Book contents
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Foreword Beyond the Printed Word
- Introduction Finding the African Voice
- Part One Remembering Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Part Two The Verbal Arts and Everyday Objects
- Part Three Documenting Our Own Histories and Cultural Practices
- Part Four Slavery Observed: European Travelers’ Accounts
- 19 Introduction:
- 20 The Story of Saaba
- 21 Zenneb and Saint-André’s Cruise Up the Nile to Dongola
- 22 The Ordeals of Slaves’ Flight in Tunisia
- 23 African Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Manuscript of Jean Godot
- Part Five Administrative Records
- Part Six Legal Records
- Part Seven Recorded Encounters with the Enslaved: Christian Workers in Africa
- Part Eight Documents from Muslim Africa
- Part Nine Living with the Past
- Index
20 - The Story of Saaba
Slavery and Colonialism in the Algerian Sahara
from Part Four - Slavery Observed: European Travelers’ Accounts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
Book contents
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Foreword Beyond the Printed Word
- Introduction Finding the African Voice
- Part One Remembering Slavery and the Slave Trade
- Part Two The Verbal Arts and Everyday Objects
- Part Three Documenting Our Own Histories and Cultural Practices
- Part Four Slavery Observed: European Travelers’ Accounts
- 19 Introduction:
- 20 The Story of Saaba
- 21 Zenneb and Saint-André’s Cruise Up the Nile to Dongola
- 22 The Ordeals of Slaves’ Flight in Tunisia
- 23 African Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Manuscript of Jean Godot
- Part Five Administrative Records
- Part Six Legal Records
- Part Seven Recorded Encounters with the Enslaved: Christian Workers in Africa
- Part Eight Documents from Muslim Africa
- Part Nine Living with the Past
- Index
Summary
This chapter describes the story of a young Fula-speaking woman known as Saaba who was sold as a slave in the Algerian Sahara in 1877. Many people had arrived in the Sahara as slaves as a result of the endemic wars that plagued the middle Niger River region in the second half of the nineteenth century. Concealing slavery was important at this time when, on one hand, colonial leaders had publically pledged themselves to abolishing slavery in Africa, and on the other, when slave-traders sold captives from Saaba's homeland, the middle Niger River region, despite the fact that they were freeborn Muslims like her. Saaba was one of many who received neither the emancipation promised by colonial rule nor the full protection and rights of the precolonial legal system. A witness and victim of criminal activities on both sides of the colonial situation, Saaba was destined to oblivion.
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- African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade , pp. 214 - 219Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013