Pilgrimage to a New Self The African Quarter and its people Charmaine Seitz Early in the twentieth century, Adam Muhammed Jedda set out from the village of Twe in Chad to fulfill his duties in pilgrimage to Mecca and Jerusalem. The African man in his early twenties traveled with his nephew, who was just a teenager. They left behind a Chad in turmoil; the kingdoms of the Kanem-Bornu and Baguirmi stretching through modern Chad, Nigeria and Sudan had already been penetrated by the French, who would colonize the area for decades to come.1 But these deeply religious men also arrived in a fomenting Jerusalem, and for 1 The life story of Adam Jedda is based on an interview with his son, Mahmoud. The exact date of Jedda's arrival in Jerusalem is unknown, but Mahmoud has found a document among his father's belongings that places him in Palestine in 1922. The French first penetrated Chad in 1891, carrying out military raids against its Muslim kingdoms. 43 Spring.p65 43 13/09/23, 12:32 ã reasons of faith and devotion to the city, institution by favoring manumission and they decided to stay. dramatically improving the position of the Jedda's story was repeated all over Arab slave, "who was now no longer merely a lands, as African Muslims made chattel but was also a human being with a pilgrimage to fulfill their religious duties, certain religious and hence social status then settled from Iraq to Syria to Palestine. and with certain quasi-legal rights."3 In a Their integration was made difficult by sad twist in history, these changes actually "color-struck" Arabs, some of whom held boosted the slave trade, as slaves were no negative stereotypes of blacks; a history of longer available inside the Islamic empire Arab-African slave trade; and the and were therefore trafficked instead from destabilizing regional influences of outside. colonialism and nationalism. Jedda and others like him in Jerusalem responded to that challenge by crafting a new identity: that of the Palestinian African. God, Slaves and Gold Islam came to Central Africa through a gradual process of Arab migration and Muslim conquest. By the late seventh century, the reach of the caliphs ruling after the death of Prophet Muhammad, most notably Caliph Uthman, extended to Central Africa served as the gatekeeper North Africa and moved south into the for the slave trade between the desert. Once Arab travelers began arriving Mediterranean and local African tribes. from the east in the fourteenth century, Early on few Arab traders ventured to in- Islam was already rooted in place. land desert areas, where the elements and Three things brought the Arabs to health conditions were notoriously hostile. Africa: the expansion of the Islamic Still, from 1500 to 1900, slave raids by the empire, a massive slave trade and West Arabs or their middlemen were common African gold to be had in the African in the Chad region. kingdoms of Mali and Ghana.2 It is Not much is known of the African important to note here that the African perspective of their encounter with Arab slave trade existed well before the advent Muslim traders, since few written records of Islam. Muslim teachings changed the 3 The issue of Arab slavery during the Islamic empire is a charged one. It touches an especially tender intersection between misunderstandings about Islam 2 "[I]t is estimated that two-thirds of all the gold and Arabs, the African Diaspora's search to recognize circulating in the Mediterranean area in the Middle and redress its grievance, and the legacy of colonialism Ages was imported across the Sahara," writes Pekka as it persists today in Africa and the Middle East. As Masonen in "Trans-Saharan Trade and the West African such, some writings on the subject are either unfair or, Discovery of the Mediterranean World," a paper given conversely, apologist. This article only skims the at The Third Nordic Conference on Middle Eastern subject, but readers looking for a summary might start Studies: Ethnic Encounter and Culture Change, with the source of this quote, Bernard Lewis' Race and University of Tampere, Joensuu, Finland, 19-22 June Slavery in the Middle East, Oxford University Press, 1995. 1994 (also excerpted on the internet). 44 Spring.p65 44 13/09/23, 12:32 ã have made it into the public sphere.4 blacks." Still others believe the term However, travelogues such as the 14th originally came from Zanzibar, an East century adventures of Ibn Battuta provide African island that was the jumping off the outsider's perspective, complete with point for slave ships heading to the Middle cross-cultural misunderstandings. East. Many of these Africans were kidnapped "I saw a crocodile in this part of the or sold into slavery, chained and then Nile [Niger], close to the bank; it shipped to Iraq where they were used to looked just like a small boat. One build canals to feed local cotton fields. For day I went down to the river to fifteen years, from 868 to 883, these satisfy a need, and lo, one of the enslaved Africans, aided by black soldiers blacks came and stood between me in the employ of the Abbasid Caliphate in and the river. I was amazed at such Baghdad, revolted in what has been called lack of manners and decency on his "the Zanj rebellion." Occurring early in part, and spoke of it to someone or the institution of regional slavery, the Iraqi other. [That person] answered. "His rebellion significantly altered the way that purpose in doing that was solely to slaves were used in the Middle East by protect you from the crocodile, by dampening enthusiasm for plantation-type placing himself between you and bondage similar to that found in the New it."5 World.6 The Arab slave trade in Africans (not to Ibn Battuta, like many Arabs, referred to mention Persians, Jews, Caucasians, Africa as the land of the Zanj, a Abyssians and others7) became so terminology that is viewed by the extensive that by the middle of the ninth descendants of early African pilgrims as century, there were as many as three highly derogatory ("It's like the word million Africans enslaved in the Middle nigger," one man told me.) Historically, East.8 Indeed, some scholars estimate that however, Zanj does not appear to have as many as 9.3 million black slaves, held negative connotations. Some scholars including the many who died crossing the say that the origins of the word lie with the desert, were trafficked in the thousand Arabic Azania, which means "land of the years of trans-Saharan slave trade to the 4 Masonen writes that, "it is extremely difficult to 6 African Presence In Early Asia, ed. by Runoko reconstruct the West African idea of the world, Rashidi & Van Sertima, Transaction Publishers, 1997. contemporary to that of the medieval European and Arab, because those West Africans who crossed the 7 John W. Blassingame's book, The Slave Community Sahara left no documents, and all that is known about (Oxford University Press, 1979), summarizes the them is based on accounts written by others." literature available on Europeans and Americans who But a September 2002 article in the Chronicle of were enslaved by Africans and Arabs. He says, for Higher Education, "Decaying Manuscripts Reveal example, that in Algiers between the 16th and 17th Africa's Literate History," (see http://chronicle.com/ centuries, there were between 25,000 and 40,000 white free/v49/i02/02a02601.htm) also proposes that the void slaves. Some of these Western slaves were emancipated comes from a lack of interest in challenging the notion and went on to write descriptively of their experiences. that Africans were illiterate. The Americans "repaid" those encounters by also enslaving Arabs in their own extensive human trade. 5 Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, tr. and ed. by H. A. R. Gibb, Broadway House, London, 8 "African Heritage extends across the Arab world," 1929. News Journal, Sunni Khalid, 21 February, 2000. 45 Spring.p65 45 13/09/23, 12:32 ã north. That means the actual number of The Royal Hajj and the Common captives rivals the number of slaves Pilgrim trafficked in the Atlantic trade, albeit over Chad itself was originally ruled by a a much longer period of time. Slavery in confederation of black tribes called the the Middle East differed in one other Kanem, who were replaced by the Kanuri important respect: often it was not life- confederation. Leader Mai Dunama long and black Africans were eventually Dibbalemi (1221-1259) was the first of the freed or able to work for their Kanuri to convert to Islam and his rule independence. was one of the most dynamic periods of "[N]o great black communities were conquest in African history. At its height, born in Northern Africa in the same sense the Kanuri controlled land from Libya to as those in the American colonies," writes Lake Chad to Hausaland (modern northern Pekka Masonen, "for most of the slaves Nigeria)-including their lucrative trade were women whose fertility in slavery was routes. low. The offspring of black concubines When the nearby kingdom of Songhay with their Arab masters were free and fell, the Kanuri grew even more powerful, merged gradually into the North African uniting with areas west of Chad and population." As such, slaves often had to creating the Kanem-Bornu empire, led by be "replaced" and new Africans another Muslim ruler. But, as Masonen "imported." These factors constrained the reports, the characterization of a ruling population of black African slave empire as "Muslim," did not necessarily communities in the Middle East and help mean that Islam was widespread.