SLAVERY, ISLAM and DIASPORA Africa World Press
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
SLAVERY, ISLAM AND DIASPORA AFRICA WORLD PRESS Publications in Association with the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples Toyin Falola and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Pawnship, Slavery and Colonial- ism in Africa, 2003 Donald G. Simpson, Under the North Star: Black Communities in Upper Canada before Confederation (1867), 2005 Paul E. Lovejoy, Slavery, Commerce and Production in West Africa: Slave Society in the Sokoto Caliphate, 2005 Paul E. Lovejoy, Ecology and Ethnography of Muslim Trade in West Africa, 2005 Naana Opoku-Agyemang, Paul E. Lovejoy and David Trotman, eds., Africa and Trans-Atlantic Memories: Literary and Aesthetic Manifesta- tions of Diaspora and History, 2008 Boubacar Barry, Livio Sansone, and Elisée Soumonni, eds., Africa, Brazil, and the Construction of Trans-Atlantic Black Identities, 2008 Carolyn Brown and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Interior of the Bight of Biafra and the African Diaspora, 2009 Behnaz Asl Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana, and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, 2009 Ana Lucia Araujo, Mariana Pinho Cândido and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Crossing Memories: Slavery and African Diaspora, 2009 SLAVERY, ISLAM AND DIASPORA Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana and Paul E. Lovejoy Copyright © 2009 Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana and Paul E. Lovejoy First Printing 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. Book design: Saverance Publishing Services Cover design: Ashraful Haque Cover artwork: “North African man in travelling costume”, ca. 1900-1910, William Wiehe Collins (1862-1951) - Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Slavery, Islam and diaspora / edited by Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana, and Paul E. Lovejoy. p. cm. Contains papers originally presented at the conference on Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, sponsored by the Harriet Tubman Resource Centre on the African Diaspora, York University, Ontario, 24-26 Oct. 2003. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-59221-704-4 (hardcover) -- ISBN 1-59221-705-2 (pbk.) 1. Slavery and Islam- -History. 2. Slavery--Islamic countries--History. 3. African diaspora. I. Mirzai, Behnaz A. II. Montana, Ismael Musah. III. Lovejoy, Paul E. IV. Harriet Tubman Resource Centre on the African Diaspora. HT919.S56 2009 306.3’62091767--dc22 2009017754 Published in Association with… Dedicated to Nehemia Levtzion & John Hunwick TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Maps ix Preface xi Chapter 1: Introduction: Slavery, Islam and Diaspora 1 Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana and Paul E. Lovejoy Chapter 2: Bringing the Slaves Back In 7 Ehud R Toledano Chapter 3: Blacks beyond the Black Sea: Eunuchs in the Crimean 21 Khanate Maryna Kravets Chapter 4: Slave Trade and Slavery on the Swahili Coast, 1500–1750 37 Thomas Vernet Chapter 5: Qājār Ḥaram: Imagination or Reality? 77 Behnaz A. Mirzai Chapter 6: Slaves in a Muslim City: A Survey of Slavery in 91 Nineteenth Century Kano Mohammed Bashir Salau Chapter 7: Islam, Ethnicity and Slave Agitation: Hausa ‘Mamluks’ 103 in Nineteenth Century Yorubaland Olatunji Ojo Chapter 8: Ransoming Captives in the Sokoto Caliphate 125 Jennifer Lofkrantz Slavery, Islam and Diaspora Chapter 9: Debating Slavery and Abolition in the Arab Middle East 139 Amal N. Ghazal Chapter 10: The Bori Colonies of Tunis 155 Ismael Musah Montana Chapter 11: The Servile Populations of the Algerian Sahara, 169 1850-1900 Benjamin Claude Brower Chapter 12: Bellah Highwaymen: Slave Banditry and Crime in 193 Colonial Northern Mali Bruce S. Hall Chapter 13: Literacy among Muslims in Nineteenth-Century 217 Trinidad and Brazil Nikolay Dobronravin Chapter 14: Religious Constancy and Compromise among Nine- 237 teenth Century Caribbean-Based African Muslims Maureen Warner-Lewis Glossary 269 Bibliography 273 Notes on Contributors 303 Index 309 viii LIST OF MAPS Map 3.1: The Golden Horde around 1300 23 Map 3.2: The Crimean Khanate around 1600 27 Map 4.1: The Swahili Coast and the Indian Ocean, 1500-1750 40 Map 5.1: Slave Trade to Iran 81 Map 10.1: Tunis 158 PREFACE The papers in this volume were originally presented at the conference on Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, sponsored by the Harriet Tubman Resource Centre on the African Diaspora, York University, on 24-26 October 2003. The conference was funded in part by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History. The editors wish to thank LaRay Denzer for her assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication. The editors also wish to thank Northern Illinois University for its support. The volume is dedicated to Nehemia Levtzion, who was scheduled to attend the conference but died unexpectedly, and to John Hunwick, who participated in the conference, despite failing health. Both scholars have made major contributions to the study of Islam and slavery. The cover image is based on a watercolor by William Weile Collins (1862-1951), entitled “North African man in travelling costume,” drawn sometime in 1900-1910. The original is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, SD. 240, and is reproduced here courtesy of the Museum. Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: SLAVERY, ISLAM AND DIASPORA Behnaz Asl Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana, and Paul E. Lovejoy his volume explores the relationship between slavery and Islam in the Tcontext of diaspora.1 Inevitably, slavery involved the movement of indi- viduals from their places of origin to various parts of the Muslim world.2 To some extent, the enslaved population was able to establish a sense of identity in diaspora that was based on social status and the common experience of enforced migration. Despite the diversity of the Islamic world and different interpretations of Islamic law, it is clear that slavery was widespread and that we need to know more about how individuals responded to enslave- ment under Islam.3 Certainly, this book does not aim to examine Islam as a religion, but attempts to promote discussion on how various communities and societies used Islam to justify enslavement, liberate slaves, and defend or maintain their communities and indeed their individual identities. The volume reflects on how various societies understood slavery and how these views influenced local perceptions of Islam. Research on the relationship between slavery and Islam has been dif- ficult, partly because of language barriers that scholars encounter. The languages of Muslim societies included not just Arabic but also Turkish, Persian, Swahili, Hausa, Malinke, and so on. Access to extensive and widely dispersed documentation is also a problem, and the representa- tion of slavery under Islam in European languages requires special care.4 As Brower and Mirzai discuss in this volume, the misrepresentation of Muslims as “others” is reflected in colonial sources and is particularly apparent in discussions of slavery. These limitations have to be overcome Slavery, Islam and Diaspora in understanding the legacy of slavery in Muslim societies and the contri- butions that enslaved Muslims made in non-Muslim countries. Besides, scholars examining the African diaspora have focused their attention on the well-researched Atlantic slave trade to the Americas, but enslaved Africans also crossed the Sahara, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to various parts of the Islamic world.5 Most of the enslaved Afri- cans taken along these routes, as well as a significant number of those who remained in Africa and indeed crossed the Atlantic, were from Muslim communities.6 Thanks to recent research in the Islamic factor as it pertains to slavery, we now know that the period of the Atlantic slave trade was also an era during which slavery was also a powerful force in Dar al-Islam (the world of Islam), especially in West Africa and inland from the “Slave Coast” of the Atlantic.7 In this volume, the contributors attempt to redress the imbalance in the study of slavery with respect to the Islamic factor by examining the history of enslavement, the development of the African diaspora and the responses of enslaved Muslims. The chapters examine the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean, slavery in North Africa, slavery beyond the Mediter- ranean, and African Muslims in the Americas. Our contributors focus on the abolition of slavery under Islam and the interconnection of slavery and race as a means of highlighting the significance of studying the relation- ship between Islamic law, culture and slavery.The essays demonstrate that religious identity was an important factor in the resistance of enslaved Muslims to the institution of slavery in the trans-Atlantic context and that laws pertaining to slavery, the treatment of slaves and paths to emancipa- tion in Muslim society also differed. Although the examples cover various geographical areas from Africa and the Middle East to the Caribbean and South America, they share a common goal in attempting to explain the essence of Islam in relation to slavery and displacement that characterized the movement of Muslims into diaspora. In spite of thematic and geo- graphical diversity of the contributions, the authors show that slave-master relations were built on social and economic exploitation, but nonetheless, the enslaved were successful in spreading