The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures (original) (raw)
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Recovering the Lives of Enslaved Africans in Nineteenth-Century Iran: A First Attempt
Recovering Biographies of Enslaved Africans in Nineteenth-Century Iran: A First Attempt Anthony A. Lee Lecturer, UCLA Abstract African slaves were brought to Iran in large numbers in the nineteenth century as part of the Eastern slave trade. While there are no definite historical statistics on the number of slaves exported from Africa to Iran, estimates among scholars for the Indian Ocean trade during the nineteenth century vary from between one and two million. Possibly two-thirds of these slaves were women and girls. In Iran, these Africans were almost always destined for residence in Iranian households as servants, eunuchs, and concubines. Little scholarship has been undertaken on the history of Africans in Iran. There are enormous gaps in our knowledge of slavery in Iran and of the influence of African people and culture on Iranian history. More than a decade ago, Edward Alpers called forcefully for the study of the history of Africans in the northwestern Indian Ocean. However, his pioneering call for more research, for the most part, has not been taken up by other scholars. This paper is a first attempt to discover the individual biographies of slaves in nineteenth-century Iran and to reconstruct at least a part of their lives. Scholars of Middle Eastern slavery have warned about the limited value of Western legal distinctions between slavery and freedom when applied to the Muslim world. Such binary, legal concepts of slave vs. free presuppose a secular state that is able to protect the lives and property of individuals based on their claim to citizenship. They are unhelpful when discussing societies which are not built around the power of the state, but rather on concepts or kinship, belonging, religious authority, and hierarchies of dependence. This paper will examine four cases of slave experience in Iran in an effort to demonstrate the widely varying conditions of enslaved persons during the nineteenth century. First, Bahrazian Khanum and Nur Sabbah Khanum, two sisters who found their freedom in 1892, but who in the absence of protectors were quickly re-enslaved. Second, Haji Mubarak and Fezzeh Khanum, servants of the middle-class merchant and Babi (later, Baha’i) Prophet, Mirza ‘Ali-Muhammad Shirazi, the Bab (1819-1850). The former an educated eunuch entrusted with his master’s business affairs; the latter a lifelong companion to the Prophet’s wife who became a holy figure in her own right. Third, Khyzran Khanum and a young boy named Walladee, two slaves who fled to the British consulate in Lingeh in 1856 seeking freedom, but found no protection. And, fourth, Gulchihreh Khanum, captured and enslaved as a child in the late 1800s. She became a servant in a wealthy Iranian home and the beloved nanny of the family’s children, but continued to protest her enslavement to the end of her life.
Chapter Title: Recovering Biographies of Enslaved Africans In Nineteenth-Century Iran
2016
RECOVERING BIOGRAPHIES OF ENSLAVED AFRICANS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY IRAN Anthony A. Lee, Ph.D. Africans were enslaved and brought to Iran in large numbers in the nineteenth century as part of the EastAfrican slave trade. While there are no definite historical statistics on the number of slaves exported from Africa to Iran, estimates among scholars for the Indian Ocean trade during the nineteenth century vary between one and two million. Possibly two-thirds of these slaves were women and girls. 1 In Iran, these Africans were almost always destined for residence in Iranian households as servants, eunuchs, and concubines. Historians have written little about the history of slavery in Iran. . 2 In 1997, Edward Alpers called forcefully for the study of the history of Africans in the northwestern Indian Ocean region, including in Iran. 3 However, his pioneering call for more research, for the most part, has gone unanswered. Behnaz Mirzai concluded that reports in the mid-nineteenth century ...
Half the Household Was African: Recovering the Histories of Two African Slaves in Iran
This article is an attempt to recover the biographies of two enslaved Africans in Iran, Haji Mubarak and Fezzeh Khanum, the servants of Mirza 'Ali-Muhammad Shirazi (1819-1850), the Bab, the founder of the Babi movement. The article argues that a history of African slaves in Iran can be written, not only at the level of statistics, laws, and politics, but also at the level of individual lives.
Enslaved African Women in Nineteenth-Century Iran: The Life of Fezzeh Khanom of Shiraz
Iranian Studies, 2012
Fezzeh Khanom (c. 1835–82), an African woman, was a slave of Sayyed ‘Ali-Mohammad of Shiraz, the Bab. Information about her life can be recovered from various pious Baha'i histories. She was honored, and even venerated by Babis, though she remained subordinate and invisible. The paper makes the encouraging discovery that a history of African slavery in Iran is possible, even at the level of individual biographies. Scholars estimate that between one and two million slaves were exported from Africa to the Indian Ocean trade in the nineteenth century, most to Iranian ports. Some two-thirds of African slaves brought to Iran were women intended as household servants and concubines. An examination of Fezzeh Khanom's life can begin to fill the gaps in our knowledge of enslaved women in Iran. The paper discusses African influences on Iranian culture, especially in wealthy households and in the royal court. The limited value of Western legal distinctions between slavery and freedom w...
Ziba Khanum of Yazd: an enslaved African woman in nineteenth-century Iran
African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal
Historians have so far found little to say about Africans in Iran. This is true of the history of the Indian Ocean slave trade in general, especially as compared to the large amount of scholarship now available on the Atlantic slave trade. There are huge gaps in our knowledge of the history of African slavery in Iran in particular and of the influence of African people on Persian society and culture. African historians estimate that between one and two million enslaved Africans were exported from the east coast of Africa into the Indian Ocean trade in the nineteenth century alone. Most of these were sent, at least initially, to Iranian ports before being sent on to other parts. Some two-thirds of these enslaved African were women, intended as household servants and concubines. The story of Africans in the Iranian Diaspora is virtually unknown. Ziba Khanum (d. 1932), an African woman, lived as a slave in the city of Yazd, in central Iran, in the second half of the nineteenth century. She bore her master a son. Ghulam-‘Ali (1871-1949), later known as Ghulam-‘Ali Siyah (the black). According to Islamic law (the shari’a), this would have changed Ziba Khanum’s legal status to umm-walad (mother of a son), meaning an enslaved concubine who cannot be sold and whose children are heirs to their father’s fortune. The master died in the late 1880s, when Ghulam-‘Ali was a teenager. For some reason, however, he inherited nothing from his father and soon left Yazd. The children of his father’s wife did inherit. Ziba Khanum remained in the household of her master after his passing as a dependent of the family. This fact alone raises the issue of the limited value of Western categories of slavery and freedom, usually based on the model of American slavery. This Western concept in theory contrasts a free (male) citizen whose rights are protected by the law with an enslaved (also usually male) person who can claim no such protection. Such a paradigm is not appropriate to a discussion of slavery in in Iran in the nineteenth century. This was a pre-modern societies that was not constructed around the idea of rights, citizenship, or of a secular state, but rather built on concepts or kinship, belonging, religious authority, and hierarchies of social dependence. Ziba Khanum’s legal status as a free woman, after her master’s death, seems to have been of little consequence. The only document that exists which mentions Ziba Khamum’s name is a family genealogy that was created by members of her master’s family in 1995 in Germany, which claims her and her son as relatives without any reference to race. All of the information for this article was taken from oral interviews with descendants of Ziba Khanum (her grandchildren) and other relatives (her daughter-in-law). These informants related family traditions and personal reminiscences that included Ziba Khanum as a beloved (and heroic) ancestor. This research demonstrates that there is still a living memory of slavery and enslaved individuals reaching back to the nineteenth century that should be exploited by historians of slavery in Iran. Ziba Khanum’s son, became an Afro-Iranian merchant, traveling to Palestine, to India, and to Bandar Abbas in southern Iran. He returned to Yazd after some years as a wealthy and notable person. The enormous mansion he built in the city still exists and has been turned into a modern boutique hotel. As a teenager Ghulam ‘Ali became a Baha’i, a member of a persecuted minority religion in Iran. Possibly his mother did also. Ziba Khanum lived in her son’s Baha’i household, after his return to Yazd, with his children and grandchildren until the end of her life. Some of the grandchildren now live in the United States. This article discusses issues of race, gender, slavery, and religion as experienced by an Afro-Iranian family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite being able to reconstruct a narrative of Ziba Khanum’s life, I was unable to get her relatives to remember even one word that she said. She remains subaltern and voiceless. Therefore, the article discusses Gayatri Spivak’s aggressive challenge in her noted essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in which she questions the use of subaltern subjects in writings about the history of India. The responses of Eve Troutt Powell and other African historians to this challenge is discussed. How much can the historian actually say about Ziba Khanum? The article makes the hopeful discovery that a history of African women in Iran is possible, even at the level of individual biographies. An examination of Ziba Khanum’s life, as well as the lives of other enslaved women in the household, can begin to fill the gaps in our knowledge of African slavery, as well as issues of race. religion, and assimilation in twentieth-century Iran.
Arba’īn and Bakhshū’s Lament: African Slavery in the Persian Gulf and the Violence of Cultural Form
Antropologia, 2020
Arba’īn names the Shi’a elegiac ritual commemorating the fortieth day of ‘Āshūrā – the 7th century murder of Husayn at the Battle of Karbala. In South Iranian provinces like Būshihr Arba’īn expresses a distinctly black character marked by animation and drumming virtuosity. Iranian filmmaker Nāsir Taqvāī’s experimental ethnographic documentary Arba’īn (1970) chronicles the regional peculiarities of this ritual, reflecting in both its form and content fragile testament to a haphazardly recorded history of African slavery absorbed into oblivion. Drawing upon historiographical, musicological, ethnographic sources and black studies, this article takes Taqvā’ī’s filmic mediation as an occasion to demonstrate the way so-called syncretized forms reveal historical information about slavery in nontransparent ways.
Behnaz Mirzai has written a monumental monograph in her study of slavery and emancipation in early modern and modern Iran. Focusing primarily on the 19th-century boom in the importation of “black” eastern African slaves from the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, the “white” slaves from the northeast Caucasus villages across the Aras River, and Persian, Kurdish, and Baluchi slaves from the northeastern and eastern Turcoman and Afghani rural regions beyond Khorasan and Baluchistan, Mirzai presents what is to date the most comprehensive study of slaving and its emancipation in Iran’s past. To document her findings, Mirzai has dug deep into the rich archival materials in Tehran, such as the National Archive and Library of the Islamic Republic, the Gulistan Palace Photo Collection, the Central Library of the University of Tehran’s rare books collection, and the Foreign Affairs Center of Documents. She also used the Center of Iranian Studies in Bushire and the National Archive in Tabriz. Finally, she drew on the holding of the Juma Al-Masjid Centre of Culture and Heritage in Dubai, the Zanzibar National Library in Tanzania, the Quai d’Orsay Foreign Office Archives in Paris, and the British foreign office materials and manuscripts in the Kew Gardens’ National Archives and in the London British Library. In the process, Mirzai had already published a score of articles, and produced two DVD documentaries on the Afro-Iranian communities in Southern Iran’s Fars, Kerman, and Baluchistan provinces. She implies that in her copious endnotes—so important to read along with her text—she carried out field interviews but, unaccountably, did not incorporate them into this monograph.