u/BakuMadarama — reddlx

Fārūq ʿUmar writes (336):

>لماذا لم تستجب حركة القرامطة وحركة الصفارين لصاحب الزنج «صاحب البرامج الاجتماعية الاقتصادية - للاتحاد ضد العباسيين ؟؟ إن يعقوب الصفار اعتبر الحركة (مارقة) وأن القرامطة ثم يفكروا جدياً في تحقيق أي تعاون مع علي بن محمد.

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But this is historically questionable, because the Qarmaṭians did reach out to ʿAlī b. Muḥammad for cooperation, and it was ʿAlī who declined:

>“A major factor contributing to the rapid success of Ḥamdān was the revolt of the Zanj, the rebellious black slaves who for fifteen years (255–270/869–883) rampaged through southernʿIrāq and distracted the attention of the ʿAbbasid officials at Baghdad. The Qarmaṭıs of Iraq had become quite numerous by 267/880, when Ḥamdān found it opportune to make an offer of alliance to the leader of the Zanj, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Zanjī. The latter, however, being at the height of his own power, declined the offer.” (Daftary, Farhad. The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines. 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 2007, p. 108).

Of course, even Daftary’s reading of ʿAlī’s alleged refusal remains dependent on interpretation (see Popovic, Alexandre. The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9th Century. Princeton, 1999, pp. 81–82, 139, 153) but that only reinforces the point: the historical record is far more nuanced than Fārūq ʿUmar presents it.

What makes this even more interesting is that Daftary himself elsewhere gives a slightly different framing:

>“It was under such circumstances that Ḥamdān embarked on anti-Abbasid activities in Iraq. His rapid success is attested by the fact that references to the Qarmaṭīs began to appear soon after 261/874; and by 267/880, when Ḥamdān attempted in vain to join forces with the Zanj, the Qarmaṭīs had indeed become quite numerous in Iraq. Aside from the narratives traceable to Ibn Rizām and Akhū Muḥsin,²⁰ valuable details on the early history of the Ismaili (Qarmaṭī) movement in Iraq have been preserved by al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) who had access to Qarmaṭī informants.²¹ At this time, Ḥamdān acknowledged the authority of the central leader of the Ismaili movement in Salamiyya, with whom he corresponded but whose identity remained a guarded secret; Ḥamdān had established his own secret headquarters in Kalwādhā near Baghdad.” (Daftary, Farhad. A Short History of the Ismāīlīs: Traditions of a Muslim Community. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1998, p. 41).

Notice the wording: “Ḥamdān attempted in vain to join forces with the Zanj.” That is plainly incompatible with the claim that “the Qarmaṭians never seriously considered cooperation with ʿAlī b. Muḥammad.” On the contrary, the evidence indicates that they did.

And it was not merely Ḥamdān b. al-Ashʿath. Even al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī appears to have explored such contacts. Muṣṭafá Ghālib mentions in al-Qarāmiṭah bayna al-Madd wa-al-Jazr (p. 160):

>الحسين الأهوازي يا مولاي يبشرنا بأن الدعوة في السواد تتقدم باستمرار وإقبال الناس على الإستجابة كثير جداً ، بعد أن استطاع بما أوتيه من جلد وصبر أن يجلب إلى صفه أحد علماء السواد ، وهو عبدان ، بالإضافة إلى حمدان بن الأشعث وعائلته وأهل قريته بأجمعهم ، وكذلك أجرى الأهوازي اتصالات مفيدة مع مهرويه وولده زكرويه ، وهما من دعاتنا الأفاضل ، ثم أنه قام برحلة إلى كلوازي حيث قابل دندان وعرض عليه أوضاع الجماعات في السواد وأنهم بحاجة إلى المساعدة المادية ، فتبرع له بمبلغ كبير من المال ، فوزعه بالتساوي على الجماعات ، مما زاد الإقبال على الاستجابة فكثر عدد الأتباع . وبنفس الوقت يذكر الأهوازي بأنه أوفد بعثة إلى البحرين لإجراء الإتصالات مع آل الجنابي في البحرين والقطيف ، كما وان الأهوازي ينوي إجراء اتصالات مع صاحب الزنج الاستمالته ووعد الأهوازي بأنه سوف يعلمنا بكل الإتصالات التي سيجريها .

Background

Before proceeding, it is important to clarify a common misconception: the claim that slavery was too economically indispensable for our Prophet Muḥammad to abolish is historically unfounded. The available evidence suggests that slavery in western Arabia during the Prophet’s lifetime was neither centered on a massive commercial slave economy nor organized around a dominant slave market in Mecca. As Hend Gilli-Elewy notes:

> “The vast majority of slaves in pre- and early Islamic times seem to have been Arab prisoners of war, victims of intertribal warfare reminiscent of the ayām al-ʿarab (the battle days of the Arabs in pre-Islamic Arabia). These captives were enslaved if the ransom on them went unpaid [...] The sources also leave us the names of Arabic slave merchants (nakhkhās). However, nothing in the sources indicates that Mecca was “un des plus important marchés d’esclaves” (one of the most important slave markets), as Henri Lammens put it. Al-Azraqi’s description of the pilgrimage sites and their markets does not suggest that Mecca had a predominant role in the slave trade.”

— Gilli-Elewy, Hend. “On the Provenance of Slaves in Mecca during the Time of the Prophet Muhammad.” (International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 49, no. 1, 2017), pp. 164–66.

If so, who institutionalized slave acquisition on a large scale in Islamic history? According to Syed Ameer Ali, that distinction belongs to Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān (d. 680), founder of the Umayyad dynasty:

> “Muawiyah was the first Mussulman sovereign who introduced into the Mahommedan world the practice of acquiring slaves by purchase. He was also the first to adopt the Byzantine custom of guarding his women by eunuchs.”

— Syed Ameer Ali. Personal Law of the Mohammadans (London: W.H Allen, 1880) p. 39.

This observation is likewise cited by Chouki El-Hamel as evidence:

> “Moâwiyah was the first Mussulman sovereign who introduced into the Mahommedan world the practice of acquiring slaves by purchase. He was also the first to adopt the Byzantine custom of guarding his women by eunuchs.”

— Chouki El-Hamel. Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 43–44.

> “In-creasingly, slaves were acquired by purchase, a practice not countenanced by Koranic law. This change was introduced by the first Umayyad Caliph Mu‘awiya (661-80), a resource-ful ruler who showed a special interest in alchemy. He was the first Arab potentate to adopt the Byzantine custom of guarding his women with eunuchs.”

— Murray Gordon. Slavery in the Arab World. (United States: New Amsterdam Books, 1989), p. 24.

> “[...] first permitted by the Ummayad Caliph Mu‘awiya (r. 661–680), probably yielded the largest numbers of slaves.”

— W.G. Clarence-Smith. Islam and the Abolition of Slavery. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 33.

Over time, this practice expanded significantly. One of the clearest indicators is the scale of slave importation from East Africa into the broader Islamic world. As H. N. Chittick observes:

> “It is certain that large numbers of slaves were exported from eastern Africa; the best evidence for this is the magnitude of the Zanj revolt in Iraq in the 9th century [...]”

— H.N. Chittick, “East African Trade with the Orient,” D.S. Richards, ed., Islam and the Trade of Asia (London, 1970), pp. 102-103.

Nor was this phenomenon unique to the Islamic world. Slaveholding was a widespread institution across the late antique and early medieval Near East, including Byzantium. As E. A. Belyaev writes:

> “Firstly, slave holding was a common trait of early feudal society in both Byzantium and the Middle East.”

Following the Arab conquests, however, slavery was not merely preserved—it was substantially expanded. Belyaev explains:

> “After the Arab conquests, the slave regime was not only retained but was greatly expanded, as the dominant Arab tribal aristocracy actually promoted slavery. Under the orthodox Caliphs and the Sufyänids, then, the numbers of slaves increased sharply and the development of feudal relations ceased temporarily in those countries conquered by the Arabs. Secondly, the slow decay of rural communes, which strenuously resisted their reduction to a state of serfdom, as well as the existence of the tax rent [the tax-like ground rent] and the absence of the corvée, meant that slaves had to be used in those spheres of social production that required most labor, especially artificial irrigation, mining and some crafts involving hard labor.”

— E. A. Belyaev. The Arabs, Islam, and the Arab Caliphate in the Early Middle Ages. (New York: Frederick a. Praeger Inc., Publishers, 1969), pp. 239–240.

Taken together, the evidence indicates that large-scale slave acquisition in the Islamic world was not a Prophetic institution, but rather a development that became increasingly systematized under later imperial rule—particularly beginning with Muʿāwiya and expanding under the Arab aristocratic order that followed.

The treatment of the Zanjs

How harsh was the treatment inflicted upon the Zanj even before the infamous rebellion led by ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad? The evidence suggests it was extraordinarily brutal—marked by severe exploitation, mass killings, and conditions bordering on extermination. As د. فيصل السامر notes, the Zanj had already been brought into Iraq as early as the first Islamic century, as evidenced by their uprising in the Euphrates region of Basra during the time of مصعب بن الزبير. Although their numbers were initially small, their miserable social condition was already apparent:

> يبدو ان الزنج جلبوا الى العراق منذ القرن الأول الهجري بدليل ثورتهم في فرات البصرة أيام مصعب بن الزبير ، ومع أن عددهم كان ضئيلاً آنذاك فإنهم احتلوا المزارع واستولوا على أثمارها عنوة مما يدل على أنهم كانوا في حالة اجتماعية سيئة . غير أن عدد الزنج ما لبث أن ازداد بحيث انزعج أهل البصرة منهم وشكوهم الى الوالي خالد بن عبد الله القسري ففرقهم وقتل جماعة منهم.

— ثورة الزنج 25

> “However, the number of Zanj soon increased to such an extent that the people of Basra became disturbed by them and complained to the governor, Khalid ibn Abdullah al-Qasri, who dispersed them and killed a group of them.”

Accordingly, in the region surrounding Basra, there were always large numbers of Zanj—brought by Arab and Persian slave traders—awaiting sales. In the ninth century, some were selected for service in the caliphal army, but the overwhelming majority were subjected to merciless exploitation. As E. A. Belyaev writes:

> “[...] but most were taken to southern Irak or to Iranian Khüzistän, where they were mercilessly exploited on state lands and on private estates. They dug ditches, drained marshland overgrown with reeds, cleaned salt flats by removing the salt crust, procured saltpeter and extracted salt from seawater; they were also used on cotton and sugar cane plantations. The Zanj lived in camps (from 500 to 5,000 per camp), and were forced to labor under the most difficult circumstances: they dwelt in dirty, stifling huts, haphazardly made of reeds and palm leaves; their daily ration was a few handfuls of flour and dates; they suffered and perished from marsh fever, from ex haustion and from the bestial treatment meted out by the slave drivers.”

— E. A. Belyaev. The Arabs, Islam, and the Arab Caliphate in the Early Middle Ages. (New York: Frederick a. Praeger Inc., Publishers, 1969), pp. 240–241.

The Zanj were commonly organized into labor gangs known as “sweepers,” quartered in villages scattered across the flats and owned by wealthy absentee slave masters. Their existence was one of relentless toil under rigid discipline:

> “Groups numbering from 50 to 500 workers, called ‘sweepers’, removed the nitrous layers, piling them up in mounds, so that the land became arable. Task-masters, probably freedmen of the employers, kept strict discipline and provided the slaves with poor food. The life of these ‘sweepers’ was a hopeless one [...]”

— E. Ashtor. A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages (London: Collins, 1976), p. 116. A similar quote can be found in; Udjang Tholib. The Economic Factors of the ‘Abbasid Decline During the Buwayhid Rule In the Fourth/Tenth Century. (Al-Jami’ah, 47:2, 2009), p. 355.

The labour force on these estates consisted primarily of Zanj, alongside other black labourers of uncertain origin. The work itself was so severe—and the conditions so exceptional—that historians have regarded it as distinctly anomalous in medieval Muslim society. As Alexandre Popovic states:

> “The number of slaves they employed was certainly very large; al-Tabari’s figure of fifteen thousand has been repeated by other historians [...] the labor in these camps was composed of Zanj and other blacks, of different names, from other regions,” including probably a certain number of peasants. The task was to remove the crust of natron from the surface of the land, take it away on mules, and pile it in heaps “as large as mountains.” It was hard work, and overseers appointed from among emancipated slaves, eager to justify their promotion, made it even more grueling.” The situation is all the more striking since slavery in Islamic countries in the Middle Ages (contrary to slavery in Rome at the time of Spartacus) was essentially domestic servitude and not much employed for large rural projects. The conditions under which the Zanj slaves lived were unquestionably unusual for medieval Muslim society.”

— Alexandre Popovic. The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd / 9th Century. (Markus Wiener Publishers, 1999), p. 24.

The brutality extended beyond labor exploitation. According to د. فيصل السامر, mass killings of Zanj also occurred under provincial governors. He records that when يحيى بن محمد was appointed governor of Mosul, he commanded a large number of Zanj in his service. Following accusations concerning sexual violence, he gathered them under false pretenses—only to exterminate them:

> [...] ولما ولي يحيى بن محد الموصل كانت معه جماعة كبيرة منهم ( فلما فعل ما فعل في الإسراف في قتل الرجال والنساء والأولاد قبح الزنج في اغتصاب النساء ، فاعترضت يحيى امرأة وعيرته بتسليم المسلمات الى الزنج فأثر فيه كلامها وجمعهم للعطاء ، فلما اجتمعوا أمر بهم فقتلهم عن آخرهم ، ولم يكن للزنج شوكة في ذلك العهد ».

— ثورة الزنج 26

>“When Yahya bin Muhammad was appointed governor of Mosul, he had a large group of them with him. When he did what he did in the excess of killing men, women and children, the Zanj were disgusted by the rape of women. A woman confronted Yahya and reproached him for handing over Muslim women to the Zanj, so her words affected him and he gathered them for the stipend. When they gathered, he ordered them to be killed to the last one. The Zanj had no power in that era.”

Landholders in the Basra region acquired vast tracts of land on the condition that they render them agriculturally productive. This required intensive reclamation work on a massive scale. Zanj labourers were commonly assigned the brutal task of removing the nitrous topsoil (al-sibākh / al-shūraj) in order to expose fertile soil beneath, while also extracting salt and producing saltpetre for commercial use.

As Theodor Nöldeke writes:

> “At no great distance eastward from Basra there were extensive flats, traversed by ditches, in which great numbers of black slaves, mostly from the east coast of Africa, the land of the Zenj, were employed by rich entrepreneurs of the city in digging away the nitrous surface soil, so as to lay bare the fruitful ground underneath, and at the stime time to obtain the saltpetre that occurred in the upper stratum. An industry of such magnitude in the open country is seldom met with in the East. The work in such a ease is very hard, and the supervision must be strict.”

— Theodor Nöldeke. Sketches from Eastern History. 1892, pp. 148–49.

Robert C. McKinney likewise notes that the Zanj were concentrated in gang labour for land reclamation, while many others were employed in date-processing industries or domestic service under wealthy landlords:

> “They concentrated on the Zanj, the negro slaves brought chiefly from East Africa to work in gangs in land reclamation, removing the salt and nitrous topsoil (al-sibakh or al-shuray of the marshland districts in the vicinity of Basrah, at the lower end of the Tigris and Euphrates [...] 'Ulabi adds that a large number of the Zanj converts had previ-ously also worked in the many presses in the area where molasses (dibs) was extracted from dates, and others had been servants in the homes of "Dahāgīn al-Başrah," the rich landlords who owned the large fiefdoms in the area. It seems certain that living conditions among these slaves were intolerable and there had, in fact, been two minor rebellions before in Umayyad times.”

— Robert C. McKinney. The Case of Rhyme versus Reason: Ibn al-Rumi and His Poetics in Context. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 464–65.

Bernard Lewis similarly describes the enormous scale of slave labour employed in southern Iraq:

> “Slaves were employed for manual labour on a number of large-scale enterprises: in mines, in the fleets, in the drainage of marshes, etc. The growth of a class of merchants and entrepreneurs with considerable liquid capital at their disposal led to the purchase and employment of slaves in large numbers for agricultural use. They were herded together in settlements, often thousands belonging to a single landowner. Slaves of this kind were mainly black, obtained more especially from East Africa by capture, purchase, or in the form of tribute from vassal states. Such were the slaves of the salt flats east of Basra, where unprecedented numbers were employed by the wealthy men of that city in draining the salt marshes in order to prepare the ground for agriculture and to extract the salt for sale. They worked in gangs of from five hundred to five thousand; one gang of fifteen thousand is mentioned. Their conditions were extremely bad. Their labour was hard and exacting, and they received only a bare and inadequate keep consisting, according to the Arabic sources, of flour, semolina, and dates.”

— Bernard Lewis. The Arabs in History. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 112–13.

Historical accounts further record that Zanj labourers were also tasked with transporting provisions such as flour and dates, while others—both enslaved and freed—continued working in the salt steppes under oppressive and degrading conditions.

— David Waines, ed. The History of al-Ṭabarī, Volume XXXVI: The Revolt of the Zanj, A.D. 869–879/A.H. 255–265. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 29–30, 35.

Modern analyses of Basra during this period emphasize the extraordinary contrast between elite luxury and the extreme deprivation of the labouring classes—a disparity that contributed directly to social instability and eventual violent revolt. Popovic repeatedly notes both the degrading labour and the intolerable living conditions endured by the Zanj.

— Alexandre Popovic. The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd / 9th Century (Markus Wiener Publishers, 1999), pp. 12–25; Alexandre Popovic. The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd / 9th Century (Markus Wiener Publishers, 1999), pp. 22–25; Robert C. McKinney. The Case of Rhyme versus Reason: Ibn al-Rūmī and His Poetics in Context (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), p. 465.

The environmental conditions of the salt marshes themselves made life even more unbearable. The region was notorious for swamps, disease, and massive infestations of insects:

> “Herds of wild boar still wallow in the swamp. The countless swarms of mosquitoes and gnats are a terrible scourge and the source of endemic diseases such as malaria, which must have been one of the principal causes of the region’s decline.”

— Quote cited in Alexandre Popovic. The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd / 9th Century. (Markus Wiener Publishers, 1999), p. 11.

This environment made the Zanj especially vulnerable to endemic disease—most notably malaria—which compounded exhaustion, malnutrition, and physical abuse.

— Nicholas C. McLeod. Race, rebellion, and Arab Muslim slavery : the Zanj Rebellion in Iraq, 869 - 883 C.E. (Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016), pp. 25, 60–61, 117.

Conversion to Islam, moreover, did not automatically secure liberation for enslaved persons. Rather, conversion was often framed as its own “reward,” while bondage itself remained legally intact. As W. G. Clarence-Smith notes:

> “The ulama only accepted automatic liberation through conver-sion when slaves ran away from infidel owners to join the Islamic host [...] Conversion came to be seen as its own reward, with enslavement portrayed as a golden opportunity to learn about the true faith.”

— W.G. Clarence-Smith. Islam and the Abolition of Slavery. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 41–42.

Initially, Islamic legal theory held that enslavement was determined principally by confessional status rather than race, ethnicity, or territory. In theory, one who had already embraced Islam prior to capture could not lawfully be enslaved:

> “[...] Islamic law which, in regard to enslavement, was based on a confessional criterion. Religious belief and not race, national origin, or territoriality was the determining factor in whether an individual was enslaved.”

— Murray Gordon. Slavery in the Arab World. (United States: New Amsterdam Books, 1989), p. 24.

In practice, however, these distinctions were frequently ignored. Muslim slave traders and raiders often enslaved fellow Muslims, whether through indifference, ambiguity, or deliberate abuse of legal categories:

> “This, not withstanding religious scruples, often did not inhibit Muslim traders and slave raiders from enslaving fellow Muslims [...] Undoubtedly, Muslims were also taken because it was not always possible to distinguish between believer and pagan prisoners of battle who did not differ from one another except in religion. The possibility of distinguishing between pagan and believer was not always easy because black Muslims were often not as vigilant in conforming to the letter of the law as Arabs. Extremely devout Muslims, not uncommonly, refused to acknowledge as true believers those whose practice of Islam fell short of accepted norms.”

— Murray Gordon. Slavery in the Arab World. (United States: New Amsterdam Books, 1989), pp. 30–31.

From a practical legal perspective, jurists also feared that granting emancipation through conversion would destabilize the institution of slavery itself:

> “If, however, he is considered to be originally a kafir who claimed to be a freeborn Muslim to regain his freedom while secretly retaining his ancestral beliefs, then he should be treated as a zindīq [...] The law does not allow for conversion to Islam as a ground for a slave securing his freedom; to have done so would have been to eliminate the institution of slavery very rapidly.”

— John Hunwick. Shari’a in Songhay: the replies of al-Maghili to the questions of al-Hajj Muhammad. (Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 123.

Due to repeated mistreatment, brutal labour, chronic undernourishment, endemic disease, and relentless abuse at the hands of slave owners and overseers, deep resentment gradually developed among the Zanj toward the caliphal order:

> “Underfed, treated harshly by their taskmasters, and perennial victims to recurrent malarial epidemics and other diseases, the Zanj harbored a burning resentment, which they expressed in a number of revolts.”

— Nicholas C. McLeod. Race, rebellion, and Arab Muslim slavery : the Zanj Rebellion in Iraq, 869 - 883 C.E. (Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016), p. 61.

In other words, the Basra region’s agricultural expansion depended on large-scale forced labor systems that placed Zanj slaves under extremely harsh conditions, where they were assigned some of the most physically demanding and environmentally dangerous work, and where poor treatment, disease, and exploitation were routine rather than exceptional.