Engraving of Samuel Gardner Drake. Stephen Alonzo Schoff – Memoir of Samuel G. Drake by John Hannibal Sheppard
Drake was educated in the common schools, and from 1818 to 1825 taught in a district school. He was fond of literary pursuits, and in 1828 he went to Boston, where he established an antiquarian bookstore — the first of its kind in the United States — and devoted himself to the study of early United States history. He continued to do business as a bookseller and publisher during his life, and the most noted writers of his day availed themselves of the store of information that he had collected.[5]
“For the inhabitants of the same latitude in Asia are of a different complexion, as are the inhabitants of Cambodia and Java; in so much that some coercive the negro is properly a native of Africa; and that those places in Asia, inhabited now by Moors are but the intrusions of negroes, arriving first from Africa, as we generally conceive of Madagascar, and the adjoining islands, who retain the same complexion unto this day. But this defect [of latitude upon complexion] is more remarkable in America, which, although subjected unto both the tropics, yet are not the inhabitants black between, or near, or under either: neither to the southward in Brazil, Chili, or Peru; nor yet to the northward in Hispaniola, Castilla, del Oro, or Nicaragua. And although in many parts, therefore, there be at present, swarms of negroes, serving under the Spaniard, yet where they all transported from Africa, since the discovery of Columbus and are not indigenous, or proper natives of America. ” (Page 28)
“A portion of the Moorish population of Africa is very mixed race of Arabs, Berbers, Negroes, &c (Page. 6)”
“The observations of Molina and Humboldt are sometimes quoted in disproof of this pervading uniformity of physical characters. Molina says that the difference between an inhabitant of Chili and Peruvian is not less than between an Italian and German; to which Humboldt adds, that the American race contains nations whose features differ as essentially from one another as those of the Circassians, Moors and Persians. But all these people are of one and the same race, and readily recognized as such, not withstanding their differences of feature and complexion;* and the American nations present precisely parallel case.” (Page. 6)
“No stronger example need be adduced than that which presents itself in the great Arabian family; for the Saracens who established their kingdom in Spain, whose history is replete with romance and refinement, whose colleges were the centres of genius and learning for several centuries, and whose arts and sciences have been blended with those of every subsequent age;—these very Saracens belong not only to the same race but to the same family with the Bedouins of the desert; those intractable barbarians who scorn all restraints which are not imposed by their own chief, and whose immemorial laws forbid them to sow corn, to plant fruit-trees, or to build houses, in order that nothing may conflict with those roving and predatory habits which have continued unaltered through period of three thousand years.” (Page. 15)
“The Egyptian form differs from the Pelasgic in having narrower and more receding forehead, while the face being more prominent, the facial angle is consequently less. The nose is straight or aquiline, the face angular, the features often sharp, and the hair uniformly long, soft, and curling. In this series of crania include many of which the conformation is not appreciably different from that of the Arab and Hindoo; but have not, as rule, attempted to note these distinctions, although they are so marked as to have induced me, in the early stage of the investigation, and for reasons which will appear in the sequel, to group them, together with the proper Egyptian form, under the provisional name of Austral Egyptian crania.” (Page. 46)
“The true Negro conformation requires no comment; but it is necessary to observe that practised eye readily detects few heads with decidedly mixed characters, in which those of the Negro predominate. For these propose the name of Negroid crania for while the osteological development is more or less that of the Negro, the hair is long but sometimes harsh, thus indicating that combination of features which is familiar in the mulatto grades of the present day. It is proper, however, to remark in relation to the whole ‘series of crania, that while the greater part is readily referable to some one of the above subdivisions, there remain few other examples in which the Caucasian traits predominate, but are partially blended with those of the Negro, which last modify both the structure and expression of the head and face.” (Page.46)
Nashid Al-Amin, a Moorish scholar and educator, is the author of “True Myth: Black Vikings of the Middle Ages,” published in 2013. Al-Amin opened his book with a bang: “Europe, we are told, has always been the domain of white-skinned people, classified variously as Caucasians, Whites, Nordics, Aryans, Indo-Europeans—white people. According to Al-Amin, a wide range of Black groups, such as the Scythic peoples, the Danes, the Celts and the Skjoldungs inhabited and ruled much of Northern and Western Europe and built megalithic structures which are reportedly still standing more than 1,000 years later. The Vikings, Norsemen or Scandinavians—particularly those of the so-called “Viking Age” (i.e., c. 800-1100 AD)—were a predominantly black- and dark-skinned, non-Caucasian people, and that Blacks, whether of African or Asian descent, were not strangers to any part of Europe in ancient or historical times.
An Icelandic-English Dictionary based on the Ms. Collections of the Late Richard Cleasby Vigfusson, Gudbrand
“blá-maðr, m. A BLACK MAN, NEGRO, i.e. AN ETHIOPIAN, Al. 51, Orkn. 364 (referring to A.D. 1152), distinguished from the Saracens and Arabians; three ‘blámenn’ were sent as a present to the German emperor Frederic the Second, Fms. x. 3: in romances blámenn are mentioned as A KIND OF ‘BERSERKERS,’” q.v., Finnb. ch. 16, Kjalnes. S. ch. 15; cp. Scott’s Ivanhoe, note B.
A portrait of Guðbrandur Vigfússon by Sigurður málari.
There are Irish records of a Viking raid on Spain and North Africa in 862. During the raid, a number of Blacks were captured and some carried to Dublin. In Ireland, they were known as “blue men” (Irish, fir gorma\ Old Norse, blamenn).”
“The entry is under the title:
Three Fragments Copied from Ancient Sources,” and sheds further light on the ethnicity of the Moors. The entry reads: After that, the Scandinavians went through the country, and ravaged it; and they burned the whole land, and they brought a great host of [the Moors] in captivity with them to Ireland. These are the ‘blue men’ (firgorma ); because the Moors are the same as negroes; Mauretania is the same as negro-land.”
“The Irish annalists were a lesson to all with their division of Norse invaders into White Foreigners, Norwegians(Finn-gaill), and Black Foreigners, Danes(Dubh-gaill), but it was a lesson no one heeded; nor do we know why they distinguished them by colour.”
A History of the Vikings by Gwyn Jones
“The Welsh chroniclers, for example, made no such clear distinction. The Danes coming in by way of England and the Norwegians by way of Ireland were pretty well all black: Black Gentiles(y Kenedloed Duon), Black Norsemen(y Normanyeit Duon), Black Host, Pagans, Devils and the like.”(CONT.) “According to Egils Saga, of the 2 famous sons of Kveldulf, Thorolf was tall and handsome like his mother’s people, but Grim took after his father was black and ugly. Grim’s sons Thorolf and Egill, born out in Iceland, repeated the pattern- Thorolf was the image of his uncle, tall, handsome and sunny-natured, and many Egill was black, even uglier than his father, totuous and incalculable,…..etc. craggy head, broad nose, heavy jaw and swart visage.”
Niger Val Dub “King Kenneth of the Picts” 997a.d. to 1004 a.d.
“Prince of Maine Mor (moor) was accompanied by his father Eochaidh, and his two sons Breasal and Amlaff.” Eochaid mac Run, known in English simply as Eochaid, was king of the Picts from 878 to 889.He was a son of Run, King of Strathclyde, and his mother was the daughter of Kenneth MacAlpin (NIGER VAL DUBH) The Moors were dominant in Scotland in the 10th century. One of them, was known as King Kenneth, sometimes as Niger or Dubh, a surname which means ‘the black man.’ It is a historical fact that Niger Val Dubh lived and reigned over certain black divisions in scotland – and that a race known as ‘the sons of the blacks’ succeeded him in history. (JA Rogers, Sex and Race)
Scandinavian Britain, Part 1 Front Cover William Gershom Collingwood
“There are turning hither to our shore lithe keels, ring-stags [ships] with long sail-yards, many shields, shaven oars, A NOBLE SEA-LEVY, MERRY WARRIORS. Fifteen companies are coming ashore, but out in Sogn there lie seven thousand more.There lie here in the dock off Cliff-holt surf-deer [ships] SWART-BLACK and GOLD ADORNED.There is by far the most of their host.”Helge Lay, i. 197-206.”
“There was a man hight Thorvard; he married Freydis, a natural daughter of Erik the Red; he went [219] also with them, and Thorvald the son of Erik (100), and THORHALL who was called the hunter; he had long been with Erik, and served him as huntsman in summer and steward in winter; he was a large man, and strong, BLACK AND LIKE A GIANT, silent and foul-mouthed in his speech, and always egged on Erik to the worst”
Source: SAGA OF THORFINN KARLSEFNI
A Book of the Beginnings, Vol.1 (Cosimo Classics: Metaphysics) by Gerald Masse
“The evidence indicates that Blacks in ancient times came to Britain from Spain, Felix Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, West Africa, India, Persia and what is today named Denmark. These Negroes were builders, scientists, masters of ocean travel and inventors of letters, according to Higgins, they built Stonehende,
“The Danes, then were like the ‘MOORs’ -black. Like them, too, they were Picts, as more than one eminent writer has proved. The title of’GROM’ (WOAD-STAINED) is not confined to Highland genealogies, it was the actual name of a grim old pagan Dane who ruled over Denmark,(it meant daub).”
“Any comprehensive account of the African presence in early Europe should include England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Scandinavia. The history and legends of Scotland confirm the existence of “purely Black people.” We see one of them in the person of Kenneth the Niger. During the tenth century Kenneth the Niger ruled over three provinces in the Scottish Highlands.”
“The historical and literary traditions of Wales reflect similar beliefs. According to Gwyn Jones (perhaps the world’s leading authority on the subject), to the Welsh chroniclers, “The Danes coming in by way of England and the Norwegians by way of Ireland were pretty well all black: Black Gentiles, Black Norsemen, Black Host.”
“There is also strong reason to suggest an African presence in ancient Ireland. We have, for example, the legends of the mysterious “African sea-rovers, the Fomorians, who had a stronghold on Torrey Island, off the Northwest Coast.” The Fomorians, shrouded deep in mist, came to be regarded as the sinister forces in Irish mythology.”
The Feok Festival is an important festival celebrated annually by the people of Sandema in northern Ghana for two reasons: to commemorate their victory over slave raiders led by ‘Babatu’ in the 18th century; and to celebrate good harvest for the season.
“A prominent Viking of the eleventh century was Thorhall, who was aboard the ship that carried the early Vikings to the shores of North America. Thorhall was “the huntsman in summer, and in winter the steward of Eric the Red. He was, it is said, a large man, and strong, black, and like a giant, silent, and foul-mouthed in his speech, and always egged on Eric to the worst; he was a bad Christian.”
“Another Viking, more notable than Thorhall, was Earl Thorfinn, “the most distinguished of all the earls in the Islands.” Thorfinn ruled over nine earldoms in Scotland and Ireland, and died at the age of seventy-five. His widow married the king of Scotland. Thorfinn was described as “one of the largest men in point of stature, and ugly, sharp featured, and somewhat tawny, and the most martial looking man… It has been related that he was the foremost of all his men.”
David MacRitchie, JA Rogers, Godfre Higgins, and Giuseppi Sergi give quiet a deal of insight on it. Also W.B., The Doctrine of Celtism, Notes and Queries, (1871) 7: p.8. Quote:
“here is genetic and linguistic evidence that proves that the Celts were Black or African people. An examination of the language spoken by the Basque has a Niger-Congo substratum. C.J.K. Cambell-Dunn has found a Niger-Congo substratum in Basque .(9) Dr. Cambell-Dunn found that the Niger-Congo and Basque languages share personal pronouns, numerals and vocabulary items. There is also genetic evidence linking the Basque and Niger-Congo speakers. Both groups share SRY10831.1, YAP, M2,M173(xR1a,R1b3), E3*-P2, E3b2-M81 . (10)This linguistic and genetic evidence supports the African origin of the Celts. The original Danes or Vikings were Blacks . (11)This is made clear in the Oseberg 8th Century Vikings on the Norway Sledge carving of the Black seafarers that populated the region at this time. It is clear from this carving that the 8th Century Vikings were different from the Blond, big bodied folk of Viking legends. ibid Tacitus in 70 or 90 b.c.e. a Roman historian notes that the “Silures”of Britania have some who are dark skinned with “unusually curly hair”.In J.A.Rogers Sex&Race vol.1and other books
One of the excavated fragments made from fine silk and silver thread discovered at the two Swedish sites, Birka and Gamla Uppsala
“Researchers in Sweden have found Arabic characters woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves. The discovery raises new questions about the influence of Islam in Scandinavia, writes journalist Tharik Hussain. They were kept in storage for more than 100 years, dismissed as typical examples of Viking Age funeral clothes. But a new investigation into the garments – found in 9th and 10th Century graves – has thrown up groundbreaking insights into contact between the Viking and Muslim worlds. Patterns woven with silk and silver thread have been found to spell the words “Allah” and “Ali”. The breakthrough was made by textile archaeologist Annika Larsson of Uppsala University while re-examining the remnants of burial costumes from male and female boat and chamber graves originally excavated in Birka and Gamla Uppsala in Sweden in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. She became interested in the forgotten fragments after realising the material had come from central Asia, Persia and China. Larsson says the tiny geometric designs – no more than 1.5cm (0.6in) high – resembled nothing she had come across in Scandinavia before. “I couldn’t quite make sense of them and then I remembered where I had seen similar designs – in Spain, on Moorish textiles.”
Enlarging the patterns and looking at the reflection in a mirror revealed the word ‘Allah’ (God) in Arabic
“Larsson has so far found the names on at least 10 of the nearly 100 pieces she is working through, and they always appear together. The new find now raises fascinating questions about the grave’s occupants. The possibility that some of those in the graves were Muslim cannot be completely ruled out,” she says. We know from other Viking tomb excavations that DNA analysis has shown some of the people buried in them originated from places like Persia, where Islam was very dominant.”
A Viking ring with a Kufic inscription saying “for Allah” was found inside a 9th Century woman’s grave in Birka two years ago
“The name Ali is repeated again and again beside Allah,” she says. “I know Ali is highly revered by the largest Muslim minority group, the Shia, and have wondered if there is a connection.” Ali was the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, having married his daughter Fatima. He also became the fourth leader of the Muslim community after Muhammad died. Although both Sunnis and Shia revere Ali as an important companion of Muhammad, he has elevated status amongst the Shia, who see him as the Prophet’s spiritual heir. “The use of Ali does suggest a Shia connection,” says Amir De Martino, programme leader of Islamic studies at the Islamic College in London.
Inscriptions on the ceiling of an Alevi mausoleum in Bulgaria feature – on the right – the names Allah, Muhammad and Ali written in legible, simple Arabic while on the left there is a blue mystic pattern with the three names interlocked
“The names Allah and Ali are often represented in enigmatic patterns inside the tombs and books of mystical Shia sects such as the Alevis and Bektashis to this day, but always they are accompanied by the name Muhammad. These can sometimes include mirrored script.”
The Europeans make it clear that the early Welsh were Black Celts. They were a small black race that came to Britain from Iberia. They were forced off the mainland by whites.
T.R. (1890). The Gael at Bala. Bye-Gones, 26 Feb, pp.320-321.
Dr. Masson reported on the Highlanders of Canada. He said they were of the descendants Black Celts. Dr, Masson made it clear these Highlanders spoke Caelic and had African faces. Black Celts 2
Dr. Masson. (1875). “The Gael of the Far West”, The Academy, Oct.30, pg.451.
William Chamers , in Information for the people, said the Celts were descendants of Blacks who mixed with invading white tribes. Chambers said these Celts were Northern Ethiopians.
“The first Swedes were dark-skinned hunters and collectors, who moved to Scandinavia from the south at the end of the Ice Age. There, they were quickly joined by another immigration wave, this time from the east, resulting in stone age Europe’s most diverse population, a new documentary by Sweden’s national SVT broadcaster has claimed. Mattias Jakobsson, a professor of genetics at Uppsala University and a researcher of the Atlas project, which aims to map the genome of Sweden’s early population, stressed that unlike present-day Swedes, their ancestors had dark skin, as a legacy of their African origin.”
“The documentary uses an early human genetic map drawn by a professor of genetics at Uppsala University in Sweden. About 11,000 years ago, the first pioneers with black skin and blue eyes entered Sweden from the south. The first pioneers lived in the southern provinces of Skona and Buhus in the west. They learned to use marine resources through constant attempts. These netizensstatements have traces to follow. After the outbreak of the European refugee crisis, 163,000 people, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, flooded into Sweden in 2015 alone, making Sweden the largest per capita recipient of refugees in the EU countries.”
Initial Q: Two Soldiers Leading Two Moors before a King (detail), from Feudal Customs of Aragon, Huesca (Spain), about 1290-1310, artist unknown. The J. Paul Getty Museum
“Pope Urban II, 1088–1099, granted Spanish crusaders the same papal indulgences that were granted for making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Urban thereafter issued the first call for crusades to the holy lands in 1095, and he continued to link crusades with pilgrimages by granting indulgences for crusaders, just as he had done for participants in the holy war with the Moors. The Knights were an infamous, crusading, priestly order, who believed Christians could attack pagans at will and deprive them of their property and lordship. The sources of this power were the papal bulls that had been directed at the Holy Lands. The Knights argued that their territorial and jurisdictional claims could be traced to papal bulls from the Crusading era, which had authorized the complete confiscation of the property and sovereignty of non-Christians. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal title to lands in Africa that were already “acquired and that shall hereafter come to be acquired” and authorized Portugal “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans” and to place them into perpetual slavery and seize all their property. The Portuguese, for example, erected stone crosses all along the coast of West Africa to symbolize their possession, and Columbus did the same “with appropriate words and ceremony” on the Caribbean islands he found. See, e.g., MILLER, NATIVE AMERICA, supra note 1, at 12–23, 44–48, 120–26, 131–36 (discussing the European powers dividing up the New World and Africa).
Panel of azulejos by Jorge Colaço (1864-1942) at the São Bento railway station, depicting Prince Henry the Navigator during the conquest of Ceuta
“Portugal, ever since the capture of Ceuta in 1415 (the event which had set Prince Henry of Portugal thinking on West African discovery), had been striving to conquer for herself an empire over Morocco.”
“Possession of Ceuta would indirectly lead to further Portuguese expansion. The main area of Portuguese expansion, at this time, was the coast of Morocco, where there was grain, cattle, sugar, and textiles, as well as fish, hides, wax, and honey.“
“When the Portuguese started their colonial expansion by taking Ceuta in retribution for its piracy ( Source: Finlayson (1992), p. 26) “in 1415,” (Source: B. W. Diffie, Prelude to Empire, Portugal Overseas before Henry the Navigator, University of Nebraska Press, Ann Arbor, 1960, pp. 83–90.)
“Tangier was always a major goal. They failed to capture it in 1437, 1458, and 1464, (Lévi-Provençal (1936), p. 651.) but occupied it unopposed on 28 August 1471 after its garrison fled upon learning of the conquest of Asilah.”
Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press
“As in Ceuta, they converted its chief mosque into the town’s cathedral church; it was further embellished by several restorations during the town’s occupation.”
Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652
“In addition to the cathedral, the Portuguese raised European-style houses and Franciscan and Dominican chapels and monasteries.”
Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, p. 26
“The Wattasids assaulted Tangier in 1508, 1511, and 1515 but without success. In the 17th century, it passed with the rest of Portugal’s domains into Spanish control as part of the personal union of the crowns but maintained its Portuguese garrison and administration.”
Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652
“In 1458, the Portuguese, led by Duarte de Meneses, captured the city and built a fortress there. Their domination lasted for over a century before the Moroccans reconquered the city.”
Source: Ricard, R., “Evacuation of Portuguese places from Morocco under Jean III: Ksar es Seghir ( 1549-1550 )”, in unpublished sources of the history of Morocco, Portugal, 1951, t. IV.
Source: Vasco de Carvalho, V., Portuguese domination in Morocco: from the 1415-1769th to the 1415-1769th century (1415-1769), Lisbon, 1942, S.P.N.
“In 1486 the Moroccan coastal city Azemmour’s inhabitants became vassals and tributaries of João II of Portugal. Portuguese control of the city lasted only for a short period; it was abandoned by João III of Portugal in 1541 due to his court’s economic difficulties.”
“Iberian rule lasted until 1661, when it was given to England’s King Charles II as part of the dowry of the Portuguese infanta Catherine of Braganza.” Source: Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough: His Life and Times, Book I (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1933) p. 35.
“A squadron under the admiral and ambassador Edward Montagu arrived in November. English Tangier, fully occupied in January 1662,” was praised by Charles as “a jewell of immense value in the royal diadem” despite the departing Portuguese taking away everything they could, even—according to the official report—”the very fflowers, the Windowes and the Dores”.
Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505
Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264
Source: Elbl, Martin Malcolm (2013), Portuguese Tangier (1471–1662): Colonial Urban Fabric as Cross-Cultural Skeleton, Peterborough: Baywolf Press, ISBN 9780921437505
“Tangier received a garrison and a charter which made it equal to other English towns, but the religious orders were expropriated, the Portuguese residents nearly entirely left, and the town’s Jews were driven out owing to fears concerning their loyalty.”
Source: Finlayson, Iain (1992), Tangier: City of the Dream, London: Tauris Parke, ISBN 9781780769264 p. 26-27
“Meanwhile, the Tangier Regiment were almost constantly under attack by locals who considered themselves mujahideen fighting a holy war. Their principal leader was Khadir Ghaïlan (known to the English as “Gayland” or “Guyland”) of the Banu Gurfat, whom the Earl of Peterborough attempted to buy off. Ultimately, the truce only lasted for part of 1663 and 1664; on May 4 of the latter year, the Earl of Teviot and around 470 members of the garrison were killed in an ambush beside Jew’s Hill. Khadir Ghaïlan hoped to support a pretender against the new Alawid sultan Al-Rashid and things subsequently went so badly for him that he was obliged to abide by its terms until his death in 1673.”
Source: Lévi-Provençal, Évariste (1936), “Tangier”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. IV (1st ed.), Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 650–652 p. 651.
“Lord Belasyse happened to secure a longer-lasting treaty in 1666”
Source: Articles of Peace Concluded and Agreed between His Excellency the Lord Bellasyse, His Majesties Governour of His City and Garrison of Tangier in Affrica, &c. and Cidi Hamlet Hader Ben Ali Gayland, Prince of VVest-Barbary, &c.”, London, 2 April 1666.
Ceuta, a Spanish possession in North Africa.
“The English, lagging behind for about half a century, cashed in on the slave trade as early as the 1480s. Various records kept in several Spanish archives disprove the received view that the English as a slaving nation was late coming in the 1550s. Moors and Mooresses of Morocco constituted colonial targets only for the Portuguese and the Spaniards, they were also victims of the English who bought the captured slaves at the slave markets of Andalusia. The trade with enslaved Moroccans led to a serious depopulation of the coastal regions of Morocco.”
Vista de Ceuta y la península de Almina desde el mirador de Isabel II
“On the Moroccan side, there was considerable enthusiasm for expelling the Spanish and Portuguese from the several Moroccan coastal cities they had conquered.”
“In the mid-1400s, Portuguese King Dom Manuel colonized the African coastal islands of Sao Tome and Principe in order “to whiten the race,” as he put it.
“One of the principal motives behind Portuguese interest in West Africa and the Canaries was the desire to tap into the trans-Saharan gold traffic. Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus, 140-48, 189-92.”
“Gradually the Christian reconquest drove them back until the only Moorish stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell in 1492.“The Iberian Moors, who had considerably intermarried, returned to Africa where they were known as Andalusians, and scattered over the enormous range of the Moors, from the Mediterranean to the Senegal river, and from the Atlantic to Timbuktu.”
Brotherhood of St George. A Leugemeete Fresco, Flanders, 14th century. The Andalusia Company
“English trade with Morocco was a natural extension of the existing trade established by the Andalusia company in Spain and in the Levant. Individual voyages can be traced as far back as the 1520s or 1530s. All the evidence is that the English merchants were rugged individuals and rivals. Trading together in one small town, they must have known one another, but during the days of prosperity, there is no hint of any combination or organization. Only in adversity did they combine together and then not very effective. They did so once in order to petition the duke. To give coherence to their organization and standing in the eyes of the English government they petitioned King Henry VIII and in September 1530 he granted them a constitution.”
“Slavery had long been known in Iberia, but slaves never constituted more than a small percentage of society. By 1492, although more than 35,000 black slaves had been introduced in Portugal, most of them were intended to be reexported to other European markets and to the Americas. By 1550, there were 9,500 African slaves in Lisbon–comprising nearly 10 percent of the total population–and 32,370 slaves and 2,580 freedmen in Portugal as a whole. Black slaves increasingly replaced slaves from other racial origins as the Portuguese became less involved in the wars against the Turks in the Mediterranean and in general against Muslims. The Moors were visible in Portugal in the most southern part of the country, where a relatively large population of Christianized Moors (Moriscos) toiled the fields and worked as artisans in towns and cities.”
“The English under Elizabeth now deemed the time opportune for gaining a foothold in West Africa. Forts were built at the mouth of the River Gambia in 1588, and towards the close of the sixteenth century English trading-settlements were erected at or near Sierra Leone, and during the seventeenth century, Great Britain became one of the leading Powers of the Gold Coast.”
“The early Portuguese explorers sent out by Prince Henry at first took every opportunity of Kidnapping the Moors whom they met on the coast of the Sahara, and these people were dispatched as slaves to Portugal. Prince, Henry, however, came in time to realize the iniquity of this proceeding and its bad policy on the part of a nation which at that time was aspiring to colonize and rule Morocco. The Portuguese learned in this way that by pursuing their journeys father south they might come to a land where it was possible to obtain “black Moors” as slaves. In fact, a slang term, “Panyar (from the Portuguese Apanhar, to seize, catch, kidnap), had sprung up in the coast jargon to illustrate the English methods. Even English travelers such as William Smith (who went out as a surveyor to the Gold Coast early in the eighteenth century) admit that the English had become very unpopular on the Gold Coast, owing to these aggression’s on the natives; and William Smith and his companions endeavored to pass as Frenchmen when they visited Eastern Liberia and the Ivory Coast, ‘because of the bad name the English had acquired.”
In 1704 a Willem Bosman of the Dutch West India company describing the “Gold Coast” wrote:
“Here the Portuguese received a small quantity of gold dust, as well as some ostrich eggs; and, as Gonçalves had always desired, his men also seized some black Africans, twelve in number, to take back to Portugal (“What a beautiful thing it would be,” this commander told his men, ‘if we could capture some of the natives to lay before the face of our Prince’). These people were nearly all Azanaghi, as had been most of those sold in Lagos in 1444. They seem not to have been carried off to serve as slaves—though one of them, a woman, was a black slave, presumably from somewhere in the region of Guinea. They were taken as exhibits to show Prince Henry, much as Columbus would bring back some Indians, fifty years later, from his first journey to the Caribbean”
“All the concerns of this essay begin in Andalusia. Slavery was a matter, raised by Shylock at his trial, in the Merchant of Venice narrative. This topic is of cultural relevance to early modern English audiences. The bottom lines become clear in the earliest records of the English slave trade to which [English American] historiographers often omit from the discussion. Records show that the first English slaveholders and traders of “enslaved Moors” were the English merchant’s resident in Andalusia in the last decades of the fifteenth and early decades of the sixteenth centuries, and further, that the English were the pioneers of the English slave trade with Morocco”
“The (De)slaving history: Mostafa al-Azemmouri, the sixteenth-century Moroccan captive in the tale of conquest article attempts to revisit one of the most spectacular odysseys in Moroccan-American history, that of the encounters started from the shores of a Moorish town in the sixteenth century by Mostafa Al-Azemmouri, the Moroccan captive and adventurer. Al-Azemmouri was captured by the Portuguese, sold in Spain and then shipped across the Atlantic to the New World around 1527. His narrative has consistently been displaced and subjected to various forms of exclusion in history; his experience in historiographical writing has been distorted by the culturally and historically essentialised forms of knowledge and power. In order to re-orient the debate on Al-Azemmouri’s emblematic journey, this work offers a rereading of sixteenth-century Morocco in its connections with the Atlantic, focuses on the Spanish historical perspective about the reconquista overseas, and spotlights the Portuguese-Azemmour nexus against the background of the Portuguese presence in Morocco to shift the focus into the Other’s Atlantic as a site of complex history that criss-crosses the boundaries of nationality and extends beyond mere geographical locations. It also interrogates the representation of Al-Azemmouri in some sixteenth-century Spanish accounts, which consigned the Moorish slave to textual shadows and obstructed his visibility in the narrative of colonial conquest.”
Ignatius Sancho Oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough, 1768, National Gallery of Canada
“Indeed Sancho’s life in England was an immediate result of the English involvement with slavery. ‘Dear sir,’ he beseeched Sterne, ‘think in me you behold the uplifted hands of thousands of my brother Moors.’”
“Hamet Tanjawi, for instance, was captured and enslaved during the Restoration period; he became a servant of the duke of York, from whom he learned a wide variety of naval lore, and later escaped back to Tangier where he put his English warfare training into Muslim use as held the attack on the English fort in Tangier in 1676. In his account of captivity in Morocco in the 1680s, Thomas Phelps recalled meeting with an “ancient Moor, who formerly had been a slave in England and spoke good English, and who was set at liberty by our late Gracious King Charles the 2d.” Another captive/slave was the corsair Abdallah bin Aisha, who spent three years in England and was released by King Charles without ransom upon the intercession of James II.”
“Kim F. Hall agreed that “English traders went to the markets of Guinea and Barbary, but African traders rarely went to England.” Only Bernard Harris, Eldred Jones, and Jack D’Amicohave alluded to Muslim ambassadors and “blackmoors” in England..”
“During the period under study, thousands of Turks and Moors visited and traded in English and Welsh ports; hundreds were captured on the high seas and brought to stand trial in English courts; scores of ambassadors and emissaries dazzled the London populace with their charm, cuisine and “Araby” ,,,”from the Elizabethan to the early Caroline periods, Britons undertook another venture as they entered into an extensive commercial, diplomatic, and social engagement with the Turks and Moors of the Muslim empires.”
“In all the surviving records of captured Moors and Turks, there is not a single reference to a Muslim woman. While numerous British women were recaptured and sold in North Africa, no Muslim woman seems to have ever set foot on English soil, either as a refugee or a prisoner. Britons also met Moorish and Turkish captives of Spain in the Caribbean.”
“In March of 1586 some Moors deserted to join Sir Francis Drake during the English attack on Cartegena, and later during the attack on Santo Domingo. In June of that year Drake captured hundreds of “Turks and Moors, who do menial service” in Havana. Although the Moors, the English encountered in the Caribbean were slaves who projected weakness and despair, they were subjects of rulers whom England’s queen wanted to befriend, and whose assistance she sought against Spain. There must have been so many of these Moors in the American Spanish dominions that in 1617, Purchas mentioned that Islam had spread as far as America. Purchas was probably thinking of these captives, some of whom had been freed by their Spanish masters and were settled in the colonies.”
“In September 1630, the Moroccan ruler, Sidi Alibin Mohammad, sent a letter to King Charles in which he demanded that the king release all Muslim captives and send them back to the lands of Islam (“li-bilad al-Islam”) regardless of whether or not they were Sidi’s subjects. After doing so, Charles could be assured that no captive from the “English tribes”(“qaba’il al-Ingleez”) would remain in North Africa.”
“there are numerous indications that Britons hauled Muslim captives to the Barbary Coast and exchanged them for English captives. In 1635 Robert Blake was authorized to take forty-five Moors to Barbary to exchange them for English captives. But he immediately ran into difficulty. There were more English than Moorish captives.
“In September 16 36, two Moors were captured—one “Mahammet aged twentie seven or thereabout” and “Hammet aged fortie foure yeares or there-about”—from Salee. They had been sailing with “foure Moores, eighteen[sailors] of Sallie, five Renegadoes Dutch one English their Pilott.” When their ship reached the English coast the renegades turned against the Moors after being called “to stand up for their lives & liberties” whereupon “they drove the Moores into the hold, hoisted saile, and brought their Barque into the first [English] port. Writing to the Lords of the Admiralty, the earl of Portland included “copies of the examinations of two of the moores.”
“In 1658, William D’Avenant wrote The Play-House to be Let, in 100 The Renaissance Triangle which which he included a scene about “the Symerons,” a Moorish people brought formerly to Peru by the Spaniards.) Purchas could also have been thinking of an ethnological theory that described the American Indians as descendants of the Moors of North Africa.”
“Muhammad notes that “Moors” from the Barbary Coast—captured by the Portuguese and enslaved—successfully. “Freeland traces how slavery became racialized as slaves became Christians. citing Allan Austin’s estimation that there may have been at least eighteen thousand Muslim slaves imported from 1771 to 1775). Ghanea Bassiri notes that a Moorish identity may have captured the public imagination, the public having heard tales of white slavery coming out of the exotic and well-known Barbary Wars. Eight Moors [enslaved-Muslims] successfully petitioned the South Carolina House of Representatives for their freedom in 1790, describing the perfidy of the English captain who promised to redeem them back to Morocco as captives of war but sold them as slaves in the New World instead. Capet, supra note 8, at 556. One of those eight Muslim slaves was named Fatima.”
“The Mohammedan Africans remaining of the old stock of importations, although accustomed to hear the Gospel preached, have been known to accommodate Christianity to Mohammedanism. “God,” say they, “is Allah, and Jesus Christ is Mohammed–the religion is the same, but different countries have different names.”
“Clearly it seems that the “Barbares” or Soninke of the Sahel and Sudan were the “Mauri Bavares” or Babars of Mauritania in what is now Morocco and Algeria possibly pushed down by the Tuareg “the second race of Berbers” and/or Arab Sulaym/Hilal peoples like the Trarza or Hassaniya. They were direct ancestors of the black merchants known as Soninke, Sughai (Isuwaghen or Zawagha) or Wangara who are called “whites” in early African manuscripts.” “The Bafour, in fact, is considered by some to be the same as the Zenagha or Znaga Berbers who came to be subject to the Almoravid (Tuareg) nobles. In Mauritania by the 15th century, they were referred to as “tawny and squat” by a slave trader from Venice named Alvice Ca’da Mosto (Thomas, Hugh, 1997, p. 22). They then fell into low caste status under the Hassaniyya or Hassan “Moors” (a group formed from the mixture of Arab/Berber peoples) which might explain how they came to be the first Africans sold out of Lagos to the Portuguese that were brought to Europe.”
“Most Americans are unaware of the special relationship between Morocco and the U.S.A. that developed subconsciously through the trans‐Atlantic conquests of Moorish‐impregnated Spain and consciously through contacts between our early Republic and this old, dilapidated kingdom. Even fewer Americans seem aware of the complex contacts between Morocco, at Africa’s northwest corner, and the ancestors of our Negro community. Slave traders from the Moorish feudal society raided southward into Senegal and delivered slaves to European traders who, in turn, sold them across the Atlantic. The descendants of these slaves are U.S. citizens today. But more rarely discussed is the vaguely discernible link between Morocco and the American Negro minority. This U.S. knowledge gap is perhaps partially if inaccurately being filled by American Negro teachers, notably Black Muslims.”
“Morocco also has an extensive history of slavery. Like the United States, Morocco traded in enslaved black West Africans, who came to Morocco across the Sahara. Slavery in Morocco took other forms, too. Morocco was one of the so-called Barbary States, where for centuries European and American sailors captured by pirates were enslaved and ransomed. In his 1853 book “White Slavery in the Barbary States,” the radical abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts depicted North Africa as a disturbing analog to the American South, which he called the “Barbary States of America.”
“It difficult to know from available information if this is a massive understatement or fails to give due respect to the comparative few who did make the journey. Though it is well-known that the Iberian powers took slaves from Morocco for service in Spain and Portugal, it is unknown how many of these may ultimately have also been sent across the Atlantic. Spain and Portugal overwhelmingly dominated the transatlantic slave trade in the first century of the Atlantic World, with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database documenting approximately 275,000 slaves sent during that period to the Americas (a paltry sum compared to later centuries). But the database shows no voyages to or from Morocco – understandable for a location that was not a major source of slaves for work in the Americas – and nothing to suggest that a substantial numbers of slaves first taken to Portugal or Spain ended up across the ocean. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://www.slavevoyages.org (for estimates and maps; accessed September 4, 2017). By the second half of the sixteenth century the slave population in Portugal appears to have been made up predominantly of people from sub-Saharan Africa. Bovill asserts that the decline of the peasant population in Portugal had resulted in their replacement by so many blacks from Africa that the southern part of Portugal had become predominantly black. Subjective evaluations of color and the multiethnic makeup of Morocco might make the assumption that these “blacks” are sub-Saharan suspect. But Bovill’s remark is consistent with Portugal having begun the importation of sub-Saharan slaves in 1444. There was also an apparent preference for sub-Saharan African slaves over North African Muslims slaves, as the former were deemed more open to conversion to Christianity, had no nearby places to which to escape, and were considered more compliant. This made them far less threatening than Muslims, the last of who were forcibly expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the early seventeenth century. Bovill, The Battle of Alcazar, 5; Joachim Romero Magalhães, “Africans, Indians and Slavery in Portugal,” Portuguese Studies 13 (1997): 143-151, 143.”
“Ethnic’ identities were determined by occupation and religion as well as by language. The Dyula were a long-distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend; the Fulbe, ideally, pastoralist, the Bozo and Somono fisherman. The Dyula were Muslim, and the Bambara ‘pagans’. The social reality was fluid and changing, there was a Muslim presence in the Bambara states, and some Dyula were not Muslims. ‘It was not uncommon for FulBe to become Bozo, Bozo to become Somono, and…animist farmers to become Maraka Muslim traditionalist. Most Marka identified themselves as ‘white’ (the black were the recently converted).”
“In other words after converting to Islam many of the Beriberi and people like the nomad Fulani and Tuareg came to refer to themselves as “whites”. The Marka Soninke (Wa’nGara/Wakar and Wa’Kore) were also called Dyula. “The Dyula were a long distance merchants, called Marka on the Niger bend…” They called themselves the whites due to their faith – Islam. I told you Wa Kore and WaKara were Korah and Kore from Teras (Jeter/Jethro) but i know – many of us are in denial – too brainwashed. Believe it!
The newly remade film involving Kunta Kinte a man of Soninke/Mande stock.
“Paradoxically the Wakoré are designated in the Tarikhs as blacks from the south, but in other sources e.g. al-Bakrî, al-Idrı¯sı – as whites from the North.” See what I mean? Awkar, Wakara, or Wa’ngara and Wakore Malinke peoples were Beriberi from the North. The word “white” refers to their Muslim heritage.
” Those who have read the peer-reviewed ‘Fear of Blackness” in West Africa would know this already. This is what was in the peer reviewed Fear of Blackness…..”
Furthermore another division of the Wakar or Wa’nGara merchants were the Songhai in some places called Zarma, Germa, Songhai i.e. Garama who founded the empire of the Garamantes.
“Like modern linguists, even colonialists knew the early Arabs used the term white for a type of blackness. Example hamam = “Being black. Becoming white. Being charred (a burning coal or billet)…”
