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

Zanj;Slavery;Iraq;Race;Arab Slave Trade;Islam

Nicholas C. McLeod

University:University of Louisville

Department:Pan-African Studies

关键词: Zanj;    Slavery;    Iraq;    Race;    Arab Slave Trade;    Islam;   

Others  :  https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3436&context=etd

美国|英语

来源: The Universite of Louisville's Institutional Repository

【 摘 要 】

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.