Zanj

The Zanj also often written Zanj (Arabic زنج, DMG Zanǧ ), were the black slaves who worked in the salt marshes in the 9th century in the south of present-day Iraq. The name is derived from a geographical name: The Zanj - " land of the blacks " - designated Arab navigators until the 19th century, the coastal region of East Africa. Zandschi in Arabic but also simply " negro ", with similar connotations as the German word. The term already appears on the map of Ptolemy and in the itinerary Periplus Maris Erythraei.

In the 9th century, the salt marshes were scheduled opened in the lower Mesopotamia and built with slaves from East Africa, a plantation economy that served the growing of luxury fruit for long-distance trade and accounted for a major part of the revenue of the Islamic cities: sugarcane, cloves, cotton, dates. The sugar was obtained, for example, widely traded commodity with Christian Europe, which knew no other sugars as the Islamic from the countries for centuries.

The work of development and plantation management was a matter for the Zanj, so that it can be determined that the Atlantic slave trade brought about through the economy in the overseas colonies of Europeans had a similarly structured precursor.

Was under the leadership of Ali ben Muhammad, an Arab who posed as a relative of Muhammad, poet and teacher and himself the Mahdi ( " Messiah " ) was proclaimed, it was 869 for the revolt of the Zanj, the rapidly deposited two hundred years before revolts in the years 689, 690 and 694 had preceded. 871 Basra was occupied by the rebellious black slaves, and there was an independent state of Zanj with a near Basra newly created capital al - Muchtara. Muhammad declared himself Aliden, a descendant of Ali, and sought an alliance with Hamdan Qarmat, the founder of sectarian Qaramita. On August 11, 883 Ali ben Muhammad was hit by a deadly arrow, and the Zanj gave up the fight. They were, if not executed, recorded, for bravery in the opposing army, but it enslaved again. One goal was definitely reached: The draining of the marshes and desalination have been set, and the cultivation of sugar cane restricted. Other Zanj, however, made two years later 885 with an uprising in al - Wasit on the Tigris talked about. Since they were left to themselves without Muslim leaders, they were quickly wiped out and cruelly punished accordingly.

All riots had on the slave trade with Africa has no effect, and remained the blacks, if not more than " Zanj " so under other names until the 20th century an important Einfuhrgut in Islamic countries. English is estimated, for example, assume that sold 600 000 prisoners 1830-1873 alone in Zanzibar and shipped out. To between the 7th and the beginning of the 20th century by the American historian Ralph A. Austen (1979 ) were deported to Islamic countries in approximately 17 million Africans on the various routes through the Sahara, through the Red Sea and along the Indian Ocean be.