Race, Rebellion, and Arab Muslim Slavery : the Zanj Rebellion in Iraq, 869 - 883 C.E

University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2016 Race, rebellion, and Arab Muslim slavery : the Zanj Rebellion in Iraq, 869 - 883 C.E. Nicholas C. McLeod University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, African History Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, History of Religion Commons, Islamic Studies Commons, Islamic World and Near East History Commons, Medieval Studies Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, and the Social History Commons Recommended Citation McLeod, Nicholas C., "Race, rebellion, and Arab Muslim slavery : the Zanj Rebellion in Iraq, 869 - 883 C.E." (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2381. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2381 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The nivU ersity of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The nivU ersity of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RACE, REBELLION, AND ARAB MUSLIM SLAVERY: THE ZANJ REBELLION IN IRAQ, 869 - 883 C.E. By Nicholas C. McLeod B.A., Bucknell University, 2011 A Thesis Submitted to The Faculty of College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts In Pan-African Studies Department of Pan-African Studies University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky May 2016 Copyright 2016 by Nicholas C. McLeod All rights reserved RACE, REBELLION, AND ARAB MUSLIM SLAVERY: THE ZANJ REBELLION IN IRAQ, 869 - 883 C.E. By Nicholas C. McLeod B.A., Bucknell University, 2011 A Thesis Approved on April 15, 2016 By the following Thesis Committee __________________________________ Dr. Theresa Rajack-Talley __________________________________ Dr. Tyler Fleming __________________________________ Dr. John McLeod ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my parents Neville and Rosamond in gratitude for your guidance, love, and sacrifice and also to Whitney because of your love, patience, and support I never felt alone during the writing of this thesis. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my mentor and thesis director, Dr. Theresa Rajack-Talley for her patience, direction, and willingness to trust in me to carry out this unique study. I also want to extend my deep appreciation to the other committee members, Dr. Tyler Fleming and Dr. John McLeod. The guidance and constructive criticism of these historians maintained the integrity of the discipline in this study. It is a pleasure to thank my mentor Dr. Leslie Patrick who nurtured my interest in history and instilled in me the discipline and self-confidence to pursue my post-graduate aspirations. I must also give further thanks to Dr. Derrick Brooms whose mentorship and counsel made this thesis possible. Truth be told, I had no intentions of writing this thesis on the Zanj Rebellion and the Arab trade; however, I must give a special thanks to Dr. Yvonne Jones for pushing me to move forward with this topic. Finally, I must express my gratitude to the faculty and graduate students of the Department of Pan-African Studies for providing the environment of free flowing ideas, dialogue, and support in which this thesis was written. iv ABSTRACT RACE, REBELLION, AND ARAB MUSLIM SLAVERY: THE ZANJ REBELLION IN IRAQ, 869 - 883 C.E. Nicholas C. McLeod April 15, 2016 In the ninth century, enslaved Africans from the east coast of Africa, called the Zanj, revolted for nearly fifteen years in southern Iraq against their Arab slave masters and challenged the social order of the Abbasid Empire. This thesis is a socio-historical investigation on the role that race played in starting the Zanj Rebellion of 869 C.E. It examines the Arab Islamic slave trade and the racial stratification experienced by blacks in the early centuries of Islamic history in conjunction with the Zanj Rebellion. The thesis applies a structural framework for analyzing race, to demonstrate the racialization process, prevalent racial ideologies in Arabic literature and Islamic doctrine, and the race consciousness and identities displayed by black poets and authors that lived in the Abbasid era. It utilizes translated Arabic literature and poetry written from the seventh to the ninth century to position the Zanj and other blacks from the period as autonomously motivated historical actors. This thesis argues that because of the racialized social structure, a racial contestation manifested in the form of one of the largest and longest lasting slave rebellions in world history, the Zanj Rebellion. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...............................................................................................iv ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES...........................................................................................................vii I. INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................1 II. ARAB-ISLAMIC SLAVERY AND THE ABBASID CALIPHATE...................15 III. BLACK SLAVES REVOLT DURING ABBASID REIGN.................................49 IV. A STRUCTURAL APPROACH TO STUDYING HISTORICALLY RACIALIZED SOCIETIES………………...........................................................72 V. BLACK VOICES OF RACE CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE EARLY CENTURIES OF ISLAM…………………………………….........…………….89 VI. THE RACIAL ATMOSPHERE THAT PRIMED THE ZANJ REBELLION IN THE NINTH CENTURY…………………………………….......…………106 VII. CONCLUSION....................................................................................................124 REFERENCES................................................................................................................130 CURRICULUM VITAE .................................................................................................141 vi LIST OF FIGURES FIGURES 1. Map of Trade Routes in the Indian Ocean.....................................................................20 2. Map of the Spread of Islam............................................................................................42 3. Map of the Abbasid Empire ..........................................................................................54 4. Map of “The Land of the Zanj………………………………………………………...57 5. Map of Iraq During the Zanj Rebellion ........................................................................64 6. Coins of al-Mukhtara - The Zanj Maroon City..............................................................68 vii I. INTRODUCTION The coming of the European and Christianity is, for the majority of the time, seen as the beginning of the end of the African’s autonomous existence in his/her land of origin; however, an event that is constantly neglected is the coming of the Arab and Islam. While it cannot be said that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is a topic that has been thoroughly explored, the subject has no shortage of scholarly writings nor is it foreign to common knowledge. Surprisingly, what may be the most tragic and longest lasting form of slavery has received little to almost no attention. Today the Arab-Islamic Slave Trade stands as a nearly unexplored area of scholarship, as most still seem to be focused on the causes and effects of Europe’s Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Slavery has existed throughout history in various forms including domestic servitude, military slavery, debt bondage, and chattel slavery. An aspect inherent to the institution of slavery is slave resistance; however, the existence and frequency of slave rebellions have, until the mid-twentieth century, been an aspect of enslavement that have not garnered a significant amount of discussion. Recently, slave rebellion and resistance have been a topic of substantial scholarship; however, this was not the case when it came to slavery in the Middle East. During the Abbasid Caliphate in ninth century southern Iraq, the Zanj Rebellion lasted for nearly 15 years, and was the greatest protest movement by African slaves in the Islamic world. The Zanj were used for manual labor in the salt marshes of Basra. They worked in camps of 500 to 5,000 men under cruel and inhumane 1 conditions with only a few handfuls of food in return. In 869 C.E. these enslaved Africans, imported from the east coast of Africa, amass one of the most extraordinary yet under-discussed events in history. Although the Zanj were enslaved Africans living in one of the most racially diverse societies in medieval times, very few historians have considered the relevance of race in their studies of the Zanj Rebellion. HISTORIOGRAPHY Traditionally historians have denied the relevancy of modern concepts of race and instead have relied on Marxist theory to concluded that the Zanj Rebellion was primarily a class struggle. When examining the causes of the Zanj Rebellion, the historiography demonstrates how scholars have neglected issues of race. For example, in al-Tabari’s The Revolt of the Zanj, the essential primary document for this thesis, he makes no reference to the presence of any kind of racial ideology or racialized social structure. Similarly, in Suad Mustafa Muhammad’s “The Zanj Revolt (869-883)

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