HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Zanj Rebellion ( ar, ثورة الزنج ) was a major revolt against the
Abbasid Caliphate The Abbasid Caliphate ( or ; ar, الْخِلَافَةُ الْعَبَّاسِيَّة, ') was the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It was founded by a dynasty descended from Muhammad's uncle, Abbas ibn Abdul-Muttalib ...
, which took place from 869 until 883. Begun near the city of
Basra Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is hand ...
in present-day southern
Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
and led by one Ali ibn Muhammad, the insurrection involved enslaved
Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle * Black Association for Nationa ...
-speaking people (
Zanj Zanj ( ar, زَنْج, adj. , ''Zanjī''; fa, زنگی, Zangi) was a name used by medieval Muslim geographers to refer to both a certain portion of Southeast Africa (primarily the Swahili Coast) and to its Bantu inhabitants. This word is als ...
) who had originally been captured from the coast of
Southeast Africa Southeast Africa or Southeastern Africa is an African region that is intermediate between East Africa and Southern Africa. It comprises the countries Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania ...
and transported to the
Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europea ...
, principally to drain the region's salt marshes. It grew to involve slaves and freemen, including both Southeastern Africans and Arabs, from several regions of the Caliphate, and claimed tens of thousands of lives before it was finally defeated. Several
Muslim historians :''This is a subarticle of Islamic scholars, List of Muslim scholars and List of historians.'' The following is a list of Muslim historians writing in the Islamic historiographical tradition, which developed from hadith literature in the time o ...
, such as
al-Tabari ( ar, أبو جعفر محمد بن جرير بن يزيد الطبري), more commonly known as al-Ṭabarī (), was a Muslim historian and scholar from Amol, Tabaristan. Among the most prominent figures of the Islamic Golden Age, al-Tabari i ...
and
al-Mas'udi Al-Mas'udi ( ar, أَبُو ٱلْحَسَن عَلِيّ ٱبْن ٱلْحُسَيْن ٱبْن عَلِيّ ٱلْمَسْعُودِيّ, '; –956) was an Arab historian, geographer and traveler. He is sometimes referred to as the "Herodotu ...
, consider the Zanj revolt to be one of the "most vicious and brutal uprisings" of the many disturbances that plagued the Abbasid central government. Modern scholars have characterized the conflict as being "one of the bloodiest and most destructive rebellions which the history of
Western Asia Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes Ana ...
records," while at the same time praising its coverage as being among the "most fully and extensively described campaign in the whole of early Islamic historical writing." The precise composition of the rebels remains a subject of debate, both as regards their identity and as to the proportion of slaves and free among them – available historical sources being open to various interpretations.


Background

The Zanj were Bantu-speaking people who had been forcibly taken from Southeast Africa and were enslaved primarily for agricultural labor as part of the
plantation economy A plantation economy is an economy based on agricultural mass production, usually of a few commodity crops, grown on large farms worked by laborers or slaves. The properties are called plantations. Plantation economies rely on the export of cash ...
of southern Iraq. The demand for servile labor during this period was fueled by wealthy residents of the port city of Basra, who had acquired extensive marshlands in the surrounding region. These lands had been abandoned as a result of peasant migration and repeated flooding over time, but they could be converted back into cultivatable status through intensive labor.; ; ; ; Local magnates were able to gain ownership of this land on the condition that they would make it arable. As a result, they acquired large numbers of Zanj and other slaves, who were placed into work camps and tasked with clearing away the nitrous topsoil as part of the reclamation process. Other Zanj were used to work in the salt flats of lower Iraq, especially in the area around Basra. Both the working and living conditions of the Zanj were considered to be extremely miserable. The menial labor they were engaged in was difficult and the slaves appear to have been poorly treated by their masters. Two previous attempts to rebel against these circumstances are known to have occurred in 689–90 and in 694. Both of these revolts had quickly failed and thereafter little is known about their history prior to 869. Beginning in 861, the Abbasid Caliphate was weakened by a period of severe disorder known as the
Anarchy at Samarra The Anarchy at Samarra () was a period of extreme internal instability from 861 to 870 in the history of the Abbasid Caliphate, marked by the violent succession of four caliphs, who became puppets in the hands of powerful rival military groups. T ...
, during which the central government in
Abbasid Samarra Samarra is a city in central Iraq, which served as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate from 836 to 892. Founded by the caliph al-Mu'tasim, Samarra was briefly a major metropolis that stretched dozens of kilometers along the east bank of the Tigri ...
was paralyzed by a struggle between the caliphs and the military establishment for control of the state. Throughout the 860s the various factions in the capital were distracted by this conflict, which resulted in the deaths of several caliphs, army commanders and bureaucrats, the outbreak of multiple troop riots, a damaging civil war in 865–866, and the virtual bankruptcy of the government.; The anarchy in Samarra allowed a number of provinces to fall into the hands of rebels, while provincial governors were free to act in an independent manner in the territories assigned to them. The effective loss of provinces, in turn, resulted in a decrease in taxation revenues received by the central government, further exacerbating the crisis in the capital and crippling the government's ability to effectively respond to challenges against its authority. This continuing instability greatly facilitated the initial success of the Zanj revolt, as the government proved incapable of committing sufficient troops and resources to subdue the rebels.


Ali ibn Muhammad

The leader of the revolt was Ali ibn Muhammad, an individual of uncertain background. Little is known about his family or early life due to a scarcity of information and conflicting accounts. According to one version, his paternal grandfather was descended from the
Abd al-Qays The Abd al-Qays ( ar, عبد القيس) was an ancient Arabian tribe from the Rabi'a branch of the North Arabian tribes. History Origins The name of the tribe means 'servant of the odQays'. It belonged to the tribal groups originally resident ...
and his paternal grandmother was a Sindhi slave woman, while his mother, a free woman, was a member of the
Banu Asad ibn Khuzaymah Banu Asad ibn Khuzaymah ( ar, ابن أسد بن خزيمة ) is an Arab tribe. They are Adnanite Arabs, powerful and one of the most famous tribes. They are widely respected by many Arab tribes, respected by Shia Muslims because they have burie ...
. Some later commentators have presumed him to have been of
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
rather than
Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, No ...
background, but other historians consider this to be unlikely. Ali himself claimed to have been descended from
Ali ibn Abi Talib ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib ( ar, عَلِيّ بْن أَبِي طَالِب; 600 – 661 CE) was the last of four Rightly Guided Caliphs to rule Islam (r. 656 – 661) immediately after the death of Muhammad, and he was the first Shia Imam. ...
, the son-in-law of the
Islamic prophet Prophets in Islam ( ar, الأنبياء في الإسلام, translit=al-ʾAnbiyāʾ fī al-ʾIslām) are individuals in Islam who are believed to spread God's message on Earth and to serve as models of ideal human behaviour. Some prophets ar ...
Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد;  570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monot ...
and fourth caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, but this was largely rejected by
Muslim historians :''This is a subarticle of Islamic scholars, List of Muslim scholars and List of historians.'' The following is a list of Muslim historians writing in the Islamic historiographical tradition, which developed from hadith literature in the time o ...
of the era as false. Regardless of his origins, Ali appears to have spent at least a part of his youth living in the area of
Rayy Shahr-e Ray ( fa, شهر ری, ) or simply Ray (Shar e Ray; ) is the capital of Ray County in Tehran Province, Iran. Formerly a distinct city, it has now been absorbed into the metropolitan area of Greater Tehran as the 20th district of munici ...
, and at an unspecified date he moved to the Abbasid capital of Samarra, where he mixed with some of the influential slaves of Caliph
al-Muntasir Abu Ja'far Muhammad ( ar, أبو جعفر محمد; November 837 – 7 June 862), better known by his regnal title Al-Muntasir bi-llah (, "He who triumphs in God") was the caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate from 861 to 862, during the "Anarchy at Sa ...
( r. 861–862). In 863, he made his way from Samarra to
Bahrain Bahrain ( ; ; ar, البحرين, al-Bahrayn, locally ), officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, ' is an island country in Western Asia. It is situated on the Persian Gulf, and comprises a small archipelago made up of 50 natural islands and an a ...
(modern eastern Arabia), where he pretended to be
Shi'i Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most n ...
and started to rouse the people into rebellion against the caliphate. Support for his cause quickly grew. A large number of Bahranis submitted to his authority and the ''
kharaj Kharāj ( ar, خراج) is a type of individual Islamic tax on agricultural land and its produce, developed under Islamic law. With the first Muslim conquests in the 7th century, the ''kharaj'' initially denoted a lump-sum duty levied upon the ...
'' (land taxes) were collected in his name. Despite this, his rebellion eventually failed due to opposition from the local inhabitants, whereupon Ali abandoned the region and relocated to the city of Basra in southern Iraq in 868. In Basra, Ali sought to take advantage of disturbances caused by the city's rival groups, the Bilaliyyah and Sa'diyyah, and attempted to secure the support of one of the factions. Eventually he proclaimed a new revolt, but no one in the city rallied to his side and he was forced to flee to the
marshlands A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found at ...
of southern Iraq. There he was arrested by the provincial authorities and sent to
Wasit Wasit ( ar, وَاسِط, Wāsiṭ, syr, ‎ܘܐܣܛ) is an ancient city in Wasit Governorate, south east of Kut in eastern Iraq. History The city was built by al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf in c. 702 CE on the west bank of the Tigris across from the his ...
. He was quickly able to secure his freedom and went to
Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
, where he remained for the next year. During his time in Baghdad he claimed to be a
Zaydi Zaydism (''h'') is a unique branch of Shia Islam that emerged in the eighth century following Zayd ibn Ali‘s unsuccessful rebellion against the Umayyad Caliphate. In contrast to other Shia Muslims of Twelver Shi'ism and Isma'ilism, Zaydi ...
by being related to the grandson of
Zayd ibn Ali Zayd ibn Zayn al-Abidin ( ar, زيد بن زين العابدين; 695–740), also spelled Zaid, was the son of Ali ibn al-Husayn Zayn al-Abidin, and great-grandson of Ali ibn Abi Talib. He led an unsuccessful revolt against the Umayyad Caliph ...
and won over additional followers for his movement. When Ali heard news about another scuffle between Basra's factions in 869, he returned to the region and "began to seek out black slaves working in the Basra marshes and to inquire into their working conditions and nutritional standards." He began a campaign to liberate and recruit Zanj and other slaves, promising them wealth, affluence and prosperity in exchange for their support. A trifling number of people quickly joined his cause, and Ali soon came to be known by the title ''Sāhib az-Zanj'', meaning "Chief of the Zanj". However, Ali's movement attracted not only Zanj but many other people of different social groups. These included "semi-liberated slaves, clients of prestigious families, a number of small craftsmen and humble workers, some peasantry and some
Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and Ar ...
peoples who lived around Basrah." While he was gaining followers for his rebellion, Ali adopted slogans of the egalitarian doctrine of the
Kharijites The Kharijites (, singular ), also called al-Shurat (), were an Islamic sect which emerged during the First Fitna (656–661). The first Kharijites were supporters of Ali who rebelled against his acceptance of arbitration talks to settle the c ...
, who "preached that the most qualified man should reign, even if he was an Abyssinian slave." He inscribed his banner and coins with Kharijite expressions and started off his Friday sermons with the slogan "God is great, God is great, there is no God but God, and God is great; there is no arbitration except by God", which was "the war cry used by the Kharijites when they defected from the ranks of Ali ibn Abi Talib during the
Battle of Siffin The Battle of Siffin was fought in 657 CE (37 AH) between Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth of the Rashidun Caliphs and the first Shia Imam, and Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, the rebellious governor of Syria. The battle is named after its location S ...
". At the same time, however, Ali did not completely abandon the pretense of being an
Alid The Alids are those who claim descent from the '' rāshidūn'' caliph and Imam ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (656–661)—cousin, son-in-law, and companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad—through all his wives. The main branches are the (inclu ...
and maintained the claim that he was a Zaydi.


Revolt

The revolt, which began in September 869, was concentrated in the districts of
Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
and al-Ahwaz (modern
Khuzestan Province Khuzestan Province (also spelled Xuzestan; fa, استان خوزستان ''Ostān-e Xūzestān'') is one of the 31 provinces of Iran. It is in the southwest of the country, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Its capital is Ahvaz and it covers ...
) in the central regions of the Abbasid Caliphate. Over the course of the next fourteen years, the Zanj were able to combat the superior arms of the Abbasid government by waging
guerrilla warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactic ...
against their opponents. They became adept at raiding towns, villages and enemy camps (often at night), seizing weapons, horses, food and captives and freeing fellow slaves, and burning the rest to cinders to delay retaliation. As the rebellion grew in strength, they also constructed fortresses, built up a navy for traversing the canals and rivers of the region, collected taxes in territories under their control, and minted their own coins. In its initial stages, the rebellion was limited to the region around the city of
Basra Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is hand ...
and the Blind Tigris. Early efforts by the Abbasid government to crush the revolt proved ineffectual, and several towns and villages were occupied or sacked, including
al-Ubulla Al-Ubulla ( ar, الأبلة), called Apologou ( gr, 'Απολόγου 'Εμπόριον) by the Greeks in the pre-Islamic period, was a port city at the head of the Persian Gulf east of Basra in present-day Iraq. In the medieval period, it served ...
in 870 and Suq al-Ahwaz in 871. Basra fell in September 871 following an extended blockade, resulting in the city being burned and its inhabitants massacred. A retaliatory campaign undertaken by the caliphal regent Abu Ahmad ibn al-Mutawakkil (known by his honorific of al-Muwaffaq) against the rebels in 872 ended in failure, and the Zanj remained on the offensive over the next several years. The continuing inability of the Abbasid army to suppress the revolt, caused in part by its preoccupation with fighting against the
Saffarid The Saffarid dynasty ( fa, صفاریان, safaryan) was a Persianate dynasty of eastern Iranian origin that ruled over parts of Persia, Greater Khorasan, and eastern Makran from 861 to 1003. One of the first indigenous Persian dynasties to emer ...
Ya'qub ibn al-Layth , title = Amir of the Saffarid dynasty , image = مجسمه یعقوب لیث در زابل.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = Statue of Ya'qub in Zabol, Iran , reign = 861–879 , coronation = , predecess ...
's advance into al-Ahwaz and Iraq, eventually encouraged the Zanj to expand their activities to the north. A campaign by the rebels to occupy the
marshlands A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found at ...
between Basra and
Wasit Wasit ( ar, وَاسِط, Wāsiṭ, syr, ‎ܘܐܣܛ) is an ancient city in Wasit Governorate, south east of Kut in eastern Iraq. History The city was built by al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf in c. 702 CE on the west bank of the Tigris across from the his ...
in 876 proved successful, and soon they made their way into the district of Kaskar. By 879, the rebellion reached its furthest extent. Wasit and Ramhurmuz were sacked and the rebels advanced northwest along the
Tigris The Tigris () is the easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, and empties into the ...
, coming to within fifty miles of
Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
. The Abbasid government regained the initiative in the war in late 879, when al-Muwaffaq sent his son Abu al-'Abbas (the future caliph al-Mu'tadid) with a major force against the rebels. Al-Muwaffaq himself joined the offensive in the following year, and over the next several months the government forces succeeded in clearing the rebels out of the districts of Iraq and al-Ahwaz and driving them back toward their "capital" of al-Mukhtarah, to the south of Basra.; ; ; Al-Mukhtarah was placed under siege in February 881, and over the next two and half years a policy by al-Muwaffaq of offering generous terms to anyone that voluntarily submitted convinced many of the rebels to abandon the struggle. The fall of al-Mukhtarah in August 883, combined with the death or capture of Ali ibn Muhammad and most of the rebel commanders, brought the revolt to an end, and the remaining rebels either surrendered to the government or were killed.


Consequences

The number of people killed in the conflict is difficult to estimate; contemporary writers gave widely variable figures, and these are considered by modern historians to be gross exaggerations.
Al-Mas'udi Al-Mas'udi ( ar, أَبُو ٱلْحَسَن عَلِيّ ٱبْن ٱلْحُسَيْن ٱبْن عَلِيّ ٱلْمَسْعُودِيّ, '; –956) was an Arab historian, geographer and traveler. He is sometimes referred to as the "Herodotu ...
reported a "moderate" estimate of 500,000 casualties – though he added a clarification that this was "empty conjecture - rigorous calculation f the amount slainis impossible" – and separately noted that 300,000 were killed at the Battle of Basra. Al-Suli gave a figure of 1,500,000 dead, which was subsequently quoted by multiple sources, while Ibn al-Taqtaqi provided a high-end number of 2,500,000.
Al-Tabari ( ar, أبو جعفر محمد بن جرير بن يزيد الطبري), more commonly known as al-Ṭabarī (), was a Muslim historian and scholar from Amol, Tabaristan. Among the most prominent figures of the Islamic Golden Age, al-Tabari i ...
's ''
History History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
'' contains no comprehensive figures, but the author frequently noted the number of soldiers killed or injured in individual battles, with amounts ranging from hundreds to thousands. The rebellion greatly disrupted economic activity and caused extensive damage to the districts it took place in. Sources of the revolt describe burnt cities and towns, the seizure of food and other resources by advancing armies, the abandonment of lands and the cessation of agricultural activity, disruptions in the regional trade, and the damaging of bridges and canals in the name of military exigency. Shortages of basic necessities, such as food and water, at times became severe, and instances of
cannibalism Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, bo ...
are reported to have occurred. Both the rebels and their opponents engaged in looting, destroying supplies that were likely to fall into enemy hands, and massacring or executing captives. The long term effects of the revolt, on the other hand, are more difficult to ascertain and opinions by modern historians vary; some like
Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near ...
believe that the rebellion resulted in no significant changes, while others such as
Theodor Nöldeke Theodor Nöldeke (; born 2 March 1836 – 25 December 1930) was a German orientalist and scholar. His research interests ranged over Old Testament studies, Semitic languages and Arabic, Persian and Syriac literature. Nöldeke translated several ...
argue that the regions devastated by the conflict never fully recovered afterward.; ; The significant arms and resources that the Abbasid government was required to throw against the Zanj meant that it was forced to divert its attention from other fronts for the duration of the conflict, resulting in the effective loss of several provinces.
Ahmad ibn Tulun Ahmad ibn Tulun ( ar, أحمد بن طولون, translit=Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn; c. 20 September 835 – 10 May 884) was the founder of the Tulunid dynasty that ruled Egypt and Syria between 868 and 905. Originally a Turkic slave-soldier, in 868 I ...
, the
Tulunid The Tulunids (), were a Mamluk dynasty of Turkic origin who were the first independent dynasty to rule Egypt, as well as much of Syria, since the Ptolemaic dynasty. They were independent from 868, when they broke away from the central authority ...
governor of
Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...
, was able to take advantage of the Abbasids' preoccupation with the Zanj and forge a ''de facto'' independent state which would survive for more than three decades, while the
Saffarids The Saffarid dynasty ( fa, صفاریان, safaryan) was a Persianate dynasty of eastern Iranian origin that ruled over parts of Persia, Greater Khorasan, and eastern Makran from 861 to 1003. One of the first indigenous Persian dynasties to emerg ...
Ya'qub ibn al-Layth , title = Amir of the Saffarid dynasty , image = مجسمه یعقوب لیث در زابل.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = Statue of Ya'qub in Zabol, Iran , reign = 861–879 , coronation = , predecess ...
and
Amr ibn al-Layth Amr ibn al-Layth or Amr-i Laith Saffari ( fa, عمرو لیث صفاری) was the second ruler of the Saffarid dynasty of Iran from 879 to 901. He was the son of a whitesmith and the younger brother of the dynasty's founder, Ya'qub ibn al-Layth al- ...
seized several of the eastern provinces and faced no serious opposition from the central government until Ya'qub's attempt to march on Iraq itself in 876. The revolt may have also affected the government's ability to defend against the Byzantines, who scored several successes on the Anatolian frontier during this period, and possibly even indirectly contributed to the rise of the
Qarmatians The Qarmatians ( ar, قرامطة, Qarāmiṭa; ) were a militant Isma'ili Shia movement centred in al-Hasa in Eastern Arabia, where they established a religious-utopian socialist state in 899 CE. Its members were part of a movement that ad ...
of Bahrain a few years later.


Historiography

Ghada Hashem Talhami, a scholar of the Zanj rebellion, argues that modern views of the revolt are distorted by mistakenly equating the Zanj with East Africans. The assumption that Abbasid writers exclusively used the term "Zanj" to mean specifically the East African coast, and that therefore the people they called Zanj originated from a specific part of that region, is unsupported by contemporary sources due to their silence on the existence of an East African slave trade in this period, as well as by their occasional use of the term to mean "blacks" or "Africa" in general. Talhami cites from various historians and works to make her point that the rebellion was more of a religious/social uprising made by the lowly classed and suppressed citizens of the Basra area, which included a wide variety of people, including slaves of indeterminate origin. She points out that the sources specifically state that the people referred to as "Zanj" were not the only participants of the revolt, but were joined by Bahranis, Bedouins and others from the Basra region; moreover, they give no explicit indication that the Zanj even constituted a majority of the rebels. Historian M. A. Shaban has argued that the rebellion was not a slave revolt, but a revolt of blacks (''zanj''). In his opinion, although a few runaway slaves did join the revolt, the majority of the participants were Arabs and free East Africans, and if the revolt had been led by slaves, they would have lacked the necessary resources to combat the Abbasid government for as long as they did.


Sources of information

Much of the current knowledge of the Zanj Rebellion comes from the historian al-Tabari's work ''
History of the Prophets and Kings The ''History of the Prophets and Kings'' ( ar, تاريخ الرسل والملوك ''Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk''), more commonly known as ''Tarikh al-Tabari'' () or ''Tarikh-i Tabari'' or ''The History of al-Tabari '' ( fa, تاریخ طب� ...
''. It has been the subject of research by such famous Orientalists as
Theodor Nöldeke Theodor Nöldeke (; born 2 March 1836 – 25 December 1930) was a German orientalist and scholar. His research interests ranged over Old Testament studies, Semitic languages and Arabic, Persian and Syriac literature. Nöldeke translated several ...
(''Sketches from Eastern History'') and
Louis Massignon Louis Massignon (25 July 1883 – 31 October 1962) was a Catholic scholar of Islam and a pioneer of Catholic-Muslim mutual understanding. He was an influential figure in the twentieth century with regard to the Catholic church's relationship ...
(''The Passion of
al-Hallaj Al-Hallaj ( ar, ابو المغيث الحسين بن منصور الحلاج, Abū 'l-Muġīth Al-Ḥusayn bin Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj) or Mansour Hallaj ( fa, منصور حلاج, Mansūr-e Hallāj) ( 26 March 922) ( Hijri 309 AH) was a Pe ...
''). Alexandre Popović has authored a more recent
monograph A monograph is a specialist work of writing (in contrast to reference works) or exhibition on a single subject or an aspect of a subject, often by a single author or artist, and usually on a scholarly subject. In library cataloging, ''monograph ...
on the subject.


See also

*
Al-Mu'tamid Abu’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Jaʿfar ( ar, أبو العباس أحمد بن جعفر; – 14 October 892), better known by his regnal name Al-Muʿtamid ʿalā ’llāh (, "Dependent on God"), was the Caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate from 870 t ...
, Abbasid caliph (r. 870–892) during Zanj Rebellion. * Afro-Iraqi * Battle of Basra (871)


References


Citations


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links


The Largest African Slave Revolt


{{Authority control 9th-century rebellions Islam and slavery Iraq under the Abbasid Caliphate 9th century in the Abbasid Caliphate Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate Slave rebellions