Slavery in Morocco

Slavery in Morocco formed part of wider Saharan and Mediterranean systems of captivity and exchange. Captives were brought north across trans-Saharan routes, while others were retained within North Africa. Enslaved people could be used in households, concubinage, agriculture, military service, and oasis labor. These practices varied by period and locality and should not be treated as a single, uniform form of “Islamic slavery.”

The legal ending of slavery was gradual. Under the French protectorate, public slave markets were prohibited in 1913, and in 1917 officials were prohibited from registering deeds of sale relating to enslaved people. These measures restricted slave trading and weakened legal recognition of slave status, but they did not immediately eliminate household servitude or inherited racial and social stigma. Morocco is therefore better described as a case of layered abolition than as one in which a single decree instantly ended slavery in practice.^[1]