the Moslem enmity toward the unconverted Negroes. Two
great modern religions, therefore, agreed at least in the policy of
enslaving heathen blacks, while the overthrow of black Askias by the Moors
at Tenkadibou brought that economic chaos among the advanced Negro peoples
and movement among the more barbarous tribes which proved of prime
advantage to the development of a systematic trade in men.

The modern slave trade began with the Mohammedan conquests in Africa, when
heathen Negroes were seized to supply the harems, and as soldiers and
servants. They were bought from the masters and seized in war, until the
growing wealth and luxury of the conquerors demanded larger numbers. Then
Negroes from the Egyptian Sudan, Abyssinia, and Zanzibar began to pass
into Arabia, Persia, and India in increased numbers. As Negro kingdoms and
tribes rose to power they found the slave trade lucrative and natural,
since the raids in which slaves were captured were ordinary inter-tribal
wars. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the
demand for slaves in Christian lands made slaves the object, and not the
incident, of African wars.

In Mohammedan countries there were gleams of hope in slavery. In fiction
and in truth the black slave had a chance. Once converted to Islam, he
became a brother to the best, and the brotherhood of the faith was not the
sort of idle lie that Christian slave masters made it. In Arabia black
leaders arose like Antar; in India black slaves carved out principalities
where their descendants still rule.

Some Negro slaves were brought to Europe by the Spaniards in the
fourteenth century, and a small trade was continued by the Portuguese, who
conquered territory from the "tawny" Moors of North Africa in the early
fifteenth century. Later, after their severe repulse at Al-Kasr-Al-Kabu,
the Portuguese began to creep down the west coast in quest of trade. They
reached the River of Gold in 1441, and their story is that their leader
seized certain free Moors and the next year exchanged them for ten black
slaves, a target of hide, ostrich eggs, and some gold dust. The trade was
easily justified on the ground that the Moors were Mohammedans and refused
to be converted to Christianity, while heathen Negroes would be better
subjects for conversion and stronger laborers. In the next few years a
small number of Negroes continued to be imported into Spain and Portugal
as servants. We find, for instance, in