women, this also entailed a loss of control over their bodies. Masters could also severely beat slaves who attempted to flee and subject them to chains. Generally, slaves in Somalia received the worst treatment among pastoral nomadic people and in agricultural estates close to the river banks, out of fear that they would escape. Likewise Toyin Falola writes that the Hawiya nomadic Somalis had a reputation for mistreating their Bantu agricultural slaves, who were often kept in shackles, overworked, and underfed.

Runaway slaves

There is little evidence of Bantu-speaking communities along the Juba and Shabelle rivers before 19th century. Increased slave imports to the Banadir coast in the 1800s led to the emergence of Bantu communities of escaped slaves mainly on the Juba river. The major growth of the fugitive slave population began after 1841. Enslaved individuals who escaped servitude in southern Somalia were reported to have fled to the Bajuni Archipelago. In the 19th century, around one thousand escaped Oromo slaves were said to have lived in Burgabo.

Around 1829, a large number of Zigua people from northern Tanzania were enslaved and transported to Lamu and the Banadir coast via Zanzibar. By 1844, many had escaped and established a settlement about 75 miles up the Juba River. During the visit of Arcangelo, an Italian traveler, their population was estimated at 1,500. They lived in a main village divided by the river, along with several smaller settlements. Arcangelo reported that the communities were steadily increasing through the arrival of runaway slaves, and that the main settlement was fortified with a double stockade of thorn branches for protection against Somali attacks. The inhabitants were sedentary and produced a form of cotton cloth. In 1863, Claus von der Decken travelled up the Juba river, where he recorded a fortified settlement of about 600-700 people made up of former slaves from diverse East African groups, mainly engaged in agriculture and trade with the Somali, they traded maize, millet, bananas, and other plant foods to Somali groups in exchange for guns, powder, lead, tools, and beads, adding variety to the mainly meat-based Somali diet. Further upstream, he found Zigua-inhabited villages. Their inhabitants traced origins to northern Tanzania and were estimated at 4,000 people in total, practising mixed farming. By 1891, F. G. Dundas described the “Gosha” as expanding communities of escaped slaves along the river, cultivating a wide range of crops and trading with the Somali city of Kismayo. He estimated their population at 30,000-40,000. By the late 19th century, colonial observers noted a continuous belt of Gosha settlements along the river, which over time became increasingly integrated into surrounding Somali society and adopted the Somali language by the early 20th century.

Although these communities later became known as the WaGosha, the term itself does not appear before the 1870s, when Nasib Bundo, a freed slave, proclaimed himself Sultan of the WaGosha. The most prominent remembered event in Gosha history was during this period (1875–95), when the Gosha defeated a major attack by the pastoral Ogaden Somalis around 1890, an event still recalled in oral tradition throughout the valley in the 1980s. The Gosha victory over local Ogaden pastoralists is primarily attributed to the leadership of Nasib Bundo, a Yao ex-slave who rose to prominence in Gosha-Boni conflicts and styled himself the “Sultan of the Gosha.” His reputation grew through negotiations with prominent Somali leaders, the sultan of Zanzibar, Egyptian authorities, and later British and Italian colonial officials. In Gosha oral traditions, Nasib is sometimes portrayed in near-mythical terms, credited with extraordinary martial and supernatural abilities in defeating Ogaden forces. Colonial authorities regarded him as the most prominent Gosha intermediary, and written accounts describe the emergence of a Gosha confederacy under his leadership. The Goshas generally avoided entering Somali territory, trade during this period was largely conducted between Ogaden Somalis and Gosha communities at a place remembered as Regatta, a plain with wide visibility and limited opportunity for ambush, thus relations between the two groups thus consisted primarily of a combination of trade and raiding. At times, Nasib Bundo made agreements with certain Somali clans to return escaped slaves to their owners, namely the Bimal, who were heavily dependent on slave labour for cultivation. Earlier European travelers instead identified riverine cultivators by their respective ethnic or tribal origins. Besides the Gosha settlements on the Juba river, escaped slave communities also existed along the lower Shabelle river. In 1843, William Christopher noted runaway slave villages, including one at Golweyn on the Shabelle, though their ethnic origins remain uncertain. Later, the Italian ethnographer Vincenzo Colucci reported the existence of about 15 small villages which were used as transit points for slaves fleeing toward the Gosha settlements along the lower Juba river. In the early 1870s, Gosha villagers were able to band together to defeat and subordinate the neighboring Boni to whom they had initially been forced to pay tribute, a victory achieved with the use of guns acquired from the sultan of Zanzibar in exchange for the promise of a share of ivory to the sultan. By the late 19th century, Somali proselytisers were successfully spreading Islam among the Gosha.

Later during the Italian colonial administration, evidence shows continued disputes over slavery and fugitive labor on the Banadir coast. In 1900, Italian Governor Emilio Dulio reported that slaves had escaped from Ras Aseir using a Somali ship, with some reaching Mogadishu and Marka. Mohamed Osman, Sultan of the Majeerteen, requested their return, but Dulio refused, citing Italy's obligations under international law and the absence of any agreement with the Sultan.

According to Oliver Schulten, fugitive slaves from modern day Sudan lived in Somalia in the 19th century.

Manumission & Emancipation

Francesca Declich noted that an Oromo man regarded as docile and useful, unlike one considered troublesome, could often be emancipated and attain the status of a freedman. One of the most influential and respected Somali ulama of the 19th century, sheikh Uways al-Barawi, was an emancipated Somalized slave. His main teacher, sheikh Muhammad Jenay, convinced Uways to visit the Qadiriya headquarters in Baghdad, where he was eventually appointed a Sufi master and given the task of spreading the Qadiriya in the Horn of Africa. Sufi orders, particularly within the Shafi'i tradition, played a role in integrating former slaves into the local Muslim communities, with Sufi orders establishing agricultural settlements for freed slaves in areas unsuitable for pastoralism.

Vittorio Bottego also observed that slaves who had served faithfully over a long period often regained their freedom upon the death of their master. However, cases of slaves purchasing their own freedom were extremely rare, and they were mostly liberated by masters or colonial government officials. During his short stay in Somalia in 1903, Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti witnessed the emancipation of around 50 slaves, he also personally purchased the freedom of two slaves.

For female slaves, manumission was more complex. Under Islamic law, slave women who bore children to their owner were to be freed upon the master's death on account of maternity. Slave women to be freed on account of maternity only acquired the right not to be sold, pledged or transferred as donations. In practice, this status often provided limited protection rather than granting full independence, as they typically remained bound to household duties, including cohabitation with the master. Emancipation in practice depended heavily on the master's consent, Italian records describe a case in which a slave woman who had borne three children by her master's son was not freed despite legal expectations, as the master demanded 100 talleri for her manumission.

Concubines often remained dependent on their masters rather than pursuing or purchasing freedom, with only their children generally recognized as free. Among the Majerteen, concubines could receive allowances for themselves and their children without being emancipated. In some cases, slave women who had borne several children acquired informal advantages within the household, such as exemption from agricultural labor or the ability to keep income from selling milk, making negotiation for better conditions more common than escape or self-purchase. For a slave woman, the primary objective was not necessarily to attain the formal status of a freed woman but rather to secure a stable relationship with a wealthy patron capable of providing better care and protection. In the city of Barawa for example, remaining in slavery rather than attempting to escape could in some cases have been a more effective strategy for improving living conditions and overall quality of life for enslaved women. According to Catherine Besteman, without their own animals or grazing land, manumitted pastoral slaves such as the Oromo were much more likely to remain in a relationship with their former masters. In Barawa, a case recorded in qadi court manuscripts involved a slave girl named Zeinab who was kidnapped and later escaped after being sold by her kidnappers to another master. She voluntarily returned to the household of her original owner, which led to litigation before the qadi court between the original owner and the alleged bona fide purchaser. The purchaser lost the case, although the judge ordered the return of his purchase money.

According to Vittorio Bottego, among the Rahanweyn Somalis lived a race of freed slaves known as the Gubahin, he says the following on their origins:

"Many years ago, a Garra-Ganana sheikh named Osman Madoba Mussa purchased a pair of slaves on a voyage to Zanzibar. The male's name was Gubahin. Upon his death, Shekh Madoba ordered that the slave Gubahin and his family be set free. Gubahin's sons, married to Boran and Suhaeli slaves, multiplied so much that many years later they formed a race. If this particular story is generalized to a number of cases, it is understood how the Gubahin race emerged from the liberation of slaves. It is therefore wrongly said that the Gubahin are of Somali origin. The Somalis in fact consider them inferior, and the Gubahin even today only marry among themselves or with Galla and Suhaéli slaves."

Legal traditions

Legally, slaves could only be obtained as captives of war or as the progeny of existing slaves. According to the Italian explorer Vittorio Bottego, a slave's owner was liable for the slave's actions; if a slave committed theft his master had to pay back for the stolen item, if a slave killed another master's slave, the owner compensated either in money or with another slave, if a free person was killed, the owner paid the dia or faced retribution. Slaves who killed their master or relatives were usually punished by beating rather than execution due to their economic value. If a runaway slave was captured, he had to be chained.

Captain Salkeld, a British officer in Jubaland in the early 20th century documented the following laws regarding slavery among the Somali:

"If a Galla or slave strikes a Somali woman he may be killed wherever met. If a Somali kills another owner's slave he pays 15 heifers. The killing of slaves is not regarded as an offence. The rape of a slave woman is not regarded as an offence."

Legal cases involving the transfer of slaves, including marriages, gifts and disputes were adjudicated by a qadi. During the colonial period, qadis were sometimes assisted in their decisions by Italian consular officials. According to locally applied interpretations of the sharia, a concubine who bore a child from her master or aborted a pregnancy could no longer be sold, pledged, or given away, although her other obligations to the master remained intact. In practice, this marked a transition from a marketable slave to a more permanent and domestically integrated position within the household, frequently involving a closer personal relationship with the master. Although remaining legally unfree and dependent, such women became increasingly integrated into the society in which they lived, assuming roles as mothers, lovers, and service providers. Unless they escaped, were abducted, or were unlawfully sold again, (all of these outcomes being documented in historical sources) their futures were generally tied to the social environment in which they had been made pregnant.

Female Participation

Slaves were also owned by Somali women. A document dated back to 1575 describes a woman from Mogadishu freeing her slave. 19th century records from Barawa highlight the fact that women owned a large number of slaves. Court cases document women donating their slaves. A census describes a mistress whose 14-year-old male slave paid her 3 besa per day. In Luuq, some women were served by slaves. Freeborn women of the family had authority over slaves, who performed tasks such as fetching firewood and water or cooking. Qadi court records suggest that women, like men, frequently manumitted their slaves. Freedwomen were often identified by the name of the person responsible for their emancipation, regardless of whether the former owner was male or female. One documented case refers to a woman, Mana Ado bint Bakar, who granted freedom to a female slave whom she had also named Mana Ado.

According to Italian records, women in the city of Barawa relied on Bantu slaves for daytime chores:

"The women of Barawa are very secluded, following Arab custom, they do not leave the house except late in the evening, and for all outdoor tasks during the day they make use of Swahili slaves."

Religious Justifications

Early Italian colonial attempts to abolish slavery largely failed, as the Somalis argued that Islamic law gave them the right to hold slaves.

Somali scholar Ali Jimale Ahmed argued that slave raids against the Oromo were framed as jihad, and that masters were religiously expected to convert enslaved people to Islam. Somalis frequently referred to raids on Oromo settlements as jihad. The British explorer John Speke recorded that the Somalis believed the slave trade to be their Quranic right. Catherine Besteman also notes that, in the Somali context, slave owners were expected to ensure the conversion of enslaved people to Islam.

According to Vittorio Bottego, slaves weren't forcefully converted and were allowed to keep their faith :

"Some of the slaves are Muslim, others idolaters or fetish worshippers; the latter are not forced to abjure their faith; however, almost all are subjected to the environment and voluntarily convert to the religion of Muhammad."

On describing the Somalis, the Italian Gustavo Chiesi wrote:

"The Somalis, belonging to the orthodox Shafi'i sect (followers of Imam al-Shafi'i), are entitled to four lawful wives, as well as whatever number of concubines (surriya), generally drawn from among slave women, whose maintenance they are able to provide.. Each wife thinks of her own children, her chickens, her goats, almost pretending to ignore the man's relationships with other legitimate wives or slaves."

Enslavement of Ethnic Somalis

According to the Somali scholar Ahmed Samatar, the historiography provides little evidence of Somalis being enslaved. Among Somalis, enslaving a fellow Somali was long regarded as a deeply entrenched customary taboo. The only documented case occurred when Muhammad ibn Abdullah Hassan’s enemies bitterly accused him of capturing their women. According to Herman Jeremias Nieboer, a Somali could never become the slave of another Somali, and prisoners of war were not enslaved. Italian scholar Enrico Cerulli observed that Somali customary law differed from Oromo law in that it forbade the enslavement or sale of fellow Somalis under any circumstances. According to Francesca Declich, slaves in Somalia were understood to be foreigners by definition.

As longtime free Muslims, Somalis could not be enslaved in the Islamic world. In Arabia, the kidnapping or enslavement of Somalis was strictly prohibited and punished as piracy on the grounds that Somalis were by nature free and belonged to an "unenslaveble" race. An Ethiopian ex-slave in the early 20th century recounted being taken from Zanzibar and offered for sale in Oman, where nobody dared to buy him as he was mistaken to be a Somali. According to Edward Alpers, Somalis rarely figured in the slave trade as captives.

Colonel Charles Henry Rigby, British Consul at Zanzibar, is cited as having stated that:

"The Somalis being Mohaminedans could not be made slaves, therefore they had not the same reason for distrusting strangers."

In 1876, Sir George Campbell is quoted as having said:

"May I be permitted to speak about the case of who are popularly called slaves, Africans, or are there any others who are called slaves? There are Galla slaves and Abyssinians. I have not known an instance of a half-bred Arab being a slave. Are the Somalis ever slaves? Very rarely. The Somalis steal slaves, but I have never seen a Somali slave, there may, however, be rare instances."

Abolition

Impact of abolitionism in the 19th century

In the last decades of the 19th century, due to increased restrictions imposed by European powers on slave trading along the coast, more enslaved women were retained as concubines by the Somalis in the interior. During the abolition period, slave exports from southern Somalia to Arabia had to be diverted to the small port of Burgabo, as it remained unguarded by both the Italians and the British. The abolition of slavery initially represented a shock to the local economy, mainly to the slave traders and slave owners. In Zeila, prohibitions against human trafficking in the second half of the 19th century led to “daredevil smuggling” and a sharp increase in slave prices, which in turn increased profits for slave traders. According to Gustavo Chiesi (1909), as a result of the Italian ban on slave imports and slave trading along the coast, the slave population in the interior was increasing. He wrote that landowners in riverine areas encouraged the growth of enslaved populations through forced unions, as a way to maintain and expand their labour force.

Italian colonial government

Despite the Brussels conference of 1890 where the colonial apowers abolished the legal status of slavery in the colonies, the slave trade in Somalia continued unabated. From 1893, the Italian colonial authorities in Somalia did not recognize the legal status of slavery and slaves were thus legally free to leave their owners, but the Italians often returned fugitive slaves to their owners. After pressure from humanitarians, the Italians officially banned the slave trade and declared that all slaves born after 1890 were legally free. The abolition of slavery in Italian Somaliland was carried out through a series of decrees issued between 1897 and 1907.

In 1893, a shocking report revealed that the Italian government had failed to adhere to the signed obligations of 1890 :

"The administration handed fugitive slaves from the interior to those who claimed to own them, and sometimes with cruelty, imprisoning and chastising them before consigning them to those who came to claim them, in open contravention of the explicit directions of the Brussels Act. It was found convenient to call slavery domestic. Records of the purchase and sale of slaves, their succession to new owners, their transfer, mortgage and pawning were inscribed in the records of the Qadi Courts. All of this was done without the government in Rome or the Royal Commissioner Sorrentino."

The first 45 slaves were freed by the Italian colonial administration in 1895. In March 1895, new regulations were issued for the administration of the Italian protectorate. The regulations prohibited the slave trade and provided for the gradual abolition of what was termed domestic servitude. However, the decree did not immediately abolish slavery itself, allowing existing slaveholding arrangements to persist while prohibiting the buying and selling of slaves. Under the regulations, judicial matters continued to be administered by qadis in accordance with the sharia.

In 1896, Italians tried to forcibly confiscate the slaves of the Somalis but failed, and top colonial administrator Antonio Cecchi was killed during the military expedition in the interior. The Somalis resisted abolition, arguing that Islamic law allowed them to hold slaves. Somali religious leaders denounced Italian orders, insisting that Somali law, based on the Quran and the Prophet, took precedence over colonial regulations. After this, Governor Emilio Dulio set aside the issue of slavery to avoid further damaging relations with Somali tribes, fearing that action against slavery would provoke revolt.

The anti-slavery decrees announced by the Italians in the 1890s caused a new wave of runaway slaves, in Gustavo Chiesi's account:

"Indeed, as soon as news of the ordinance issued by the government spread beyond the coastal dunes and reached the riverine regions, slaves began to flee with increasing frequency, in an alarming and ever-growing wave. Every day, enslaved people arrived in Mogadishu, Barawa, and Merka after escaping from the interior, seeking the protection and assistance which the government decree, reaching them perhaps in exaggerated form through rumor, had led them to expect. These unfortunate people came to the coast in the hope of obtaining their freedom and of no longer being imprisoned or returned to their masters, as had previously been the case. The situation became increasingly serious, both because of the growing number of fugitives and because of the resentment spreading among the tribes when the Governor and the Residents, aware of public opinion in Italy and bound by the provisions of the General Act of Brussels, refused to return the runaways. Instead, slave owners were offered financial compensation ranging from forty to sixty thalers, depending on the age and physical condition of the fugitive. At first, the owners accepted the compensation, hoping to use the money to acquire replacements in the interior slave markets. However, enslaved people were becoming scarcer in those markets, and increased demand drove up prices. The compensation paid by the government was therefore insufficient to replace the labour lost when slaves fled from the plantations and farms. Supported by tribal leaders, the owners eventually rejected the compensation and instead demanded the unconditional return of their slaves. At the same time, in an effort to prevent further escapes, they placed slaves in irons, increased surveillance, and treated more harshly those suspected of planning escapes or encouraging others to flee."

He further describes slavery as still ongoing in the interior:

"The Somali populations, who, through racial pride nourished by fanatical and fanciful interpretations of the Quran, despise all manual labor and equally despise the Galla populations, who are non-Muslim but idolatrous, have made slavery, regardless of origin and race, their principal means of existence. Agricultural work, cultivation, the care of livestock, all manual labor is carried out by slaves, men and women, while the masters attend to trade in goods at the markets, travel between the places where they keep their wives, or spend entire days conversing with friends. The inland Somalis cannot imagine the possibility of any cultivation of the land or other manual work without the labor of slaves, nor do they yet accept that other men could dedicate themselves to such work unless they are slaves, that is, beings over whom, either by the laws of the Quran, or by customs established over centuries, or by the right acquired by the buyer over purchased merchandise, the master has unlimited power. On this conviction, deeply rooted in the Somali spirit, there can be no doubt. Whoever has visited that people cannot fail to realize this."

Italy's position on the protection of enslaved fugitives remained that such people would not be handed back to their owners, however, in a letter from 1900, Italian Governor Emilio Dulio reported that fugitive slaves were sometimes returned to their owners, particularly in cases involving domestic servants, on the condition that they would not be mistreated. By the end of the 19th century, the social and economic system in Somalia was still largely based on slavery. The Italian administrators in Somalia at the turn of the century did nothing to discourage slavery. In fact, several Italian administrators, including the royal commissioner, purchased female slaves from the Somalis to be used as concubines. By 1903, nearly half of Mogadishu's 7000 population was enslaved, as well as one third of Barawa's population and one fifth of Marka's population. In 1904, only a few hundred slaves had been manumitted since the arrival of the Italians. From 1905 to 1908, the colonial government negotiated the freedom of 2300 slaves, however these ex-slaves were told to remain in their master's homes as servants.

In March 1902, Governor Emilio Dulio argued that slavery could not be immediately abolished, as such a measure would likely provoke unrest among much of the Somali population. As an alternative, he advocated replacing slave labour with oxens, an approach that largely failed. By the end of 1902, articles in newspapers were reporting about the tolerance of slavery by the Italian authorities in Somalia. Under the administration, slaves that escaped were returned by the Italians to their masters or put in jail and forgotten about, in clear violation of the Brussels Conference of 1890. One contract, for example, concerned the sale of two female slaves purchased for 135 thalers by the sons of Sheikh, with 2 thalers paid as taxes to the Italian administration for the registration of the act. It was subsequently revealed that Italian authorities had from the very beginning reached informal understandings with the Somali tribes according to which the export of slaves by sea was prohibited, but slavery itself remained unaffected, as can be inferred from a statement made on 17 November 1903 by the Sultan of the Geledi. According to the Italian journalist Gustavo Chiesi, while the Italian Lieutenant Commander Mannini was resident in Barawa, some Bimal Somalis came to him claiming the return of a slave woman who had fled from them to a certain Songollo which refused to hand her back. Mannini then sent eight askari, under the command of a sergeant, to summon Songollo and request that he return the woman.

In September 1902, Igino Badolato, the Italian Resident at the city of Merka, observed that:

"Nothing is being done here, and no one wants to do anything. Slavery is still at its zenith."

The scandal of 1902 was further aggravated by reports sent by Robecchi Bricchetti, who had exposed that contracts for the sale of slaves were duly authenticated and kept in the residence of the governor. The situation and pressure of public opinion forced the governor to issue special measures. On 2 March 1903, he issued an order prohibiting the slave trade, followed on 12 March 1903 by a circular letter to the residents requesting the application of a number of anti-slavery decrees adopted by the Sultan of Zanzibar. On 20 April 1903, he issued an order establishing special tribunals to decide all questions relating to slavery. A key mistake of the Italian government was the weak oversight of its officials. Funds that could have been used to address the slave trade were instead spent on a ship to navigate the Shabelle river, which was in fact non-navigable. According to the Italian historian Ludovica De Courten: "slavery was still a widespread business and justice was administered by corrupted qadì."

In February 1903, Somali elders interviewed in the city of Barawa revealed that Italian workers purchased the freedom of enslaved women in exchange for sexual favours, they had also affirmed that slaves had been brought into the city as early as the year prior with the knowledge and assistance of Italian authorities. In December 1903, around twenty Oromo women, some of whom were slaves asking for manumission certificates, went to the Italian colonial government offices to request permission to accompany a caravan from Barawa to Bardera. The Italian officials denied them the certificates on the grounds that caravans were forbidden to travel with women and that such women could only have one intention; to practice prostitution. The women wanted to travel closer to their own original homelands in Oromia, where they had been caught as slaves. The Italian officials rejected their petition again on the grounds that the Oromo-speaking area was continuously being raided by Somali slave traders and therefore unsafe. Italian explorer Lamberto Vannutelli also recounts meeting Oromo and Sidama slaves at Luuq who had begged for his help to escape from the Somalis and return to Ethiopia, though the exact number of captives he encountered remains unclear. In 1903, almost half of Mogadishu's population was made up of slaves or freed slaves. A few years later, a U.S. diplomat wrote that much of the slave-raiding still taking place in East Africa was said to occur in the Oromo country.

In 1902, Pestalozza asserted that "slavery, and even less the slave trade, does not exist in the districts of Banadir." However, the following year, he claimed to have uncovered registers documenting transactions involving slaves, including their sale and donation. In 1902, following the publication in the Italian newspaper Secolo of a facsimile of a slave sale contract, the governor of Banadir, Emilio Dulio, wrote to Pestalozza denouncing the document as a forgery, claiming that that a qadi had been forced to supply the document with false names invented by an Italian functionary called Sala. In 1904, a scandal broke out when a concubine committed suicide rather than consent to sexual relations with a prominent Italian officer. It was later reported that he had frequently sought sexual favours from enslaved women through their masters. In 1906, the Italians did free slaves in urban territories via compensation to the masters, but did not act to free slaves in the interior of the country and in fact tried to stop the wave of fugitives who left their owners as news of the Italian emancipation reached the rural interior. Italian anti-slavery measures eventually led to a revolt by the Bimal Somalis. From April 1904 to January 1905, the Bimal besieged Merka, which was supplied by sea whenever monsoon conditions permitted. The Italians eventually suppressed the uprising after reinforcing their troops, whose rifles gave them a military advantage. By the end of the siege, approximately 1200 had died from starvation or scurvy. On 5 March 1905, a peace agreement was signed at Eyl in northern Somalia between Italy and the Dervish State, which included a ban on the slave trade. In 1905, slavery was formally outlawed, but in practice remained widely tolerated. In May 1906, a new decree prohibited freed slaves from leaving the colony, followed in July 1907 by another decree establishing "servant" villages. The distinction between slaves and servants was largely in name only, the Italian authorities had made little effort to investigate whether cases involved legitimate servitude or slavery. In 1909, the Italian journalist Gustavo Chiesi revealed that Italian men paid Somali masters to have sexual relations with their concubines. He had also revealed that many of the indigenous Somalis in the service of the colonial administration such as the interpreters and qadis had female slaves at their disposal. Chiesi also accused the Filonardi Company, who managed the ports of Banadir from 1893 to 1896, of having tolerated slavery and of promising the Somali that they would use a judicial system based on the sharia.

By 1910, the colonial government was reluctant to free all the slaves in Somalia because freeing all the slaves at once would force the free Somalis, unaccustomed to working their own field, to abandon them and resume the nomadic way of life, which the Italians did not want to happen. In 1910, the number of freed slaves had risen to several thousands. By 1916, the general governor of Italian Somaliland, Giovanni Cerrina Feroni, estimated that about one-tenth of the colony's population were still slaves, roughly 300,000 out of 3 million. According to Ronald Segal, Italy's Benadir Company was openly collaborating with local slave dealers, and wealthy Somali merchants still owned slaves by in the first half of the 20th century. The Italians adopted a conciliatory approach toward slave owners in the interior. Colonial tribunals often encouraged slaves to reach agreements with their masters as a condition for freedom, leading many to remain as dependent client laborers rather than slaves.

In the early 1900s, the Italian journalist Gustavo Chiesi recorded the following response from a Somali when asked about the abolition of slavery:

"We cannot do without slaves. They are our life. They are our hands, our eyes, our strength. They cultivate our lands, sow our seeds, harvest our crops, and tend our livestock. How can we manage without them? The land will remain uncultivated and overgrown with brush. Seed will no longer be cast into the furrows. The waters of the river will flood the fields unchecked. No one will gather the harvest. Our customs and laws do not permit us to perform such manual labour. And even if we wished to do so, we could not, for we do not have enough arms. Likewise, the slave women, who are like our daughters, grind the sorghum and maize from which bread is made to feed the whole family, they carry the water from which everyone drinks, and they make the butter that we take to the markets to be sold across the sea in exchange for the cotton cloth with which we all dress. If you take away the slaves, who will do all this? We are not enough. Without the slaves, men and women, who are our children, we shall have to abandon the country, leave it deserted, and withdraw far away, where it will no longer be possible for you to reach us. We cannot remain here, because we would die of hunger, and our livestock, left untended, would scatter into the bush, for we are not numerous enough to watch over them!"

According to historian Gwyn Campbell:

"However, as in other recently established colonial regimes in Africa, there was no immediate challenge to slavery. Although it was part of the Italian colonial obligation in the Belgium treaty to abolish slavery and the slave trade, Italy's initial concern was to promote efficient colonial administration in Somalia. The issue of slavery was ignored until the administrative structure was strong enough to enforce abolition. Indeed, Italian officials tolerated the maintenance of slavery on the large plantations created by Italian planters on the confiscated land between the Juba and Shebelli rivers, and frequently returned fugitive slaves to their former masters.. slavery throughout the colony was officially outlawed only in the first years of the twentieth century, in response to pressure from other European governments and within Italy from the Italian anti-slavery group led by the abolitionist Robecchi Bricchetti who, through a media campaign in Milan, aroused Italian public opinion against the government's lassitude towards abolition in Somalia."

The Italians reported to the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery in the 1930s that slavery and slave trade in Somalia had now been abolished. Although the Italians freed some Bantus, some Bantu groups remained enslaved well into the 1930s and continued to be despised and discriminated against by large parts of Somali society. Most of the freed slaves went on to work in Italian owned plantation or as client-farmers for Somalis. The Italians regarded Somalis as naturally disinclined toward agricultural labor :

"Hand power in the Benadir is scarce for a complex series of reasons of a moral, economic and demographic kind.. overall there is a natural slothfulness of pure Somalis towards work in the fields. Only slaves and freed slaves practice this dishonourable activity, it is only among them that we gather the small amount of manpower which is available."

While slavery had formally been abolished during the fascist period, in practice it was tolerated and ignored. Contrary to De Vecchi’s claim to Mussolini that slavery had disappeared in Somalia in a letter, it persisted under other forms, and forced labour remained legal and regulated. The abolition of slavery was more a matter of law than of fact. In 1933, Marcello Serrazanetti, the federal secretary of the Fascist Party in Mogadishu and a vocal critic of the new forced labour policies in Somalia, described forced labour as being "cynically disguised" as labour contracts that were, in his view, far worse than slavery. By 1935, the Italians in collaboration with former Somali slave owners introduced coerced labor laws and the forced conscription of the freed slaves in the agricultural industry, with over 100 Italian plantations in the river valleys. The emancipated Bantu were forced to leave their own farms to work solely as farm laborers on plantations owned by the Italian colonial government. In 1937, a law was passed that allowed Italians to keep enslaved concubines. During this period, the Italian colonial regime effectively permitted European settler farmers access to slave labour and even returned fugitive slaves to their owners.

The Italians definitionally separated the ex-slave population from the Somali population for purposes of conscripting laborers. According to Kenyan historian Ahmed Salim, Somali men generally avoided plantation labour due to an aversion to manual labour. During the fascist period, Italian authorities relied on forced labour, as Somali workers were not attracted by monetary wages, which were not yet seen as useful for meeting daily subsistence needs. According to Harold Nelson, during the Italian colonial period the potential labour market was largely composed of sedentary populations who had formerly been enslaved by dominant Somali groups, who showed little interest in agriculture. Almost all the people conscripted into these forced plantations were former slaves or related to former slaves. The colonial government tasked ethnic Somalis with drafting these former slaves under their control to work on plantations. Several demonstrations against conscription took place and many conscripted men fled the estates. As a result, the Italians promised men conscripted into forced labor the right to choose any woman on the plantation as a wife, without her consent. Contemporary informants reported that without the company of a woman, most young men would have fled conscription.

Abuses against conscripts on plantations under the fascist administration were common, as many of the Italians sent to Somalia were violent or corrupt individuals with criminal records. In one documented case, workers who failed to complete assigned labor were punished by being tied to a pole and exposed to the sun for hours. Among descendants of slaves in Somalia, memories of forced labor under the fascist regime often overshadowed earlier memories of slavery in southern Somalia. In local recollections, traumatic memories associated with slavery were largely linked to forced conscriptions in the fascist period. At an Italian-owned plantation known as Avai, numerous Bantu laborers were drowned in the irrigation canals.

The British abolished this system after defeating the Italians in WW2. One British official described the scheme to be indistinguishable from slavery. At least one Italian plantation overseer was later interned by the British in a prison camp in Kenya following the British conquest. Slave labour in Somalia only effectively came to an end with the collapse of Italian colonialism after the Second World War. Traces of it still existed in 1948, on the eve of the United Nations decision to entrust Italy with the fiduciary administration of Somaliland. At the Conference on Somalia, forced labour was specifically raised, and its abolition became one of the conditions for accepting the UN Trusteeship proposal.

British colonial government

In April 1898, an Oromo slave who had obtained British protection was found and killed by his Somali master. In response, British police confiscated the Somali master's cattle in the Afmadow area. The Somalis retaliated by raiding towards British controlled Kismayo and killing two Arab traders near the town.

As did the Italians, The British government of the East Africa protectorate consistently intervened on the side of the Somalis to maintain the servile status of the Oromo. Despite their official actions, the British clearly recognized that the position of the Oromo living among the Somalis amounted to slavery. Summarizing the situation of Oromos living under the Somalis in 1930, the district commissioner of Garissa District wrote that every Oromo living with the Somalis is virtually a slave and therefore exploitable. To bury the issue, in 1936 the British falsely declared that the Wardey (Oromo slaves) had ceased to exist as an ethnic entity, having been fully assimilated as Somalis. The enslavement of Oromo populations in British controlle southern Somalia continued in the 20th century, because British officers classified Oromo slaves as assimilated Somalis rather than enslaved communities, thereby avoiding the issue of slavery.

Following the killing of a British officer during an expedition in Somaliland and the subsequent British blockade of Berbera, British authorities negotiated a series of treaties with northern Somali clans. In 1855, the British Brigadier-General William Marcus Coghlan, the Resident at Aden, signed a treaty with the Garhajis and Habr Je'lo prohibiting the export of slaves from territories under their authority. During the 1880s, the British concluded additional abolition treaties with the Majerteen (1866), Habr Awal (July 1884), Gadabursi (December 1884), Habr Je'lo (December 1884), Issa (December 1884), Garhajis (January 1885), and Warsangeli (January 1886).

Officially, slavery in Northern Somalia was abolished during the British Somaliland protectorate. However, at the turn of the 20th century, British naval officers routinely ignored orders to police the slave trade, and slave running from the British Somaliland coast went virtually unchecked as a result. Severe infighting among northern Somalis during the Dervish Wars of the 20th century led to the decline of the slave trade, as groups turned on each other instead of carrying out slave raids, contributing to a sharp population decrease in the process.

Things became more difficult for slave merchants when European powers, particularly the British Empire, expanded into the region in the 1880s. The British occupied Zeila in 1884, followed in the same year by the French move on Obock, and in 1885 the Italians seized Massawa. In addition, the Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888-1892 disrupted slave exports. Together, these developments made it increasingly difficult for merchants to export slaves from the northern Somali coast. After suppressing the slave trade on the northern Somali coast, the British promoted commerce in textiles and natural products as an alternative source of trade.

Life after Enslavement

Different members of a Somali clan could have slaves of both Oromo and Bantu heritage, and once these slaves attained their freedom, they and their children could then be affiliated with the same Somali clan, despite their separate origins. In this way, villages formed along Somali clan lines in the Jubba valley could contain people of both Oromo and Bantu heritage, who claimed affiliation to the same Somali clan. One example is Shaikh Hajji Ali bin Isa al-Bimali of Marka, an Oromo ex-slave of the Bimal, despite not being ethnically Somali, he identified himself with the Bimal clan.

Qadi court records indicate that freedwomen sometimes married their former owners or the sons of their former owners. One example is the case of an Oromo freedwoman named Hawa, who had married an Isaaq Somali man in Barawa with a recorded mahr (dower) of 3 qirsh, the lowest recorded amount. More commonly, freedwomen received a mahr of around 10 qirsh, compared to approximately 30-60 qirsh for freeborn women. Former owners and their freed slaves often remained connected through social and economic obligations. In one case, a freedwoman, possibly a former concubine, was sufficiently trusted that upon her patron's death she was found in possession of a large amount of gold and silver, which she subsequently handed over to the guardian of the deceased's minor heirs. In another case, a freed person remained legally tied to their former patron, such that upon the freed person's death, the patron inherited their estate.

After emancipation, Oromos ex-slaves settled in large numbers in the mid-valley area around Buale and the middle Juba region as well as the upper Shabelle. Bantu ex-slaves settled along the Juba and Shabelle rivers, but also the inter-riverine regions of Bay and Bakool.

Some freed female slaves practiced prostitution. Prostitution as a female slave activity was first documented in Somalia by Robecchi Bricchetti. According to records of the Italian parliament, by the 1910s most emancipated individuals were described as living in vagrancy, with many women engaged in prostitution :

"The slave, Swahili, Borana, Galla, Arussi, means by freedom only the right to do nothing. Except for the few who join the freedmen's villages on the Shabelle or Juba Rivers and take up farming on their own, most, if men, turn to idleness and vagrancy; if women, to prostitution. Mogadishu, Merca, and Brava are overflowing with prostitutes, and, with a few exceptions, they are all freed slaves."

In British Somaliland, the administration employed emancipated slaves, the jail master of Zeila under the British was an ex-slave. According to the colonial administrator Major H. Rayne, after the abolition of slavery in British Somaliland, both former slaves and those formerly involved in the slave trade tended to avoid discussing the subject, preferring to keep their past experiences of slavery and emancipation private. In the 20th century, freed slaves were generally held in an unequal and inferior legal status compared to those considered ethnic Somali.

Discrimination in Modern Somali Society

The term “Galla” has been documented in modern contexts as a pejorative exonym for Oromo descended people in Somalia, at times used in association with the legacy of slavery in Somalia. In one recorded instance from the 1990s, a Somali interpreter used the term during an asylum application in the Netherlands to refer to a woman described as descending from formerly enslaved families, reportedly emancipated during the colonial period. Despite adopting Islam, affiliating with Somali clans, and speaking Somali, descendants of Oromo and Bantu slaves in Somalia continue to face discrimination. Somalis commonly refer to these descendants of slaves as "Habash" or "Jareer" meaning kinky hair.

Slavery in Somali literature

In the novel Maps (1986) written by the Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah, Misra appears as a major character, an Oromo woman who was separated from her family at a young age and taken by a Somali warrior on horseback to a town where she was acquired by a wealthy man. Upon reaching adulthood, she became his wife and grew increasingly confused by her situation, eventually murdering him during sexual intercourse and fleeing, later becoming the maid and mistress of a man named Qorrax. She eventually adopts Askar, the novel's protagonist, which becomes an important aspect of the narrative.

Modern Slavery

A 2017 investigation by the BBC reported that young Kenyan women from Mombasa, both Christian and Muslim, were being lured and subsequently trafficked by al-Shabaab into Somalia, where they were subjected to sexual slavery. As of 2023, Somalia had around 98,000 people living in modern slavery and ranked 14th in terms of prevalence of modern slavery within Africa.