3 Sides to Slavery

One thing I truly find valuable in Strayer's book is his inclusion of original sources and stories of individuals who lived through these historical events. What I also value is the importance he puts on telling the history from multiple views. There are always many sides to a story: mine, yours and the whole truth. What Stayer does is tell the same story from multiple sides in order to show the whole truth. Specifically, I’d like to address a story/portrait in Chapter 14 page 696-697.

“Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, To Slavery and Back”

This portrait is about a West African man who was not only a prominent Islamic scholar, prayer leader and hafiz (one who has memorized the Quran), but he and his family were also slave owners! Ayuba was sent off by his father to trade slaves for paper for his business, but mistakenly he traveled too far and was captured and enslaved himself along with his own slaves. He became ill shortly after his capture due to the physical work demanded of him. He tried to escape, failed, and was imprisoned. During his imprisonment a local lawyer realized he was not the ‘common slave’, took to him and helped him regain his freedom. Once free, Ayuba made his way back to West Africa where he was welcomed and “resumed his place of prominence”.

The worst part of all this is that Ayuba continued to be a slave owner for another 39years until his death…WHAT?!? He experienced firsthand what his people/slaves go through and yet he still chose to put them in harm’s way and poor living conditions. I would expect that a man with his education and passion for Allah and his teachings would find compassion, and instead of using his power of knowledge for personal gain he would use it to better the lives of all people.

This is a great example of how slavery worked during that time, and probably still does today. We know slavery in the US to be the selling of Africans to the British Colonies, but we don’t know much about is how the slaves were actually traded. This portrait shows us that there was already a divide in Africa between the rich and poor, the elite and the commoner. Both parties are to blame when it comes to slavery, yet in US schools we do not learn that Africans, and in many cases Black Africans helped facilitate or at least take part in the slave trade. We would benefit in, and our children will be more knowledgeable and confident in knowing our own history better than we do today.