Blacks in Egypt
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Black people have been a part of Egyptian society since ancient times.
Slavery[edit]
Until 19th century[edit]
Slavery existed in Egypt for millennia and persisted until the end of the 19th century. Egyptian rulers employed the use of military slaves since the mid-9th century when Ahmad Ibd Tulun recruited 40,000 black Sudanese slaves to his army.[1] Black Sudanese slaves formed the majority of the Egyptian military for two centuries.[1] While the Egyptians, historically, took an ethnically diverse population of slaves, by the 18th and 19th centuries the overwhelming majority of slaves in Egypt were black African men and women from across the continent.[2]
While black slaves mainly worked in domestic service, Egypt also used them as soldiers until the late 1800s, when the British occupation of Egypt ultimately brought an end to this practice.[2] Muhammad Ali, the viceroy of Egypt for the first half of the 19th century, brought back the practice of using black slaves as soldiers and was said to have had about 2,500 black slave soldiers in the mid 1830s.[3] Ali, who publicly supported the institution of slavery, required slave owners in the outer regions of Egypt to pay taxes on their slaves.[2] Ali wanted to form a European style army composed entirely of slaves, called the nizam army.
Throughout the 19th century, he maintained a mixed army, composed of black and white slaves, and a hierarchical army, with black slaves as the soldiers and white slaves as officers.[1] The Egyptian military continued to use slaves as troops until Britain's arrival, despite the slave trade being outlawed in Egypt.[2] Black slaves were also used as agricultural laborers, but this was on a much lower scale as compared to black slaves working in domestic services while upper Egypt used slave labor on vast sugar plantations.[2]
The practice was widespread throughout Egyptian society by individuals of many occupations and social statuses.[2] Christians, Jews, and Europeans also owned black slaves in Egypt. Historians suspect that there were between 22,000 - 30,000 slaves in Egypt, of whom 17,000 - 25,000 were black; this figure, however, may be an underestimation. The number of slaves in Egypt remained constant throughout the 19th century, and about half of the population slaves lived in Cairo.[2]
19th century on-wards[edit]
While Ali may have publicly supported slavery; privately, he claimed he wished to abolish slavery. However, he knew that to abolish slavery would be politically unpopular due to the upper-class negative views of slaves and their unwillingness to allow them into Egyptian society.
Only a few years after Ali’s reign ended, Mohamed Sa’id took control. In December 1854, he advanced the first measures toward banning the slave trade in Egypt and prohibiting the import of slaves from Sudan, a major source for the Egyptian slave trade.[2] Throughout his rule, Sa’id sent multiple orders to ban the slave trade in different parts of Egypt, but with weak enforcement, the black slave trade continued.
Sa’id’s successor, Ismail Pasha, continued Sa’id’s attempts to cut off the slave trade. Having witnessed his predecessor’s failed attempts to cease the import of slaves, Ismail decided to try to cut off the slave trade at the source and sent European-led expeditions to Sudan and the Red Sea area to try to control the situation. However, Pasha's attempts also failed and slavery continued in Egypt throughout the 1870's.[2]
On 4 August 1877, the British and the Egyptians signed the Convention for the Suppression of the Slave-Trade, which established harsher punishments for slave dealers and required slave owners to free their slaves. The convention was effective because, for the first time, the Egyptian anti-slave laws were backed by enforcement. By 1889, 18,000 slaves had been freed.[2]
On 21 November 1895, a new convention of the same name was signed by both Egypt and France. This convention established even harsher punishments for slave dealers.[2] While these conventions helped reduce the slave trade, slavery was abolished in Egypt due to the rise of the free labor market in the 80s though 90s and the urbanization of the country. This made slave ownership more expensive than paying workers, and thus, less appealing. Additionally, the increased interactions with Europe also improved Egyptian culture as it shifted away from the institution of slavery. By the twentieth century, slavery in Egypt had ended.[2]
Sudanese refugees[edit]
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According to Egyptian authorities, there are five million refugees and immigrants who are mostly Sudanese that live in Egypt. The Sudanese refugees belong to many diverse ethnic groups, greatly affecting the politics of all nations in which they seek refuge, particularly Egypt.[4] Approximately one million Sudanese and South Sudanese fled the region due to conflict.[5]
While Egypt faces economic malaise, Sudanese refugees face a grim situation amid discrimination and violence, and poverty. The suicide rate is high among Sudanese refugees in Egypt. There are two to three cases of suicide every week, and many of those are students suffering from poverty. There are few jobs for Sudanese people in Egypt, mostly in shops or as cleaners in houses. Even well educated Sudanese refugees such as with doctorates work in these positions because their residence permit does not allow them to work. During raids, security forces randomly arrest people, including those who have a residence permit. Once arrested, they are held in custody for at least a week until the investigation is completed and their residence is confirmed.[6]
The Sudanese migrated in two distinct phases: from 1955 to 1972 and from 1983 until the mid-2000s. A majority of these refugees have wound up in Uganda or Egypt, specifically Cairo. Sudanese refugees in Cairo primarily came with legal passports, but often engaged in illegal work upon arrival.[4]
Overall, the transition into the Egyptian lifestyle has been easier for the Arab Sudanese contrary to the South Sudanese. The Arab Sudanese are considered Arab and share a similar culture and appearance to the Egyptians. The South Sudanese, on the other hand, are mostly black and share fewer cultural similarities with the Egyptians. This, in turn, has caused more strife for the South Sudanese refugees in Egypt than their Sudanese counterparts.
In 2001, only 2,833 Sudanese had been registered as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner Refugees (UNHCR), while tens of thousands had not been interviewed yet or already denied. Roughly 15,000 Sudanese were denied refugee status from 1997-2000 in Egypt.[4] The majority denied refugee status were black South Sudanese. Refugees without status faced harassment, arrests, and deportation. The Egyptian government has periodically collected refugees presumed to be living in Egypt illegally, despite many having been under the supervision of the UNHCR.[4] As a result of the government's actions toward black refugees, racially motivated harassment and attacks were widespread in the early 2000s. While the black Sudanese were the main victims, other black Africans living in Egypt were victims as well. Historians believe that the history of slavery and racism in Egypt is a probable cause for their attitudes towards the black Sudanese refugees.[4]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1950-, Walz, Terence Cuno, Kenneth M. (2010). Race and slavery in the Middle East : histories of trans-Saharan Africans in nineteenth-century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean. American University in Cairo Press. ISBN 9789774163982. OCLC 900297960. Search this book on
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Baer, Gabriel (1967). "Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Egypt". The Journal of African History. 8 (3): 417–441. doi:10.1017/S0021853700007945. JSTOR 179829.
- ↑ "Muḥammad ʿAlī | pasha and viceroy of Egypt". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 2018-09-06. Retrieved 2018-10-17. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Moro, L. N. (2004-12-01). "Interethnic Relations in Exile: The Politics of Ethnicity among Sudanese Refugees in Uganda and Egypt". Journal of Refugee Studies. 17 (4): 420–436. doi:10.1093/jrs/17.4.420. ISSN 0951-6328.
- ↑ "Egypt". UNHCR. August 2018. Retrieved 18 October 2018.[permanent dead link]
- ↑ "Sudanese Refugees in Egypt Suffer Discrimination, Poverty". 19 September 2018. Archived from the original on 2019-04-13. Retrieved 2019-05-12. Unknown parameter
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