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That probably wasn't racism, but economic exploitation and ruthless opportunism.When African tribes sold Africans of other tribes they defeated in battle to white slave traders, what kind of racism is that?
It was partly religious persecution. Part of that was a purging of infidels. Islamic tribes were getting rid of some of the other tribal members that wouldn't convert.
Racist opinions occurred in the works of some Persian and Arab-Muslim historians and geographers: so in the 14th century, the Tunisian Ibn Khaldun could write: - :"...the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals..."
Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998, Le Monde diplomatique. Quote: "The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth)." He continues: "Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean"
Much of North Africa was enslaved and they traded them as a commodity like cotton, silk, or gold. http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/3356143