A significant proportion of male black slaves were castrated and used in Muslim lands as eunuchs, to guard the harems and serve as attendants at holy sites such as the Ka’ba at Mecca and the prophet’s mosque at Madina. They formed a special class of highly prized slaves kept by Muslim rulers and bourgeois from the heart of the Muslim world to Muslim Africa. Ethiopia was for a very long time the main source of eunuchs for the Muslim world even though from the mid-eighteenth century Bagirami became the main exporter” . (John Alembillah Azumah, the Legacy of Arab Islam In Africa, One World, London, 2018, p, 159)
The operation, done on boys aged between eight and ten was carried out with an exceedingly high death rate. Gustav Nachtigal was told that on the whole about 30 per cent survived the operation in Bagirami, while other estimates put the mortality rate at up to 80 per cent. This barbaric act was made particularly cruel for black victims in that, in contrast to their white counterparts whose operation did not deny them the ability to perform coitus, the castration of blacks involved what was popularly referred to as ‘level with the abdomen”, that is, a complete amputation of the genitalia.”
“….the young man was held down on top of the table while his genitalia were tied off with ‘soap coated silken cord’ they were then swiftly cut off with a razor. Following surgery, a wooden or (then) tin tube was inserted into the Eunuch’s urethra, the wound was cauterised with ash and hot sand, then slightly later with boiling oil ….”
Reference:
(John Alembillah Azumah, the Legacy of Arab Islam In Africa, One World, London, 2018, p, 159)
Henri Brunschvig and Black Africa: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42953179
Hunwick, J. Arab views of Black Africa and slavery. https://glc.yale.edu/…/files/files/events/race/Hunwick.pdf
