Mirzai, Behnaz A. A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800–1929/Reviewed by Pedram Khosronejad (original) (raw)
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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.
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.
Emancipation and its Legacy in Iran: An Overview
The Cultural Interactions Resulting from the Slave Trade and Slavery in the Arab Islamic World (Paris: UNESCO, 2008) http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/dialogue/pdf/Emancipation%20Legacy%20Iran.pdf, 2008
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 ...
Slaves And Slave Trading In Shi'i Iran, AD 1500-1900
African and Asian Studies, 2001
In 1501, the Safavids proclaimed themselves the new rulers of the Iranian plateau establishing Shi'ism as a "state" religion and a "new" economic and political order. The Safavid "new order," however, was an impossibility without the slaves, forced urban and rural labor, and periodic population transfers. This paper examines the changes in slave labor practices and slave trading in Iran from 1500 to 1900. The establishment of an Islamic empire did little to diminish the numbers and uses of slaves in Iranian society and economies. Indeed, slaves and the peddling trade in slaving greatly expanded during and after the Safavid rulers assumed power. By the nineteenth century, shortages of Iranian peasant labor, the expansion of land holdings in Central and Southern Iran, and the boom in Iran's trade through the Persian Gulf altered the older slave trade in several signi cant ways in particular the numbers, ages and usages of African slaves. Between 1840 and 1880, Iran's participation in the Indian Ocean trade surpassed all previous slave-trading practices including the pre-Safavid era. While religion and politics are much in vogue today when discussing Iran, it is equally important to understand Iran in terms of its economies and societies. Indeed, Iran's contemporary political economy has been examined by several researchers (Bakhash 1989; Halliday 1979; Katousian 1981), and a few works have focused on Iran's social history, such as the history of its labor forces (Ladjevardi 1985). However, the history of Iranian slave labor (ghulaman, 'abidan, badigan, and kanizan) remains a perplexing void in Iran's historiographica l landscape. While there is continuous evidence of "habashi" or "Abyssinian" or "zangi" servants in middle and upper-class Iranian families and among pastoral clans from the early 1500s to the beginning of the twentieth century, there are few if any researched articles or dissertation s on the subject of slaves, slave trade, trade routes, collection stations, creditors, or slavery for the medieval, early modern or modern periods of Iranian history. Slaves and slave trading in Iran have been recorded in written texts as early as the third century AD era of
Journal of Islamic Law, 2022
The wave of struggle againstthe slave trade which began in eighteenth century Europe reached the Middle East and countries in Persian Gulf in the nineteenth century. In its efforts to end slave trade, Britain concluded treaties with Ottomans, sheikhs in Oman, and the king of Masqat. This concentrated the trade of enslaved Black people from Africa in Iran. The study of this period in Iran is important because Muḥammad Shāh, the then ruler in Iran, believed that since any order that bans the slave trade is against Islam, concluding any accord in this regard was beyond his control and was related to sharī ͑a. This Essay discusses and compares the opinions of Shīʿī scholars in the Qājar era, when the question of the abolition of slavery was first posed via British diplomatic channels, and subsequently during the Constitutional Revolution 1905 (Enghelāb-e Mashrūteh), to see if the introduction of Human Rights concepts at the time had any effect on fatwas about slave trade. This is done ...
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...