The Black People of Iraq Freed

This is a report from Salid Khalid, of News Journal Reporter!

He takes us into the world of the black, african peoples of Iraq who were brought to Iraq by muslim slave traders!


Bush liberation of Iraq will no doubt give these people some hope!

Usually Black History Month focuses on the accomplishments of African-Americans or the past glories of African civilizations. When the issue of slavery is explored, the focus is almost always on slavery in the United States. Seldom do we ponder the history of slavery in Africa or the Arab slave traders who exploited the continent long before the 15th century, when the

Portuguese became the first Europeans to buy and sell Africans.

What happened to the millions of Africans who did not make the voyage west across the Atlantic but wound up in bondage in the Middle East?

I didn't give it much thought while growing up in the United States. I never saw images of Arabs with dark skin and African facial features on television or in newspapers. All the Arabs I saw in news accounts seemed to have about the same complexion as Saddam Hussein. So you can imagine my surprise when I -- an African-American journalist and a Muslim -- traveled in the Middle East and saw lots of people who looked like my friends and relatives in the United States.
Eventually I began to trace the link between Africa and the Arab world. My research took me back more than 1,500 years to African villages where slaves were captured, tied together and marched to seaside fortresses.

They were herded onto ships, and many wound up in what is now southern Iraq and Kuwait, where they became laborers, farm hands, servants, concubines and eunuchs. Initially many of the slaves came from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and what is now Somalia.

They were brought to what is now southern Iraq to build canals and to turn marshlands into fields for crops, including cotton. The rulers needed more arable land to feed the region's rapidly growing indigenous population.

The demand for slaves grew, but the supply dwindled along Africa's Indian Ocean coast. Two factors contributed to their scarcity: --> some African ethnic groups began to resist the traders and others converted to Islam.

Muslim slave traders were prohibited from enslaving fellow Muslims. This forced Arab slavers to go deeper into the Africa, eventually reaching present-day Malawi, Zambia, southern Sudan and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.


Laboring for freedom
Arabs also enslaved Persians, Kurds, Jews, Indians, Chinese, Slavs, Turks, Caucasians and others. But most slaves were Africans. A glaring difference existed between Muslim slavery and slavery under the Europeans. In the United States, slavery often lasted a lifetime. Slavery under the Muslims was closer to indentured labor, and slaves could often purchase or earn their freedom.

Eventually African slaves came to be known as the Zanj. Some academics say Zanj comes from the Arabic word Azania, which means the "land of the blacks." But others trace it to an old Arabic or Farsi colloquial expression related to Zanzibar, an island off the East African coast, which was a major shipping point for slaves headed to the Middle East and other Muslim lands.
In the middle of the ninth century, the Zanj are believed to have numbered about 3 million.

Written accounts from the era are replete with racial slurs denigrating the intelligence and physical characteristics of Africans. These slurs are strikingly similar to those expressed by European slave masters centuries later in the New World.

A 14-year uprising later in that century brought an end to slavery as it had been known in the Middle East. The rebellion had a major impact on the region, said Thabit Abdullah, a history professor at York University in Toronto.

"As a result of the Zanj rebellion," Abdullah said, "the Abbasids never again tried to establish the system of plantation slavery, even though the institution of slavery continued. So, in many ways, while the revolt ultimately failed, it did put an end to plantation slavery in what became Iraq."

The African influence did not end with the Zanj rebellion. Abdullah points to many words of the Arabic dialect spoken in present-day southern Iraq that can be traced to East Africa.

For example, the haywa, a popular dance in Basra and Kuwait, is believed to have East African origins, along with boza, homemade beer brewed throughout southern Iraq. Some Iraqi classical music, composed by the late Munir Bashir, is based on the African-influenced music of southern

Iraq.
In Basra, which was sacked twice by the Zanj, are areas called Mahalat al-Abid (Quarter of the Slaves) and Jisr al-Abid (the Slaves' Bridge), which refer to areas where African slaves were sold or transferred.

Distant kin
And the African genetic imprint survives in the faces of some of the people of southern Iraq, Kuwait and southern Iran, who are referred to as Zanji and resemble distant kinfolk in other places touched by the African diaspora.

Iraqis of African descent speak Arabic and almost all are Muslims, belonging to Iraq's Shi'a majority or the powerful Sunni minority.

Intermarriage with lighter-skinned Iraqis is common.

Divisions within modern Iraqi society are primarily based on class, religion, region, genealogy and sex -- not necessarily race.

But that's not to say that racial prejudice does not exist there.

As for Iraqis with African blood, the fact that even a distant ancestor was once enslaved carries a considerable social stigma.

This has as much to do with the degrading nature of slavery, which implies cultural and often genetic inferiority of the slaves and their descendants. As a result, there are few, if any, public displays of cultural affinity by African-Iraqis with their hereditary homeland of sub-Saharan Africa.

Instead, they identify with the Arab culture.

This is also the case throughout the modern Arab peninsula, which has included a significant number of Afro-Arabs since the pre-Islamic era. The birth of Islam and the institution of the annual hajj, or religious pilgrimage to Mecca, have brought literally millions of Africans to Arabia.

The hajj has demonstrated since ancient times that neither Africans nor Arabs considered physical barriers or long distances as insurmountable obstacles. Large numbers of African pilgrims never returned to their native lands as far away as Senegal.

Instead, they settled throughout the Middle East, including present-day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine/Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, the Persian Gulf countries and Turkey.

Prominent Arabs of African descent include Kuwaiti Crown Prince Saad and Saudi Arabia's longtime ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Also included are many popular musicians, such as Mohamed Abdu of Saudi Arabia, members of the Miami Kuwaiti Group and Nabil Shuail of Kuwait, and Yemeni musician Abu Rab Idriss.

Despite social and cultural differences, these natives of the Arabian peninsula have historic and genetic ties to the African diaspora. And they also share a common bond with African-Americans and others who live in Europe, the Caribbean and Africa.


* Sunni Khalid, a former News Journal reporter, is a free-lance journalist. He also was a foreign correspondent based in Cairo.


*This Washington Post Artilce also well written

A Legacy Hidden in Plain Sight

Iraqis of African Descent Are a Largely Overlooked Link to Slavery

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A6645-2004Jan10&notFound=true