₦airaland Forum

Frontpage information @nlfpmod

There was a country

nlfpmod:

Masquerades arrested and detained in Nsukka, Enugu State, today for ass@ulting residents👀👀 pic.twitter.com/k9d8KGBd7s

— CHUKS 🍥 (@ChuksEricE) August 28, 2026

Kanye west see this one he go use am do him next album cover

@nlfpmod Please move this educational piece to the frontpage

For centuries, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj, was more than a religious journey. It also became part of a much larger network through which Africans and others were trafficked into the Arabian Peninsula and enslaved.

This connection between pilgrimage and slavery is not a fringe theory or a recently invented narrative. It appears in historical accounts spanning many centuries and formed part of the wider Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and trans-Saharan slave trades. Yet compared with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, it receives surprisingly little attention outside specialist historical scholarship.

There are several reasons for this. The subject can be politically and culturally sensitive, the surviving records are often incomplete, and historical discussions of slavery have frequently focused on the European and Atlantic experience while giving less attention to slavery in Muslim-majority societies.

A Slave Route That Followed the Pilgrimage

The connection between the Hajj and the movement of enslaved people goes back to the medieval period.

In 1416, the Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi recorded that pilgrims from Takrur, around the Senegal River region, arrived in Mecca with 1,700 slaves. The pilgrimage created a huge, predictable movement of people across North Africa and the Red Sea. That movement naturally created opportunities for traders who wanted to move human beings over the same routes.

The Hejaz, particularly the cities of Mecca and Medina, generated demand for domestic servants, agricultural workers and concubines. Pilgrimage caravans and ships provided established routes connecting West and East Africa with Arabia.

And in some cases, people travelling to Mecca were not even aware that they were being drawn into the slave trade.

Some African travellers were promised inexpensive or even free transportation to the Red Sea. Instead of being allowed to continue their pilgrimage, they could be sold when they arrived in Arabia. Women and children were particularly vulnerable.

There were numerous accounts of African women being deceived by men from Arabia who promised marriage, taken toward Mecca and eventually sold. Families could then be told that the women had died during the journey.


African Children were also vulnerable. Parents might entrust a child to a supposed guardian, teacher or servant travelling toward Mecca, only for that child to disappear into slavery.

The phenomenon was not limited to Africans. Historical accounts describe people arriving from regions as far away as the East Indies and China. In some cases, poorer pilgrims or servants were themselves sold to help finance the journey.

The Trade Continued Into the Modern Era


By the nineteenth century, the movement was still taking place on a considerable scale.

English traveller Charles M. Doughty, who travelled through Central Arabia in the 1880s, described African slaves arriving with the annual Hajj caravans. He also noted the presence of enslaved Africans and African families across towns and tribes in Arabia.

The exact scale of the Red Sea slave trade is difficult to establish. Unlike the Atlantic trade, which generated extensive European shipping and commercial records, much of the Islamic-era slave trade was conducted through overland routes, small ships and local markets. Records are therefore fragmented.

Nevertheless, historians generally agree that the Red Sea trade was part of a much larger system that moved millions of people over many centuries through the trans-Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean routes.

Attempts to Stop the Traffic

The trade did not simply disappear as European powers began pushing for the abolition of slavery elsewhere.

During the 1920s and 1930s, colonial governments and international authorities introduced measures intended to restrict trafficking connected with the pilgrimage.

In 1927, the Inter-Sanitary Conference in Alexandria required pilgrims to travel by steamer or motorboat rather than traditional dhows, which were difficult to regulate and could be used to smuggle people.

Nigeria introduced a passport and financial-deposit system in 1933, requiring pilgrims to demonstrate that they had enough money to make the journey home.

But enforcement was far from perfect.

Dhows continued to land at uncontrolled locations, and people could be presented to authorities as wives, children or fellow pilgrims rather than as enslaved people. The distinction between a genuine pilgrimage and trafficking could therefore be deliberately concealed.

Slavery Survived Into the Twentieth Century

Perhaps the most uncomfortable part of this history is how late slavery remained legally established in parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

In the 1950s, British parliamentarian Barnett Janner described Saudi Arabia and Yemen as among the last countries where chattel slavery remained a legal institution. He reported cases in which Africans were lured toward Mecca without proper documentation, detained after arriving and subsequently transferred to licensed dealers.

Reports also described slave-raiding and trafficking around Baluchistan and the Persian Gulf.

Some contemporary accounts attributed openly pro-slavery views to King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, including the claim that West Africans were better off being enslaved and "civilized." [/b]Whether every such quotation is accurately reported is something historians should examine carefully, but the broader historical fact remains: slavery was still legally tolerated in the region during the twentieth century.

Saudi Arabia and Yemen formally abolished slavery in 1962. Other Gulf states followed in subsequent years. Illegal trafficking did not necessarily disappear overnight, but the legal institution of slavery and the large-scale system that had existed around it were finally dismantled.

[b]Why Is This History So Little Known?

The relative lack of public awareness has several explanations.

One is simply the enormous prominence of the Atlantic slave trade in Western education and historical memory. The Atlantic system generated vast quantities of documentation and was deeply connected to the economic and political development of Europe and the Americas. It also left a profound legacy that continues to shape debates about race, colonialism and reparations.

The Islamic slave trades were different. They lasted for much longer, operated across several regions and routes, and involved different forms of enslavement. The Red Sea, Indian Ocean and trans-Saharan systems were not one single unified trade, but interconnected networks that changed over time.

Another reason is the scarcity of surviving testimony from enslaved people themselves. In many cases, enslaved people were absorbed into households, military institutions, agricultural communities or local societies rather than concentrated in the enormous plantation systems that characterized parts of the Atlantic world.

There is also a cultural dimension.

Discussing slavery in Muslim societies can be politically sensitive. Some historians have noted that research into the subject has at times been treated as an attack on Islam rather than as legitimate historical inquiry. In parts of the Muslim world, there has also been a tendency to emphasize Islamic legal teachings encouraging the humane treatment or emancipation of slaves while paying less attention to the actual practices of raiding, kidnapping, trafficking, markets and hereditary enslavement.

None of this means that Islamic teachings and historical practice were identical. They were not. Nor does acknowledging slavery in Muslim societies imply that Muslims were uniquely responsible for slavery. Slavery existed across civilizations for thousands of years.

The problem arises when uncomfortable parts of history are selectively ignored.

Remembering one slave trade does not require forgetting another. The suffering of enslaved people deserves to be remembered wherever it occurred, regardless of who the enslavers were or which civilization the trade passed through.

@nlfpmod

HacheNoire:
You still fumbling in August 2026 😂😂😂

Seems you forgot when Iran was pounding Israel and US synth same time. US during the day and Israel at night.

Israel that is being fed has stepped aside and the big boys now on game.

Iran that could make a whole US president to be squeezed inside a microwave and transported inside a food truck.

Give Iran that respect! Kept both countries on their toes!

If you pound 0lo2ho all night, would you give her credit from collecting the hammering?

HacheNoire:
He should try to bomb Itan again then.

Even US that is feeding them is already tired of fighting.

Stat something now and see if Iran won’t start installing Christmas lights across Israel again.

I temper those days when Nairaland IDF’s will be boasting about Iron dome😂🤣😂🤣

Iran has retired those scraps with hypersonics 😂🤣😂

Iran really proved to the world that nothing is invisible.

Bro you sef know as e dey go.

E dey play e dey show

QuinQ:
Why can't video be AI? How una dey reason sha

But no be AI, right? una go dey do like people wey NEPA disconnect light for their head

Yes na, thank God for video, if not dem go say na AI

Wait, is it not the same Borgu kingdom that crowd Tinubu, Jagaban Borgu? This is very sad

Do Nigerians really fall for these type of Z grade eye service and petty pandering?

If anyone should be arrested it should be YOU!

What shocked me most was that the APC who he was a very vocal supporter of, abandoned him when he needed their help the most

RIP MR TAIWO

APC people should help him nah pic.twitter.com/iBQcBUAmHH https://t.co/iBQcBUAmHH https://t.co/OPJonuNezA

— 🅵🅻🅴XX👨‍💻 (@FlexxRichie) August 18, 2026

Inspect keh? is the visible damage in front of you not enough?

How I wish sey pesin dey win war with AI videos and memes, Iran for don conquer the entire world by now.


CHAI! Dem sabi make memes ehn. Any how sha

make Nigerians dey careful oh. There are lots of information coming out that Asian countries are falsefully arresting Nigerians and then harvesting organs while they are in jail. You would hear more news about Nigerians dying mysteriously in these jails. Go on social media. Make una dey waka well oh

FBIBOT:
You are so arrogant to think your candidate of choice would have done any better.... You voted for your candidate of choice no one bully you for it but you go around hating people for the same choice/right you exercised.... It just happened your candidate couldn't have the upper hand move on.....

The poor state of the healthcare system, the high cost of medical care, and the limited cash flow in society, are unfortunately, part of the system he voted for.

Tinubu promised to continue from where Buhari stopped. Any reasonable person should have seen that as a huge red flag, yet because of tribal sentiments, some Nigerians ignored the warning signs and still voted for this government.

I sincerely sympathize with him and pray for him and his family. However, unfortunate circumstances such as this do not automatically erase accountability for the political choices that contributed to the situation.

Ibadanfarmroad:
keep deceiving, show me anywhere you attack mba the governor of Enugu state for being apc and supporting tinubu.
Keep deceiving yourself.

Go and look at how Igbos reacted towards Orji Kalu when he tried to manipulate us with tribal nonsense.
We don't play that nonsense game. Playing tribal politics while your people die of poor health is like Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face

Lazy Nigerian youth. Instead make he enter bush, find firewood, find yam and find beans so he can sell fried fish, beans and yam, he dey there dey complain. Must the president do everything for you?

4 x 4 IS A GOAL

Gotocourt:
Down north and dey on the low.

Bello Turji for catch am for that side.

Ibadanfarmroad:
why don’t you say the same thing about your own SE governors? Because as at today they all support the same president tinubu.

We no dey play tribal politics. If our people mess up, we dey call them out.


Ask Ekweremadu how he was treated both when he went to Germany and when he was arrested by the UK authorities.

We know better than to be drawn into that nonsense. Why support someone who endorses evil all because he is from your tribe? Igbos no get that time

FBIBOT:
Did the family tell you they had no funds to cater for his medical bills..... Have u seen someone with stage 4/5 cancer before? If you have or familiar with health/medical field you won't say this rubbish.... Stop hating/attacking people for their choice of candidate.... There is no where on the planet where people can have 100% same choice of candidate.... Learn to move on, be happy and purge your heart of hatred

I think it would be very irresponsible for someone to support a political party that brought so much hardship and death on Nigerians but then turn around and ask Nigerians for their prayers.

I pray for him and his family but as Nigerians let us learn that no good comes from supporting evil

Ibadanfarmroad:
you guys are pathetic, just because of politics.
They never lacked money, they never solicited for money like mr ibu. All the family asked for was prayers ans expertise

So many Nigerians are asking for help and prayers from Bandits, why the political party he supports turned a blind eye. Prayers for him and his family

7upnigeria:
Sometimes I just congratulate people who are able to get rid of yeebos from their midst.

Send your congratulations or sympathy to his family

Money for 1000 weddings day but dem no fit even spread money to help their supporter

RIP MR TAIWO

APC people should help him nah pic.twitter.com/iBQcBUAmHH https://t.co/iBQcBUAmHH https://t.co/OPJonuNezA

— 🅵🅻🅴XX👨‍💻 (@FlexxRichie) August 18, 2026

After all the news of FRAUDSTERS being arrested these past few days about. I think Nigerians are due some good news.

God bless Ndi-igbo
God bless Imo state

He has the freewill to do as he please. My happiness is that he would not be going to peace places to eliminate people for being so called infidels. So no wahala.

But to be Fulani dey sweet sha oh. Enter Oyo or Kwara, carry people enter bush, collect money, come cash out the money on luxury items.

Na that Oyo kidnapping money she dey cash out like so