Informative Response 300 words

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CHAPTER 1

Antiquity

Scholars of American history have long understood that discussions of
the African American experience must begin with a consideration of
people and cultures and developments in Africa itself, before the rise
of American slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, to debilitate the
notion that black folk, prior to their experiences in the Americas, had
no history worthy of the name

Long before the rise of professional historians, black men and
women had reached a similar conclusion. Facing the withering ef-
fects of slavery, black thinkers as early as David Walker and Frederick
Douglass were careful to mention the glories of the African past. When
circumstances all around suggested otherwise, they found evidence of
the potential and ability of black people in the achievements of antiq-
uity. Rather than conforming to divine decree or reflecting the natural
order of things, the enslavement of black people, when placed in the
context of thousands of years of history in Africa itself, was but an aber-
ration. In this view, there was nothing inevitable about black suffering
and subjugation.

These early thinkers, uninformed about the greatness of West and
West Central African civilizations, invariably cited those of ancient
Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia as exemplars of black accomplishment
and creativity. In so doing, they anticipated the subsequent writings
of scholars like W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, and St. Clair
Drake, who likewise embraced the idea that ancient Egyptian and Nu-
bian societies were related to those toiling in American sugar cane
and cotton fields. This view was not limited to black thinkers in the

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8 REVERSING SAIL

Americas; the Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop argued for links
between Egypt, Ethiopia, and West Africa. The latest to make such
claims have been the “Afrocentrists,” but whatever the particular
school of thought, certain of their ideas resonate with communities
in both West Africa and the African Diaspora, where the notion of a
connectedness to either Egypt and Nubia or Ethiopia resides in the cul-
tural expressions of the folk. Whether one accepts their views or finds
them extravagant, there is no avoiding the realization that Africans and
their descendants have pursued a long and uninterrupted conversation
about their relationship to the ancients. Such intergenerational discus-
sion has not been idle chitchat but rather has significantly influenced
the unfolding of African American art, music, religion, politics, and
societies.

A brief consideration of ancient Africa, especially Egypt, Nubia,
and Ethiopia, remains important for at least two reasons: First, it con-
textualizes the discussion of subsequent developments largely inaugu-
rated with massive trades in African captives. Antiquity reminds us
that modernity could not have been predicted, that Africans were not
always under the heel but were in fact at the forefront of human civiliza-
tion. Second, antiquity reminds us that the African Diaspora did not
begin with the slave trades. Rather, the dissemination of African ideas
and persons actually began long ago. In this first diasporic phase, ideas
were arguably more significant than the number of people dispersed.
The Mediterranean in particular benefited from Egyptian and Nubian
culture and learning. This initial phase was further distinguished by
the political standing of the Africans in question; Egypt was a world
power that imposed its will on others, rather than the reverse. This
was therefore a different kind of African Diaspora than what followed
many centuries later.

Egypt

The study of ancient Egypt is a discipline unto itself, involving majestic
monuments, mesmerizing religions, magnificent arts, epic wars, and
the like, all of which lie beyond our purpose here. Rather, our deliber-
ations are confined to Egypt’s relations with its neighbors, especially
to the south, as it is in such relations that the concept of an ancient
African Diaspora can be demonstrated.

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ANTIQUITY 9

TARTESSOS

NUMIDIA

500 km

AFRICA

Carthage

Rome

Chalcedon
Nicomed

Nicaea

Antioch

Sidon
Tyre

JerusalemAlexandria

Fayum

ConstantinopleBYZANTIUM

ASSYRIA

Alwa

Meroe
Soba

Kerma

Nobatia

Thebes
(Luxor)

NUBIAFaras

Old Dongola

Adulls

Aksum

Approximate Southern limit of desert

Philae
(Aswan)

Memphis

UPPER
EGYPT

LOWER
EGYPT

Sennar

CYRENAICA

GREECE

MAURETANIA

MAP 1. North Africa in antiquity.

Ancient Egypt, located along the Nile and divided into Upper
and Lower regions, exchanged goods and ideas with Sumer (in
Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) as early as
3500 BCE, and by 1700 BCE it was connected with urban-based civi-
lizations in the Indus valley, the Iranian plateau, and China. Situated in
Africa, Egypt was also a global crossroad for various populations and
cultures, its participation in this intercontinental zone a major feature
of the African Diaspora’s opening chapter.

Just who were these ancient Egyptians? While none can reasonably
quibble with identifying them as northeastern Africans, the discus-
sion becomes more complex when the subject turns to “race.” Race,
as it is used currently, lacks scientific value or meaning; it is as a so-
ciopolitical concept that race takes on decided import and gravity. Our
understanding of ancient Egypt is complicated by our own conversa-
tions about race, and by attempts to relate modern ideas to ancient
times. A contemporary preoccupation, race was of scant significance
in ancient Egypt, if the concept even existed. For example, while some
paintings depict the Egyptians as dark skinned, it is more common to
see males painted a dark reddish-brown and females a lighter brown or
yellow. Such varying representations were not meant to simply convey

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10 REVERSING SAIL

physical traits, but social standing as well; a woman portrayed as light
brown suggests privilege and exemption from the need to work out-
doors, her actual skin tone a matter of conjecture.

Ancient Egyptians were highly ethnocentric, regarding themselves
as “the people” and everyone else as uncivilized, a distinction having
more to do with land of birth and culture than outward appearance.
Foreigners included Bedouins from Arabia, “Asiatics” from Asia Mi-
nor, Libyans from the west, and the Nehesi from the area south of
Egypt, called Nehesyu or Khent (“borderland”) by the Egyptians, oth-
erwise known as Nubia or Kush. But given Egypt’s long history, its
gene pool periodically received infusions from Asia Minor, southern
Europe, the Arabian peninsula, and, of course, subsaharan Africa.
What Egyptians may have looked like in the third millennium BCE
is not necessarily how they appeared 1,000 years later, let alone after
4,000 years. Swift and dramatic changes in the North American gene
pool between 1500 CE and 2002 caution that sustained and substan-
tial immigration can produce startling transformations.

Egypt and the South

During the Old and Middle Kingdoms (3400–2180 and 2080–1640
BCE), Egypt sought to militarily control Nubia and parts of Syria and
Palestine. Under the New Kingdom (1570–1090 BCE), Egypt repeat-
edly invaded Palestine and Syria in its competition with Assyria and
(subsequently) Babylon for control of the region. Africa was therefore
a major foreign power in what would become the Middle East for thou-
sands of years, years that were formative, in lands destined to become
sacred for millions of people.

While especially interested in Nubia’s gold, Egypt also recruited the
Nubians themselves for the Egyptian army, as their military prowess,
especially in archery, was highly regarded (Egyptians referred to Nubia
as Ta-Seti, or the “land of the bow”). Nubians were also sought as
laborers, and some were even enslaved. However, with the possible
exception of the Hebrews, Egypt’s enslaved population was never very
large, with slaves from Europe and Asia Minor often more numerous
than Nubians or other Africans.

While extending its control over Nubian territory and tapping Nu-
bian labor, Egypt also relocated select Nubians to its capital at Thebes,
where an institution called the Kap provided a formal, rare Egyptian

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ANTIQUITY 11

education. Nubians learned the ways of Egypt, but their presence as
elites, workers, and soldiers also led to the spread of Nubian culture
in Egypt. This phenomenon was similar to later developments in the
Americas, where the convergence of African, European, Asian, and
Native American elements led to a flourishing of African-inspired cul-
tures, among others.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the New Kingdom’s eigh-
teenth dynasty’s involvement with Nubia was the determinant role
Nubian women played in the royal court. Indeed, Nubian women be-
came Egyptian royals, wielding tremendous power as queen mothers
and royal wives. As wives, they ruled at times with their husbands, at
times as regents, and in some instances alone. Ahmose I inaugurated
the eighteenth dynasty and ruled with Nefertari, a Nubian who enjoyed
tremendous prestige and popularity with native Egyptians. Their great-
granddaughter Hatshepsut ruled as both queen and regent from 1503
to 1482 BCE. Ties to Nubia were later strengthened when Amenhotep
III married thirteen-year-old Tiye, another Nubian. Their seven chil-
dren included sons Amenhotep IV and Tutankhamen. Renowned and
emulated for her beauty, Tiye was also well educated and quite the
political force; funerary sculptures depict her as an equal to Amen-
hotep III. She may have been responsible for affairs of state under
Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Akhenaton (from aton, solar
symbol of supreme deity) as part of his promotion of monotheism. As
Akhenaton’s wife, Nefertiti, was yet another Nubian, we can see that
it is not possible to discuss the New Kingdom without acknowledging
the Nubian presence and contribution.

Nubian Ascendancy

Nubia, also located along the Nile, was called Qevs by its inhabitants.
None of its various names – Nubia, Qevs, Cush, Kush, Ta-Seti, Ne-
hesyu, Khent – refer to skin color; one can surmise that whatever dif-
ferences existed between Egyptians and Nubians, skin color was not
one that elicited elaboration.

Nubia was likewise divided into Lower and Upper regions: The
former was associated with bows, shields, and other manufactures as
well as raw materials; the latter with gold, semiprecious stones, leopard
skins, and cattle. A Nubian state may have existed prior to Egypt’s
Old Kingdom, and at least one was its contemporary. The three major

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12 REVERSING SAIL

Nubian kingdoms came later and are named after their capitals: Kerma
(1750–1550 BCE), Napata (750–300 BCE), and Meroë (300 BCE–
350 CE).

Scholars point to the distinctiveness of Nubian history and culture,
that Nubia was not simply an outpost of Egyptian civilization or an
imitation of Egypt on a smaller scale. The history of Napata, however,
features Egyptian and Nubian convergence. Under Napata’s leader-
ship, the Nubians not only freed themselves of Egyptian domination
but also turned and conquered Egypt. Establishing the twenty-fifth
dynasty, the Nubians ruled as Egyptian pharaohs, their acceptance by
the Egyptians a reflection of the long familiarity of the Egyptian with
the Nubian.

The twenty-fifth dynasty was a time of contestation between Egypt
and Assyria for control of Palestine. Assyria invaded Egypt in 674 BCE
but was defeated. Three years later they were successful, driving the
Nubians south where they eventually reestablished their capital at
Meroë. Removed from the interminable conflicts in the Near East,
neither the Ptolemies nor Rome mounted any serious effort to con-
quer Meroë, opting instead to maintain trade relations. Commerce
and defensible terrain allowed Meroë to flourish and export such com-
modities as gold, cotton, precious stones, ostrich feathers, ivory, and
elephants (the latter for war and amusement), while producing large
quantities of iron.

Meroë was a unique civilization, with large stone monuments of
stelae and its own system of writing, Meroı̈tic. Nubian women played
major roles in government (Egypt’s eighteenth dynasty may reflect this
custom); queen mothers were especially powerful, and, together with
royal wives, were called Candaces (from Kentakes). The renown of the
Candaces in the ancient Near East was such that they reappear in
accounts connected with the Bible; they were a source of dramatic
and powerful images reverberating to the present day.

Africans in the Graeco-Roman World

The ancient Mediterranean world, successively dominated by the
Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans, came to know Africans from a
number of places and in varying capacities. Most Africans, especially
during the Roman period, entered the Mediterranean from both Egypt
and Nubia. They also came from areas south of the Nile, North

Africa

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ANTIQUITY 13

(from what is now Libya west to Morocco), the southern fringes of the
Sahara Desert, and West Africa proper.

In sharp contrast to the impressions that Egyptians and Nubians
had of each other for millennia, southern Europeans were completely
struck by the African’s color; the darker the color, the stronger the
impression. Although stunned, southern Europeans generally did not
ascribe any intrinsic value or worth to skin color, and, unlike con-
temporary notions of race and racism, did not equate blackness with
inferiority. Modern day racism apparently did not exist in the ancient
Mediterranean world. In fact, there is evidence that just the opposite
was true, that Africans were viewed favorably.

The Greeks were so taken with the pigmentation of Africans that
they invented the term Ethiopian (from Aethiops). The term means
“burnt-faced person” and reflects the European belief that the skin
color and hair of the African were caused by the sun. “To wash an
Ethiopian white” was a common expression in the Graeco-Roman
world, indicating enough familiarity with blackness to use it in con-
veying the futility of attempting to change the unalterable. The term
Ethiopian was at times also applied by the Greeks to Arabs, Indians,
and others of dark hue, and it is often used inaccurately to refer to
Nubians. It should be borne in mind that the ancient state of Ethiopia
did not begin until the first century CE.

The combined vocabulary of the Greeks and Romans could include
terms of distinction. Color variation was one scheme by which groups
(rather than individuals) were categorized, located as they were along
a continuum from dark (fusci) to very dark (nigerrimi). Ptolemy, for
example, described the population around Meroë as “deeply black”
and “pure Ethiopians,” as opposed to those living in the border region
between Egypt and Nubia, who, according to Flavius Philostratus,
were not as black as the Nubians but darker than the Egyptians. While
these classifications are nonscientific and subjective, they demonstrate
that blackness varied in the ancient world, much as it does today.

In addition to pigmentation, diet also formed the basis of categoriza-
tion, so that the work of second-century BCE geographer and historian
Agatharchides, as recorded in On the Erythrean Sea and surviving in
part in the writings of Diodorus (born 100 BCE) and Photius, speaks
of the Struthophagi or ostrich eaters; the Spermatophagi, consumers of
nuts and tree fruit; the Ichthyophagi or fish eaters; and the Pamphagi,
who ate everything. Of course, some groups were purely fanciful, as
is evident by Pliny the Elder’s (born 23 CE) list that includes the

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14 REVERSING SAIL

Trogodytae (voiceless save for squeaking noises); the Blemmyae (head-
less, with eyes and mouths in their chests); the Himantopodes, who
crawled instead of walked; and the three- and four-eyed Nisicathae and
Nisitae.

Greek and Roman attempts to account for unknown parts of Africa
represent an acknowledgment of the limitations of the former’s knowl-
edge. But what the Greeks and Romans did know of Africa, they tended
to admire. Their attitudes toward Africans can be deduced from their
accounts of actual encounters, as well as from their literature (such
as poetry and drama). Artwork is also a source of information. These
views come together in yet another Graeco-Roman division of the
African population, this time along lines of civilizational achievement;
African societies deemed high in attainment were greatly acclaimed.
Egyptians and Nubians had established literate, urban-based, tech-
nologically advanced civilizations long before there was a Rome or
an Athens, so there was every reason for African achievement to be
praised and even emulated. It is not surprising that Homer speaks
of the Olympian gods, especially Zeus, feasting with the “blameless”
Ethiopians, the most distant of men, who by the time of Xenophanes
(d. circa 478 BCE) had been identified as black and flat nosed, and by
the fifth century located to the south of Egypt. Herodotus maintained
that the Ethiopians were the tallest and most handsome of men, and
the most pious. He added that Meroë was a “great city,” and that the
Nubians had supplied Egypt with eighteen pharaohs. Diodorus wrote
that the inhabitants of Meroë were the “first of all men and the first to
honor the gods whose favor they enjoyed,” and, together with Lucian,
who maintained that the “Ethiopians” had invented astrology, claimed
that many Nubian practices and institutions were subsequently bor-
rowed by the Egyptians. Meroë was to be distinguished, however, from
“primitive” Ethiopians, who went about “filthy” and naked (or nearly
so) and who did not believe in the gods. Celebrated sexual encounters
in the Greek and Roman imagination are yet another measure of the
regard for the Nubian. Examples include Zeus, who may have been
portrayed in the Inachus of Sophocles (circa 496–406 BCE) as black
or dark, and whose child by Io is described by Aeschylus (525–4

BCE) as black and by Hesiod (fl. circa 700 BCE) as the ancestor of
the Ethiopians and Libyans. Delphos, the founder of Delphi, was be-
lieved to be the son of Poseidon or Apollo and a woman whose name
means “the black woman.” There is also the example of Perseus, who
married the daughter of the king of the Ethiopians, the dark-hued
Andromeda.

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ANTIQUITY 15

Just as individuals like Herodotus actually traveled to Africa and
gathered information, Africans also entered southern Europe. The
context was often one of war, both for and against the Greeks and Ro-
mans. Nubians were a part of the Egyptian occupation of Cyprus under
Amasis (569–522 BCE), and there is the account of Memnon and his
black soldiers coming to the aid of the Greeks in the possibly mythical
Trojan Wars. A large number of Nubians fought under Xerxes of Per-
sia in the very real Battle of Marathon in 480–79 BCE. These Nubians
experienced liaisons with Greek women, resulting in the “brown ba-
bies” of the Persian Wars. Carthage, founded no earlier than 750 BCE
by the combination of Phoenician settlers and Berber natives referred
to as Numidians, developed a society in which the Berber masses were
treated harshly. Although transsaharan trade in the hands of the Gara-
mantes was not very important during Carthaginian ascendancy, a
sufficient number of subsaharan Africans made their way to Carthage,
where they were inducted into military service. Frontius records the
presence of “very black” auxiliaries among the Carthaginian prisoners
taken by Gelon of Syracuse in 480 BCE. The Punic Wars (264–241,
218–201, and 149–146 BCE) also saw Maghribian (North African)
“Ethiopians,” possibly West Africans, employed in the invasion of Italy,
serving as mahouts aloft elephants. Rome would go on to conquer Egypt
and occupy it from the time of Augustus to the sixth century CE. Its
relations with Nubia and the south were relatively peaceful until the
third century CE, when it incurred difficulties with the Beja of the Red
Sea hills, called “Blemmyes” in the Roman sources.

Africans enslaved in the Graeco-Roman world were only a small
fraction of the total number of slaves in these territories. Enslaved
Africans also only represented a portion of the overall African popu-
lation living in southern Europe. A number of Africans were attracted
to places like Rome for trade and occupational opportunities, and
they could be found working as musicians, actors, jugglers, gladiators,
wrestlers, boxers, religious specialists, and day laborers. Some became
famous, such as the black athlete Olympius described by sixth-century
poet Luxorius. In addition to entertaining and fighting the Romans,
Africans also served in the Roman armies, as was the case with the
elite Moorish cavalry from northwest Africa under Lusius Quietus,
himself of possible Moroccan heritage. Black soldiers even served in
the Roman army as far north as Britain.

Potentially more far-reaching than the actual presence of Africans
in southern Europe was the impact of their cultural influence. Scholars
debate the extent to which Egyptian science, engineering, architectural

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16 REVERSING SAIL

forms, and philosophy influenced developments in Greece. There can
be no question, however, that Egyptian and Nubian religion was deeply
influential throughout the Mediterranean world for many centuries if
not millennia, especially the worship of Isis, adopted and worshiped
in many places under several names. Her worshipers made pilgrim-
age to the island of Philae, near the border of Egypt and Nubia, and
Nubian specialists in Isiac worship were welcomed in various centers
throughout southern Europe, where the Isiac rites were known as the
Eleusianian mysteries.

From all that can be determined, it would appear that the racial at-
titudes of the ancient Graeco-Roman world differed significantly from
the contemporary West. Africans were seen and treated as equals, the
representatives of homelands both ancient and respected. Their recep-
tion in southern Europe and the Near East underscores the power and
prestige of African realms and leaders as a factor that distinguishes this
phase of the African Diaspora from what takes place much later. In the
ancient world, Africa and Africans were forces to be reckoned with;
indeed, for thousands of years, they were the leaders of the ancient
world.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Useful general histories of Africa include Philip Curtin, Steven Feier-
man, Leonard Thompson, and Jan Vansina, African History: From
Earliest Times to Independence (London and New York: Longman, 1995,
2nd ed.), and J. Fage and R. Oliver, eds., The Cambridge History of
Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1975–86), an eight-volume
collection.

Concerning ancient Egypt, works providing general reconstructions
include Ian Shaw, ed., The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000); Karol My’sliwiec, The Twilight of An-
cient Egypt: First Millennium B.C.E., trans. David Lorton (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell U. Press, 2000); and Sergio Donadoni, ed., The Egyptians,
trans. Robert Bianchi et al. (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1997).
Studies with foci on women, gender, and society are Lynn Meskell,
Archaeologies of Social Life: Age, Sex, Class Et Cetera in Ancient Egypt
(Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999); Zahi A. Hawass, Silent
Images: Women in Pharaonic Egypt (Cairo: American U. in Cairo Press,
2000); John Romer, People of the Nile: Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt

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ANTIQUITY 17

(New York: Crown, 1982); Susan Walker and Peter Higgs, Cleopatra of
Egypt: From History to Myth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 2001).
Regarding religion, see Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks,
Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, trans. G. M. Goshgarian (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell U. Press, 1996); and Aylward M. Blackman, Gods, Priests and
Men: Studies in the Religion of Pharaonic Egypt (New York: Columbia
U. Press, 1993).

The issue of race in Egypt and antiquity is engaged by Cheikh Anta
Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, trans. Mercer
Cook (New York: L. Hill, 1974). St. Clair Drake’s two-volume Black
Folk Here and There: An Essay in History and Anthropology (Los An-
geles: Center for Afro-American Studies, U. of California, 1987–90)
certainly addresses identity in ancient Egypt but goes well beyond this
period and place.

The question of Graeco-Roman indebtedness to early Egypt is
taken up in Martin Bernal’s controversial Black Athena: The Afroasi-
atic Roots of Classical Civilization, 2 vols. (London: Free Association
Books, 1987–91), in the course of which race is considered. An oft-
overlooked work making parallel arguments, but preceding Bernal by
three decades, is George G. M. James, Stolen Legacy (New York: Philo-
sophical Library, 1954). One of the responses to Bernal (and others) is
Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse
to Teach Myth as History (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

A rather comprehensive discussion of Nubian history is provided in
P. L. Shinnie’s massive Ancient Nubia (London and New York: Kegan
Paul International, 1995). Nubia’s rise and eventual takeover of Egypt
is examined in Robert G. Morkot’s The Black Pharaohs: Egypt’s Nubian
Rulers (London: Rubicon, 2000).

A bridge connecting Egyptian, Nubian, and Graeco-Roman so-
cieties via race are Frank M. Snowden, Jr.’s Blacks in Antiquity:
Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press of Harvard U. Press, 1970), and his Before Color Prejudice: The
Ancient View of Blacks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1983). Leo
William Hansberry’s Africa and Africans as Seen by Classical Writers,
ed. Joseph E. Harris (Washington, DC: University Press, 1981), is also
useful.

Finally, Stephen Quirke and Jeffrey Spencer, eds., allow for printed
visualization of antiquity in The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt
(London: British Museum Press, 1992).

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CHAPTER 2

Africans and the Bible

The Bible has affected the lives of Africans and their descendants in the
Diaspora possibly more than any other document in human history.
This phenomenon can be divided into at least two spheres: The first
features the roles and experiences of Africans in the Bible, while the
second concerns the ways in which these roles and experiences have
influenced Africans living in post-Biblical times. Because the Biblical
account is seen by many as prescriptive, the interpretation of African
roles in the narrative is critical, as it has often determined how post-
Biblical Africans were treated. In particular, the Bible has been crucial
to slavery, with both benefactors and detractors of the institution taking
solace in its pages.

Egypt and Nubia in the Bible

Pharaohs of the twenty-fifth dynasty appear in the Old Testament as
allies against the Assyrians, and Taharka (690–664 BCE) is mentioned
by name (Isaiah 37:9; 2 Kings 19:9). Egypt and Nubia’s union under
this dynasty is demonstrated by the prophet Isaiah’s conjoined mes-
sages to each (Isaiah 18–20). In language corresponding to Herodotus,
Isaiah (18:2,7) writes this of Nubia:

Go, swift messengers to a nation tall and smooth,
To a people feared far and wide,

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AFRICANS AND THE BIBLE 19

A powerful and oppressive nation
Whose land the rivers divide.

Such esteem for Nubia is consistent with the view of states along the
Nile as powerful neighbors of Israel, ever present in regional affairs. In-
deed, the very formation of the Hebrew people is intimately associated
with Egypt and Nubia. Egypt in particular features large in the Old
Testament, playing successive roles as asylum, oppressor, ally, and foe.
The enslavement and subsequent divine deliverance of the Hebrews
was a source of consolation and hope for enslaved Africans and their
descendants thousands of years later. But while many identified with
the Hebrews, others celebrated the connection to Egypt.

Assuming a historical basis for Hebrew enslavement, it is unreason-
able to believe they would have avoided sexual unions with Egyptians
and Nubians for 400 years; indeed, individual stories suggest that the
interaction between Hebrews and Egyptians or Nubians may have been
significant. Even before the Hebrew community in Egypt, Egyptian
women figured prominently in the lives of the prophets. Abraham, the
father of revelatory monotheism, had a son Ishmael by the Egyptian
Hagar, and Ishmael in turn married an Egyptian woman. Upon en-
try into Egypt, the patriarch Joseph also married an Egyptian woman,
Asenath, who bore Manasseh and Ephraim, so that at least one of
the twelve tribes was of partial African origin. Moses himself mar-
ried a Nubian woman (Numbers 12:1). These examples suggest such
women were desirable and instrumental at critical junctures, birthing
clans and nations.

Beyond the question of intermarriage is the issue of cultural in-
fluence. The Hebrews were necessarily affected by their long stay in
Egypt; after all, Joseph was embalmed. Such influence probably re-
mained with the Hebrews for many years, as they exited Egypt with
a “mixed multitude” (Exodus 12:38). Much of the Old Testament
is concerned with eradicating that influence, along with others from
Mesopotamia. If the Exodus is afforded credibility, it gives pause that
the Hebrews, every one of them, came out of Africa after a 400-year so-
journ. The story is not unlike the human birthing process, the crossing
of the Red Sea a movement through the amniotic fluids of an African
mother.

Mention of individual Egyptians and Nubians in the Bible is rel-
atively rare. Some are in servile positions; others are associated with

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20 REVERSING SAIL

the military. They include the unnamed Nubian military courier or
messenger who told King David of his son Absalom’s death in battle
(2 Samuel 18:19–33). Then there is Ebed-melech (or “royal slave”), a
Nubian eunuch in the service of Zedekiah, king of Judah. He rescued
the prophet Jeremiah from certain death by interceding for him be-
fore Zedekiah; for his intervention, Ebed-melech would be spared the
coming judgment (Jeremiah 38:1–13; 39:15–18). Others with possible
blood ties to Egypt or Nubia include Aaron’s grandson Phinehas, pos-
sibly an Egyptian name meaning “the Nubian” (Exodus 6:25); and the
prophet Zephaniah, son of “Cushi” or the Cushite (Zephaniah 1:1).
Perhaps the most famous involves the Queen of Sheba, a complicated
story involving a King Solomon already married to a daughter of the
Egyptian pharaoh (and eventually hundreds of other women; see 2
Chronicles 8:11).

Africans and Origins

The question of identifying Africans in the Bible is influenced by as-
sumptions brought to the text. The exercise of “discovering” Africans
in the Bible often presupposes that the document is essentially con-
cerned with non-Africans. But what if the assumptions are different,
and the Bible is presumed to be primarily concerned with “people of
color,” including Africans?

Independent of anthropological and archaeological records, the
Bible has its own tradition of human origins. In the interpretation
of that tradition over the centuries, the Garden of Eden story has
rarely been situated in an African setting. A forced correlation be-
tween Biblical narrative and scientific findings, however, directs at-
tention to East Africa and would suggest to those concerned with
Biblical teachings that the earliest actors were Africans. The notion of
an African Eden, however, was far from the imagination of Western
slaveholding societies. Instead, a tale condemning Africans was widely
accepted.

The account concerns the prophet and ark-builder Noah, and it is
possibly the most dramatic example of how the interpretation of holy
writ can have life-altering consequences. After the flood, the progen-
itors of the entire human family are listed in the “Table of Nations”
(Genesis 10). According to a conventional reading, Ham became the
father of “the black people,” as his sons are listed as Cush, Mizraim,
Put or Punt, and Canaan; that is, Nubia, Egypt, possibly Libya or

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AFRICANS AND THE BIBLE 21

lands beyond Nubia proper, and Palestine. Such a reading assumes
that Noah’s other two sons, Japheth and Shem, were “white” and
“Asian,” or at least not black.

The term Cush probably derives from Qevs and is simply a place-
name, bearing no racial or ethnic connotations. The Greek terms
Ethiopia and Ethiopian do not appear in the Hebrew and Chaldean Old
Testament, but rather the words Cush and Cushite, suggesting Nubian
features were not a concern for Old Testament writers but became
one with the rise of Alexander and the ensuing period of hellenization,
when translators of the Septuagint, the Old Testament in Greek, opted
to substitute Ethiopia for Cush.

Although the physical features of the Cushites or Nubians were
not a significant matter for early Jews, an incident that precedes the
presentation of the Table of Nations would eventually be interpreted
in a way that would affect issues of slavery and race for centuries to
come. The incident concerns a drunken Noah whose “nakedness is
uncovered” by his son Ham, a phrase with multiple possible meanings.
When Noah awoke from his stupor and realized “what had been done
to him,” he uttered words that would have profound implications for
people of African descent:

Cursed be Canaan;
The lowest of servants
He shall be to his brothers.

(Genesis 9:24–27)

The ambiguity of the passage lends itself to conflicting interpretations.
Who was being cursed, Ham or his son Canaan? Did Noah’s curse
carry divine sanction, or was it the innocuous expletives of an angry
mortal?

The interpretation of Noah’s curse depends upon the perspective.
Believers are divided over its meaning. To the cynical, the curse was
written after the entry of the Hebrews into Palestine to justify the ap-
propriation of land. For the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave-
holder, it became “the Hamitic curse” and meant that African slav-
ery had been providentially decreed. In this reading, the European
slaveholder was simply fulfilling the will of God, as God’s chosen
instrument.

To the extent that the curse enjoys divine sanction, the likelihood
that it was meant to apply to all of the descendants of Ham is miti-
gated by the record of the Bible itself. The only person discussed in
any detail in Genesis Chapter 10, site of the Table of Nations, is one

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22 REVERSING SAIL

Nimrod, son of Cush, who “became a mighty one on the earth. He was
a mighty hunter before the Lord,” and credited with establishing such
cities as Babel and Nineveh in Assyria. If anything, Nimrod represents
a tradition of imperialism and domination rather than subservience.
Another example is Egypt itself, as it was the Egyptians, descendants
of Ham, who were the slaveholders. Again, it was to the Nubians that
the Israelites turned for help against the Assyrians out of recognition
of their ascendancy. There is also the fascinating account of Moses
and his Nubian bride (Numbers 12), a marriage opposed by Moses’
siblings Miriam and Aaron for reasons unclear. In a stunning rebuke,
Yahweh not only supports Moses but also turns Miriam’s skin into a
leprous, luminous white that persists for days, an unusual punishment
laced with humor if not sarcasm.

Unfortunately, the import of the divine rebuke did not endure.
Scholars of the revered communication would produce additional lit-
erature to accompany the scriptures and unfold their meaning. In con-
trast to the Jewish Talmud (a collection of laws and rabbinical wisdom
and the second most holy text in Judaism), another tradition began,
perhaps around the fifth century BCE, that may have characterized
blackness itself as a consequence of and punishment for Ham’s trans-
gression. This tradition that can be found in the fifth-century CE liter-
ature of the Midrashim and the sixth-century CE Babylonian Talmud.
However, some scholars argue that the idea of blackness as scourge ac-
tually derives from mistranslations of these texts, rather than the texts
themselves.

African-born persons rarely appear in the New Testament. Jesus is
said to have spent an unspecified number of his childhood years in
Egypt, where in all likelihood he would have lived in the large Jew-
ish community at Alexandria (Matthew 2:13–23). Simon of Cyrene
(North Africa) is remembered for helping Jesus carry the cross (Luke
23:26; Matthew 27:32; Mark 15:21). The “Ethiopian” eunuch, who
will be discussed in more detail, is prominently featured in the book
of the Acts of the Apostles.

It is striking that the formation of the early Jewish state involved
the literal transfer of a community from one land of Ham to an-
other. It is therefore not possible to hold an intelligent discussion of
the Old Testament without understanding the contribution of the
African. It is not a question of a lone Nubian here and an odd Egyptian
there; rather, the Old Testament world was awash in Africa’s colors and
cultures.

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AFRICANS AND THE BIBLE 23

The Queen of Sheba

While the Hamitic curse would be used in the future with devastat-
ing effect, another account in the Old Testament forms the basis for
perhaps the most significant and certainly most hallowed tradition in-
volving Biblical Africa, linking the continent to the African Diaspora
from ancient times to the present. In arresting defiance of, and in dia-
metric opposition to, the damnation of Canaan, the very glory of God
is held to have rested upon a favored Ethiopia. The explanation of how
that happened is a fascinating journey into an African reading of the
Bible, and it links the continent to three separate faiths in fundamental
and enduring ways.

The story begins with King Solomon, who already had ties to the
Nile valley by his marriage to an Egyptian princess and possibly by way
of his mother Bathsheba, whose name may signify “from the house
or land of Sheba.” Word of his fabled wisdom spread far and wide,
eventually attracting the Queen of Sheba, who journeyed to Israel with
a large retinue to hear Solomon’s wisdom for herself (2 Chronicles
9:1–12; 1 Kings 10:1–13). More than favorably impressed, the Queen
gave the king a large quantity of gold, spices, and precious stones. In
exchange, Solomon gave unspecified gifts of his own.

According to the Ethiopian holy book Kebra Nagast or “Glory of
Kings,” completed in the early fourteenth century and drawn from the
Bible, the Qur’ān, apocryphal literatures, and other sources, Solomon
and the Queen, identified as Makeda in the Ethiopian manuscript,
struck up a romance consummated through Solomon’s guile. After
nine months and a conversion to Judaism, Makeda gave birth to
Menelik (literally, “son of the wise man”), who years later returned to
Jerusalem where he was acknowledged by his father, crowned the king
of Ethiopia, and implored to remain in Jerusalem to inherit the throne
of Israel. Longing for home, Menelik instead returned to Ethiopia
with a number of priests and the Tabot or the Ark of the Covenant
(or Tabernacle of Zion). The Ark, symbol of Yahweh’s presence and
Israel’s unique status, henceforth rests, according to this tradition, in
Ethiopia, thereby transferring to the Ethiopians the honor of “God’s
chosen people.” Likewise, the kings of Ethiopia are descendants of
Solomon, each a “lion of Judah.”

There are multiple layers to the story. To begin, the location of
“Sheba” is in dispute: many cite Saba in Yemen as the most likely site,
while some insist upon Nubia or Ethiopia. Interestingly, Jesus simply

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24 REVERSING SAIL

refers to the “Queen of the South” who came “from the ends of the
earth” to hear Solomon’s wisdom (Matthew 12:42; Luke 11:31), a
characterization of space and distance in remarkable resonance with
Homer’s Odyssey, wherein the Ethiopians are described as “the most
remote of men,” dwelling by the streams of Ocean, “at earth’s two
verges, in sunset lands and lands of the rising sun.” As Ethiopia did
not exist during the time of Solomon, the only viable alternative to
Yemen for Sheba’s location is Nubia, where the queen may have been
one of the Candaces. In the end, Sheba’s precise location may not
matter very much, as populations and cultural influences regularly
crisscrossed the Red Sea in antiquity; in fact, southern Arabia was
periodically dominated by powers on nearby African soil, particularly
from 335–370 CE and 525–575 CE, when Ethiopia ruled portions of
the southern peninsula.

Another complication is the Kebra Nagast ’s claims of an initial as-
sociation with Judaism. Ethiopia is better known as a Christian state.
Founded at Aksum (Axum) in 59 CE, Ethiopia became home to
Amhara-Tigrean, Galla, Afar, Somali, and Omotic populations, dis-
tinguishing it both culturally and territorially from Nubia (which lay
to the north). Christianity entered Ethiopia early; tradition links mis-
sionary activity to the apostle Matthew, but Ethiopia’s definitive turn
to Christianity took place in the middle of the fourth century CE,
when King Ezana and the royal court embraced the new religion, and
in the fifth century CE, when large-scale conversions occurred. In
1135, the Aksumite rulers were overthrown by the founders of the
Zagwe dynasty, whose greatest achievement was the creation of a re-
markable ceremonial center at Lalibela (or Roha, named after the dy-
nasty’s most illustrious ruler), site of churches hewn from “living rock,”
fashioned deep in the earth. The Zagwes were in turn overthrown
by the Solomonids in 1270, claiming descent from Solomon and
Makeda.

The Solomonids drew upon traditions enshrined in the Kebra Na-
gast to legitimate their seizure of power, claiming the best of both
worlds by trumpeting their alleged hereditary connections to Israel
while simultaneously championing Christianity. Led by a literate
elite who wrote in Ge’ez (or Ethiopic), Christian Ethiopia experi-
enced an efflorescence under the Solomonids, particularly from the
thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries. Although severely chal-
lenged by Ah.mad Granye’s sixteenth-century Muslim campaign that
saw widespread destruction of churches and monasteries, only to be

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AFRICANS AND THE BIBLE 25

followed by incursions of Galla or Oromo in the sixteenth through
the nineteenth centuries, Ethiopia’s unique Christian legacy survived.
Ethiopia would become an icon in the modern African Diaspora, a
symbol of independence and fierce pride, and the focus of a new reli-
gion developed in the Caribbean.

Beta Israel

The Solomonids were not the only ones to draw from the Kebra Nagast
for legitimation. The Jews of Ethiopia, who refer to themselves as the
Beta Israel (“House of Israel”) and take umbrage at the term Falasha
(“stranger, wanderer,” coined by non-Jewish Ethiopians), also claim
descent from Solomon and Makeda. The Beta Israel have a differ-
ent account of what happened following Menelik’s return to Ethiopia:
With the Ark of the Covenant in tow, Menelik’s entourage came to
a river and separated into two companies. Those who crossed even-
tually became Christians, while those who paused remained Jews: a
marvelous allegory at the least.

Scholars and politicians have debated whether the Beta Israel are
“true” Jews for centuries. Aside from the Solomon–Makeda tradition
(given little credence by many scholars), there are other, competing
theories attempting to explain how Jews came to Ethiopia. In 1973,
for example, Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi recognized the Beta Israel
as true Jews, a remnant of the lost tribe of Dan (one of the ten who
seemingly vanished after their capture by Assyria in 722 BCE). Other
scholars cite evidence of a Jewish military garrison at Elephantine Is-
land, near the traditional border of Egypt and Nubia, between the
seventh and the fifth centuries BCE. Yet others point to the proxim-
ity of southern Arabia, in which communities of Jews have lived since
the seventh century BCE, with most arriving after the destruction of
Jerusalem’s Second Temple in 70 CE.

Whatever their origins, the Beta Israel’s subsequent history in
Ethiopia is also a matter of scholarly contention; some maintain they
were persecuted and harassed for most of their existence, while oth-
ers argue the relationship between Jews and the Christian state was at
times complementary and cooperative. The Beta Israel took refuge in
the mountain fastnesses of Ethiopia and were cut off from world Jewry.
There they continued to sacrifice animals, observe the Sabbath, fol-
low other religious laws and dietary proscriptions, and circumcise on

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26 REVERSING SAIL

the eighth day. They lost the Hebrew language, however, speaking in
Amharic (a modern language) and praying (while facing Jerusalem) in
Ge’ez. Armed with the Torah but unaware of the Talmud, Ethiopian
Jews managed to survive. Toward the end of the twentieth century, they
participated in the general immigration of Jews to Israel (the aliyah) in
spectacular ways: In 1984, so-called Operation Moses brought 16,000
Ethiopian Jews to Israel, followed by the airlifting of thousands more in
1991. Media images of these “black Jews” arriving in Israel was noth-
ing less than electrifying. That there were verifiable African Jews with
a venerable past raised new questions about the scope of the African
Diaspora.

The “Ethiopian” Eunuch and the Call to Christianity

In addition to the Queen of Sheba and the Beta Israel, the account of
the “Ethiopian” eunuch has also fired imaginations across time and
space. The New Testament records the baptism of “an Ethiopian eu-
nuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in
charge of all her treasure” (Acts of the Apostles 8:27–40). As Ethiopia
either did not yet exist or was just coming into being, and as a series
of female rulers of the Nubian state of Meroë held the title Candace,
this encounter probably refers to a Nubian court official who, after
his baptism, “went on his way rejoicing,” presumably all the way to
Nubia. Christianity had certainly entered Nubia by the second cen-
tury (following the establishment of the Coptic church in Egypt), but
Nubia did not convert en masse to Christianity (according to area
tradition) until the mid-sixth century and the arrival of missionaries
from Byzantium. For the next 800 years Nubia flourished as a Chris-
tian culture, its literacy based upon Old Nubian, a language written
in Greek form with Meroitic vowelization. Meroë itself had ended by
350 CE, but Nubia continued on, splintering into Nobatia (or Nu-
bia), Alwa, and Makuria. The rise of S. alāh. al-Dı̄n and the Mamluks
in Egypt in 1169 began Christian Nubia’s gradual decline until 1323,
when a Muslim ruler took power. Nubian Christianity survived into
the sixteenth century, in retreat from a growing Islamized and Arabized
Nubian population and government.

Like Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia, North Africa also converted to
Christianity, although the region’s rapid embrace of Islam in the sev-
enth and eighth centuries raises doubts about the depth of its preceding

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AFRICANS AND THE BIBLE 27

commitment. Even so, North Africa was the site of a brilliant Chris-
tian civilization, producing the likes of Saint Augustine of Hippo
(354–440), born in North Africa and likely of Berber descent. Chris-
tian scholars and leaders located throughout Egypt and North Africa
played major roles in the various schisms and doctrinal disputes char-
acterizing the troubled history of the early church. However, while
North Africa and Egypt provided the setting, European languages
dominated the religious discourse; Latin was used in the North African
church, and Greek in the Coptic.

An African past filled with splendor and pageantry would serve to
defend against the onslaught experienced by the enslaved in the Ameri-
cas, who were repeatedly told that Africa held no historical significance.
Though ancient and in a corner of the continent from which the vast
majority of the enslaved did not hail, Egypt, Nubia, and Ethiopia were
yet in Africa, and therefore they represented the dignity of the en-
tire continent, a place of honor bestowed largely through exposure
to Christianity and Judaism. By the nineteenth century, the prophesy
that “Ethiopia shall soon stretch her hands out to God” (Psalm 68:31)
would be interpreted by many as a call to convert masses of Africans
and their descendants to Christianity, thereby shaping Africa and its
Diaspora in profound ways.

Suggestions for Further Reading

In addition to some of the relevant suggested readings for Chapter
One, especially that of St. Clair Drake, works covering the general
history of Ethiopia include Harold G. Marcus, A History of Ethiopia
(Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1994); Jean Doresse, Ethiopia, trans.
Elsa Coult (London: Elek Books and New York: Putnam, 1959); and
Sergew Hable Sellassie, Ancient and Medieval Ethiopian History to 1270
(Addis Ababa: United Printers, 1972).

Regarding the Kebra Nagast, the only English translation available
remains, curiously, E. A. Wallis Budge’s The Queen of Sheba and Her
Only Son Menyelek (Kebra Nagast) (London and Boston: The Medici
Society, Ltd., 1922). Given the date of the translation and Budge’s rep-
utation as something of a racist, a modern translation is sorely needed.
Donald N. Levine’s Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic So-
ciety (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1974) provides a critical read-
ing of both Kebra Nagast and the development of Ethiopian society.

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28 REVERSING SAIL

An excellent work on the Beta Israel is Steven Kaplan’s The Beta Is-
rael (Falasha) in Ethiopia: From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century
(New York: New York U. Press, 1992), which can be joined with a
study edited by Tudor Parfitt and Emanuela Trevisan, The Beta Israel
in Ethiopia and Israel (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999).

Concerning the Hamitic curse, see David M. Goldenberg, The
Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 2003), for a discussion of its devel-
opment as an idea, and Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s Curse: the Biblical
Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford U. Press, 2002),
for an indication of how the myth came to be exploited. Finally, among
the most important works addressing blacks or Africans and the Bible
are James Cone, For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984); Charles B. Copher, Black Bib-
lical Studies: An Anthology of Charles B. Copher (Chicago: Black Light
Fellowship, 1993); Cain Hope Felder, Troubling Biblical Waters: Race,
Class, and Family (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989) and his Scan-
dalize My Name: A Critical Review of Blacks in the Bible and Society
(Silver Spring, MD: Beckham House, 1995).

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CHAPTER 3

Africans and the Islamic World

We tend to know more about Africans in the Americas than elsewhere
in the Diaspora. However, as this chapter makes clear, millions of
Africans entered Islamic lands, where they made important contribu-
tions to extraordinary civilizations, from the heartlands of the faith to
Muslim Spain. An extended discussion of this major component of the
African Diaspora is warranted, as the juxtaposition of the similarities
and differences between this experience and that of Africans in the
Americas yields far greater insight into the condition of displacement
than does a lone hemispheric focus.

We begin with a brief consideration of Muh.ammad, born circa 570
CE in the city of Mecca, an oasis important as both marketplace and
site of religious shrines. Muh.ammad was sensitive to the disparities
between rich and poor, and his meditations resulted in a series of rev-
elations that began when he was forty years of age; three years later, he
began heralding a message centering on the oneness of God, his own
role as God’s messenger, the Last Day, and the need for a response of
submission, gratitude, worship, and social responsibility. Encounter-
ing resistance and harassment, Muh.ammad and his companions found
asylum in Medina, and in 630 they accepted Mecca’s peaceful surren-
der. By the time of his death in 632, the whole of the Arabian peninsula
was united under Muh.ammad’s control. By 656, Islam had expanded
into Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and North Africa, and by 711, Muslim armies
had conquered parts of the Iberian peninsula as well.

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30 REVERSING SAIL

Sahara

Taghaza

N
iger R.

Takedda

Walara

Gao

Sorsa

Timbuktu

Kouinbi

Atlantic Ocean Atlantic Ocean Atlantic Ocean

Sofala

Kalahari
Desert

Orange

Zanzibar

Indian Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

Malindi

L.Tanganyika

L. Chad

Africa

Congo R.

Aksum

Mecca
Medina

Arabia

Alexandria

Tripoli

TunisAlgiers
Fez

Tangier

Sahara

Regency
of Algiers T

un
is

Mediterranean Sea

Sahara

Lagos

0°

Nig
er R

Mombasa

L. Victoria

Kilwa

L. Nyasa

Mozambique

Songhai Empire at Height of Power: 1475Mali Empire at Height of Power: 1325Ghana Empire at Height of Power: 1060

Battle site

Major African Empires, 1000–1500

Songhai Empire (see map below, right)

Mali Empire (see map below, middle)

Sahara

N
iger R.

Taghaza
Walara

Gao 1325
Sorsa

Niani

Kouinbi

1240

Karina x
1235

Sahara

Takedda
Walara

Niani

Jenne
Koumbi

Taghaza
N
iger R.

Timbuktu
1468

Gao

Zam

b ez
i R

Hausaland

Bornu-
Kanem

Oyo
Lfe

Kano

Tekrur

Darfur

Wadai
Nubia

Ethiopia

N
ile

R
.El Fasher

Luba
São Salvador

Kongo

Mono-
motapa

Zimbabwe

Marrakesh
Cairo

Egypt
(Ottoman
Empire)

Tripoli
0°

N 23 °1/2

1/2S 23 °

Madagascar

Red
Sea

Benin

Zeilia

Ghana Empire (see map below, left)

Aksum
x

MAP 2. Major African empires, 1000–1500.

Islam’s move into Egypt (or Misr) and North Africa (or al-Maghrib
al-Aqs.ā, “the far West”) was accompanied by the gradual Arabization
of the population (the spread of Arabs and their language and culture).
As part of a larger Muslim world that was quickly becoming a mighty
empire, Egypt and North Africa once more became destinations for
other Africans, while simultaneously serving as sources of emigration
to such places as Portugal and Spain.

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 31

Golden Lands

Where Muslim armies spearheaded Islam’s expansion into North
Africa and Egypt, Muslim traders and clerics led the religion’s
spread into regions south of the Sahara. Regularized trade between
North and subsaharan Africa became possible with the first-century
CE introduction of the camel from the Nile valley to the Sahara’s
southern fringes near Lake Chad, after which they spread further
west. By the fourth century, camel caravan patterns crisscrossed the
desert.

West Africa became associated with gold early in the history of Is-
lam; indeed, one of the earliest West African states, Ghana, became
known as “the land of the gold” through the Arabic writing of ge-
ographers between the eighth and eleventh centuries. Ghana, home
to the Serakole (northern Mande-speakers), was located in the sāh. il
(“shore”) between the Sahara and the savannah (flat grasslands) fur-
ther south, as were Gao (on the eastern Niger buckle) and Kanem
(along the northeastern side of Lake Chad); together they were intro-
duced to the ninth-century Islamic world as Bilād as-Sūdān, or “land
of the blacks.” A brief review of developments within this region and
East Africa is important, for as these lands were in direct contact with
the Muslim world, they constitute the beginning of this component of
the African Diaspora.

West African gold was exchanged primarily for salt (from desert
mines and evaporating ponds at the mouth of the Senegal River and
elsewhere). The gold was transported to North Africa, then east to
Egypt and as far as India, where it served as payment for spices and
silks; it was transported across the Mediterranean to pay for Euro-
pean goods and currency. Trade from the West African hinterland
to the sahel was organized and controlled by West Africans, who
over the centuries developed an extensive network operated by the
Juula (Mande for “merchant”) and Hausa traders. Once in the sa-
hel, gold and other commodities were transported north through
the Sahara by the Tuareg, Berber-speaking desert-dwellers, along
with Arab merchants. The arrangement was to the immediate advan-
tage of West Africans, who maintained secrecy of the gold’s sources,
but ultimately it was to their detriment, as they did not control
the trade through the desert. A pattern developed early in West
Africa, whereby external powers acquired long distance, multiregional
trade experience. Those with such expertise eventually took command

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32 REVERSING SAIL

of the trade and dictated its terms, notwithstanding West Africa’s ap-
preciable influence.

Ghana, though still in existence in the twelfth century, was eclipsed
in the thirteenth by Mali, populated by southern Mande-speakers fash-
ioned into an empire by the emperor Sunjaata around 1230. As was
true of Ghana, Mali was also associated with gold in the Muslim world,
but unlike Ghana, Mali slowly became a part of that world through
the early conversion of its rulers. The fourteenth-century travels and
eyewitness accounts of Ibn Bat.t.ūt.a (d. 1368) reinforced the image of
Mali as a land of wealth, as did the pilgrimage to Mecca of Mansa
Mūsā (reigned 1312–1337). Although a diminished Mali would con-
tinue through the seventeenth century, its stature in the western Su-
dan (from the Atlantic Ocean to the Niger buckle) was eclipsed in the
fifteenth century by imperial Songhay, whose origins go back to the
seventh century and Gao. By the fifteenth century, Islam had become
the religion of the court and the merchant community; commercial
towns such as Timbuktu and Jenne were transformed into centers of
Islamic education and intellectual activity, a development begun un-
der Mansa Mūsā of Mali. As was true of Ghana and Mali, Songhay
was known as a major source of gold, and the disruption of the gold
trade under Sunni ‘Alı̄ (1464–1492) was a principal factor in Askia
Muh.ammad Ture’s 1492 seizure of power.

Viewed as a wealthy land, the western Sudan was increasingly incor-
porated into the Islamic world. North Africa, Egypt, and the western
Sudan exchanged emissaries and written communication (in Arabic).
Houses of wealthy merchants were often allied to leading clerical and
political families through marriage. All of this resulted in the rise of an
elite in the western Sudan, connected through religion, marriage, and
commercial interests and accorded prestige by coreligionists in North
Africa and Egypt. Muslim West Africa would therefore be differenti-
ated from non-Muslim West Africa, for whom the Islamic world held
contempt. Stated differently, the Muslim world entertained no single
image of subsaharan Africa, distinguishing its various populations on
the basis of Islam and related notions of civilization. The status of the
land as opposed to the individual was critical; a Muslim was one who
practiced the religion, but a Muslim land was one over which Mus-
lim rule had been established. Songhay, with a majority non-Muslim
population, was a Muslim land.

Part of the central Sudan (from the Niger buckle to the Lake Chad
area) had a decidedly different trade relationship with North Africa.

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 33

The independent city-states of Hausaland were apparently slower to
embrace Islam than their western Sudanic counterparts, but by the sec-
ond half of the fifteenth century such cities as Kano and Katsina were
under Muslim control and were integrated into long-distance trade.
In contrast to Hausaland, the states of Kanem and Bornu near Lake
Chad had an Islamic pedigree with considerable historicity. Kanem,
for example, was under Muslim rulers by the tenth century, who per-
formed the h. ājj (pilgrimage) as early as the eleventh, while establish-
ing Islamic offices in Kanem’s government. They eventually fled anti-
Islamic forces to the southwestern edge of Lake Chad and established
Bornu.

Unlike their western Sudanic counterparts, Kanem and Bornu’s ex-
ports were primarily captives (captives were also exported by Mali and
Songhay but were of secondary importance), which were exchanged
for cloth, firearms, and other commodities. A major trade route linked
Lake Chad to Tripoli by way of the Fezzan. The route was a noto-
rious highway for captives well into the nineteenth century. Captives
were supposedly non-Muslims, but there is evidence that many Mus-
lims were taken as well. Mai Idrı̄s Alooma (reigned 1570–1602), “the
learned, just, courageous and pious Commander of the Faithful,” de-
veloped quite the reputation as a slave raider.

The question of African captives arises again in conjunction with
the history of East Africa, specifically the Swahili coast. To be sure,
maritime trade in the Indian Ocean is of significant antiquity. By the
second century BCE or earlier, regular traffic linked East Africa to Ara-
bia, India, and southwest Asia by way of prevailing monsoon winds.
The dhow, far more efficient than the camel, sailed the Indian Ocean in
one-third the time of a Saharan caravan crossing, carrying the equiv-
alent of 1,000 camel loads. Seafaring was dominated more by Arabs
and Indians than Africans, while Africans along the coast controlled
access to the East African interior, analogous to the western Sudan’s
relations with Tuareg and Arab merchants, with sea and sand as barrier
and bridge. In the case of the Swahili coast, however, the bridge is the
more appropriate metaphor, as the East African littoral was more fully
integrated into the trade of the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, a commer-
cial complex both massive and lucrative. In exchange for such imports
as Chinese porcelain, cowry shells, glass beads, and large quantities
of cotton cloth from India and China, East Africa exported ivory,
gold, mangrove poles (for housing in the Persian Gulf), and human
beings.

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34 REVERSING SAIL

To speak of East Africa is to discuss Swahili culture and language,
which incorporates Arabic and (to a lesser extent) Malagasy words
and concepts. Arabs (and apparently Persians) settling along the coast
often intermarried with the local population, resulting in a fusion of
genes and lifestyles. The apogee of the Swahili coastal towns lasted
from the ninth through the fifteenth centuries CE; this was an age of
royal courts, stone palaces, beautiful mosques, and internal plumb-
ing in the best houses. Trade and urban growth corresponded to
changes in the Islamic world, as the Muslim political center shifted
from Damascus and the Umayyad caliphate (661–750) to Baghdad
and the Abbasids (750–1258), thereby elevating the Persian Gulf’s
importance. This period in East African history came to an abrupt
halt with the arrival of Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese in 1498.
Seven years later, Portuguese men-of-war returned to destroy Kilwa
and inaugurate a new era in the Indian Ocean.

Pilgrims and Scholars

Many subsaharan Africans entered the Islamic world as fellow believ-
ers, usually by traveling to the Middle East and North Africa to make
the pilgrimage, to study, or to teach. A number of individuals from
subsaharan Africa were regarded as learned and pious. Examples in-
clude the eminent scholar Ah.mad Bābā, taken captive from Timbuktu
to Marrakesh in 1594 following the Moroccan conquest of Songhay,
where he was imprisoned for two years and taught classes for large
numbers until his return to Timbuktu in 1608. A second example
is S. ālih. al-Fulānı̄, an obscure West African scholar from Futa Jallon
(in contemporary Guinea), who headed for Cairo and finally Med-
ina, where he studied and eventually taught from 1791 to his death in
1803–1804.

A tradition of royal pilgrimage dates back to the eleventh century
in West Africa and includes the rulers of Kanem, Mali, and Songhay.
However, the quintessential hajj was that of Mali’s Mansa Mūsā in
1324. With a retinue of thousands of soldiers, slaves, and high offi-
cials, he brought such large quantities of gold to Egypt that its value
temporarily depreciated. Less significant for the Muslim chroniclers
of the trip, but more stunning in its implications and symbolism for
our purposes, was the manner in which Mansa Mūsā entered Egypt.
In what must have been a sight for the ages, Mūsā and his thousands

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 35

encamped around the pyramids prior to entering Cairo. For three days,
the glory of imperial Mali and the wonder of ancient Egypt, two of the
most powerful icons of the African Diaspora, became one.

The Enslaved

In contrast to those making the pilgrimage, other subsaharan Africans
entered the Islamic world as slaves. Muslim societies made use of slaves
from all over the reachable world. Europeans were just as eligible as
Africans, and Slavic and Caucasian populations were the largest source
of slaves for the Islamic world well into the eighteenth century, espe-
cially in the Ottoman empire. Race was therefore not a factor – at least
not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when European ex-
pansion forced a closer association between blackness and slavery.

When the discussion is restricted to Africa, tentative estimates for
the transsaharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean slave trades are in the
range of 12 million individuals from 650 CE to the end of the sixteenth
century, and another 4 million from the seventeenth through the nine-
teenth centuries. In other words, as many or more captive Africans
may have been exported through these trades as were shipped across
the Atlantic, although the latter took place within a much more com-
pressed period (fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries). To be sure,
these estimates are imprecise and possibly misleading. It is difficult to
separate, for example, the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trades, and not
all who were transported through the Indian Ocean landed in Islamic
lands. Even so, the number of enslaved Africans in the Islamic world
was clearly significant.

Slavery in Arabia was already an accepted practice by the time
Muh.ammad was born; the Qur’ān assumes as much and, far from
simply condoning it, attempts to improve the servile condition while
promoting manumission at the same time. Islam held that freedom was
the natural condition of human beings, and only certain circumstances
allowed for slavery. According to a strict interpretation of Islamic law,
or sharı̄ ↪a, only those non-Muslims who were without a protective pact
(↪ahd ) with Muslims, who rejected the offer to convert to Islam and
were then captured in a war ( jihād ), could be enslaved. However, after
the first century of Islam, reality diverged from theory, and most were
in fact captured through raids and kidnaping and then sold to mer-
chants. Stated another way, slavery in the Islamic world was a business.

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36 REVERSING SAIL

Keeping in mind the theory–reality divide, Muslims slaveholders
were to treat the enslaved with dignity and kindness. Slaves could
marry with the slaveholder’s consent, and they were not to be over-
worked or excessively punished; those seriously injured were to be
freed. They were to be provided with material support and medical at-
tention into old age. The enslaved were property, to be bought and sold
like any other chattel, yet their undeniable humanity created tensions
that Islamic law attempted to resolve. Above all, slaveholders were
enjoined to facilitate the conversion of the enslaved; uncircumcised
males were circumcised from the outset, and they were given Arabic
names. In an interesting parallel with the Americas, these names com-
prised a “special” category of nomenclature, names of “distinction”
for the enslaved. Such appellations included Kāfār (“camphor”) and
‘Anbar (“ambergris”) for males; and Bakhı̄ta (“fortunate”), Mabrūka
(“blessed”), and Za’farān (“saffron”) for females. The majority of the
enslaved were therefore converted to Islam, and some became literate
in Arabic and were taught to read the Qur’ān.

However, conversion to Islam did not obligate slaveholders to free
their slaves; slaveholders were only encouraged by the Qur’ān to do
so. The ideal was to enter into a manumission contract (mukātaba),
whereby the enslaved person would be allowed to make and save
enough money to pay an agreed upon amount to purchase her or his
freedom. As would also be true in the Americas, the acquired freedom
was qualified in that the freed person remained a client of the former
slaveholder and always in his debt, a condition passed down through
several generations.

One of the most arresting aspects of the transsaharan, Red Sea, and
Indian Ocean slave trades is that they were primarily transactions in
females and children. Young girls and women were used as domestics
and concubines, and often both, as the male slaveholder enjoyed the
right of sexual access. The concubine is referred to in the Qur’ān as
“that which your right hands possess” (mā malakat aymānukum). Do-
mestic work included cooking, cleaning, and wet-nursing (tasks that
would become just as familiar to many African-descended women in
the Americas), and there is evidence that some were (illegally) forced
into prostitution. A slaveholder on occasion married an enslaved fe-
male, but in those instances she first had to be freed. As for concubines,
the Muslim world had an order of preference, beginning with white
females, many of whom were obtained from the Balkans and lands
in the southwest of what was formerly the Soviet Union and referred

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 37

to as the saqāliba or Slavs (although the term would come to include
non-Slavs). Next in order of preference were Ethiopian, Nubian, and
other women from the Horn of Africa, called the h. abashiyyāt (or sim-
ply Habash when men were included), often found in the service of
middle-class slaveholders. They enjoyed greater status and privilege
than did other African women, who were allegedly the least preferred.
According to Islamic law, the concubine who bore the slaveholder’s
children (thereafter known as an umm walad ) could never be sold
away, and she was automatically freed upon his death. In contrast to
what would develop in the Americas, the children of a slaveholder and a
concubine followed the status of the father and became free. An exam-
ple of how this could work is found in imperial Songhay, where every
one of the askias following Askia al-h. ājj Muh.ammad (d. 1529) was the
son of a concubine. Yet another illustration concerns the ↪Alawid ruler
Mūlāy Ismā↪ı̄l (reigned 1672–1727) of Morocco, whose mother was a
black concubine.

Some concubines and female domestics were kept in large harems,
where sexual exploitation was erratic and unpredictable. Women in
such circumstances inhabited a world of instability, as advancing age
and the failure to bear children or secure slaveholder interest could
result in their sale. Central to the organization of such large harems
was the eunuch or tawāshi, also referred to as khādim (“servant”), fatā
(“young man”), and aghā (“chief”). The primary responsibility of the
eunuch was to maintain order; his emasculation “perfected” him for
such purposes, as he remained physically strong but incapable (for the
most part) of posing a sexual threat. As was true of concubines, those
transformed into eunuchs came from Europe and Asia and Africa, but
in this instance it was the African eunuch who appears to have been
preferred (at least in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul). Because they
were privy to the inner workings of the household, these individuals
could amass significant influence in both the household and the soci-
ety (assuming a prominent family). The authority of the Kislar Aghā,
the Ottoman sultan’s head eunuch, was legendary. In apparent viola-
tion of Islamic law, such eunuchs were allowed to own other eunuchs
and concubines. According to one nineteenth-century account of the
chief African eunuchs of Mecca, they were even married to enslaved
Ethiopians, a most curious arrangement.

The procedures by which males became eunuchs rank among the
most inhumane. Young boys were commonly forced to endure the
operation, which involved removal of the testes or both testes and penis.

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38 REVERSING SAIL

Because the operation was abhorrent to Muslims, it was performed by
Christians (and perhaps Jews) in such places as Baghirmi near Lake
Chad, in Ethiopia, and in other locations. Accounts of the process
veer toward the macabre, as young males were gelded and placed in
the sand up to their navels to heal. Those able to urinate after some
days were herded off through the Sahara; those who could not were left
to die. In addition to serving in the harems, some were chosen to serve
in the mosque of the Ka↪ba in Mecca and in Prophet Muh.ammad’s
mosque in Medina. Many who began the desert trek did not complete
it, expiring along the way. The number of eunuchs in the Muslim world
is difficult to estimate, but the claim that the sultan Mūlāy Ismā↪ı̄l
personally owned over 2,000 suggests their numbers were significant.
Indeed, so many more entered the mutilation process than exited;
a credible estimate is that only 10 percent survived the operation,
which meant that some 20,000 young males perished to achieve Mūlāy
Ismā↪ı̄l’s 2,000.

Africans were also used as laborers in large agricultural ventures and
mining operations. They supplied the backbreaking, bloodcurdling
labor for the salt mines of Taghāza in the western Sahara and the
copper mines of Tegidda in what is now Niger. The model of exploiting
subsaharan labor may have been provided by the Tuareg and Arabo-
Berbers of the Sahara, who had a long-standing tradition of using
subsaharan African slaves to herd animals and collect wood and water.

Agricultural projects in the Islamic world generally did not approach
the magnitude of the American plantation until the emergence of clove
cultivation in such places as Zanzibar in the nineteenth century, but
African enslaved labor was used in date production in Saharan oases
and in tenth-century Arabia, near Bahrain. African slave labor was
also used in the cultivation of sugar in the Ahwāz province of what is
now western Iraq in the ninth century, together with the large-scale
use of East African slave labor in nearby southern Iraq and Kuwait, in
what was called the Sawād. There, captives from the interior of East
Africa, the Zanj, were expended to drain vast marshlands. The condi-
tions under which the Zanj labored were so stultifying, so deplorable,
that they produced one of the most spectacular slave revolts in the
history of both the African Diaspora and the world as a whole. Unify-
ing under the charismatic leadership of ↪Alı̄ b. Muh.ammad, son of an
Iraqi father and a mother from Sind (the lower Indus valley), the Zanj
waged insurrection for fifteen years, from 868 to 883, capturing the
city of Basra and marching on Baghdad itself, center of the Muslim

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 39

world. With their defeat, the Zanj were ruthlessly exterminated, the
experiment using their labor in southern Iraq abandoned. In fact, some
scholars speculate that the Zanj left such a bitter taste in the mouths of
the Abbasids that it influenced the brutish depiction of blacks in The
Thousand and One Nights.

One of the more visible uses of enslaved African labor was in the
military, one of the few institutions allowing for any degree of upward
mobility for persons of African descent throughout the history of the
entire Diaspora. Slave armies were in a number of places in the Is-
lamic world by the ninth century. The concept was to create a military
that, as a result of its very foreignness and alienation, owed its total
allegiance to the ruler. Those destined for such armies were usually
acquired through purchase rather than war, and they included Turks,
Slavs, Berbers, and other Africans. In fact, most military slaves were
non-African and were often organized into separate units based on
ethnic origin and background. Specific terms were used to identify
armies as both servile and ethnically distinct: the Mamlūks, a servile
army that eventually seized power in Egypt and Syria from 1250 to
1517, were mostly from the Black Sea region; the Janissaries (or kuls),
who took control of the Ottoman empire in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries, hailed from the Slavic and Albanian populations of
the Balkans. The term ↪abı̄d, however, was apparently used exclusively
for subsaharan African slave armies.

The ‘abı̄d army was developed in Egypt under the Turkish gover-
nor Ah.mad T. ūlūn (d. 884), who garrisoned them separately from the
Mamlūk division. This particular ‘abı̄d army was probably Nubian.
The immediate successors to the T. ūlūnids also maintained servile
black troops, as did the Fāt.imids, who began in North Africa (in 909)
before moving their capital to Cairo in 969, maintaining large numbers
of black servile soldiers in both places. In Egypt these soldiers grew
powerful, and skirmishes between them and nonblack units increased
in number and violence. A final conflict, the “Battle of the Blacks”
or the “Battle of the Slaves,” took place in 1169, when S. alāh. al-Dı̄n
led his nonblack forces against some 50,000 black soldiers and drove
them out of Cairo into southern Egypt. All-black units would not be
used again in Egypt until the nineteenth century under Muh.ammad
↪Alı̄.

Black slave soldiers were also used in North Africa by the ninth-
century Aghlabid dynasty and thereafter under successive regimes.
Further west, in what is now Morocco, the Almoravid leader Yūsuf

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40 REVERSING SAIL

b. Tāshı̄n (d. 1106) was surrounded by a bodyguard of 2,000 black
soldiers, and the successors to the Almoravids, the Almohads, also
used black soldiers. The ultimate in the use of servile black soldiers
took place under Mūlāy Ismā↪ı̄l (reigned 1672–1727), son of the black
concubine, who along with his 2,000 black eunuchs was reported to
have maintained 150,000 black troops, having ordered the seizure of all
black males throughout the kingdom. The troops were provided black
females and were forced to swear personal allegiance to Mūlāy Ismā’ı̄l
upon the h. adı̄th (traditions of Muh.ammad) collected by al-Bukhārı̄,
and they were therefore known as ↪abı̄d al-Bukhārı̄. This ↪abı̄d army
grew enormously powerful, determining the succession to the throne
for thirty years after the death of Mūlāy Ismā↪ı̄l, choosing from among
his 500 sons. In 1737 the ↪abı̄d army was brought under control by
Mūlāy Muh.ammad III using an Arab force. Black soldiers continue
to serve in the Moroccan army to the present day, only no longer as
slaves.

Iberia

Mention of the Almoravids and Almohads redirects our attention to
Iberia (Spain and Portugal), site of a remarkable Muslim civilization
from 711 to 1492. When Muslim forces crossed Gilbraltar into Spain
in 711, it was a combined army of Berbers, subsaharan Africans,
and Arabs. The invading Muslim armies renamed the peninsula al-
Andalus (an apparent corruption of the term Vandal, from the former
occupiers). By 720, the Muslims laid claim to territory south of the
Pyrenees and parts of southern France, and in 732 they encroached
further into France, where they were engaged outside of Tours and
defeated at the Battle of Poitiers by Charles Martel. Celebrated in Eu-
rope as a major victory over Islam, the event known as the “Highway
of the Martyrs” (Balāt. al-Shuhadā’) by the Muslims was, from their
perspective, little more than an insignificant border raid. The “land
of the Franks,” as France and much of western Europe were known,
was culturally unremarkable, economically unimportant, and of little
interest to Muslims.

Those portions of Iberia under Muslim control answered to the
Umayyads of Damascus until 750, when the Abbasid caliphate arose
and shifted the center of the Muslim world to Baghdad. A member of
the Umayyad family fled to Iberia where he restructured the Umayyad
caliphate, rupturing the dream of a single Muslim empire. Muslims

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 41

Asia

Asia
Am

R
.

Pacific
Ocean

South

China

Sea

Mindanao

Philippine
Islands

Java

Sumatra

Ceylon

Arabian Sea

Indian Ocean
Madagascar

Red
Sea

Mediterranean SeaAtlantic Ocean

Europe

Iberia

Ethiopa

Europe

Danube R.

Black Sea

Beghdad
Persia

Samarkand
Constaninople

Asia
Minor

Arabia

Mecca
Nubia

Africa

Tunis

Timbuktu

Zeila

Mombasa

Kansu

Steppe
Steppe

Delhi

India

In
du

s R
.

Aral Sea

Vo
lga

Yello
w R

M
ebong

R
.Niger R.

Co
ng

o R

Za
mbezi R.

N
ile
R
.
China

Yunnan

Boneo

Australia

Yangtz
e R.

Caspian
sea

MAP 3. Spread of Islam to 1500.

would conquer Sicily between 827 and 902 and move into parts of
southern Italy, but the eleventh century saw the return of Sicily to
Christian control, as well as the slow erosion of Muslim power else-
where in Italy and Iberia.

Al-Andalus was a Muslim state controlled by Arabs in command of
Berbers and subsaharan Africans. However, conflict between Berbers
and Arabs stemmed from an almost uninterrupted history of in-
vasion and occupation of North African territory, beginning with
the Carthaginians and followed by the Romans, the Vandals, the
Byzantines, and lastly the Arabs. Berbers resisted Arab domination
militarily, but they also resisted by embracing an aberrant form of
Islam, Kharijism, which advocated democratic and egalitarian prin-
ciples. The strategy of adopting altered expressions of an oppressor’s
religion, thereby transforming it into a tool of liberation, would also be
used in the New World. Berbers further resisted by creating politically
autonomous space, establishing a number of Kharijite states in North
Africa after 750; Kharijite communities remain in the mountains and
remote areas of Algeria and Tunisia. In this way, they were not unlike
the maroons of the Americas.

Yet another path of resistance was direct confrontation, a road lead-
ing back to ancient Ghana. The West African savannah was crucial to
the rise of the Berber Almoravid movement in the eleventh century.

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42 REVERSING SAIL

Berbers in southern Morocco noted Ghana’s spectacular growth and
trade, and they concluded that it was the key to both the transsaharan
trade and al-Andalus. Like the leaders of Egypt’s eighteenth dynasty,
who secured their control over Nubian resources before launching
campaigns into Palestine and Syria, the Almoravids began their ac-
tivities by first focusing on West Africa. Their bid for power became
part of a religious reform movement, and by the mid-eleventh century
the Almoravids seized control of the southern and northern termini of
the transsaharan trade. Financing their operation with West African
gold, the Almoravids also used West African soldiers, slave and free.
By century’s end, the Almoravids succeeded in bringing not only all of
Morocco and western Algeria under their control, but also al-Andalus
as well, founding Marrakesh as their capital. For the first time in his-
tory, a single Berber power controlled much of North Africa and Iberia,
and Africans would rule the “kingdom of the two shores” for nearly
300 years.

The Almoravids were succeeded by the Almohads (1146–1269),
who also used West African soldiers. Like Mūlāy Ismā↪ı̄l of the seven-
teenth century, al-Mans.ūr (reigned 1184–1199) was a leader who was
possibly of West African ancestry. Another was Abū al-H. asan (reigned
1331–1351) of the later Marinid dynasty. Earning a reputation for cru-
elty, Abū al-H. asan exchanged embassies with Mansa Mūsā prior to the
latter’s death, and he was a great patron of the arts. The examples of
Abū al-Has.an, al-Mans.ūr, and Mūlāy Ismā↪ı̄l demonstrate the diffi-
culties in distinguishing between Berbers and subsaharan Africans, as
extensive, centuries-long interaction between these regions necessar-
ily meant a significant sharing of genes; an ostensibly Berber-looking
individual may have in fact had considerable subsaharan ancestral ties.
Europeans could and did distinguish between African groups, but
their tendency to label all as Moors (literally, “blacks”), suggesting
all Africans were part of a continuum of related characteristics, is not
without warrant. Whatever the nature of their congenital relations,
Africans of varying backgrounds in Iberia tended to participate in cul-
tures knitted together by Islam. In this way, it may be better to read
the designation Moor as a cultural rather than racial or ethnic qualifier.

Africans were present in al-Andalus throughout the 800-year period
of Muslim domination, contributing to an intense period of intellec-
tual and cultural production. It was during the Muslim domination of
Iberia that the sciences and technology and the arts, including astron-
omy, medicine, alchemy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, literature,

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 43

and philosophy, received a tremendous boost. Indeed, the knowledge
of the ancients, including Greek philosophy, had been lost to Europe
for hundreds of years, as Latin and Greek had nearly disappeared.
Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars uncovered and translated the
mostly Greek texts into Arabic, by which Europe reconnected with its
past. The works of Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Euclid, and the physi-
cians Hippocrates and Galen were among the many reintroduced to
Europe during this period. Prominent scholars of the period include
Ibn Sı̄nā (or Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (also known as Averroës), who
was born in Córdoba under Almoravid rule in 1126 and went on to
translate and comment on the works of Aristotle as well as establish a
reputation as a scientist, mathematician, philosopher, and poet. Made
possible by the support of Almohad ruler al-Mans.ūr, Ibn Rushd’s
work, some thirty-eight volumes of it, became popular largely through
Spanish Jewish scholars, a circle that included Mūsā Ibn Maymun
(or Maimonides). Students from all over Europe, including France,
Germany, England, and Italy, came to study in al-Andalus, often be-
coming literate in Arabic. The intellectual productivity of Muslim
Iberia, as well as other parts of the Muslim world, was an important
foundation for the Renaissance of western Europe.

In addition to their contribution to various branches of knowl-
edge, Muslims introduced styles of architecture resulting in stunning
blends of structure and landscape, of which al-Hambra is a prime
example. Cities they founded include Córdoba, Seville, Toledo, and
Granada, each known for a particular quality. Córdoba was a city of
libraries; Seville was associated with music. Muslim cities were well
planned, featuring aqueducts, gardens, public baths, and fountains
to embellish mosques, hospitals, and other buildings public and pri-
vate. Supplying the urban centers were fields given enhanced fertil-
ity through revamped irrigation systems and the introduction of such
crops as cereals and beans. However, the Muslim geographic imag-
ination was by no means confined to the Iberian city and country-
side; rather, Muslim scholars refined geography by more accurately
measuring distances (although they remained hampered by ancient
models), and they introduced to the Western world seafaring tools
and techniques such as the astrolabe, the lateen sail, and the method
of tacking. Some of these innovations were modified from their use in
the Indian Ocean, and in any event they proved critical to the develop-
ment of European seafaring and subsequent commercial and imperial
expansion.

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44 REVERSING SAIL

India

While there are numerous scholarly works on al-Andalus or Moor-
ish Spain, what is known about the subsaharan African contribution
to this brilliant civilization is far from satisfactory. Research on the
African presence in India is similarly in its infancy. Matters are com-
plicated by an ancient, pre-Islamic society in which the four major
castes (Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra) are hierarchically
arranged in a manner corresponding with color (varna). Thus, the
lowest, servile caste, the Shudra, is characterized in the ancient Vedic
literature as “black” and “dark complexioned,” but as there are many
dark-skinned populations throughout the world, attempting to locate
Shudra origins in Africa may be pointless.

Given the historicity and expanse of Indian Ocean trade, Africans
necessarily voyaged to the Indian subcontinent prior to the rise of
Islam. However, it is with that religion’s movement into the subcon-
tinent that the African presence becomes better documented. India
initially experienced Islamic incursions as early as 711, and in the late
tenth century Muslim forays from what is now Afghanistan and Iran
resulted in considerable plundering. Islam reached its political zenith
in the subcontinent under the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526) and the
Mughals (1526–1739).

Free Africans (as well as non-Africans) operated in Muslim-ruled
India as merchants, seafarers, clerics, bodyguards, and even bureau-
crats. Regarding slavery, African women and men assumed famil-
iar roles as concubines and servile soldiers; in 1459, for example,
some 8,000 served in Bengal’s army. Called “Habshis” (from the
word h. abashiyyāt) and “Siddis” (from the title sayyid, afforded cap-
tains of vessels), Africans settled in a variety of locales. Enclaves of
Siddis can presently be found in such places as Gujarat (western India),
Habshiguda in Hyderabad (central India), and Janjira Island (south
of Bombay); the names Habshiguda and Janjira reflect an African
ancestry.

During the time of the Mughals, there were a number of African
Muslim rulers in the subcontinent. At least several Habshi rulers were
in the breakaway province of Bengal (eastern India), including Mālik
Andil (or Saiffuddı̄n Firuz, 1487–1490) and Nās.iruddı̄n Mah.mūd II
(1490–1491). There were also several rulers in the Deccan break-
way province of Ahmadnagar who were of African descent, including

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 45

Chand Bibi (d. 1600), a princess who led Ahmadnagar resistance
against the Mughals. Perhaps the most famous of all was Mālik Ambar
(d. 1626), who supported Chand Bibi’s struggle against the Mughals
until her assassination. Mālik Ambar, possibly Ethiopian born, was
brought to India as a slave and eventually served as a highly educated
military commander. Noted for his religious tolerance and patronage
of the arts and learning, he ruled for twenty years and earned the
admiration of Indians and Europeans alike.

The Image of the African in the Islamic World

The Muslim view of the African was an evolutionary process, informed
by changing circumstances over time. Whatever the initial attitude
toward the African, the trade in slaves via the Sahara, Red Sea, and
Indian Ocean had some impact, but the fact that enslaved Europeans
and Asians were also imported into the Islamic world, and in greater
numbers until the eighteenth century, suggests that the slave trade
alone was not solely responsible for a less than complimentary view
of the African. Other factors, essentially cultural, must have played a
role.

There is no trace of racism in the Qur’ān. Rather, there is the as-
sertion that difference is of divine decree:

And among His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and
the diversity of your languages and colors. In that surely are signs for
those who know.

(sūra or chapter 30, al-Rūm, verse 23)

This nonevaluative acknowledgment of what is now called racial diver-
sity is indicative of the early Muslim period in the Arabian peninsula.
There, color was both insignificant and variable, depending upon who
was being compared. While Bedouins were usually described as brown
or olive, Arabs at times characterized themselves as black vis-à-vis red
Persians, but in comparison with black Africans these same Arabs be-
came red or even white. Furthermore, the concept of red took on
metaphoric meaning with Islam’s early expansion, as the hated red
Persians were now the subjects of the Arabs, and redness took on
a pejorative connotation. In this way, Greeks, Spaniards, and other
Mediterranean populations also became red.

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46 REVERSING SAIL

It is not surprising that the Qur’ān is devoid of racial bias, or that
Arabs depicted themselves as black and brown. Seventh-century Ara-
bia was surrounded by far more powerful Sassanian (Persian), Byzan-
tine, and Ethiopian empires, who fought each other for influence in the
peninsula. The dominant peninsular power was Yemen in the south-
west (called Arabia Felix by the Romans), which was distinct from the
rest of the peninsula because of its urban-sustaining agriculture and
because of extensive ties with Ethiopia. The latter had both invaded
and conquered southern Arabia in the fourth century, taking control
of the spice and silk trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian
Ocean that passed through Arabia. With Sassanian help, the Yemenis
pushed the Ethiopians out around 375, but the Ethiopians returned
triumphantly in 512. The subsequent defeat of Ethiopian garrisons
led to another Ethiopian expedition around 525. A few years later,
divine intervention, according to the Qur’ān (sūra 105, al-Fı̄l, or “the
Elephant”), turned back an Ethiopian assault on Mecca.

Ethiopian incursions are but one example of interaction between
the Horn of Africa and Arabia that has existed for millennia; related
languages and cultures are another. Such interconnectedness suggests
that Ethiopians and Nubians made contributions to the Yemeni and
Arab gene pool, along with other populations from the Horn. It is
therefore no surprise that one of the greatest poets of pre-Islamic Ara-
bia was ↪Antara (or ↪Antar), son of an enslaved Ethiopian or Nubian
mother and an Arab father. Born in the pre-Islamic jahilı̄yya period
(“time of barbarism”), ↪Antara followed his mother’s status and was a
slave, but he earned his freedom through military prowess. His back-
ground is similar to that of another figure of the early Islamic period,
Khufāf b. Nadba, son of an Arab father and enslaved black mother
who rose to become head of his (Arab) group or “tribe.” On the other
hand, many Arabs had black skin but apparently were not descended
from Africans; such was true of ↪Ubāda b. al-S. āmit, an Arab of noble
birth and a leader of the Arab conquest of Egypt.

The impression that blackness was no barrier is bolstered by the
example of Muh.ammad himself, who, facing mounting opposition
to his message, sent seventy of his followers to seek asylum with the
Ethiopian ruler in 615, presaging the official hijra or “flight” to Medina
in 622. Muh.ammad’s action revealed his esteem for the piety of the
Ethiopians, a sentiment consistent with Homer’s much earlier charac-
terization of the “Ethiopians.” There were also a number of persons of
Nubian or Ethiopian descent among the Companions of the Prophet,

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 47

perhaps the most famous having been Islam’s first muezzin (who calls
the faithful to prayers), Bilāl b. Rabāh. , born into slavery in Mecca and
an early convert to Islam. Purchased and manumitted by Abū Bakr
(Islam’s first caliph or successor to Muhammad as well as his father-
in-law), Bilāl became the Prophet’s personal attendant. In addition
to Bilāl, notables of known African descent include the caliph ↪Umar
(634–644), the grandson of an Ethiopian or Nubian woman, and the
conqueror of Egypt; and ↪Amr b. al-↪Ās., similarly descended from an
Ethiopian or Nubian female ancestor. The Prophet himself may have
been of partial African descent, as his grandfather and paternal un-
cle Abū T. ālib were both reputed to be “black.” Therefore, significant
Ethiopian or Nubian influences were circulating at the very core of Is-
lam’s foundation. Given Ethiopia’s ascendancy, if anyone felt inferior
in the seventh century, it would have been the Arabs.

And yet, there is something unsettling about these relations. One
wonders if the potential for bias was not already present in pre-Islamic
and early Islamic Arabia, for, despite the prominence of all of these
men of Ethiopian or Nubian descent, it is striking that so many of them
descend from enslaved mothers. Perhaps free Nubian or Ethiopian-
born males were much rarer in Arab society than enslaved Nubian or
Ethiopian women, so that the most common African figure in Arab
society was a female slave. If so, Arab society may have begun associ-
ating Africans with slavery before the rise of Islam. ↪Antara reflects an
Arab acceptance of difference, but his own background suggests that
Africans within the Arab world largely entered by way of the servile
estate.

The expansion of Arab armies in the seventh and eighth centuries
was probably the period during which Arab views of Africans began
to change. Arabs were already suffering from ethnocentricity, as Islam
had been revealed to an Arab and the revelation forever sealed in his
language. It was not even clear that Islam was meant for non-Arabs.
With the world now divided into believers and infidels, the rise of the
transsaharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean slave trades did not bode well
for Africans, especially those with whom Arabs had little experience.
Their high regard for the Ethiopian and Nubian continued, but they
were distinguished from other Africans such as the Nūba, Bujja (Beja),
Zanj, and the Sūdān (from West Africa). Lack of familiarity played
some role, but since most Africans entered Islamic lands as young fe-
males, the Arab view of Africans was also informed by the perception
of African women. Whatever the answer, Muslim societies became

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48 REVERSING SAIL

increasingly accustomed to seeing Africans as enslaved menials. The
struggle over the meaning of blackness in early Islamic society can be
seen in the poetry of “the crows of the Arabs” (aghribat al-↪Arab), men
who lived during the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods and who
were dark-skinned but not necessarily of African ancestry. These po-
ets alternately bemoaned and defended their blackness. One Suh.aym
(d. 660), whose name means “little black man,” wrote this:

If my color were pink, women would love me
But the Lord has marred me with blackness.

Though I am a slave my soul is nobly free
Though I am black of color my character is white.

A century later, one of the most popular of these poets, Abū Dulāma
(d. ca. 776), was a court jester for the Abbasids in Baghdad; he wrote
the following in derision of his mother and family:

We are alike in color; our faces are black and
ugly, our names are shameful.

One hundred years later, one of the best-known composers of prose in
classical Arabic literature, Jāh. iz. (d. 869), also alleged to be of partial
African ancestry, wrote (among other things) that the Zanj “are the
least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind.”

Some of this literature comes out of the Persian Gulf, where one of
the consequences of the Zanj revolt may have been an anti-Zanj back-
lash of sentiment. Some scholars see the revolt as the principal cause of
antiblack expressions, but the revolt did not begin until 868, well after
many of these black poets were already dead. Yet another argument
is that Persian Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, with their emphasis
on conflict between darkness and light, associated darkness with dark
skin and light with white skin and influenced Muslim thinking. While
this is all speculative, one source makes clear the view of the African
in the Persian Gulf. The Thousand and One Nights, an apparent com-
pilation of stories developed by Persian, Indian, and Chinese travelers
and merchants, is associated with the early days of Baghdad’s Abbasid
caliphate. Black folk are mentioned frequently in the book, principally
as slaves or servants of some kind. Enslaved black men are also fea-
tured at the book’s beginning, engaged in sexual escapades with King
Shahzāmān’s wife and twenty other female members of his household.
Some of the most pervasive stereotypes of black folk known in the

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 49

Western world were therefore already taking shape in ninth-century
Iraq and elsewhere in the Islamic world.

Those Muslims arriving at a negative assessment of the African did
not do so on their own, but in dialogue with other traditions and pre-
ceding opinions. One influence was Galen (fl. 122–155), whose work
on anatomy remained the seminal text in medicine for both Chris-
tians and Muslims through the medieval period. Galen was the official
physician for gladiators at the Pergamum circus, and there presumably
came into contact with blacks. In an interesting and fateful conjunc-
tion, it was the famous al-Mas↪udı̄ (d. 956) who introduced Galen to
the Muslim world by quoting the Greek physician’s observations of
black men. Galen, al-Mas↪udı̄ stated,

mentions ten specific attributes of the black man, which are found in
him and no other; frizzy hair, thin eyebrows, broad nostrils, thick lips,
pointed teeth, smelly skin, black eyes, furrowed hands and feet, a long
penis and great merriment. Galen says that merriment dominates the
black man because of his defective brain, whence also the weakness of
his intelligence.

Besides Galen, other sources were interpretations of Christian and
Jewish texts condemning black skin as the curse of Ham.

Not all Muslims adopted unfavorable views of blacks. There were
those who respected Africans, citing their roles as Companions of the
Prophet as well as their virtues. The “defenders of the blacks” included
such leading intellectuals as Jamāl al-Dı̄n Abū’l-Faraj b. al-Jawzı̄ (d.
1208), who wrote The Lightening of the Darkness on the Merits of the
Blacks and the Ethiopians; and the Egyptian scholar Jalāl al-Dı̄n al-
Suyūt.ı̄ (d. 1505), who wrote The Raising of the Status of the Ethiopians.
Individuals such as al-Suyūt.ı̄ had substantial experience with subsaha-
ran Africans and knew a number of their scholars and political leaders
personally. One must therefore be careful not to paint the entire Mus-
lim world with the same broad stroke.

Furthermore, it is not clear that prior to the sixteenth century the
Muslim view of Europeans was any better than their assessment of
Africans. The idea that geography and climate determined group char-
acteristics was popularized by the tenth-century Persian physician Ibn
Sı̄nā. Because of western Europe’s cold climate and cultural unattrac-
tiveness, Muslims by and large held little respect for it, enslaving many
from southeastern Europe. Arab and Persian Muslims who may have

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50 REVERSING SAIL

felt contempt for Africans also felt superior to Europeans, as the follow-
ing quote from an Arab living in eleventh-century al-Andalus reflects:

For those who live furthest to the north . . . the excessive distance from
the sun in relation to the zenith line makes the air cold and the at-
mosphere thick. Their temperaments are therefore frigid, their humors
[dispositions] raw, their bellies gross, their color pale, their hair long and
lank. Thus, they lack keenness of understanding and clarity of intelli-
gence, and are overcome by ignorance and dullness, lack of discernment,
and stupidity. Such are the Slavs, the Bulgars, and their neighbors.

In view of the symmetry in opinions toward select Africans and Eu-
ropeans, the divergence in the Muslim view between the two groups
may well have come after the sixteenth century, when the trade in
Europeans began to diminish as its counterpart in Africans contin-
ued. By the eighteenth century, there was a fast association between
subsaharan Africans and slavery in the central Islamic lands, whereas
the enslavement of Europeans had largely become a thing of the past,
confined to memory and books.

Slavery’s Aftermath

What became of all these African slaves in the Islamic world? The an-
swer is by no means obvious, as descent traced through the free male
line obscures if not erases African maternal ancestry. A look at con-
temporary Arab populations in North Africa, Palestine, the Arabian
peninsula, and even the Saudi royal family reveals discernible African
features, but studies are insufficient to make conclusive statements. In
Morocco the fate of subsaharan blacks is clearer, as the descendants of
slaves, the h. arat.ı̄n (called bella further east), continue in servile subjec-
tion to Arabic- and Berber-speaking masters to the present day. The
free descendants of the h. arat.ı̄n also continued in subordination and
second-class citizenship through the nineteenth and into the twentieth
centuries, heavily dependent upon patron families. Like their Ameri-
can cosufferers, large numbers of the h. arat.ı̄n found themselves share-
cropping in southern Morocco, along the fringes of the Sahara, effec-
tively barred from any meaningful social mobility and virtually shut
out of systems of education. Nevertheless, also like their American
counterparts, the dispossessed of Morocco have experienced changes
for the better with the twentieth century’s progression. One famous

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 51

community of blacks in Morocco are the gnawa, noted for their distinct
musical traditions. In Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, the descendants
of subsaharan Africans (and North Africans, for that matter) practice
Islam along with bori, a cosmology concerned with the spirit world’s
interaction with the corporeal. Bori is a mixture of spirits – infants,
nature gods, spirits of deceased Muslim leaders, Muslim jinn (spir-
its), and so forth – who cause illness and who are appeased through
offerings, sacrifice, and dance possession. West African communities
practicing bori, such as the Songhay, Bambara, and Hausa, were dis-
tinguished in North Africa at least through the mid-twentieth cen-
tury. The practice of bori within dominant Muslim societies parallels
a similar persistence of subsaharan African religions in the Christian-
controlled Americas, and it is a testimony to the tenacity of African
culture even under duress.

In India and Pakistan, the descendants of the Habshis and Sid-
dis no longer speak African languages, but their worship and music
and dance are suffused with African content, influencing adherents of
both Hinduism and Islam. Hindu Siddis in India, for example, use
only Siddi priests for guidance in life, who have expertise in engag-
ing Siddi spirits; in Pakistan, the “Sheedis” venerate the Shi’ite leader
Imam H. usain (martyred at Karbala in 680) in a way that transforms
the latter into an active force. In addition to those of clear African de-
scent are the vast millions of Dalits, with whom the former may have
intermingled, along with the Shudra caste. Dalits, formerly referred to
as “untouchables,” were considered ritually polluting and outside of
the caste system, even below the Shudras. The Shudras, Dalits, and
Siddis have all experienced severe discrimination, their darker skins
not unrelated to their suffering.

Perhaps the greater mystery concerns the old Ottoman empire. Ap-
proximately 362,000 Africans were imported into its heartland during
the nineteenth century alone. The slave trade was abolished there in
1857, at which point all freed persons were required to serve as domes-
tics in designated households (presumably to preserve slaveholder in-
terests). Perhaps the disproportionate use of eunuchs, combined with
the high ratio of females to males, explains the apparent disappearance
of blacks there. It should be noted, however, that diffused settlements
of “Negroes” existed along the western slope of the Caucasus moun-
tains, in what is now Abkhazia and Georgia, until recent times. They
may have been descendants of the enslaved brought to the Black Sea re-
gion by the Ottomans; alternatively, they may be related to the ancient

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52 REVERSING SAIL

people of “Colchis,” as the area was called by the Greeks, where,
records Herodotus, the inhabitants were “black-skinned with wooly
hair.”

Suggestions for Further Reading

On the early or classical period of Islam’s history, one may begin
with Albert Habib Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge,
MA: Belknap of Harvard U. Press, 1991). More challenging is the
first volume of Marshall G. S. Hodgson’s three-volume The Venture of
Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: U. of
Chicago Press, 1974) and Fred Donner’s The Early Islamic Conquests
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 1981). For Muhammad, see W.
Montgomery Watt’s classics, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford: Claren-
don U. Press, 1953) and Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon
U. Press, 1956). An accessible reading of the sayings and traditions of
the Prophet is Alfred Guillaume, The Life of the Prophet: A Translation
of Ishaq’s Rasul Allah (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1967).

The scholarship regarding Islam in early West and East Africa is
voluminous, as is obviously true of the literature on Islam in general.
One could begin with Mervyn Hiskett’s The Development of Islam in
West Africa, although it is more concerned with what becomes Nigeria.
Nehemia Levtzion’s Islam in West Africa: Religion, Society and Politics
to 1800 (Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1994) and his Ancient Ghana and
Mali (London: Methuen, 1973) are also useful. There are excellent
articles in Nehemia Levtzion and Humphrey J. Fisher, eds., Rural and
Urban Islam in West Africa (Boulder, CO: Rienner, 1986). More chal-
lenging but thorough are the contributions to the first volume of J. F.
A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, eds., History of West Africa (London:
Longman, 1985), 3rd ed. Though dated, two enjoyable classics re-
main Félix Dubois, Timbuctoo the Mysterious, trans. Diana White (New
York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1896) and E. W. Bovill, The Golden
Trade of the Moors (London: Oxford U. Press, 1968). For African ur-
ban areas, see Graham Connah, African Civilizations. Precolonial Cities
and States in Tropical Africa: An Archaeological Perspective (Cambridge:
Cambridge U. Press, 1987). For East Africa specifically, see J. F. Safari,
The Making of Islam in East Africa (Dar es Salaam: Benedictine Pub-
lications Ndanda-Peramiho, 1994). Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti’s
Islam in East Africa, New Sources: Archives, Manuscripts and Written

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 53

Historical Sources, Oral History, Archaeology (Rome: Herder, 2001) is a
collection of data from a 1999 conference, and it is helpful. For more
focused studies, consider Randle L. Pouwells, Horn and Crescent: Cul-
tural Change and Traditional Islam on the East African Coast, 800–1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1987) and Frederick Cooper, Plan-
tation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa (New Haven, CT: Yale U. Press,
1977).

Mention of Cooper’s work provides a segue into the topic of slavery.
Ralph Austen’s African Economic History: Internal Development and Ex-
ternal Dependency (London: J. Curry; Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann,
1987) contains an important discussion of the volume and organi-
zation of the various external slave trades, while Paul E. Lovejoy’s
Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge U. Press, 1983) and Patrick Manning’s
Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades
(Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1990) combine these insights with
discussions of domestic slavery and arguments about the implications
of slave trading for Africa. Moving to the actual sites of enslavement,
John O. Hunwick’s “African Slaves in the Mediterranean World: A
Neglected Aspect of the African Diaspora,” in Joseph E. Harris, ed.,
Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora (Washington, DC: Howard
U. Press, 1993), is an excellent overview. R. Brunschvig’s “Abd,” in
The Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960), new ed., addresses
the equation of African slaves with this term. Bernard Lewis’s Race and
Color in Islam (New York: Octagon Books, 1971) and his Race and Slav-
ery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (New York and Oxford:
Oxford U. Press, 1990) are probably the most thorough discussions of
the African presence in the Islamic world, although they are somewhat
controversial in that translations from Arabic to English tend to favor
the more pejorative of possible meanings. Compare with Murray Gor-
don, Slavery in the Arab World (New York: New Amsterdam, 1989),
who emphasizes the sexual component of slavery. Important studies
in various sites of the Islamic world include John Ralph Willis, ed.,
Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa (London, England, and Totowa,
NJ: 1985), 2 vols.; Y. Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and
Its Demise, 1800–1909 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Alexan-
dre Popovi’c, The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9th Century,
trans. Léon King (Princeton, NJ: Markus Weiner, 1999); and Ehud R.
Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle: U.
of Washington Press, 1998). Graham W. Irwin’s Africans Abroad (New

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54 REVERSING SAIL

York: Columbia U. Press, 1977) provides translations of important
documents. Information and accounts of the movement and experi-
ences of slaves in Africa and the Middle East can be found in Martin
Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge:
Cambridge U. Press, 1998); Paul Lovejoy and Jan Hogendorn, Slow
Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–
1936 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1993); and John O. Hunwick
and Eve Trout Powell, eds., The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean
Lands of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Markus Weiner, 2002).

Concerning more contemporary subsaharan communities in North
Africa and their cultures, see Mohammed Ennaji, Serving the Master:
Slavery and Society in Nineteenth-Century Morocco, trans. Seth Graeb-
ner (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Émile Dermenghem, Le culte
des saints dans l’islam maghrébin (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1954); Vin-
cent Crapanzano, The Hamadsha: A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry
(Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1973); A. J. N. Tremearne, The Ban
of the Bori: Demons and Demon-Dancing in West and North Africa (Lon-
don: Heath, Cranton, and Ouseley, 1914); and Janice Boddy, Wombs
and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zār Cult in Northern Sudan
(Madison: U. of Wisconsin Press, 1989).

Context for the question of Africans in India is provided by K.
N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the In-
dian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge U.
Press, 1990). Joseph E. Harris was one of the first to pursue this topic
in The African Presence in Asia; Consequences of the East Asian Slave
Trade (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1971). Fitzroy A. Baptiste’s
“The African Presence in India,” in Africa Quarterly 38 (no. 2, 1998:
92–126), is a fine analysis, linking the discussion to Trinidad. V. T.
Rajshekhar raises vexing issues in Dalit: The Black Untouchables of In-
dia (Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 1995), while Vijay Prashad argues for
coalitions that are based on racial categories in “Afro-Dalits of the
Earth, Unite!,” in African Studies Review 43 (no. 1, 2000: 189–201).
The most recent literature is to be found in Edward Alpers and Amy
Catlin-Jairazbhoy, eds., Sidis and Scholars: Essays on African Indians
(New Delhi: Rainbow; Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003).

Concerning Moorish Spain, one should begin with Jamil M. Abun-
Nasr, A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge U. Press, 1987). For the adventurous with interest in North
Africa, look at Ibn Khaldun’s The Muqadimmah, trans. Franz Rosen-
thal (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958) and his Histoire des Berbères

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AFRICANS AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD 55

et des dynasties musulmanes de L’Afrique septentrionale, trans. (Paris: P.
Geuthner, 1925–56). Other references include L. P. Harvey, Islamic
Spain, 1250–1500 (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1990); D. Fairchild
Ruggles, Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain
(University Park: Pennsylvania State U. Press, 2000); Ivan Van Ser-
tima, Golden Age of the Moor (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1992);
Mark D. Meyerson and Edward D. English, eds., Christians, Muslims
and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural
Change (Notre Dame, IN: U. of Notre Dame Press, 1999); Thomas
F. Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle: Social and Cultural
Change in Medieval Spain (Manchester, England: Manchester U. Press;
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); and Hugh Kennedy, Muslim
Spain and Portugal: A Political History of al-Andalus (London and New
York: Longman, 1996). Bernard Lewis’s The Muslim Discovery of Eu-
rope (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982) and Maribel Fierro, Judı́os y
musulmanes en al-Andalus y el Magreb: contactos intelectuales (Madrid:
Casa de Velázquez, 2002), provide a discussion of Europe’s intellectual
engagement with Muslims in Iberia and elsewhere.

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