Race and Slavery in the Middle East (2010) edited by Terrance Waltz and Kenneth Cuno. The American University Press in Cairo, Cairo, New York The brittle mood against blacks in post-Muammar Gaddafi's Libya and the current accumulating discomfiture among Egypt's four million-strong Nubian community point to a sense that a meticulous examination of the conditions of black-skinned people in the Middle East and North Africa is long overdue. The warning systems of the politically correct in the Arab world will be flashing red in the months ahead. Being black in the Arab world was always a matter of paradox and ambiguity. The authors rightly point out that Arab aversion to blackness was historically misconstrued as a misconception based on traditional stereotypes. However, the past precedes the present and this seminal work by cerebral scholars is much more than cold-blooded tales of the cruelty and crassness of slavery, submission to Sharia laws, racial oppression and calculated cynicism in a bygone age. After a gap of a mere century, battle has been joined again. And, the battle for public opinion about prejudicing the civil rights of blacks in the Arab world has always been a contentious issue. The facts spoke for themselves. Blacks have historically been alienated in this part of the world. There could be no argument about that. Yet as far as numerous Arab intellectuals are concerned prejudice against blacks was a peripheral question. Not just summary dismissal of the subject but an orchestrated howl of disapproval drowned all reason. What the authors do not explain is that those who insist that Arabs are not racists or colour conscious are political ideologues who cut their teeth in the Arab-Israeli wars. So why is it that the authors are now digging up such a long-dead topic? They do so precisely because the phenomenon of racism in the Arab world is alive and kicking. It takes some explaining, but Walz and Cuno lay it out until the entire mycelium of historical self-delusion is laid bare. Slavery was an institution that fitted snugly in medieval Islamic societies. Racism was a philosophy, or ideology, that did not. For a region mired in a colossal crisis of confidence, grappling with democratisation and the promulgation of laws that guarantee full citizenship rights regardless of gender, race or religious affiliation, Race and Slavery in the Middle East could not have been published at a more opportune moment. The underlying assumption that the Arab World is free of the racial baggage of Western nations is starkly out of date. This momentous study in the histories of black Africans in nineteenth century Egypt, Sudan and the Ottoman Mediterranean is compelling in passages. It is also, at times, oddly disengaged. Editors Terrance Walz and Kenneth Cuno, respectively the authors of Trade Between Egypt and Bilad Al-Sudan, 1700-1820, and The Pasha's Peasants: Land, Society and Economy in Lower Egypt, construe a marked difference in construct between institutionalised plantation slavery in the Americas and the domestic slavery -- wet-nurses and eunuchs of the harems -- so prevalent in Ottoman North Africa and the Middle East. The latter's slaves fall into a category that in the United States was once pejoratively dismissed as "House Niggers". Blacks in North Africa and the Middle East were musicians and magicians, fortune-tellers and soldiers of fortune. Yet there is no escaping the fact that in numerous contemporary colloquial Arabic dialects the word for "blacks" and "slaves" is simultaneously both interchangeable and indistinguishable. The term "abd" is at once "slave" and "a black person" in contemporary Middle Eastern Arabic dialects. "A near-consensus is apparent among the contributors on the popular association of Africans' colour and origin -- here perceived 'blackness' and sub-Saharan origin -- with servile status. This obviously was a consequence of the large proportion of slaves who were trans-Saharan Africans." The linguistic connotation differs somewhat in North Africa where a curious consciousness in the deep recesses of the collective memory of North African peoples harks back to a time when blacks were the primeval precedence and preeminence. Egyptians might refer to blacks pejoratively as "barabra" -- barbarians, but never as an "abd" -- slave. The preferred term, curiously both pejorative and endearing is "samara" -- darkie. The reader must not expect tidy resolutions precisely because history is never simple. Race and Slavery in the Middle East is a remarkable achievement. It is a compelling and haunting narrative of the lives of black men and women in Ottoman times slither away from cautionary optimism and into the melodramatically tragic. As this poignant study implies, slavery and racial prejudice in the Middle East and North Africa still has a jeopardous resonance. The abiding revulsion with which Arabs view blackness is that such colour prejudice is justified, legitimised and even motivated by faith, since most blacks are inherently infidels. "Slaves would arm themselves with talismans on the eve of uprisings to render themselves invincible or would simply take comfort or protection from such amulets in their daily lives," notes Hakam Erdem. "Ottoman history has few examples of communal acts of rebellion or resistance by African slaves; only individual acts of resistance involving murder are on the record. The infinitely more developed historiography of [American] antebellum slavery," the author points out, "can offer some insights into the role of conjurers on resistance by African slaves in Ottoman contexts. Conjurers as healers of the sick, fortune tellers, and interpreters of the unknown were believed to determine the outcome of events and commanded fear and respect among their fellow slaves." This line of attack may have some resonance among the bulk of Libyans fed up with Gaddafi's obsession with the Nkrumaist notion of African Unity. This irksome anti-Sub-Saharan Africa sentiment emerged because in recent months opponents of Libya's former strongman Gaddafi have succeeded in disseminating the notion that blacks, be they Libyan nationals or migrants workers from African south of the Sahara, were in the employ of Gaddafi. He was the champion the black Africans and his adversaries ousted him from office and now revile Gaddafi's favoured sub-Saharans. The keen judgement and mastery of sources that the contributors to this momentous work display sets the contentious subject of slavery in Ottoman times in its historical context so well. "The slave trade from sub-Saharan Africa to Egypt is ancient. Egypt relied on slave recruits for its military from the early medieval period onward," muses one contributor, and he paints a vivid portrait of battles that are anything but flat. "The tradition of strengthening the soldiery with black recruits was continued by Mohamed Ali." This historical fact makes it all too easy for Gaddafi's detractors to cast his use of black African mercenaries as an Ottoman throwback. "Many historians argue that the experiment in the recruitment of slaves failed even before it began because death spread quickly among the recruits, killing them in the thousands." Indeed, Mohamed Ali's invasion of Sudan in 1805-48 had as its principal aim the forcible recruitment of men to serve in the new regiments he sought to train in the modern army he envisioned. This exhilarating, idea-thirsty work combs through the diverse facets of the lives of slaves in the Ottoman Middle East and North Africa. This collection of memorable chapters is full of intriguing facts. Among the jostling subcultures of black African slaves and in the marginal spaces of Ottoman cities the creativity of the slaves could churn and flow. Slaves contributed to the rich musical life of Egypt. "In Egypt, where it was once vibrant and often centered on beer taverns and in private homes, it is now fading but can still be heard in concerts and in specialised performance spaces in Cairo." This book undeniably has pertinent lessons for its readers. There is much to inspire and the slaves' lives were not necessarily all about disappointments and disillusionment. The authors pull no punches with the slavers and slave owners. Amid all the carnage and casual cruelty there are moments of light relief. "Among the most important avenues of leisure activities in Khartoum's shantytowns and neighbourhoods were the anadi and brothels �ê� the anadi were run by freed female slaves who sold araqi and marisa (potent alcoholic beverages)." The descriptions of the depraved freed female slaves of Turco-EgyptianKhartoum makes today's western and southern Sudanese harlots look piffling. "Prostitutes came from a wide range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds �ê� Prostitution emerged as organised sex work in response to the demand that accompanied urban growth and migration to the city, but emancipated women resorted to it out of a lack of other opportunities. Indeed, prostitution was an argument used by both slave owners and later colonial officials against emancipation." The genius of emancipated black women for self-advertisement alerted them exactly to what would catch their prospective clients' attention and keep them in business. At the end of these mind-boggling and heart-wrenching accounts of slavery in Ottoman days, one wonders why the tragedy of that legacy is still being played out today in countries as far afield as Libya and Saudi Arabia. In general, North African and Arabian governments of all stripes have been chary of rolling out the heavy artillery in the public arena. They have eschewed forcing through by military might a measure for twisted social justice against blacks depriving dark-skinned people of full citizenship rights, in deference to the will of the lighter-skinned majority populations. The chilling evocation of the past is still with us in the twenty-first century. It is against this backdrop that blacks in the Arab world, even today, are viewed suspiciously as the enemy within. The National Transitional Council of Libya (NTC) would try to play upon fears of ordinary olive-skinned Libyans that Gaddafi's determination to turf them out of the Libyan political establishment had less to do with a concern for democracy and meritocracy. Rather it had more to do with a determination to neuter one of the few checks on his power. Intended as a temporary measure, pending further reforms, the leaders of the NTC counseled against retribution. The past is resurrected with all its terrifying and teeming animation. The contemporary Arab world at times appears to be knuckle-white with suspense about the political future of the black communities it cannot contain and the concomitant social implications. Nubians are beginning to get their act together on full citizenship rights in Egypt and Sudan. However, public attitudes towards political reforms may be less predictable than some Nubians hope. Gaddafi may have handed the NTC the ammunition it needs to win the battle of Libyan public opinion against blacks. The blacks of Libya themselves have tried to be careful in picking their battles with the NTC. Libyan blacks have desperately tried to grab the democratic high-ground in a post-Gaddafi Libya. The NTC now chronicles the atrocities of the Gaddafi regime. His extolling of the virtues of blacks marked his speeches. The NTC made it clear that it is only too eager to play the "people versus the blacks" card. Race and Slavery in the Middle East by Walz and Cuno is a shocking memoir of why contemporary blacks in the region suffer the indignities that they do today. Few Arab leaders cared to uplift the lowly social status of their black subjects. Fewer still instituted social and political reforms that guarantee full civil rights to their black compatriots. Apart from minor tinkerings those reforms never came to fruition. Black rights was never a top priority as far as the Arab ruling elite was concerned. Crete, it appears, played a vital role in the slave trade of the Ottoman Empire. African slaves were shipped from the Libyan ports of Tripoli and Benghazi to Istanbul, Salonika and Izmir via Crete. End of story? Yes and no. "Slaves or siblings? Abdallah Al-Nadim's Dialogues about the Family" by Eve Trout-Power is a poignant epilogue, a heart-warming wrap-up. "The challenge for modern readers of these texts is to strike an intelligent and sensitive balance between treating them as absolute and unbiased fact and dismissing them as useless fabrications." Reviewed by Gamal Nkrumah
