on the fatuous 'taboo' of 'Arab slavery': addressing anti-black racism without mutual ethnic recrimination

Recently I had the chance to listen to a very interesting podcast in which Bamba Ndiaye interviewed Fallou Ngom about various aspects of his research. At the end of the conversation the two delved into a controversial and wide-ranging conversation that occurred in 2020 on the Research Africa about anti-black racism in the Arab world. It is evident that the conversation stuck with Ngom, and there is no doubting he is very passionate about this issue, and sensitive to attempts to sidetrack it. Since I was one of those responding to his initial foray, and subsequently wrote a whole piece on the topic, I thought I would respond to Ngom’s characterization of the issues and of the conversation and to expand on why I wrote a piece asking people not to use the terminology of “Arab-Islamic slavery”.

First of all, Ngom and I agree that anti-black racism in the Arab world is an undeniable phenomenon. I have observed it during my research, and I know it to exist. Some US Arab immigrants also perpetuate this racism in their interactions with US Blacks. But Ngom still labors under the impression that those seeking to reframe the conversation are the same as those engaging in apologetics for Arab slavery. I reject that conflation as misguided. There are serious objections to Ngom’s framing, that go well beyond a pedantic debate over terminology or ancillary issues of hurt feelings, but rather strike to the core of how to effectively address a complex issue. Though Ngom might disagree with my conclusions, I hope this will contribute to his stated goal of having the issue addressed more openly.

I will argue that Ngom’s framework, as discussed in his conversation with Ndiaye, will be ineffective in accomplishing what he hopes, because his discourse is largely preaching to a choir of Anglophone western academics interested in inciting discourse around Arab racism. It is there he is guaranteed a sympathetic reading of his project, as a result of the peculiar sensitivity of the US to issues of race, and interest in globalizing the issue. The most likely outcome of Ngom’s interventions, given his own positionality, is that more 'white liberals' and Arabs based in the US will become aware of anti-Arab racism towards Africans. Given the already regnant association between Arabs and slavery among many USians, both right and left, this is hardly a salutary development, and will not contribute meaningfully to Arab reckonings with racism.

First, it is vital to note that in Ngom's opinion, attempts to provide nuance and historical context are unwelcome distractions from the main issue of moral complicity in racism which he characterizes as endemic to the Arab world as a whole. Ngom believes that the nuances of motivation serve as a form of apologetics for racism. At one point he even accuses Arabs who reject blanket explanations for Arab racism as themselves racist: "if they are Arabs they are perpetrators because if not they would denounce it." This is a logical fallacy, and antithetical to a prophetic approach. The accusation of collective complicity itself partakes in the logic of racial thinking that Ngom wishes to fight against. The majority of Arabs throughout history have been non-slaveowners. By making the charge about ethnicity instead of slaveowning, Ngom has shifted the terrain of engagement and committed a tactical error with consequences for addressing actually existing slavery.

Ngom constructs Arabs and the Arab world as a monolith in which racism is not specific to one country, but exists among all members of the imagined community due to the legacy of slavery. For Ngom, Libya and its slave markets are archetypes of a racism that can be traced back to this same history of slavery. Few specifics are offered, nor are the issues in Libya fleshed out by Ngom. It is enough, we are told, to break a supposed “taboo” on discussing the issue. There are many people opposed to, and opposing racism in the Arab world, including many Afro-Arabs, who know that world well enough to know that one must be strategic if one is serious about the goals of addressing internalized racism among Arabic speakers. The truth is the vast majority of Arabs are poor and face similar issues to the ‘African’ world related to education, finding a job, and making a living. In fact, many of them have been similarly victimized by human trafficking in places like Libya. If one wants to prevent situations like that which happened in Libya, then one must place one’s focus on strengthening state capacity in Africa. The extremely poor conditions of the average person are what motivate risky and often illegal journeys across state borders, placing them into positions of extreme vulnerability that lead to their immoral trafficking.

Ngom’s perspective will also be ineffective in addressing the issue among any but the true believers because it is low information and engages in conflating issues that ought effectively to be treated as distinct. In the podcast conversation there is a vague mention of fiqh texts, a discussion of a rude Arab who greeted Ngom with his left hand, and a mention of slave markets in Libya, as if these are all symptoms of the same underlying psychic attitudes. But the issues in Libya are separate issues from addressing racism on an interpersonal level among Arabs. This latter project must proceed from a sense of it being in Arab self interest to address racism. What interest has the average poor Arab in an abstract moral conversation by an academic located in a prestigious western institution, that condemns them out of the gate, as an ethno-linguistic group, and assigns to them a collective attitude? Defensiveness is entirely understandable and is not necessarily a symptom of complicity. Any effective anti-racism strategy must take it into account.

Even though the main advocates of ‘Arab slavery’ as a construct are pan-Africanist in orientation, I think the idea of 'Arab slavery' or 'Arab-Islamic slavery' is a very dangerous one for those with pan-Africanist sensibilities to adopt. These rhetorical framings continue to serve as resources for fomenting moralizing rhetoric because they are highly seductive. The attempt to draw a neat line around slavery and ethnic discrimination using the metaphor of an unchanging hostility between two ‘races’ or ‘ethnicities’, African and Arab, will rebound against those using it. It will do so because it relies on metaphors of racecraft that ought to have been left in the dustbin of history. The notion of a free-floating and universal antagonism pitting Arabs against Africans will inevitably be turned against Africans once it is pointed out (and it is and will be pointed out) that for thousands of years “Black” Africans sold other “Black” Africans into slavery. The logic of collective guilt is a double-edged sword. This is also 'taboo' to discuss, depending on who you are talking to. The Wolof rulers were as complicit as any Arab, for perpetuating slave raiding in Senegal. The Asante raided communities now part of the same nation of modern Ghana. Amhara state-builders raided and enslaved Oromos, who also raided and slaved communities in Kenya. Mijikenda engaged in the slave trade even though they were also victimized by coastal traders. Does that mean we need to have a global dialogue about each ethnicity’s racism rooted in a past of some members of them engaging in slaving? Can we really distinguish slaving that proceeds from pragmatic ends from that which proceeds from hatred and racism? Or ought we to junk these projection of ethnic distinctions as an anachronistic exercise in racecraft? Victimhood confers moral privilege in American academic morality but history shows us there are no perfect victims/victors. Ethnicity as shortcut for collective moral complicity is worse than useless for problem solving the issue where it matters, in the realms of law and culture. The point is not that Arabs have a collectively racist mindset, but that anti-black racism is immoral, un-Islamic, and unethical.

None of this ought to be construed to mean the 'Arab world' is perfect, or that there are no issues between North Africa and the rest of the African countries, or that there is some generic third world liberation front that requires silence on these issues. I reject the idea that one should stay quiet for these reasons. But I also reject Ngom’s discourse because it engages in the kind of rhetoric that will have unsalutary reciprocal consequences. The idea that reluctance to engage in discourse about this issue is motivated by a belief that Islam and Muslims are perfect, and that to criticize them is Islamophobia, is fatuous at best, and bad-faith at worst. There are many ways to fight anti-black racism that don’t involve such sweeping generalizations.

I wrote my application for the Ph.D. on Arab racial attitudes in East Africa. I was convinced at the time, that there was a form of racism among Arabs Muslims towards Africans that was unaddressed and indeed taboo. I have had occasion to revise those views upon studying the issue in depth, both for East and West Africa. Inter-state and intra-state relations are more relevant contexts for discussing this issue than racist fiqh texts or the more distant issue of Arabs slave-raiding in Africa. The language of Arab slavery was a seductive pretext for violent retaliation against Arabs in 1964 as an ethnic group in Zanzibar, even those who were not involved in politics. Anti-Arab racism in East Africa partook of the same reciprocal spirals of dehumanization as anti-black racism, as anti-Tutsti racism, and as anti-semitism. These spirals had nasty consequences for ethnic minorities, both Black and Arab, in both Mauritania and Senegal in 1989.

I do not think my objections can be dismissed as mere academic 'liberal' concerns. If anything, I have sought to go beyond contemporary anti-racism frameworks common among white liberals, and to argue they are inappropriate to other contexts. If Ngom and others interested in this issue would like to reach the Arab street, they will have to talk in the language of that street, just as Ahmadu Bamba wrote in local languages when he wanted to reach his audience. Anything other than that isn't about breaking 'taboos'. It practically functions as moral grandstanding before a western audience eager to see their views about Arab perfidy confirmed.

Read more...

How to Eat, Khaleeji style (traditional)

Among the many gems of description in T.E. Lawrence's classic book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, is the following excerpt on a feast prepared for Lawrence and his companions by a prominent sheikh and participant in the Arab revolt, Auda Abu Tayi. I post it here because it reminded me so vividly of eating at weddings and for iftar in Oman.

"This load was set down on the soil of the cleared space between us, where it steamed hotly, while the procession of minor helpers carried in the small cauldrons and copper vats in which the cooking had been done. From them, with much-bruised bowls of enameled iron, they ladled out over the main dish all the inside and outside of the sheep, little bits of yellow intestine, the white tail cushion of fat, brown muscles and meat and skin, all swimming in the liquid butter and grease of the seething. The bystanders watched the work anxiously, with muttered satisfactions when a very juicy bit plopped out.

Pouring these bowls-full of scrap over the heap was warm labor, for the fat was scalding. Every now and then a man would drop his baler with an exclamation, and plunge his burnt fingers, not reluctantly, in his mouth to cool them: but they persevered till at last their scooping rang loudly on the bottoms of the pots, and with a gesture of triumph they fished out the intact livers from their hiding places in the gravy and topped the yawning jaws with them. Then two raised each cauldron and tilted it over the mass, letting the liquid splash down the meat till the crater of the rice was full, and the loose grains at the edge swam in the abundance, and yet they poured till amid exclamations of astonishment from us it was running over and a little pool congealing in the dust. That was the final touch of splendor, and the host called us to come and eat.

We feigned deafness, as manners demanded; at last we heard him and looked suprised at one another, each urging his fellows to move first: till Nasir rose coyly, and then we all came forward, and sank on one knee round the tray wedging in and huddling up till the twenty-two for whom there was space groped around the food. We turned back our right sleeves to the elbow, and taking lead from Nasir with a low, "in the name of God the merciful, the loving-kind," we dipped together.

The first dip for me at least was always cautious, since the liquid fat was so hot that my unaccustomed fingers could seldom bear it: and so I would toy with an exposed and cooling lump of meat till others' excavations had drained my rice segment. We would knead between the fingers, not using the palm, neat balls of rice and fat and liver and meat, all cemented by gentle pressure, and project them by leverage of the thumb from the crooked forefinger into the mouth.

With the right trick and the right construction the little lump held together and came clean off the hand: but when surplus butter and old fragments clung cooling to the fingers they had to be licked carefully to make the next effort slip easier away.

The host stood by the circle encouraging the appetite with pious ejaculations, and we worked at top speed twisting, tearing, cutting and stuffing, never speaking since conversation at a meal would be an insult to its quality, though it was proper to smile thanks when one of the more intimate guests passed across a select fragment or when Mohammed el Dheilan or Farraj gravely handed over a huge barren bone with a blessing. On such occasions, I would return the compliment with some hideous and impossible lump of guts, a flippancy with rejoiced the Howeitat, but which the gracious and aristocratic Nasir saw with disapproval.

As the meat pile wore down (nobody really cared about the rice; the flesh was the luxury) one of the chief Howeitat eating with us would draw his dagger, silver-hilted, set with turquoise, a signed masterpiece of Mohammed ibn Zari of jauf and would cut crisscross from the larger bones long diamonds of meat easily torn up between the fingers; for it was necessary boiled very tender, since it had all to be disposed of with one hand.

At length some of us were nearly filled, and these began to play and pick, glancing sideways at the rest, till they grew slow, and at least ceased eating, elbow on knee and the hand hanging down from the wrist over the tray edge to drip, while the fat and butter and scattered grains of rice cooled and stiffened into a white grease which gummed the fingers together. When all had stopped Nasir cleared his throat meanly, and we rose up together in haste with an explosive, "Our host, God requite it to you," and grouped ourselves outside among the tent ropes while the next twenty guests came forward and inherited our leaving.

Read more...

Consciousness, Motivation and Violence: Review of War of Words, War of Stones

Jonathon Glassman. War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.

PART 1: Scholars of mass violence, ethnic cleansing and genocide frequently debate the precise nature of the links between popular violence and an elite propaganda. Mass violence, they increasingly argue, is not the product of primordial hatred activated in a Hobbesian environment of weak social inhibitions. Yet this thesis has come to have something of the air of a cliché; provoking an enormous literature that is essentially a reaction against the "uncontrollable passions" thesis. Such literature argues that such violence was really about "something else", such as control over resources or political power.
In his new ambitious new book on racial violence in colonial Zanzibar, Jonathon Glassman argues that neither approach adequately captures the complexity of violence in the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution and the events leading up to it. In 1964, a group of armed Africans overthrew the Sultan of Zanzibar and purged his supporters in the rival political party. They then embarked on the massacre and intimidation of Arabs; some figures cite as many as 5,000 Arabs were killed in the months following. As in other cases, reports of violence were immediately contested—revolutionaries naturally denied the massacres, while exiles painted a gruesome picture of anti-Arab (and anti-Indian) pogroms.
In Zanzibar, Glassman argues, violence was the product of dueling discourses of civilization and barbarism from groups of "Africans" and "Arabs." Each group shaped competing approaches to the island's history and identity. In his introduction, Glassman traces the development of these identities through the history of Zanzibar, beginning with the founding of the Zanzibar Sultanate in the mid-nineteenth century, when it fell under the rule of the Busaidi family from Muscat, Oman. The Busaidi sultans expanded Zanzibar's wealth through usage of Indian merchant credit and an intense plantation slavery system built around clove production. British-imposed abolition soon destroyed the productivity of this system, and slaves and masters had to re-negotiate relationships of labor through tenancy and squatting. British colonial administrators sought to control and rationalize these relations, and they steadily increased their influence in Zanzibar until the establishment of a formal protectorate in 1890. British administrators had seen Zanzibar as an "Arab state" before the protectorate, and afterwards they continued to rule with (and often for) the Arab sultan as if Arabs were the natural ruling elite of the island.
In the half-century leading up to Zanzibar's first common roll election in 1957, British administrators nurtured a secular intelligentsia of (mostly) elite Arabs, who they inculcated thoroughly with British notions of civilizational nationalism. These Arabs served important roles as middlemen in the colonial bureaucracy. Yet they were no parrots of their would-be teachers; these elites also drew on Islamic modernism and pan-Arabism to advocate (initially) for the Arabs as the natural rulers of Zanzibar, and to mobilize Arabs (and eventually all Zanzibari citizens) against colonialism. Their vision of Zanzibari nationalism was broad and inclusive, but rested on specific values (like allegiance to the sultan) and particular exclusions. All "true" citizens were welcome under the inclusive umbrella of ustaarabu, (a Kiswahili word meaning "civilization") but such logic often criminalized mainlanders and encouraged Arab cultural chauvinism. Politically, the National Party of the Sultan's Subjects (Hizbu or ZNP) represented this ideological position.
In N'gambo, the African neighborhood east of the elite streets of Zanzibar's Stone Town, a vibrant post-bellum African culture nurtured its own intellectual vision of Zanzibar's future. This nationalist vision relied heavily on metaphors of blood and race. Africans, it argued, had been victims of Arab imperialism, and it was only by uniting with each other on the basis of skin color and shared oppression that Africans could overcome Arab hegemony. This vision came to be represented by the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP), an outgrowth of a fusion of member of the town's African and Shirazi associations. The ASP was a complex mixture of former slaves, mainland migrants, and the indigenous Shirazi who resented Arab political dominance. Despite their links, those self-identified as Shirazi often faced criticism from the "Africans" that they were futilely trying to be "Asiatic." Instead of adopting an Arabocentric identity, the ASP argued, Africans ought to rediscover and reclaim their "tribal" ancestry. The Arabs were just as colonial as the British, the ASP claimed, but at least the British had abolished slavery. The ASP in effect, "racialized" the memory of slavery. Where the ZNP saw a shifting relationship between patron and client, the ASP saw evidence of pernicious racial oppression. This issue between the two proved to be one of the most contentious points dividing the two parties in the period known as the "Time of Politics", 1957-1963.

Read more...

Book Review: "God and Man in the Koran"

There is a reason Toshihiko Izutsu's book is available through Islamic booksellers online: its a great introduction to what is at stake for the believer in the language the Qur'an. If, as Izutsu explains, the ultimate guarantee of the Semitic religions is that God reveals himself to humans, then an understanding the language through which that revelation came is an indispensable part of understanding divine reality.

Izutsu take a long time building up to his argument about clusters of word and meaning in the Qur'an, and how they are often found in opposing pairs. The Qur'an, argues Izutsu, took the vocabulary of the pre-Islamic Arabs and expanded or narrowed the conceptual scope of certain words. In discussions of words like imam, kufr, wahy, kitaab, nabii, and tanziil, God and Man in the Koran offers an invaluable insight into the Gestalt, or Weltanschaung of the Qur'an.

Izutsu's work, despite being immersed in the technical vocabulary of semantic and linguistics, is readable enough for anyone to gain some insight, and for those (like me) who first read the Qur'an in English and found it (initially) ponderous and unpoetic, this book impresses an appreciation for the intricacy and vision of the original Arabic text. It may seem obvious to any scholar, but it bears repeating that any text in any language cannot be understood properly apart from the cultural context in which it is embedded. That is why the act of translation is so fraught with peril--something of the flavor, the style of the original text is always lost.

The status of the Qur'an as a holy revelation for Muslims complicates the commonsense application of this thesis (culturally embedded) Muslims have to wrestle with extracting universal meaning from the text (the debates over the uncreatedness of the Qur'an in early Muslim theology reflect this tension) and debates over the hidden meanings, abrogated meanings, literal meanings, and contingent meanings permeate this atmosphere of meaning-making.

In order to show what the Qur'an introduced to the Arabs, Izutsu sets out to explain the "darkly pessimistic" attitude of the Jahiliyya Arabs and their particular attitude and style of life. He shows how materialistic their worldview was, and how much they valued language and particular styles of recitation (i.e. saj') as having the potential to release the magical power contained in words. He explains how they initially saw Allah as just another djinn, since djinn were known to pounce upon human beings, throw them to the ground, kneel on their chest and force them to become the djinn's mouthpiece to the world.

Thus when the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) first began his prophetic mission, the Jahiliyya Arabs understood it in terms of spirit possession. However the Prophet (SAW), saw his mission in terms of a revelation from Allah, the Only True God, through His Angel Gabriel. The innovation this introduced in the worldview of the Jahiliyya Arabs is something Izutsu brings out well. The content of these revelations, which took place over twenty years, and which the Prophet (SAW) sometimes heard in terms of tinkling bells, after which he would understand what Allah meant to say, had to be communicated through the Prophet as a coherent message, what Izutsu calls a "Sprachwerk", an objective linguistic work. And it had to take form in a language-system peculiar to his community.

Sura 26, as-Shuara (The Poets)

وَلَوۡ نَزَّلۡنَـٰهُ عَلَىٰ بَعۡضِ ٱلۡأَعۡجَمِينَ

فَقَرَأَهُ ۥ عَلَيۡهِم مَّا ڪَانُواْ بِهِۦ مُؤۡمِنِينَ

Translation: "Had we sent this down upon some non-Arabian prophet, and had he recited it to them in Arabic, they would not have believed in it."

Based on this sura, Izutsu goes on to make a valuable conclusion, "The use of Arabic as the language of Revelation was not intended to be the open declaration of the superiority of Arabic." Arabic, argues Izutsu, was chosen for its usefulness, not for its inherent qualities.

Why is this argument important? Because it helps one avoid a kind of implicit ethnocentrism that runs through many hadith: that the language of paradise will be Arabic for example, and that Arabic is naturally the most exalted and best medium for expressing spiritual reality and complexity. Instead, the message had to be in Arabic because it had to be a prompting to action. Yet in order for the revelation (wahy) to remain a prompting to action, it cannot continue to be a "sprachwerk." That is, its interpretation cannot be fixed in the time it was revealed, even if the content remains the same.

In this reviewer's interpretation, this demonstrates that the inner meaning of the Qur'anic message is not necessarily literally attached to the interpretation of the signs themselves, which changes over time, but to the correct performative recitation of the revelation and the spiritual disposition it creates in the heart of the believer. Izutsu's work thus sheds light on why Muhammad Asad once remarked that no one should attempt to translate the Qur'an from Arabic unless he had personally lived among the Bedouins of the Arabian Peninsula.

For linguists, Izutsu's approach to the language of the Qur'an as a kind of worldview comes uncomfortably close to the Whorf-Sapir theory of language and meaning, in which language determines reality. I will let those with linguistic training critique this aspect of the book, if they have read it. For me, as a historian, Izutsu's work is "good to think with" and offers a sympathetic portrayal of an oft-misunderstood book.

Read more...

Medieval Arab Writers on Africa: Abû Ûthmân al-Jâhiz: From The Essays, c. 860 CE

On the Zanj:

Everybody agrees that there is no people on earth in whom generosity is as universally well developed as the Zanj. These people have a natural talent for dancing to the rhythm of the tambourine, without needing to learn it. There are no better singers anywhere in the world, no people more polished and eloquent, and no people less given to insulting language. No other nation can surpass them in bodily strength and physical toughness. One of them will lift huge blocks and carry heavy loads that would be beyond the strength of most Bedouins or members of other races. They are courageous, energetic, and generous, which are the virtues of nobility, and also good-tempered and with little propensity to evil. They are always cheerful, smiling, and devoid of malice, which is a sign of noble character.

The Zanj say to the Arabs: You are so ignorant that during the jahiliyya you regarded us as your equals when it came to marrying Arab women, but with the advent of the justice of Islam you decided this practice was bad. Yet the desert is full of Zanj married to Arab wives, and they have been princes and kings and have safeguarded your rights and sheltered you against your enemies.

The Zanj say that God did not make them black in order to disfigure them; rather it is their environment that made them so. The best evidence of this is that there are black tribes among the Arabs, such as the Banu Sulaim bin Mansur, and that all the peoples settled in the Harra, besides the Banu Sulaim are black. These tribes take slaves from among the Ashban to mind their flocks and for irrigation work, manual labor, and domestic service, and their wives from among the Byzantines; and yet it takes less than three generations for the Harra to give them all the complexion of the Banu Sulaim. This Harra is such that the gazelles, ostriches, insects, wolves, foxes, sheep, asses, horses and birds that live there are all black. White and black are the results of environment, the natural properties of water and soil, distance from the sun, and intensity of heat. There is no question of metamorphosis, or of punishment, disfigurement or favor meted out by Allah. Besides, the land of the Banu Sulaim has much in common with the land of the Turks, where the camels, beasts of burden, and everything belonging to these people is similar in appearance: everything of theirs has a Turkish look.

Source.

Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg has modernized the text.

Read more...

Pambazuka - Arab women issue a call to Arab Heads of State

Pambazuka - Arab women issue a call to Arab Heads of State

Read more...

Zanzibar Pictures from the 1950s and 60s

I would like to thank Ms. Chappel and Ms. Abdullah for uploading these photos to the Facebook group: "Zanzibar and Oman." Subhanallah they have a very nice collection of old photos, references, and links. I think you may have to request to join the group here:

Read more...

Darfur's Skeleton on DVD

One of the best documentaries about the Darfur conflict, Darfur's Skeleton moves beyond all the 'genocide' talk of 'experts' to get to the people themselves and what they are saying about the situation. Darfur's Skeleton avoids the racist 'Arab vs. African' narrative to probe into the envirornmental causes of the crisis. Directed by Haj Hisham Omar, this documentary is not to be missed.
Order Here

Read more...

Unveiling Zanzibar's Unhealed Wounds

From the BBC
Unveiling Zanzibar's unhealed wounds
By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

I often went to Zanzibar as a child, with my mother, who was born in Dar
es Salaam.

We would take a crowded ferry and stay at a hostel for poor women and
their kids, who wanted a subsidised break by the sea.

The women in the local mosque provided lunch and we had a wonderful time.

The island, a fabulous mix of Arab, African, Indian and Persian
cultures and peoples, was utterly unlike my racially-divided hometown,
Kampala, in Uganda.

Abomination

Then, one day, my mother told me about the thousands of black slaves who
had been captured in the hinterlands and brought to the island to be
sold.

She took me to Bagamoyo, the slave port on the mainland: the word means
"lay down your heart".

That trade went on from the Seventh Century until - it is claimed - the
beginning of the 20th Century.

Throughout early history, enslavement was common around the world, and
East Africa was just one more lucrative location.

But here, the abomination went on longer than at any other time or place.

The traders were mostly Arab, though some Indian merchants were
actively involved.

Those who captured and sold humans to the businessmen were local African
chiefs and henchmen.

A febrile young child, I was distraught when I learned that Muslims had
perpetuated this evil. How could it be?

The Prophet Mohammed had freed Bilal, a black slave, and asked him to
make the first-ever call to prayer. Surely that meant something?

And, as the years went on and we learned to look back with abhorrence at
the practice of owning and exploiting humans, how come there was no
acknowledgement of this injustice in Zanzibar?

The questions circled around in my head obsessively when I was a young teen.

Revolution

Then came 1964, and the island detonated.

A revolution led by African soldiers deposed the constitutional
monarch, Sultan Seyyid Bin Abdullah.

It was, in part, retaliation for slavery - by people, and upon people,
who were not responsible.

It felt as if some ancient God of vengeance had risen from the sea.

They slaughtered anyone who looked Arab, and some Indians too. They took
their daughters to rape, confiscated their properties and
banished many.

To this day there is no list of the dead - those tortured and dumped
into the sea - the disappeared and the exiles.

My mother and I never went back to our favourite place, but for years I
have wanted to reveal these veiled stories.

Returning for the first time in more than 40 years for the BBC World
Service's Heart and Soul strand, I interviewed Leila, 99, whose
grandparents were enslaved.

"My grandmother had a baby, and the baby was still feeding - but the
traders said this would delay the journey so they just threw the baby
away," she said.

"My father was also thrown away but the missionaries took him in and
looked after him here."

Leila became very emotional.

"It is very painful - so many cruel people," she said.

"It's very hard because we can't remember our home, can't see or know
our relatives. We are cut off from our history."

When we turned the tape recorder off, her eyes glazed over and she threw
up blood all over her lovely satin dress - and me.

Then there were those I talked to about the revolution in 1964.

Those who knew the violated and stolen girls cried as they spoke. They
were taking risks talking to us, but it was time to do so, they said.

On a secluded beach away from the main town, Suleman Hamed told me how
his uncle, sister and brother-in-law were killed.

"People were killed in the streets and houses, and the revolutionaries
take your wife and daughters - for raping. That was a horrible time. We
think as if it was yesterday. And all because their ancestors were
Arabs. We are called Arabs, but I don't even speak a word of Arabic."

The historian Maalim Idris says he witnessed the gutters running with
Arab and Indian blood.

He showed me photographs of mass graves and of trucks piled high with
corpses being driven through the main street.

He believes no fewer than 3,000 Arabs and Indians were killed during the
revolution, but there is no official figure.

No healing

Going back to Zanzibar was a life lesson in the potency of the whole
historical truth.

Those of Arab descent feel too defensive about the slave trade and focus
on the revolution; Africans dwell on the trade and expect no mention of
the barbaric acts of the revolutionaries.

There will not be real, deep healing between the citizens of various
ethnicities until everyone talks more honestly about past injustices.

Without that, paradise is but an illusion.

An earlier version of this piece appeared in Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's
column in the Independent newspaper. Her radio documentaries can be
heard via the Heart and Soul website.

Read more...

African Slaves in Islamic Lands: Afropop interview with Eve Trout Powell

B.E: You make an important point about the different kinds of people involved in Islamic slavery. Of course, we are really looking at just one part of the story, how the Arab and Islamic slave trade affected Africa.

E.T.P.: And how the African slave trade affected the Middle East. It is important to make the distinction because people goof all the time on this. By coming out of old Western concept of slavery, it is automatically assumed that slavery bears a certain kind of stigma, and it is really important to differentiate. Sometimes it did, if it was for Africans, but not necessarily the way would for African Americans. If you were Circassian in the Ottoman Empire, it was a wonderful thing in some ways to be a slave, because when you were freed, you could often reach the uppermost levels of power, short of being the Sultan himself. All the great viziers in the Ottoman Empire were trained as part of an elite institution. This was true within the Mamluk Empire as well, which was earlier. So you basically have different classes of slaves going on. And there were black slaves who could achieve those levels as well, so it is important to keep that in mind. You can't just exclude the Circassian slaves out of the picture, because there's a whole racial gradation that comes out. It is very complex, and we don't like to talk about how complex it is because we have a very black and white interpretation of slavery in this country, which just doesn't work in the context of the Middle East or East Africa.

Within the Islamic world, within the Middle East, there all kinds of racial gradations of slavery. They were whites. There were Abyssinians (Ethiopians). There were Sudanese. There were Nubians. There were Circassians. There was a whole complicated racial gradient going on which is very difficult for Westerners to wrap their minds around because slavery in the West, particularly African American slavery was black-white. Either you were black and you are enslaved, or you were white and you owned. This is something very difficult it seems for us, to intellectually divorce ourselves from our own racial constructions.
B.E: At a high level, what are the important things that distinguish the Western, European slave trade, from what was going on in the Middle East?

E.T.P.: I'm going to start my answer from the 19th century. I'm a specialist in 19th-century history, and I think it also the height of the African American slavery institution that is so iconographic for us, and then the Middle Eastern one that we’re talking about, is the 19th century. So here are some of the differences. In the United States, of course, and the Caribbean, you had agricultural slavery. You had plantation slavery. In the Middle East, this was very rare. You did not see this certainly in the 18th and 19th century. So African slaves in Egypt would work in people's households, would be part of people’s families, would live in the household, would not have a huge community of other slaves around them, but really would be surrounded by the family of their owners. This is very different from what you have in the United States south, where you have large numbers of slaves on many plantations. The slave-owning family could often be the minority in many cases. The slavery that we’re talking about in the Middle East is much more domestic.

Now there was also a military slavery, which you do not find all in the west. There was a military institution along the Nile Valley in the 19th century. This was known as the jihadiyya, in which you had particularly Dinka tribes conscripted into the Egyptian army as slave soldiers. And this is an old tradition in the Islamic Middle East. It goes way back: having slaves be soldiers loyal only to the ruler. Of course, in the United States, the idea of putting guns into the hands of slaves would have been just totally anathema to the whole institution. It is exactly the opposite in the Middle East. And finally, again, you don't have slavery as an inherited status. It just doesn't carry that same weight through the generations.

Read more...

Videos on Swahili Culture and Civilization

Listen to what Mark Horton has to say, about how the British tried to make the history of the Swahili an 'Arab' history.




Finally, Basil Davidson on the Swahili City States:

Read more...

The Frontier in Indian Ocean History

As part of an Envirornmental History class for the esteemed Dr. John McNeill, I am trying to integrate an ecological and envirornmental focus into my study of identity, trade, social change and state building in the Eastern Congo. In other words, I want to know not only how merchants like Tippu Tip built nascent state structures and incorporated Swahili, Manyema, Nyamwezi, and other corporate or ethno-cultural groups into their organization, but also how the movement of these merchant-princes impacted the ecology of the Eastern Congo. What kind of crops did the Swahili Arab settlers plant? What sort of envirornmental changes did they set in motion?

It occured to me that such a project may be difficult to undertake without delving into Congolese and Omani archives. So, as part of a related but alternate set of questions, I would also like to explore how the competing discourses of Belgian, British, German and Arab primary sources sought to portray the envirornmental and social changes the Arabs set in motion. On the one hand, the Arabs called Nyangwe the 'New Bengal' and viewed themselves as bringing civilization and order to the land. They tamed the forest, and brought peace and order.

On the other hand, the many European travel accounts emphasize the devastation of Arab slave-trading, the many famines (which they linked with Arab settlement) and the general negative impact of the Arab presence. Of course this discourse itself, even if it was accurate, came to fulfillment only with European colonization--the worst years of ecological and social devastation were assuredly after the 1890s and the routing of Arab power in the Congo.

This relates back to the concept of the frontier in Indian Ocean history. Is there a way I can talk within an Indian Ocean framework of land-based frontiers? On the surface it doesn't appear to be an obviously helpful narrative framework. However, there are compelling cultural links (the presence of Comorians, Baluchis, and Omani Arabs in the Congo) and economic links (Indian financiers in Zanzibar linked the Congo River basin with the circuits of Indian Ocean capital) that make such a framework interesting. Using the idea of systems theory, which posits that we can find common features of a given 'unit' in terms of shared aspects of organization, I submit we can talk of the penetration of Indian Ocean cultural 'clusters' and the integration of Central Africa into Indian Ocean economic exchange and have legitimate historical evidence to back up our assertion. I am reminded as I consider this question of John Wilkinson's insight about Oman: "Oman as a 'natural' region has no real frontiers: like all such regions it tends to be rather more 'Omani' in places than others."

So it goes with the Indian Ocean: if we identify a set of shared religious practices, common clothing items, culinary features, familial organization, vocabulary, and more, that are found in the Indian Ocean, then certain places will have more ties than others, and this is also related to which 'features' we choose to compare.

Of course the challenge is to determine how much the 'Indian Ocean' actually explains; we want it to do some theoretical work, but we would err to depend on it to do heavy historical work as it relates to Central African history in general--most of the history of the Eastern Congo has logical connections with other lake regions in Tanganyika, Zambia, as well as points north in Uganda. But the fact that so few historians have even attempted to use it to look at the history of Central Africa during the late nineteenth century means that some potentially valuable understandings from this perspective can be integrated in with the existing literature.

Read more...

The African Presence in Oman: Research Questions

My research looks at the influence of Swahili culture on Oman. This research is extremely relevant at the present time. The Arab/African dichotomy has been the subject of extensive media coverage due to the conflict in Darfur. Unsurprisingly, the media focuses only on conflict, reducing a complex historically-negotiated relationship to an ugly racial divide. The history of Oman offers another example of extensive cultural interchange between Arabs and Africans and may help shed light on questions of how intermarriage and migration complicate the simplistic Arab/African dichotomy. It also may shed light on questions of power vis-à-vis family identity.
There are various groups of people who all could be considered African, in one way or another, but who may identify as Arab, Swahili, or simply Omani. Africans in Oman have diverse origins: some come directly from East Africa for employment, while others have someone (usually a mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother) from East Africa. Still others are the descendants of Africans brought by Omani slave traders until the late nineteenth century.

My research starts from the premise that the culture that became Omani—primarily coastal Arabs of the southeast peninsula—had its origins in maritime pursuits and connections with the larger Indian Ocean world. For example, Oman in the nineteenth century encompassed diverse groups of people-- Indian traders who made up the core of Muscat’s overseas financial empire, Baluchi mercenaries, Swahili Arabs like Tippu Tip, and indigenous Zanzibaris.
Those I refer to as Swahili Arabs migrated to the Swahili coast in large numbers beginning in the early 18th century and continued until the end of the nineteenth century. There were two major waves of migration—early 18th century, after the overthrow of the Portuguese, and mid-nineteenth century, with Sultan Seyyid Said’s move to Zanzibar.

This migration gave rise to a distinct Omani influence on the coastal culture of East Africa. Tippu Tip’s family was one example of the Swahilized Arabs who traded and intermarried in Mombasa, Zanzibar, Tanga, Bagamoyo, and other city-states of the mrima.

I am most interested in contrasting the community of Swahili Arabs with their fellow Omanis. This means tracing the history of each community, their mother tongues (Arabic vs. Swahili) and the ways in which they constitute themselves as individuals and social groups. Do all now consider themselves ‘just’ Omani? What religious and cultural differences separated Zanzibari/Swahili Omanis from other Arab Omanis? Is there a social stigma in Oman in being from Zanzibar? What kind of economic differences are there between the two groups What aspects of culture in Oman can be said to have an African origin? Which nisbas are most associated with migration to East Africa?

One way I hope to answer these questions is through an individual who in many ways straddles these divides. Hamed bin Muhammed el-Murjebi, the most famous of the nineteenth century Swahili ivory-traders, was the great grandson of an African woman and an Arab migrant trader from Oman. The first part of my research is directed towards finding relatives of Hamed bin Muhammed el-Murjebi (Tippu Tip) and interviewing them, as well as tracing any documents related to Hamed bin Muhammed’s life and family.
Arab/African Intermarriage

Read more...

Sudanese: 'What Arab-African rift?'

While the World sees only Arab-African conflict in Darfur, pockets of amity thrive unnoticed.
Christian Science Monitor
by Heba Aly
Dongola, Sudan - Ask Abbas Adam Ibrahim whether he is Arab or African, and he does not quite know how to respond. "Both," the Sudanese man says, after slight hesitation.

Mr. Adam comes from the Fur tribe, of Darfur – commonly understood to be an African tribe, under persecution by Sudan's Arab-dominated government.

Last month, the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor indicted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, saying "evidence shows that al-Bashir masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa groups, on account of their ethnicity."

But for Sudanese Arabs and Africans coexisting peacefully outside Darfur, these racial distinctions are not so clear.

Adam, for example, believes he has some Arab blood.

During the drought of the early 1980s, Adam left Darfur for the mostly-Arab north of Sudan, in search of work and a better life. He settled in Dongola, a city more than 300 miles north of the capital, Khartoum, and has lived among Arabs ever since. He even married one and now has four "mixed" children.

"We live here peacefully and there are no problems," he says. "We live as if we are natives here. We feel that this is our country and this is our town."

Around the corner, at a small Darfurian social club, the atmosphere is loud and buoyant. Young men gather around tables playing cards, slamming down dominoes excitedly, and watching television. They are mostly economic migrants who left Darfur years ago. Among them are members of various tribes that are killing each other back in Darfur and in neighboring Kordofan State.

"There is no such thing as Arab or African. We are all Sudanese," says Mohammed El-Cheikh an Arab from Western Kordofan. "Him over there," he says, pointing across the yard to a young man standing shyly in the corner, "that's my friend Abubakr. He's from the [African] Tama tribe.

"There are problems in Darfur, but they are not between people. They are related to the government and to politics."

In scores of markets, clubs, and homes in the Arab north, Arabs and Africans are working side by side, sending their children to the same schools and intermarrying. The Arab-African distinction that has played out so broadly in media coverage of Darfur means little to people here.

In fact, historians say the distinction has no factual basis. There is a long tradition of intermarrying between the Arab and African tribes that settled in what is now Sudan.

"No single tribe in Sudan can claim it is purely African or Arab," says history teacher and mayor of the greater Dongola locality Bushra Mohamed Saleh. "They are all mixed."

And while some tribes may be more Arab or more African, coexistence between them is nothing new. Even in Darfur, different tribal groups lived together for centuries. So-called Arab nomadic tribes and African farming communities shared the same land – the nomads using it for their cattle to graze; the farmers using it to grow their crops. Conflicts arose routinely but were solved through traditional leaders.

Things changed early this millennium when traditional leaders lost their control, guns became more commonplace, and a group of non-Arab Darfurians took up arms against the government, arguing that their region had been neglected.

In responding to this rebellion, the government made a "big, big, big mistake," says Gen. Hassan Hamadain, who governed West Darfur State during the late 1990s.

It called upon popular defense forces from local communities to combat the Darfur rebels. But those who responded were mostly Arabs, many of whom joined the now infamous janjaweed militia that is accused of razing hundreds of African villages, looting, raping, and killing along the way.

"The government made use of the conflict in Darfur in a kind of non-thoughtful way," says General Hamadain, who has since retired from politics, acknowledging that he and others failed in Darfur. "It was not sensitive to the tribal relationships, the tribal history of the area, and the resources."

And so what began as normal, cyclical conflicts between mostly Arab herders and non-Arab farmers grew to what has been termed the world's largest humanitarian disaster. The United Nations says some 300,000 have died and 2.5 million have been displaced.

Among the dead were members of Hassan Ali Ibrahim's village, which was completely destroyed by Arabs. But he says he can't hold them all responsible.

"The disputes between the Arabs and people in Darfur originate from different reasons – grazing, pastures, natural things. They are not rooted in race," said the community elder, sitting under a tree at the Islamic school he manages in Dongola, where both Arab and African children sit side by side. "The Arabs that are here have nothing to do with this."

Still, for some Darfurians, it is not so easy to forget. Daoud (not his real name) watched with his own eyes as members of his family were killed by Arab militias in West Darfur. After the first attack on his village, he found his father dead. He says he does not blame the Arabs – "Who supported them? Who gave them the guns? Wasn't it the government?" – but he still has difficulty getting too close.

"I can interact with Arabs at work or in general ways, but when it comes to close relationships, I feel there is a wall between us."

British analyst Jago Salmon says this social polarization – a result he blames partly on simplistic descriptions by Western Darfur advocates – has been an unfortunate consequence of the conflict, but was never its root.

"We were still looking for dichotomy of some kind, something that would explain what was going on easily and simply. We latched onto the Arab-African dichotomy, which did vast damage…. Then as the conflict developed, it became a reality on the ground. It became something by which people explained the conflict themselves."

But as the conflict continues in Darfur – 180,000 have fled their homes this year alone, according to the UN – Adam will wake up next to his Arab wife every morning, Ali will teach his Arab students, and plenty of other African Darfurians will keep living alongside Arabs, wishing the politics would cease and their tribes could go back to life as usual.

Read more...

Zanzibar: Island Paradise, Islamic Society, and Tourist Destination Gone Wild

The first impressions of Zanzibar (at least if you come by the ferry from Dar es Salaam) are almost inevitably of the relentless activity of the dock; the crush of people—men, women and children carrying luggage, boxes, provisions of rice and fuel from the mainland, all trying to avoid being stepped on amidst the tangle. There are others waiting for their sister or brother, children or grandchildren to step off the boat and into their arms, smiling and laughing. Overhead the sky is clear, and the incredible beauty of this remarkable island engulfs the senses.
The stone buildings are set with intricate doors of carved wood, inscribed with family titles in Arabic and Hindi over the mantle. The centuries of cultural fusion are evident everywhere. Disembarking from the ferry, there are young Muslim students in their matching blue robes paying their respects to an elder on the street, and women in hijab walking on flat heels, their feet intricately tattooed with henna. Several guys wearing locks extend English greetings in passing. And amidst all the rush, negotiating their overloaded frame packs through customs while haggling with the waiting taxi drivers, are the tourists.
Zanzibar is a tourist economy. Once a center of clove production for export worldwide, the island came to rely heavily on tourism after the clove economy collapsed in the 1980s. As soon as my friend and I disembarked, we were greeted with a great many men, both taxi drivers and tour guides, who wanted to know if wanted to go on the spice tour, or swim with the dolphins, or buy some paintings. Tourism is quite literally the lifeblood of this 97% Muslim society.
The following day, as we wandered through groves of banana trees (mg’omba), stands of lemongrass (mchai mchai) and pepper vines (pilipili manga) on the spice tour, I wondered aloud: “how could a place so beautiful come to be stained with so much blood?” There are ghosts in my head of enslaved Africans, mixed Shirazis, and the Arabs and Indians killed in the revolution of 1964.
Zanzibar is a country grappling with the clash of cultures, inequities of class and race, as well as the effects of globalization, including an economy dependent on mostly European tourists. Along the beaches and in restaraunts, I saw plenty of evidence that this old colonial mentality had not been broken, but simply glossed over; for example, the most prestigious hotel in town, the Africa House, was the former headquarters of the English colonial country club. At the bar overlooking the Indian Ocean, an all white clientele is served by an African service staff.
The name Zanzibar comes from two Persian words, ‘Zanj’ meaning black, and ‘bar’, meaning coast. It should be no surprise that despite what many tour guides on the island told us (‘the first people to settle here were either Arabs or Persians’) the indigenous people of Zanzibar emigrated there around 1000 A.D. from the African mainland. They were known as the Hadimu, who settled primarily in the South, and the Tumbatu, who lived in the North. After this initial migration, a wave of traders from Persia and the Persian Coast arrived and intermarried with the Hadimu and Tumbatu. Their offspring became known as the Shirazi and they would figure prominently in the emergence of Zanzibar as a hub of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean.
We visited several monuments dedicated to enslaved Africans, but I still wondered if the formerly enslaved had gained any foothold in the society, especially since the revolution of 1964. That revolution led to outbreaks of violence and the confiscation of the property of many large landowners, mostly of Arab and Indian descent. Given voice by a political activist from Uganda, John Okello, who was also a member of the Afro-Shirazi Party, the revolution galvanized the African population of Zanzibar, especially the poor. Their impetus proved so powerful that a similar uprising in Dar es Salaam had to be put down by President Nyerere, with help from the British. Nyerere then shrewdly moved to federate the island within the union of Tanzania, an arrangement which continues, uneasily, to this day.
But the revolution, though it may have acted as a social and psychological force to redress the imbalance of land and business ownership, could provide very little in the way of comprehensive programs with which to implement the desired changes for the long term. However I did observe some positive features. We toured one farm which was cooperatively owned by nearly 70 families, although according to them, most of the revenue they bring in was from tourism, and not food and spice production. Zanzibar’s food and fuel are shipped in large tankers that dock well off the coast of Stone Town.
There have been intermittent outbreaks of violence since the revolution; some of these killings were in retaliation for the revolutionary government’s seizure of land. In fact, the first president of the new Peoples Republic of Zanzibar was assassinated in 1972, and the current president, Amani Karume, is his son. It made me wonder: how does one absorb or avoid the inevitable backlash to a revolution by those deposed from power? And how does one use those instruments of power now in your hands (i.e. property, farms, weapons, manufacturing centers, and natural resources) to the benefit of all the people? Further still, what cultural programs are most effective for instilling the values of collective work, pride, and self-reliance in a people who have been trained in the opposite mentality by colonial oppression?
I wondered too about the role of Islam in Zanzibar. The profiligate waste and easy promiscuity of beach tourists ran counter to the disciplined and familial devotion I observed in the Muslim society of Zanzibar. I did not have time to probe further into the coexisting presence of these contradictions, merely to scratch the surface of an observation demanding deeper analysis. Nor did I have time to explore the current state of Afro-Arab relations. The picturesque beauty of this island and an economy geared towards fulfilling the elaborate tropical fantasies of a European elite, can stymie such analysis. But the effects of globalization demand a deeper look at this idyllic, troubled island.

Read more...