There is no agreement on the exact number of black slaves in Egypt dur- ing the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the trade in slaves from the Sudan reached its peak. Gabriel Baer writes that it was impossible to establish the exact number of slaves in Egypt at any time in that century, but basing his estimation on contemporary British accounts, the census of 1850, and the records of the slave trade bureaus established after the Anglo- Egyptian Convention in 1877, he figured that throughout the century the number of slaves remained between twenty and thirty thousand. Judith Tucker never arrived at a total figure of slaves, although she posits that, between 1877 and 1905, twenty-five thousand slaves were manumitted in Egypt. The majority of African slaves in Egypt were women who served as domestic workers in private homes, although in upper Egypt there were documented examples of agricultural slavery, and many slaves were recruited for military service early in the century.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 663