Trade in Sudanese slaves continued along the Forty Days’ Road into 1890s Egypt

Evidence

In August 1894, a Bedouin slave dealer named Muhammad Shaghlüb led a small caravan to a stop in the village of Kerdessa, within sight of the Great Pyramids of Giza.The caravan consisted of six Sudanese women, purchased hundreds of miles to the south, who had walked slowly and barefoot with Shaghlüb and three other traders along the Forty Days’ Road, the old and well-traveled trade route that ended in lower Egypt. All were exhausted upon reaching Kerdessa, but Shaghlüb persevered, acting quickly to find an accommodating friend who agreed to hide the women on the top floor of his house. While the six women waited in this room, under admonition to be silent in the hot, cramped quarters, Shaghlüb went on to Cairo to negotiate for buyers for the six women. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 45