Medieval Ibiza

Genetics is chipping into archaeological discoveries. Back in the day, islands such as Ibiza became part of the Islamic world. Ibiza being first colonised from North Africa in AD902.  A later settement event occurred in the 12th century Almoravid period – see https://phys.org/news/2026-03-medieval-dna-reveals-trans-saharan.html  …  The piece concentrates on the genetic discovery of trans Sahara DNA in two bodies from a cemetery in Ibiza. They possibly arrived via the slave trade – or they had converted to Islam at some stage and were fully a part of the settlements population. One came from the Senegal/ Gambia region and the other from southern Chad. Hence, they arrived via two different routes across the Sahara. This was of course a period of intense slave raiding by people in North Africa, continuing into the 18th century. Southern France and the heel of Italy were especially affected, but they also did longer  range slave raids  as far as Ireland and southern Britain. No doubt they reached the Gambia by boat. Not a lot of research has been done on Islamic slave raids, much like the earlier Viking slaving expeditions. It was lucrative and we may suspect it was an expansive trade that kept some people in clover. It also involved a lot of human misery. There is no evidence that this was part and parcel of the genetic evidence in Ibiza, of the two individuals. We may assume they had been assimilated into the society of the period – unless evidence to the contrary becomes available.