Impact Of Islamic Slave Trade On Africa

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The Atlantic slave trade transported twelve to eighteen million slaves from West Africa, specifically along the coast from Senegal to Nigeria, to the Americas to exploit them and use them for the purpose of building the newly emancipated United States of America. Europeans first traveled to Africa in order to retrieve the gold along “the Gold Coast” due to their need for more money for the military, any debts, etc, but in the sixteenth century they lost interest in the gold and began to dehumanize Africans and enslave them. The slave trade began in 1501 during the Songhai Empire and ended in 1867, and throughout the years a significant amount of the African slaves transported were Muslims. The African Muslims who were enslaved in the Americas experienced a lot of hardships and both culture and religious shocks. In Sylvian Diouf’s book, Servants of Allah, he discusses the impact Muslim slaves had on the Americas and how they contributed to American society. The Muslim slaves left a key historical impact on the Americas and they left numerous, important traces of the Islam they practiced on American society, but they were ultimately incapable of transmitting their religious beliefs to their descendants. The Muslim slaves left their mark and different impacts on the Americas over the years while they were enslaved on the continent and afterwards once their successors were free. The biggest impact that Islam and African Muslims had on the Americas was the intellect they brought