UGR researchers analyse the flow of slaves between Spain and Morocco throughout History

The phenomenon of slavery between Spain and Morocco from ancestral times is both evident and unknown. The UNESCO includes at present a research line called ‘The route of the slave’ to revive the memory of the ethnic-religious minorities tyrannized all through History, but up to now they only have only studied the Greco Latin or the Latin American ambit.

With the aim of analysing the historic role and the evolution of the enslaved collectives, a research group of the Universidad de Granada is working on a project of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation (AECI) together with the University of Fez, under the title ‘Slavery on both shores of the Mediterranean: a common past’.

Supervised by professor Aurelia Martín Casares, of the Department of Social Anthropology, the research work studies the Muslim and Christian routes of slave transport during the Modern Age (from the 16th to the 18th century) with the aim of establishing parallelisms with the itineraries of immigrants´ small boats nowadays.

The analysis shows how the two great religions at a world wide level (Islam and Christianity) contributed to justify slavery in the past, a well documented reality that some want to hide nowadays. This project also examines what kinds of works were carried out by the slaves in antiquity, comparing them to the current situation of such minorities as regards Human Rights.

The first results of this research work will be expounded in May, during a conference organized by the Seminar Emilio García Gómez of the Universidad de Granada.

Reference: Prof Aurelia Martín Casares. Department of Social Anthropology.
Phone numbers: 958 242 321 – 243 099. E-mail: aurelia@ugr.es