Historical analysis of slavery and the slave trade is extensive for the traffic from the west coast of Africa to North, Central and South America, and recently some publications have addressed 'Islamic slavery', especially its social history, as well as aspects of the trade as it affected the Ottoman Empire. However, such monographs do not analyse in any detail the sea trade towards the Arabian littoral. One reason for lack of analysis of the Arabian trade may be because there is no single large community of slave descendants in the former Ottoman Middle East, as there is in the United States and the Caribbean. In tracing the massive effort made to stop the sea trade, it is hoped that this collection of documents will also convey the scale of the diaspora out of east Africa.