Arab merchants

“ They are keen, thrifty traders, and as brutal in their instincts as they are keen. The commerce which connects the western part of Asia with Europe is largely of their making. They collect and transport the goods from the interior, delivering them to Jewish and Armenian middlemen, who turn them over to European and American merchants. Arab traders also control the greater part of the commerce of northern Africa. The slave-trade, which is wholly in their hands, is very largely the key to the situation. ”

“ Provisions are cheap and plentiful; the profits are large; and the Arab, when wealthy, is disposed to be hospitable and convivial. Many of the more prosperous merchants support their brethren who have been ruined by the chances and accidents of trade. When a stranger appears amongst them, he receives the “hishmat l’il gharíb,” or the guest-welcome, in the shape of a goat and a load of white rice; he is provided with lodgings, and is introduced by the host to the rest of the society at a general banquet. ”

“ Thinking that this portion of Africa, hitherto untravelled by foot of civilized man, must abound in ivory, the Arab merchants were desirous of securing the rich stores awaiting the earliest adventurers. ”

“ There were such crowds of people that it was almost impossible to make one's way through; there were quantities of provisions for sale, and trade seemed very lively. Egyptian merchants brought their goods as far as Ed Damer, whence they were brought by Arab merchants to Omdurman. ”

“ Reference has been made to the Arab merchants. They, however, constitute only a small number of the multitude who frequent the market and the adjoining streets. You will see them at their stalls or continually passing along in the afternoon, the thoroughfares crowded with them: Fulanis, Hausas, Nupés, Beri-Beris, male and female, many carrying in hands or on head cotton goods, native and imported, for sale. It is a busy multitude and few there are not intent on business. ”

“ Against such an enterprise all the energy and subtlety of the Arab was called into action. No information was allowed to reach the merchants in Egypt, and every device the imagination could create was directed toward discouraging the least disturbance of the channels of trade that had existed since human memory began. And in an unknown ocean, with only the vaguest ideas of the sources of the products they sought, and the routes that led to them, it might been many years before a Roman vessel, coasting along hostile shores, could reach the goal. But accidents favored Roman ambition. ”

“ Arab or Moorish merchants, the only ones who have hitherto ventured amongst them, are encouraged and treated with great liberality. Several of them are known to have returned, after a residence of less than nine years, with fortunes of fifteen and twenty thousand dollars; and which might, perhaps, by a more intelligent trader, have been doubled, as the commodities with which they barter are mostly European produce, purchased at Tripoli, at prices full two hundred and fifty per cent. ”

“ During the period of the Byzantine empire quite an overland traffic was maintained, and we find accounts of frequent embassies to and from Arabia and India from the beginning of the Christian era onward through the mediæval period. But the most authentic and detailed narratives are those of Arab travelers and merchants in and after the ninth century, showing an extensive trade by sea from the ports of Arabia and the Persian Gulf; and even at that date Chinese junks were making voyages to India, Ceylon, and still farther west. ”

“ Trade—paltry, mean, and cowardly as it so often makes men—has done the Arab irreparable harm: it has taught him to believe in counterfeits and little swindles as a legitimate mode of life, to pass bad money, and to cringe to a conqueror because he could make money thereby. He could not do these things in the old days, with his face to the sun.
The Arab is generally pictured to us in his tent or with his tribe, calm, dignified and brave, and perhaps we may meet with him thus on the other side of the Sahel, but here in Algiers he is a metamorphosed creature. ”

“ These golden dreams speedily vanished as the country became more extensively known: and though the Arab tribes of the desert between Syria and the Euphrates acknowledged a nominal subjection to Rome, the intercourse of the Imperial City with Yemen, or Arabia Felix, was confined to the trade which was carried on over the Red Sea from Egypt, and which became the channel through which not only the spices of Arabia, but the rich products of India, and even the slaves [32] and ivory of Eastern Africa, were supplied to the markets of Italy. ”

“ He may be unscrupulous in his dealings, and he has to be sharply watched by those in authority, but as a trade pioneer in a new country he is invaluable, and his enterprise contributes largely to make life possible for more exacting Europeans in desolate places. Some day, perhaps, when the Arab has mastered his methods of trade, he will find his match, but at present he holds the field. ”

“ They have never yet allowed an Arab to trade in their country, which proves them to be a bad lot. There is plenty of ivory there, and during the last eight years Khamis bin Abdullah, Tippu-Tib, Sayid bin Habib, and I myself have attempted frequently to enter there, but none of us has ever succeeded. ”

“ Emerging thus rapidly from ruin and degradation, the tide of lucrative commerce, both from Africa and Arabia, may be confidently expected to revert to its former channel. Blessed by a mild but firm government, the decayed mart, rescued from Arab tyranny and misrule, will doubtless shortly attain a pinnacle far eclipsing even its ancient opulence and renown; and Aden, as a free port, whilst she pours wealth into a now impoverished land, must ere long become the queen of the adjacent seas, and take rank among the most useful dependencies of the British crown. ”

“ Tozeur’s market is a mere alley of inverted V-shaped huts of reed, wherein are sold—after much solemn bargaining and drinking of coffee—all the small wants of the desert Arab, such as a morsel of town-baked bread, hobnails for his shoes, a piece of tanned leather—with the fur on—with which to make a new sole, a hank of thread, a tin pot or pan, or a bandanna handkerchief—which however must have stamped upon its border some precept from the Koran. The Arab’s personal wants are not great, and as he almost invariably carries his worldly goods about with him they are accordingly not bulky. ”

“ Into what country soever the Arabs enter, they contrive to render their name and race abominated. But the mainspring of it all is not the Arab's nature, colour, or name, but simply the slave-trade. So long as the slave-trade is permitted to be kept up at Zanzibar, so long will these otherwise enterprising people, the Arabs, kindle gainst them the hatred of the natives throughout Africa. ”

“ The break-up of the White Nile slave-trade involved the depression of trade in Khartoum, as the market had supplied the large bands of slave-hunters. The ivory of the numerous adventurers still remained in the White Nile stations, as they feared confiscation should their vessels be captured with the ever accompanying slave cargo. Thus little ivory arrived at Khartoum to meet the debts of the traders to the merchants in Cairo and Alexandria. These owed Manchester and Liverpool for calicoes supplied, which had been forwarded to the Soudan. ”

“ Some were employed in agriculture, others were shepherds, and others as merchants sought distant lands by sea, and exchanged native products for those of India and Ethiopia, or explored their pathless way through the northern desert, guided only by the stars of heaven. [10] Commerce is the source of wealth. The Arabians were the carriers of the eastern ocean, and the trade of India, that trade which afterwards contributed so much to the riches of Persia, had been monopolised by the merchants of Sabæa from the patriarchal days of Jacob. ”

“ Both the agricultural and the theocratic constitution of their society were unfavourable to a vigorous prosecution of foreign trade. In such traffic as they had with other nations they were served on their eastern borders by Arabian merchants, and on the west and south by the Phoenician shippers. The abundance of gold, silver and other precious commodities gathered from distant parts, of which we read in the days of greatest Hebrew prosperity, has more the character of spoils of war and tributes of dependent states than the conquest by free exchange of their domestic produce and manufacture. ”

“ There is not a spool of thread in Nejd or a jack-knife in Jebel-Shammar that did not come up the Persian Gulf in an English ship. All of Hassa eats rice from Rangoon and thousands of bags are carried in British ships to Bahrein to be transported inland by caravan. Not only is the steamshipping mostly in English hands, but many of the native buggalows fly the British flag and the chief merchants are Englishmen or British subjects from India. The Rupee is the standard of value along the whole Arabian coast from Aden to Busrah. ”

“ Of all the slave-dealers on this coast, the Arabs are the most unscrupulous. In 1855, one Mohammed of Muscat, a shipowner, who, moreover, constantly visits Aden, bought within sight of our flag a free-born Arab girl of the Yafai tribe, from the Akarib of Bir Hamid, and sold her at Berberah to a compatriot. Such a crime merits severe punishment; even the Abyssinians visit with hanging the Christian convicted of selling a fellow religionist. ”

“ But in fact we were not more desirous to sell than the men, women, and children of the Djowf were to buy. From the very outset our little courtyard was crowded with customers, and the most amusing scenes of Arab haggling, in all its mixed shrewdness and simplicity, diverted us through the week. ”

“ On the seaboard and in the island the Banyans, by monopolizing the import traffic, do injury to the internal trade. In the interior the Wasawahili excite, with all the animosity of competition, the barbarians against Arab interlopers, upon the same sordid and short-sighted principle that the latter display when opposing the ingress of Europeans. Finally, the Arabs, according to their own confession, have by rapacity and imprudence impoverished the people without enriching themselves. ”

“ You are aware that Arab traders swarm upon the coast, that they are reckless men, who possess boats and money in abundance, that the trade is very profitable, and that, being to some extent real traders in ivory, palm-oil, indigo, and other kinds of native produce, these men have many ruses and methods—what you English call dodges—whereby they can deceive even the most sharp-sighted and energetic. ”

“ The war that had distracted all Arabia, first between the Greeks and Persians, then between Mahomet and the Arabs, in support of his divine mission, had very much hurt the trade carried on by universal consent at the Temple of Mecca. Caravans, when they dared venture out, were surprised upon every road, by the partizans of one side or the other. Both merchants and trade had taken their departure to the southward, and established themselves south of the Arabian Gulf, in places which (in ancient times) had been the markets for commerce, and the rendezvous of merchants. Azab, or Saba, was rebuilt ”

“ Competition and a sense of pride on the part of the Arabs have also had their share in raising Arab standards of living. Nevertheless, the economic relations between the two groups have something of the character of trade between different nations. As consumers, their separateness is less marked, but as producers (with the main exception of the citrus industry) they maintain a degree of separateness unyielding, thus far, to the pressure of the economic forces which might have been expected to bring about a greater degree of homogeneity. ”

“ The peaceable Arabian merchants, full of that good faith which successful commerce inspires, fled everywhere from the violence and injustice of these Turkish tyrants, and landed in safety their riches and persons on the opposite shore of the kingdom of Adel. ”

“ The fourth sort are Arabian merchants, who come over occasionally to recover their debts, and renew correspondences with the merchants of this country. These are the richest of all, and are the bankers of the Gibbertis, who furnish them funds and merchandise, with which they carry on a most lucrative and extensive trade into the heart of Africa, through all the mountains of Abyssinia to the western sea, and through countries which are inaccessible to camels, where the ass, the mule, and, in some places, oxen, are the only beasts used in carriage. ”

“ The establishment of Islam gave a new and powerful stimulus to all Arabian enterprise. By the end of the fifteenth century there existed from the Red Sea to Japan a valuable and well-organised commerce, mainly in the hands of Arabian or other Muslim seamen and merchants. ”

“ All the foregoing merchandise being first landed at Alexandria, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Tetuan, and other Barbary ports in the Mediterranean, as well as at Mogodor on the western coast of Africa, are afterwards sold to the Muhamedan merchants, who sell them with a very good profit to other Moors. These goods frequently go through three, four, and five hands, before they reach the consumer in Sudan, subject to a profit gained by each holder of from twenty to thirty per cent. ”