African Slaves and the Persian Gulf

Abstract

African slaves played significant roles in the history of the Persian Gulf from at least the 9th century onward, during which period the social, political, and economic significance of African slaves saw a number of changes. For example, the 9th-century Abbasid Caliphate was greatly disturbed by the Zanj Revolt (869–883) in which African slaves took a major part; European travelers in the 17th and 18th centuries frequently noted African eunuchs at royal courts and saw African slave soldiers there, while in the 19th and the early 20th centuries, the production of global commodities linking the Persian Gulf with the rest of the world, such as dates and pearls, relied heavily on the labor of enslaved Africans. The historical records are enough to show that most such slaves were shipped to the Persian Gulf from either the East Coast or the Horn of Africa, while genetic studies reveal the significance of West African haplotypes in the population of certain regions of the Persian Gulf. While the flow of African slaves continued until the beginning of the 20th century, there were two peaks, one in the 9th century and the other a thousand years later in the 19th century. The earlier peak was triggered by the demand for labor in lower Iraq during the Abbasid era but had ended by the time of the Zanj Revolt. The second peak was prompted by global demand for dates and pearls and continued until international solidarity developed against the slave trade, which by the beginning of the 20th century had succeeded in blocking the flow of slaves from Africa into the Persian Gulf. Naturally enough, however, even after imports of slaves from Africa had been stopped, slave demand did not cease and slave trade within the Persian Gulf continued. A number of those traded were descendants of Africans notably of individuals traded from Baluchistan to the Arabian side of the Gulf. Eventually, slavery in the Persian Gulf more or less collapsed during the first half of the 20th century, not as a result of international pressure but because of declines in the date and pearl industries.