Early Arab sources suggest significant commerce across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and that many slaves were at this time exported  from various parts of Abyssinia to Arabia. The nineteenth century British historian William Muir reminds us in his "Life of Mahomet" (1861) that caravans from Mecca, in the seventh century (as perhaps earlier), left for Abyssinia every year. One of those thus trading across the Red Sea was none other than the Prophet Muhammad's grandfather Abdal Muttalib. Such trade, which included the shipment of slaves from the African side of the sea, led to the emergence at Mecca, and other parts of Arabia, of a sizable Ethiopian community. The best known of its members at this time was Bilal, who will ever be remembered as Muhammad's muezzin, who called the early Muslims to prayer, and was referred to by the Prophet as "the first fruit of Abyssinia".

The export of slaves from the African coast was subsequently reported, in the tenth century, by the Arab author Ibn Hawqal. He stated in 976-7 A.D. that the then ruler of Yaman received slaves, as well as amber and leopard skins, from the chief of the Dahlak islands (off the coast from Massawa). These slaves were reported to number a thousand, half of them Abyssinian and Nubian women.  Subsequently, in 985, Al Maqrizi listed Abyssinian slaves as among the principal imports, much further south, at the great Arab emporium of Aden. Later again, in 1021 an Abyssinian slave called Najah, who had been purchased on the other side of the sea by another ruler of Yemen, seized power to the north, at Zabid, where there were reportedly five thousand Abyssinian spearmen. A subsequent Yemeni ruler is said to have sent messengers across the Red Sea for the purchase of a further twenty thousand.