The history of dependency, slavery and abolition in the Somali country reveals that women slaves, through their translocal movements and personal interactions, were at the crossroads of the intermingling of people from Cushitic groups and Bantu-speaking groups. A number of Italian writers at the turn of the twentieth century describe the phenomenon of slavery as “soft” and rather non-conflictual; it is depicted as a situation in which slaves preferred to be taken care of by their masters, rather than take their lives into their own hands. Others highlight the way slaves were treated as commodities and exchanged in the market.1 Another common stereotype is that this form of subordination basically did not exist among Somalis practicing pastoralism. Only a few works have counteracted this stereotype.2
Following in the tradition of the officers and scholars involved in the administration of Somalia in the period of colonial incursion and administration, historians of recent decades have written little about the characteristics of slavery in Somalia at the turn of the twentieth century, with a few exceptions.3 This chapter, by using data from a civil court register of the town of Brava and
In the central and southern parts of Somalia, where agriculture was possible and practiced because of the fertile lands surrounding the Shebelle and Juba Rivers, a large number of slaves were taken from the Indian Ocean market, mostly from Bantu-speaking groups. In addition, there was a flourishing market in slaves brought from the interior, mainly of Oromo origin, referred to in the old texts as Galla4 or Boran; they were taken not only to the central agricultural areas of the Benadir, but also to both urban and pastoral settings in more northern areas. People who had been won in fights, kidnapped from their settlements, or captured in raids could become slaves in both the northern and the southern parts of Somalia. Literature on customary law among the Majeerteen and the Marrexaan in Somalia reports on how slaves were dealt with in both groups, especially in the case of unions between a man and a woman.5 During his travels in Harar, the British traveller Burton met a number of slave girls, some of whom he recognized as being of Oromo origin.6 Indeed, it was much easier in the middle of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century to find Oromo slaves rather than slaves of Bantu origin in the interior of the northern areas of the Horn inhabited by Somali speakers.
This article deals with relationships of hierarchy and dependency as they relate to discourses on the construction of male and female roles in Somalia with regard to dependency and slavery. This short overview highlights the pivotal
According to the locally applied interpretation of the shariʿa, if a woman gave birth to at least one child, or even if she aborted a child of the master, she could no longer be sold, pledged or given as present, although her other obligations towards the master remained intact. If the law was applied, she was thus transformed from somebody who could always form part of the slave market to somebody belonging to the master’s domestic environment. In principle, her translocal movements – from the place where she was born, to where she had been kidnapped and/ or sold – came to an end; she was integrated, albeit in a dependent and unfree status, and took on a reproductive role in the society where she had ended up. Unless she escaped, was kidnapped or was unlawfully sold again, from then onwards she played a role as a mother, lover, service provider and worker in the new context where she had been made pregnant.
As observed by scholars of slavery in East Africa,7 this meant that in the precolonial period, female and male slaves had different destinies: men were less easy to absorb at the family level, while girls, “as future concubines, mothers, and agriculturalists were more universally assimilable than boys.”8 However, they should not be thought of as “socially dead” individuals, statically embedded in a domestic mode of production as reproducers.9 As will be shown, women slaves – far from being in a passive role – were in position of continuous negotiation throughout their lives.10 Perhaps unlike other areas of East Africa, in this context the slave’s ethnic origin also mattered, as an asset and opportunity for social mobility within the social context where the slave had been sold.
The Benadir Coast and Lugh at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Slaves of Oromo origin were brought into the Benaadir by land routes, whereas Bantu-speaking slaves came from the trade along the Indian Ocean.11 The ships
Some information concerning slavery in 1895–1897 can be found in Ugo Ferrandi’s work.13 He argues that in Lugh station, a market town in central Somalia situated along the Juba River going north toward the present-day boundaries of Ethiopia, slave traffic was “mainly supported by traders of the Coast.”14 The slaves traded were mainly boys and women. Those who arrived in Lugh were mostly traded by the Gherra, who bought them from relatives and parents in exchange for cows, goats, tobacco, and cotton fabric.15 Through raids, rather than barter, Oromo Boran slaves were acquired by the Ogaden and the Cablalla living north of Kisimayu. The extent to which people kidnapped in raids would maintain their status of subordination as slaves or as free clients depended largely on the possibility for negotiations after the fighting between groups; whether individuals had been kidnapped in adulthood or as children were other influential factors.
One case of integration between Oromo and Somali fighters is the case of the Oromo Orma, who were conquered by the Somali. After the conquest, some of them decided to stay as clients and some stayed as slaves, all of them taking the name of Warday.16 Later, the Warday set themselves free, but took Somali as their first language and followed many Somali customs. According to Cerulli,17 Somali customary law, unlike Galla law, prohibited Somalis from owning or selling Somali slaves, themselves or their children for any reason. Slaves were therefore, by definition, foreigners.
From the Lugh market, slaves were taken to the village of Audegle – at the time, an important centre of slave exchange and trade in southern Somalia, close to Merca and Mogadishu. From there, some were sent to the agricultural estates in the Middle Shebelle, to the Geledi, and to the “Mublin and Scidle.”18 Some were also taken to Mogadishu, Merca, Brava, and the port of Munghia. This last place, especially, provided an easy embarkation point for
In 1903, according to data reported by Robecchi Bricchetti, the numbers of slaves in the Benaadir coastal towns, as against members of the free population, were as follows. In Mogadishu town there was a population of 8000 people, of whom 6695 resided in the areas of the town called Shingani and Hamar Weyn. Of these 6695 individuals, almost half were slaves: in Hamar Weyn 2850 were free and 1260 were slaves, while in Shingani almost 1750 were free and 835 were slaves.20 The population of the town of Merca ranged from 5000 to 7000 people, of whom 721 were slaves.21 Brava contained approximately 4000 inhabitants, 829 of whom were slaves – 434 in the town itself and 395 in the surrounding countryside.22 However, the data on Mogadishu might have been overestimated. Robecchi Bricchetti’s handwritten notebooks held in Pavia’s archive show corrections to these numbers.
As for statistics from the interior, the numbers for Lugh are given in a work by Ugo Ferrandi, dated February 1, 1897. The town was run by the Gasar Guddà clan, supposedly the wealthiest in the area. The ratio of slaves to free people is shown in Table 3.1.
According to Ferrandi, the Gasar Guddà were devoted mainly to trade and brokerage. For this reason, they owned only what Ferrandi considered a “small
Reports from the Turn of the Twentieth Century
According to Ferrandi, slaves were not treated badly by the people living in Lugh; they were often considered to be like family members. He reports an example of the family-like relations he witnessed, when a master cried at the death of one of his slaves as if the slave were his own child.24 Ferrandi reports that he generally only saw unhappy slaves in Lugh among poor families who could not even decently support themselves.25
An account of the extent to which slaves were mistreated in the Somali territory, according to the standards of international law, is provided by Giacomo Trevis, who was the Italian Resident in Brava in 1895–1896.26 He regards the treatment of slaves as different in various settings: among pastoral people (mentioned as beduini), in the agricultural estates, and in the urban coastal context. In urban coastal areas, he argues, slavery was of the domestic type, and harsh treatment could be effectively limited to the use of exemplary punishments ordered by governors, as shown by cases in Brava.27 Slaves received the worst treatment among pastoral people and in agricultural estates close to the river banks, partly out of fear that they would escape; Trevis particularly mentions as relevant slave holders the Abgal, Bimal, Uadan, Tunni, and Cablalla groups.28 Among pastoral people and in agricultural farms, slaves were often permanently chained with pingo, which were “short, heavy fetters.”29 The worst kind of treatment he heard of was inflicted on their slaves by the Mobilen clan.30 The second-hand sources he relied on reported a number of tortures to which fugitives were subjected. When a fugitive was captured, “two pieces of wood [were] tied to his head and all slaves [were] obliged to beat on
Trevis expresses concern over such bad treatment, not only as inhuman and morally unacceptable, but also for economic reasons: this treatment encouraged slaves to escape toward the Gosha area, along the southern Juba River, rather than going to urban areas where they could have been useful labourers.34 In the Gosha area, freed and escaped slaves formed organised communities of free people earning a living from agriculture and trade.35 The movement of fugitives toward wild rural areas deprived coastal towns of hard workers who could otherwise be employed by Italian officers and, eventually, colonists.36
Quite accurate data concerning the treatment of slaves in the coastal towns of Benadir in 1903 were published in 1904 by a representative of the Società Antischiavista d’Italia, Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti. He travelled to the Benadir and wrote a series of letters to his agency describing the conditions in which slaves were living as well as the actions undertaken to free a number of them. Robecchi Bricchetti was given the task of investigating the practice of slavery in the Benadir Italian colony, which was governed on behalf of the Italian government by the Società del Benadir, whose representatives had argued for tolerance towards slavery and declared it inevitable in the Somali context.37 Much of the data reported by Robecchi Bricchetti refers to the towns of Brava, Merca, and Mogadishu. In one letter, he writes that among Somalis
a slave is a domestic animal suitable for work, he has to do all that he is directed to do, and live in the complete uncertainty of his status and his fate; he is considered like an animal, but his treatment is worse than that given to a beast. I observed that in Mogadiscio, as in most of the cities of the Benadir, the majority of the slaves have a sort of blind devotion to their masters: sometimes (like, for instance, the slaves of the Ahmudi) they have a respectful affection for their masters like trusty dogs. This is
a phenomenon that at first strikes people and it may suggest to them the existence of a “soft” slavery.38
As regards slaves assigned to agricultural tasks, he describes scenes he observed close to the town of Merca. During the weeding period, slaves
enter the field two by two, their feet often chained, and tied to one another at two meters’ distance; thus, so tied they proceed one behind the other; the front one holds a small hoe, makes a hole in the soil and the one behind lets fall into the holes some seeds of millet which he holds in a cotton cloth which encircles his waist.39
Returning from his visit to Africa, Robecchi Bricchetti brought home a number of chains, padlocks, and other iron paraphernalia taken from the ankles of slaves in Brava and Merca and published some pictures of the fetters.40 These bonds were fixed around the ankles with nails.41 To be able to walk, slaves intending to flee would have to constantly work to separate the chains on each ankle and twist cloth around each ring in order to avoid making a noise while walking. Often these iron ankle rings could only be removed by a blacksmith.42
Concerning the juridical status of the slaves, the representative of the Società Antischiavista d’Italia was concise:
The slave is inherited property, a source of private wealth, which, in the hands of the master, becomes a comfortable monetary unit, which can circulate at the master’s choice. This is very convenient, considering that all those slaves are of good character, very docile, obliging and excellent workers.43
That the slaves were dealt with as exchangeable units, whose property could be shared by several people, is also attested by the records of the Brava qadi’s register. In judgment QR no. 372.2, a man pledges security to a creditor by transferring to him one man and one woman from among his slaves, named,
Slaves could be given in distraint of property as security for a debt. In one reported case, six slaves were taken as pawns.50 Contracts for the services of slave women are also available.51
Interestingly, various words were used in Somalia to indicate slaves. Some records refer to slaves as jins al-māl, i.e., literally, “kind of goods” in Arabic; however, in the rendering of Robecchi Bricchetti, they are called “qualità della merce”;52 and according to Vianello and Kassim, they are “chattel” or “property.”53 In other cases, the legal records in Brava use the expression “speaking things”54 for slaves, as opposed to “mute things” when talking about objects.55
The argument about slavery elaborated by Claude Meillassoux saw slaves as embedded in a “domestic mode of production.” They were regarded as socially dead and fixed in a socially deprived status through the generations, due to this particular mode of exploiting human labour. Thus slaves were seen as completely dominated by their masters, and their language was that of the master.56 More recently, this argument has been re-analysed and opposed in
In Brava, slaves were described in juridical books by the definition “something that speaks.” By definition, slaves were not silent. This evidence seems to reflect Glassman’s argument about the space for agency in slaves’ lives.61 In this area of Somalia there was a wide spectrum of possible negotiated statuses of dependence;62 those, as a matter of fact, could not be summarised in the Swahili proverb that “a slave has no words” – a proverb which perhaps reflected the perspective of one social class. From their positions of dependence in different social layers, slaves actively operated following aspirations that might include visions of distancing themselves from their masters, becoming their powerful clients, and maybe holding servants of their own.63
Table 3.2 shows several words used around the 1950s to describe slaves in various clans, lineages or other groupings living in Somalia.
From the prices of slaves in Mogadishu and in the Somali Benaadir in 1903, one can trace the importance and value given to particular tasks allotted to
In general, Swahili slaves were considered much stronger than the Oromo because they were reputed to exhibit greater endurance and perseverance at work. Swahili men were used for agricultural and other hard work, whereas Oromo men, reportedly due to their “scarce endurance and … their stubbornness,”64 were used especially in pastoral activities. In general, Swahili men and women were considered much harder workers than the Oromo. Young Oromo girls used as domestic servants were called suriya, a word also meaning concubine, and their price varied according to their physical conformation.65 Their children, according to Robecchi Bricchetti, became slaves of the master.66
Oromo women were rated the highest among the slaves for their capacity as slaves/concubines, being valued at 90 talleri. Children born to Oromo women
It is not clear, from Table 3.3, whether women other than those of Oromo origins were considered ideally valuable concubines, although young girls of any ethnicity initially taken for domestic work were certainly taken as lovers by masters and the masters’ children. Slave women were also valued as workers: when women were taken as workers, the price for Swahili women was higher than that for Oromo women, as the Swahili were reputed to be stronger. Teenagers were valued for domestic work. Older women seem to have been valued especially for their capacity for work, rather than for their sexual/reproductive services.
Strong Swahili adult men were valued at 89 talleri, almost as much as female Galla who were to be used as concubines. Seventy talleri were paid for a strong Galla man, approximately 20 talleri less than the price paid for the stereotypical worker, the strong Swahili man. A male child was valued at 40 talleri if paid for together with a mother who was not necessarily young.
Male slaves, according to a census conducted in the town of Brava,73 might be servants, sailors, carpenters, masons, porters, farmers, askari, or carriers. They might also be “living in the farms” (that is, looking after the farms), looking after cattle, working as tailors, carrying milk, working as butchers or blacksmiths, selling petroleum, working as weavers, or working with donkeys. Female slaves might carry water, look after children, look after cattle, carry milk, or carry out the salting of animal skins. They might also be servants, servants in the home, farmers, concubines (suriya), or suriya in shamba,74 pot makers. Boys and girls could start working as servants when they were as young as eight years of age.
Some slaves’ independent activities were remunerated, and in these cases the slaves paid tributes to their masters either daily or monthly. In 1903, such tributes ranged from 3 to 6 besa per day, while monthly tributes could go up to a total of 2 talleri a month, as in the cases of the 20-year-old woman slave Halima and the 25-year-old woman slave Nia mentioned in Robecchi Bricchetti’s
Robecchi Bricchetti did not take a formal census of prostitution as a female slave activity, but he was well aware of the practice among slave women, as is evident in the case of Auvai, which will be described later.80 A woman’s income from prostitution could not be easily controlled by a master, especially if this activity was not declared to him as part of the woman’s income. Whilst tributes to the master were collected from slaves who practiced income-generating activities, the occasional sale of one’s sexual favors, if practiced in secret, could not easily be “taxed” by masters.
Slaves were owned by women as well as men: many cases from the Bravanese records highlight the fact that women owned a large number of slaves. A court case reports a woman who donated a slave.81 A census describes a mistress whose 14-year-old male slave paid 3 besa per day.82 In Lugh at the end of the nineteenth century, women living with the Gasar Guddà (the clan governing the town) were served by slaves. Freeborn women of the family had authority over slaves, who performed tasks such as fetching firewood and water or cooking.83 Yet Ferrandi does not mention whether these slaves were the women’s own property. Ferrandi only tells us that Gasar Guddà women had access to the services of many servants and had the power to command them.
Slave Women and Men
It should be noted that, despite the presence of the cadi, customary law on the treatment of slaves at the beginning of the twentieth century was not the same everywhere in Somalia. For instance, children of slaves are reported to have been dealt with differently from clan to clan. Among the Somali Majeerteen, if a slave man had a child by a slave woman, the child was considered the property of the male slave’s master,84 whereas the Somali Marrexaan would have considered the child the property of the female slave’s master.85
A case reported in the letters sent to the Società Antischiavista d’Italia gives a hint of the relationship between non-slaves and slaves in the context of marriage. Two askari,
Salem Baggaine and Salem bin Ambarac…, married respectively Aiscia and Halima, both slaves of Mohamed Scerif Busceri, who gave permission for the wedding only with a declaration in front of witnesses that the children begotten within the marriage would be his property. The askari agreed, but, just after signing the declaration, they both exclaimed: “Should I have a child, I would rather strangle him myself than leave him as a slave of a Somali!” At that point, the wives answered that such a thing would never happen, as they would do everything not to deliver children. Both women kept their promise, using strong indigenous abortifacients made of pepper, seeds of colza, colba and honey, prepared by an old practiced hand of the country.86
This case shows that masters in coastal towns could to some extent negotiate rights over the “offspring” of their female slaves, even if these women married free men. Yet the very fact that the master wanted his rights to be asserted by the free men in front of witnesses before they married his slaves highlights the fact that these rights were not so obvious, and could have been the subject of later claims by the husbands. Moreover, these wives must have been afraid of what might happen should they actually deliver children after seeking abortions so persistently. Masters could, for example, separate children from their mothers to sell them. In the Italian colonial region of Migiurtinia, for instance,
An interesting aspect of this example is that free men, askari, did not mind marrying slave women in this setting, while customary law in the Migiurtinia region did not permit it.88 It may be that the askari were aware that, with a little negotiation, they would usually be entitled to give free status to their children born from these marriages. In the Migiurtinia region, marriages between low-caste persons89 and slaves were possible, though the children acquired their father’s status.90 Judgment QR 432.1 in Brava shows that a number of other transactions might be involved in marriages contracted between free men and slave women.91 A free man paid the mahari, i.e. dowry, to the master of the slave woman he married by selling a hut (ariish), in order to fulfil this obligation. Unlike free women, slave women were not entitled to their dowry sum, and the master took the money. This clarifies some juridical aspects of slave women’s status as compared to freeborn women in Brava. Not only were freeborn women entitled to the dowry and would claim it by using legal procedures when needed, but they were also allowed to own property; in fact, they possessed quite large amounts of property, in the form of commodities, slaves, and estates in Brava.92
On the other hand, women slaves experienced many difficulties in claiming rights over their own property. Evidence for this comes from reports of direct observation of specific cases on the Benadir coast:
The shapely slave Auvai … was servant of the interpreter AbuBeker in Filonardi’s time, and was presented with three cows by the translator on his departure. She narrated that once, having to travel from Mogadishu to visit her sick mother in Merca, she left her cattle with her master Schek Mohamed Dubi Scerif, who refused to give them back. Only much later did she receive them back through the mediation of the Governor. She added that, due to famine and having no means to feed the cows, she was obliged to sell a cow to support the other two. Because one cow had been sold without the permission of her master, he took the two cows
that were left from her, and had a judgment issued, through Hagi Ahmed (translator for the governor), by the Aghida and by the Cadi, stating that properties of slaves belong exclusively to their masters. Due to this judgment … the poor woman was deprived of the two cows that represented all her hoard. It was not enough. She was put in short irons and placed in the very filthy garesa [prison] of the town for seven months and during this time was supported by the charity of the mates; meanwhile she was also despoiled of her silver bracelets, of the brooches, of the earrings, baubles, scarves and trifles she had earned as a slave: through the painful prostitution of herself … It is to be noticed that this woman had already begotten three children from the first-born of her master and therefore, under Islamic Law, should have been freed; but she was not yet free, as the master wanted 100 talleri to manumit her.93
First of all, one reason why the Auvai case was examined so thoroughly by an Italian is that Auvai had been working with an interpreter for the Italian Filonardi, who was founder of the Compagnia Filonardi, company which had been in charge of the administration of the Benadir’s territory on behalf of the Italian government (1893–1896). This interpreter was AbuBeker Bin Aohod, who was later accused and then cleared of having fostered the assassination of the Cecchi expedition in 1896.94 If she had not been working for such an important person, who was among Filonardi’s contacts in the Benadir at the time,95 her case would have probably remained unknown and probably no Italian would have advocated for her rights. Yet her case shows a number of interesting aspects of female slaves’ lives at the time.
First, slave women could own their own commodities; although at times it was not easy to keep their rights over them, and negotiations were needed. Auvai’s master had to engage in a court case in order to enforce his own control over the woman’s personal rights. Yet it is a fact that female slaves could be easily and almost forcibly accessed by their masters and the master’s children for sexual services from the time they were pubescent; it comes as no surprise that they might later be prepared sometimes to offer their bodies in return for payment.
Second, some slave women accumulated their own wealth in terms of gold, silver, and other items that could be kept discreetly hidden. Selling one’s own body, occasionally and secretly, was one of the options for a woman to earn money without having to pay tributes to her owner, although masters seemed to claim some return for it.
Third, according to Muslim law, women slaves who gave birth to their owner’s children were to be freed after the master’s death, on account of maternity.96 Depending on the customary traditions the children were considered liberti or followed the mother’s route. The children of a slave woman and a free man who was not her master were declared liberti only if their father recognized them.97 Some slave women, as in the case of Auvai, maintained some sort of dependence on their masters, rather than attempting to buy their freedom. This choice must be seen as embedded in the specific contexts. Buying their freedom might not have been even an option if the master did not agree. Slave women to be freed on account of maternity only acquired the right not to be sold, pledged or transferred as donations. They remained obligated to offer all their other duties as slaves, including cohabitation with their master. Yet in the Somali Migiurinia areas they were entitled to an amount of money to feed themselves and their children.98 We do not know if the same was true in Brava.
There are a few more observations relating to the case of Auvai. As in many other areas of the Swahili coast, women had their way of accumulating wealth by acquiring jewelry.99 However, the way Auvai’s case developed might well reveal a resentment felt by her master in response to the fact that he could not completely control her income, or, perhaps, the sexual services of her body. This may have led to his request to the court to have her stripped of those few commodities she had accumulated through prostitution.
At this point, we may ask what kind of changes would occur in a woman’s life after she had borne a number of children for her master’s son. While taking care of them, she had probably acquired a number of benefits within the household – for example, she might have been excused from working in the farm. In Migiurtinia, for instance, a slave woman in this situation was not freed but her children were, and were considered liberti; the mother was entitled to an amount of money for the maintenance of herself and the children.100 For such a woman, a more successful strategy than escaping or buying freedom could have been negotiating extra benefits from the master, such as permission to sell the cows’ milk and keep the income for herself. In fact, since Auvai served Filonardi’s interpreter, her labor had probably been rented to this man
The life strategy of the slave woman Zeinab could also be seen from this perspective. Zeinab escaped from her new Bimaal master but decided to go back to her previous master, Nur Mohamed Gaw of the Hajuwa clan,101 rather than join the free slaves of the Hawai community or of Gosha. It is a known fact that the Bimaal were particularly harsh on their slaves, yet there must have been good reasons, at that point in her life, why she preferred not to set herself free by escaping.
The harsh punishment given to the woman slave Auvai, who did not even escape from her master, might be the result of a desire for revenge, arising out of the jealousy of the master and his child towards the woman. She engaged in sexual relations with people outside the family, and increased her income and commodities through such activities, and yet she had possibly received some benefits from the master because of the three children she had borne to his son. The very fact that the interpreter for the Italians had left cows with Auvai rather than with her master could have been an initial source of her master’s resentment, when the translator was no longer in Brava to protect her and possibly to pay a hiring fee for her work.
Women’s Pivotal Role
The different prices of slave men and women shown in the tables highlight aspects of the different social values given to male, female, and child slaves with different linguistic and territorial origins. Specific personal and behavioral characteristics were ascribed to people coming from groups residing in different areas, and people whose life was based on different modes of production.
Slaves of Cushitic and Bantu origins enjoyed a difference in status. These origins were considered important markers of differentiation in the local criteria of social stratification. It is of some importance that in the book of the qadi of Brava, tribal affiliations or fathers’ names were usually not reported for Bantu-speaking slaves, unlike for some slaves of Galla and Warday origin.102 According to Cerulli, customary laws among the Somali Marrexaan prescribed that an Oromo Boran woman kidnapped from a settlement was set free if she gave birth to a child and became a wife of the child’s father.103 Slaves of Cushitic origin, such as the Oromo, may have been considered more akin to the masters in terms of their attitudes toward life, and their children were probably integrated
One example is the case of Sheikh Rufay, a famous and influential man in Brava in the year 1866, who had two Oromo women as “femmes,” i.e. wives or concubines.104 One of them was referred to as a “very cute Galla slave,”105 showing the extent to which European travellers seemed to share the aesthetic criteria of the leading echelon of the society they were in contact with, which conflated ethnicity with beauty. She used to live in the sheikh’s farms along the Shebelle River. According to Brenner’s reports, slaves were left alone much of the time when they were working in these plantations.106
Masters did not often travel to such extreme and humid environments107 and there were no good roads to these areas. In fact, urbanized farm owners travelled to them only occasionally and were quite happy if “none of the essential tasks had been left undone.”108 The presence of a woman lover, concubine, or wife in a plantation made it possible for the owner to control the estate to a certain extent. A woman of this kind was an important asset on the plantation, since she would organize hospitality in her residence when the owner travelled to the farm.109
There is one question we can raise about the social role of such concubines, later referred to by Robecchi Bricchetti as suriya in shamba, namely, “concubines in the field.” Concubines were often originally slaves, and Oromo women were much appreciated as such. Europeans also considered the Oromo women much prettier than the Bantu and Swahili speakers. Children born from such unions were considered freed slaves, liberti,110 and this certainly fostered an intermingling of people, at least in the coastal towns. Brenner’s description of the women of Brava is quite indicative: “Not all women, on the other hand, belong to the same race of the Somalis. One can trace among them every shade
Yet Brenner certainly knew the difference between concubines and wives, having travelled in Muslim countries for a long time. However, he speaks of the wives of the sheikh simply as “Galla.” It is only later in the text, when he writes about Shiek Rufay’s fourth “femme” (we do not gather from the French term whether she is a wife, concubine or lover) who lived on the sheikh’s plantation, that he describes her as a “très-jolie esclave Galla.”112 Since, according to the shariʿa, masters could offer or sell the services of their slaves to third parties, one is also led to wonder whether Brenner might have known this “esclave” even in private contexts. Concubines, wives, and slaves were not identified as individuals holding different statuses in his report, as he considered them all sexual partners who were also available to be used for purposes other than sexual services, and whose lives a man could control to some degree.
Perhaps Brenner’s perception of his host in Brava, Sheikh Rufay, was a much more layered perception, and female sexual partners – wives, concubines, freeborn, freed, or slaves – might relate to a particular economic strategy of a polygamous household.
Brenner’s descriptions of the Bravanese plantations along the Shebelle River (the Wobbi, as he calls it) hint at complex socio-economic dynamics in the organization of plantations in the hinterland of Brava. As “urban” people would not like to live on the plantations because of their insalubrious and uncomfortable conditions, acquiring “slave” concubines/wives might have been the best strategy to supervise and control work and harvests on the plantations. Perhaps a slave woman would be even easier to control than a freeborn woman. Consequently, such “wives or concubines” found themselves in a pivotal position in the local economic system. On the one hand, “husbands” could trust such women more than other “slaves” or male slaves, on the basis of
Another question is whether only Oromo women held such pivotal roles, or whether Bantu speakers also did so. Though Oromo girls were greatly preferred as concubines, they were more expensive than Swahili or Bantu speakers; it might well be that other sheikhs who were less well off than Sheikh Rufay were not able to acquire Oromo concubines for their fields, and therefore relied on Swahili and Bantu-speaking concubines. According to Cerulli, among the Majeerteen it was not considered honourable to have relations of marriage and concubinage with slaves, who were usually Swahili in this area;113 however, the customs may have been different in the Benadir where many Bantu language speakers lived, and especially in Brava where the urban language was the Bantu Chimiini. In addition, free unions between masters and slave women were not at all prohibited. In fact, they were the norm according to Islamic law, although we do not know about the practice, and we do not know how many of these unions may have shifted from occasional encounters to more permanent relations of concubinage.
Women slaves, on their side, were able only to some extent to choose whom they would prefer to belong to and whether they wanted sexual intercourse or not. The slave woman Zeinab, mentioned above, had been kidnapped from her home and sold by the kidnapper. She managed to escape and went back on her own to her previous master, whom she evidently preferred to the new owner114 and also to any settlement of escaped slaves like Hawai and Gosha. We do not know how wealthy her master Nur Mohamed Gaw was. However, we can assume that he was wealthier than an escaped slave who lived in a ariish (wattle-and-dub hut) near his farm and ploughed a shamba (field) together with his wife to make a living in a free settlement of freed and/or fugitive slaves. Other concubines, for instance, would not agree to sleep with men on command. A scandal arose when a concubine committed suicide rather than agree to have sexual relations with a well-known Italian officer. It was only discovered later
Conclusions
I shall conclude with some final considerations. The number of slaves at the turn of the twentieth century was rather high in relation to free people, ranging from one-tenth to almost half of the inhabitants of the main towns. However, relations of dependency had, at times, been negotiated over several generations, and groups of clients who had been subordinate to the extent of being called slaves in the past succeeded in overcoming the free people and claiming their independence. As slaves in Brava came from different geographical areas, the interior and the Indian Ocean slave trade, their translocal movements led inevitably to cultural exchanges. Women were at the centre of this exchange due to reproductive roles ascribed to their gender.
The institution of slavery in Somalia was not just of the “soft” kind described by some witnesses.116 On the contrary, in certain areas it implied an absolute lack of personal freedom, and slaves were chained up to prevent their escape.117 In this case of women, this lack of personal freedom also meant a lack of control over their bodies. This made room for the rise of independent activities of prostitution, if these were hidden or occasional.
In addition, women’s lack of freedom to use their own bodies as they chose gave rise to different sorts of claims on the forced “husbands” or “exploiters of their bodies,” while also opening up several possibilities for social mobility. The highest aspiration to social mobility for a slave woman might not be the status of “freed woman,” but rather a relationship with a wealthy person who could take care of this sort of woman better than others. Considering that women in Brava could marry husbands of a higher social status, remaining a slave rather than escaping could prove to be a more successful strategy for improving a woman’s standard of living. The freedom which maternity guaranteed upon
For all these reasons, the role of women in this system was pivotal. Even though female slaves were not freed right after they bore children for the master and their children became freed after their mother’s master’s death, in certain cases children of women slaves could be declared liberti even before then. Although this may not have given these children entitlement to a legitimate position within a “noble” lineage, this blurring of the boundary between nobles, wealthy people, poor people, and commoners may have removed certain barriers. This in turn could have fostered a certain degree of trust between some nobles and the children they had with slave women, due to the intimacy and acquaintance of daily life. Although Oromo slave women were preferred in their capacity of concubines, Bantu speakers and other women were also bought in this same capacity. Therefore, possibly unexpectedly, women held a crucial role in the system of social mobility and in the intermingling of groups in southern Somalia. It is likely that these social dynamics are the very reason why some Bantu speakers and Cushitic speakers look so similar at first glance, and may often not be recognized as belonging to one or the other group in the Somali countries.
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A version of this paper was first published in Northeast African Studies 10, no. 3 (New Series) (2009), 45–69. I am indebted to Alessandra Vianello for our many inspiring discussions through the years, both in Africa and Europe, based on her profound knowledge of the life and culture of the town of Brava and the early explorers of the area.
See, for instance, Gustavo Chiesi, La colonizzazione europea nell’Est Africa, and Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti Dal Benadir. Lettere illustrate alla Società Antischiavistica d’Italia.
Hilarie Kelly, “Orma and Somali Culture Sharing in the Juba-Tana Region,” in Proceedings of the Second International Congress of Somali Studies, ed. Thomas Labahn (Hamburg: Buska, 1983), 13–38 and Catherine Besteman in a subchapter of her anthropological book Unravelling Somalia. Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery, 57–60.
See for instance Lee Vincent Cassanelli, “The Ending of Slavery in Italian Somalia: Liberty and the Control of Labor, 1890–1935,” 308–331; Lee Vincent Cassanelli, “Bantu Former Slave Communities (Somali)”; Virginia Luling, “Colonial and Postcolonial Influences on a South Comali Community,” 491–511; Edward Alpers, “Muqdisho in the Nineteenth Century: A Regional Perspective.”
At the time in Somalia, one of the names given to people of Oromo origin was “Galla,” deriving from the word gal, meaning “infidel.” As many Italian sources refer to the Oromo as the Galla people, from now onwards the words Galla and Oromo will be used as they appear in quotations.
Enrico Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 19–24, 83.
Richard F. Burton, First Footstep in East Africa or an Exploration of Harar, 35.
Marcia Wright, Strategies of Slaves and Women. Life Stories from East/Central Africa, 6.
Ibid., 2.
Jonathon Glassman, “No Words of Their Own,” Slavery and Abolition 16, no. 1 (1995): 140.
Ibid.
Giacomo Trevis, “Considerazioni sulla schiavitù” in Finazzo, L’Italia nel Benadir, 469. Anthropologist Catherine Besteman has a sub-chapter on Oromo slaves among the Somali pastoralists in Besteman, Unraveling Somalia. Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery, 57–60.
Ibid.
Ugo Ferrandi, Lugh. Emporio commerciale sul Giuba.
Ibid., 111.
Ibid.
Hilarie Kelly, “Orma and Somali Culture Sharing in the Juba-Tana Region,” 29, quoted in Besteman, Unravelling Somalia, 58.
Cerulli, Somalia vol. 2, 20.
Ferrandi, Lugh. Emporio commerciale sul Giuba, 111.
Ibid., 111–112.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir. Lettere Illustrate alla Società Antischiavistica d’Italia 70–71.
Ibid., 90.
Ibid., 179–203.
Ferrandi, Lugh. Emporio commerciale sul Giuba, 111.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Trevis, Considerazioni sulla schiavitù, 467–472.
Ibid., 462–472.
Ibid., 470.
Ibid.
Ibid., 471.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 30.
Trevis, Considerazioni sulla schiavitù, 470–471.
Otto Kersten, Baron Klaus von der Decken’s Reisen in Ost-Africa in den Johren 1862 bis 1865, 303.
Trevis, Considerazioni sulla schiavitù, 471.
As from the Report of the Consiglio di Amministrazione della Società del Benadir to the Assemblea Generale degli Azionisti, Milano, 27 January 1903, mentioned in Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 11.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 63.
Ibid., 91–92.
Ibid., 269–272.
Ibid., 270.
Ibid., 270.
Ibid., 108.
Judgment from the Qadi Record (QR) no. 372.2, in Alessandra Vianello and Mohamed Kassim, Servants of the Sharia. The Civil Register of the Qadis’ Court of Brava 1893–1900, 829.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 31–33.
QR no. 405.1, in Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 901.
Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 879.
QR no. 11.1, in Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 91.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 32.
Ibid.
Ibid., 34.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 32–33.
Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 41.
Judgments QRs no. 21.1, 41.3. 94.1, 97.1, 153.1, 212.1, 285.1 in Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 11,151,261,267,379,499,647.
Judgments QRs no. 21.1 111, and 212.1 in Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 111, 499.
Glassman, “No Words of Their Own,” 141; Claude Meillassoux, L’esclavage en Afrique Précoloniale.
Igor Kopytoff and Suzanne Miers, Slavery in Africa.
Glassman, “No Words of Their Own.”
Fred Morton, Children of Ham. Freed Slaves and Fugitive Slaves on the Kenya Coast.
Paul G. Forand, “The Relation of the Slave and the Client to the Master or Patron in Medieval Islam,” 63.
Glassman, “No Words of Their Own,” 140–141.
Locally there were several statuses related to degrees of dependence and servitude. This discussion has been tackled by several authors, including Cassanelli, “The Ending of Slavery in Italian Somalia: Liberty and the Control of Labor, 1890–1935,” 314–315; Luling, “Colonial and Postcolonial Influences on a South Somali Community”; Enrico Cerulli, Somalia. Diritto ed etnografia, linguistica. Come viveva una tribù Hawiyya, Vol. 2; Francesca Declich, “Defending, Negotiating and Trading: The Watoro in Southern Somalia”; Francesca Declich, “Emancipazione degli schiavi nella Somalia del sud”; Francesca Declich, “Slaves, Escaped Slaves, Freed Slaves (liberti) and Clients in Southern Somalia: The Case of the Makhuwa.”
Declich, “Emancipazione degli schiavi nella Somalia del sud”; Declich, “Slaves, Escaped Slaves, Freed Slaves (liberti) and Clients in Southern Somalia: The Case of the Makhuwa.”
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir 62.
Ibid., 62.
Ibid., 62.
Cerulli, Somalia vol. 2, 83.
Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 83.
Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 83. The status of a liberto/a, i.e., a freed person, was not the same as that of a freeborn, in terms of customary law. A liberto/a retained certain obligations towards his/her master/mistress.
Ioan M. Lewis, Blood and Bone. The Call of Kinship in Somali Society, fn. 108.
Alessandro Gori, Studi sulla letteratura agiografica islamica somala in lingua araba, 82, concerning the source of ʿAydarus b. al-sharif ʿAli al-ʿAydarus al-Nadiri al-ʿAlawi, Bughyat al-amal fi taʾrih al-Sumal.
Cerulli, Somalia vol.2, fn. 84.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir 179–203.
Ibid., 185.
Ibid., 198, 180.
Ibid., 183.
Ibid., 195.
Ibid., 193.
See also Gustavo Chiesi, La colonizzazione europea nell’Est Africa, 274.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 27–28.
Sentence QR 629.1 in Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 1355.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 197.
Ferrandi, Lugh. Emporio commerciale sul Giuba, 221.
Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 83.
Ibid.
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 28–29.
Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 21.
Ibid., 22.
In Somalia, the professional lineages characterized by certain handcraft skills were considered of a lower juridical status as reported, for instance, in Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 26–27.
Ibid., 21–22.
QR 432.1 in Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 955.
Alessandra Vianello, personal communication 2003 and later Alessandra Vianello and Lidwien Kaptejins "Women’s Legal Agency and Property in the Court Records of Late Nineteenth-Century Brava".
Robecchi Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, 27–28.
Giuseppina Finazzo, L’Italia nel Benadir, 336–371.
Ibid., Chapter 16, paragraph 6.
According to Cerulli, “nel diritto islamico la ‘ummu ‘l-walad’ era libera alla morte del padrone.” Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 22 fn. 3.
Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 22.
Ibid., 22.
Jewelry are considered personal items, thus individually owned. Pat Caplan "Cognatic Descent, Islamic Law and Women’s Property on the East African Coast", 34. Yet, the recognition of individual ownership might be debatable for slaves.
Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 22.
QR 419.1 in Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 929.
In Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 41.
Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 83.
Richard Brenner, “Renseignements obtenus relativement au sort du Baron der Decken,” Annales (Paris 1868), 136.
Ibid., 151.
Ibid., 148.
Ibid., 149.
Ibid., 148.
Ibid., 151.
Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 22.
English translation of the author of the following: “Toutes les femmes d’ailleurs n’appartiennent pas également à la race des Somalis. On remarque parmi elles toutes les nuances de couleurs depuis le brun le plus clair, jusqu’au noir très-luisant. Les plus recherchées sont de jolies filles Gallas, et c’est pour les marchands d’esclaves la marchandise la plus chèrement payée. Rufay a aussi pour femmes deux filles Gallas.” Brenner, "Reinseignements obtenus relativement au sort du Baron Der Decken," 136.
Ibid., 151.
Cerulli, Somalia, vol. 2, 84 fn1.
QR 419.1, in Vianello and Kassim, Servants of the Sharia, 929.
Archivio Storico del Ministero dell’Africa Italiana (ASMAI), 1904.
For instance, Ugo Ferrandi for the town of Lugh; Ferrandi, Lugh. Emporio Commerciale sul Giuba, 111.
Cassanelli suggests that the second half of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of a new system of slave production that, unlike the previous system of corporate clientship, provided Somali overlords with a class of “dependent laborers whose deployment was not constrained by the custom as in the case of the client-cultivators”; Cassanelli, “The Ending of Slavery in Italian Somalia: Liberty and the Control of Labor, 1890–1935,” 315.
Claire C. Robertson, “Post-Proclamation Slavery in Accra. A Female Affair?,” 230.