Zanj (Arabic: زنج, "Land of the Blacks" or "Land of the Negroes"^[1]) was a name used by medieval Arab geographers to refer to both a certain portion of the coast of East Africa and its inhabitants, Bantu-speaking peoples called the Zanj.^[2] The seaboard is also the origin of the place name "Zanzibar".

Division of East Africa[link]

Geographers historically divided the coast of East Africa at large into several regions based on each region's respective inhabitants. In northern Somalia was Barbara, which was the land of the Eastern Baribah or Barbaroi (Berbers), as the ancestors of the Somalis were referred to by medieval Arab and ancient Greek geographers, respectively.^[2][3][4] In modern-day Ethiopia was al-Habash or Abyssinia,^[5] which was inhabited by the Habash or Abyssinians, who were the forebears of the Habesha.^[6]

Arab and Chinese sources referred to the general area south of the Abyssinian highlands and Barbara as Zanj, or the "country of the Blacks".^[7] Also transliterated as Zenj or Zinj, it was inhabited by Bantu-speaking peoples called the Zanj.^[2][8][7] The core area of Zanj occupation stretched from the territory south of present-day Mogadishu,^[9] to Pemba Island in Tanzania. South of Pemba lay Sofala in modern Mozambique, the northern boundary of which may have been Pangani. Beyond Sofala was the obscure realm of Waq-Waq, also in Mozambique.^[10][11] The tenth-century Arab historian and geographer Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī describes Sofala as the furthest limit of Zanj settlement and mentions its king's title as Mfalme, a Bantu word.^[2]

History of Zanj[link]

The Zanj traded extensively with Arabs, Persians and Indians, but according to some sources only locally since they possessed no ocean-going ships.^[2] According to other sources the heavily-Bantu Swahili peoples already had seafaring vessels with sailors and merchants trading with Arabia and Persia and as far east as India and China.^[12][13][14] Through this trade, some Arabs intermarried with local Bantu women, which eventually gave rise to the Swahili culture and language -- both Bantu in origin but significantly influenced by foreign elements (e.g. clothing, loan words, etc.).^[15]

Prominent settlements of the Zanj coast included Shungwaya (Bur Gao), as well as Malindi, Gedi, and Mombasa. By the late medieval period, the area included at least 37 substantial Swahili trading towns, many of them quite wealthy. However, these communities never consolidated into a single political entity (the "Zanj Empire" being a late nineteenth-century fiction).

The urban ruling and commercial classes of these Swahili settlements was occupied by Arab and Persian immigrants. The Bantu peoples inhabited the coastal regions, and were organized only as family groups.^[2] The term 'shenzi' used on the East African coast and derived from Swahili "zanji" referred in a derogatory way to anything associated with rural blacks. An example of this would be the colonial term a "shenzi" dog, referring to a native dog.

The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696 AD, we learn of slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab masters in Iraq (see Zanj Rebellion). Ancient Chinese texts also mention ambassadors from Java presenting the Chinese emperor with two Seng Chi (Zanji) slaves as gifts, and Seng Chi slaves reaching China from the Hindu kingdom of Sri Vijaya in Java.^[16]

The term "Zanj" apparently fell out of use in the tenth century. However, after 1861, when the area controlled by the Arab Sultan of Zanzibar was forced by the British to split with the parent country of Oman, it was often referred to as Zanj.^{[citation needed]}. The sea off the south-eastern coast of Africa was known as the "Sea of Zanj" and included the Mascarene islands and Madagascar. During the anti-apartheid struggle it was proposed that South Africa should assume the name 'Azania' to reflect ancient Zanj.

Arab views on the Zanj[link]

Arab descriptions of Zanj have been inconsistent.^[16][17] A negative view is exemplified in the following passage from Kitab al-Bad' wah-tarikh, vol.4 by the medieval Arab writer Al-Muqaddasi:

"As for the Zanj, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence."

"We know that the Zanj (blacks) are the least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind, and the least capable of understanding the consequences of actions."

-- Jahiz (d. 868 AD), Kitab al-Bukhala (The Book of Misers)

"Like the crow among mankind are the Zanj for they are the worst of men and the most vicious of creatures in character and temperament."

Al Jahiz, Kitab al-Hayawan, vol. 2

However, the 9th-century Muslim author Al-Jahiz, an Afro-Arab and the grandson of a Zanj (Bantu)^[2][3][8] slave, disagreed.

"They say; If a Zanji and a Zanji women marry and their children remain after puberty in Iraq, they come to rule the roost thanks to their numbers, endurance, intelligence, and efficiency."

Al-Jahiz also wrote a book entitled Risalat mufakharat al-Sudan 'ala al-bidan ("Treatise on the Superiority of Blacks over Whites"), in which he stated that Blacks:

"...have conquered the country of the Arabs as far as Mecca and have governed them. We defeated Dhu Nowas (Jewish King of Yemen) and killed all the Himyarite princes, but you, White people, have never conquered our country. Our people, the Zenghs (Negroes) revolted forty times in the Euphrates, driving the inhabitants from their homes and making Oballah a bath of blood.^[18]

"...Blacks are physically stronger than no matter what other people. A single one of them can lift stones of greater weight and carry burdens such as several Whites could not lift nor carry between them. [...] They are brave, strong, and generous as witness their nobility and general lack of wickedness..."

In 1331, the Arabic-speaking Berber explorer Ibn Battuta visited the Kilwa Sultanate in the Land of Zanj, which was ruled by Sultan Hasan bin Sulayman's Yemeni dynasty.^[19] Battuta described the kingdom's Arab ruler as often making slave and booty raids on the local Zanj inhabitants, the latter of whom Battuta characterized as "jet-black in color, and with tattoo marks on their faces."^[19]

"Kilwa is one of the most beautiful and well-constructed towns in the world. The whole of it is elegantly built. The roofs are built with mangrove pole. There is very much rain. The people are engaged in a holy war, for their country lies beside the pagan Zanj. Their chief qualities are devotion and piety: they follow the Shafi'i sect. When I arrived, the Sultan was Abu al-Muzaffar Hasan surnamed Abu al-Mawahib [loosely translated, "The Giver of Gifts"]... on account of his numerous charitable gifts. He frequently makes raids into the Zanj country [neighboring mainland], attacks them and carries off booty, of which he reserves a fifth, using it in the manner prescribed by the Koran [Qur'an]."^[19]

Zanj Rebellion[link]

The Zanj Rebellion refers to a series of uprisings which took place over a period of fifteen years (869-883 AD) near the city of Basra (also known as Basara) in modern day Iraq.

The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in hard agriculture-related outdoor work.^[20] In particular, Zanj slaves were used in labor-intensive plantations, harvesting crops like sugarcane in the lower Mesopotamia basin of southern modern-day Iraq, a relatively unusual development in the Islamic world, which generally reserved slave labor for household chores and as soldiers. Harsh circumstances apparently motivated, between the seventh and ninth centuries, three rebellions, the largest of which occurred between 868 and 883.^[21]

Others have taken a different interpretation of the Zanj rebellion believing that it was not a slave rebellion but that the revolt was mostly Arabs supported by East African immigrants in Iraq. This view was taken by M. A. Shaban who argued:

"It was not a slave revolt. It was a zanj, i.e. a Negro, revolt. To equate Negro with slave is a reflection of nineteenth-century racial theories; it could only apply to the American South before the Civil War."

"All the talk about slaves rising against the wretched conditions of work in the salt marshes of Basra is a figment of the imagination and has no support in the sources. On the contrary, some of the people who were working in the salt marshes were among the first to fight against the revolt. Of course there were a few runaway slaves who joined the rebels, but this still does not make it a slave revolt. The vast majority of the rebels were Arabs of the Persian Gulf supported by free East Africans who had made their homes in the region."^[22]

See also[link]

• Swahili people
• Zingium
• Zanj Rebellion
• Arab slave trade
• Zanzibar

References[link]

External links[link]

• African Revolts
• Map of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1886 showing Zanj