What men are naked? I don't see any! I only see animals, such as horses, camels, goats, dogs, and slaves. But that's how animals are supposed to be, isn't it?

Slavery is an ancient institution. People from peoples defeated in wars, captured or kidnapped, were sold and bought like any other commodity or animal.

In countries and regions around the Sahara, this practice dates back to times before the Roman Empire until, in 1981, Mauritania became the last country to abolish slavery officially.

Even today, in several countries of the world, people are held and treated as slaves.

Most of the available images show slaves wearing petticoats or breeches as if nudity was immoral or shocking.

However, historians and scholars describe that the slaves' nudity was a way of reiterating their animal condition as non-human creatures. In some tribes, the slave was forbidden to wear any clothing, a privilege of free men. Nudity marked the difference between the poor worker and the slave.

There is a story of a European traveler who visited these markets and asked a merchant: Why do all these men have to be naked?

To which the merchant replied: What men are naked? I don't see any! I only see animals, such as horses, camels, goats, dogs, and slaves. But that's how animals are supposed to be, isn't it?

I made two illustrations showing how slaves were customarily kept entirely naked, and I added below a picture from Le Petit Parisien from June 1907, showing a slave market in Morocco.

We see a slave carrying a bag wearing a small cloth, one having his teeth examined, wearing a skirt, and another naked behind, half-hidden by the buyers. The design reveals the puritanism of the European designer.