Enslaved Africans and Balochis on the Arabian Peninsula, 1926-1938

FAIN: HB-251279-17

Alaine Hutson
Huston-Tillotson College (Austin, TX 78702-2753)

Completion of a book on the history of slavery on the Arabian peninsula.

I will spend a year writing full-time to produce a manuscript on slavery on the Arabian Peninsula. I am asking for support for the last 7 months. In four chapters and an epilogue I will describe and analyze the lives of African and Baloch slaves including a short history of Africans’ presence in Arabia and the Makran Coast (Balochistan), an examination of slaves' specific ethnic and national origins, a description of the “seasoning” process for Arabian Peninsula slaves, an analysis of slave naming and exchanging practices, and detail of slaves’ work lives, families, and networks. This research contends that the power dynamics of slave holder-enslaved coupled with abolitionist and global economic pressures resulted in Arabian slaveholder practices and patterns that were in some ways similar to those of Atlantic slavery. This research will be disseminated as a published monograph intended for students and scholars of slavery and Middle East and South Asian Studies.

Associated Products

Bin Jelmood House and the African diaspora in the Middle East? (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Bin Jelmood House and the African diaspora in the Middle East?
Author: Alaine Hutson
Abstract: Bin Jelmood House, part of the Msheireb heritage complex of museums in Doha, Qatar opened in October 2015. This museum is dedicated to the history of slavery, part to its wider global dimensions starting in the ancient world and part to its regional history (especially the 19th and 20th centuries). The museum includes narratives of runaway slaves in the 20th century, collected by the British India Office to facilitate their manumission. These British archival records have also been digitized as part of the Qatar Digital Library (www.qdl.qa). This paper will attempt an analysis of the building of Bin Jelmood House and the reported reaction of descendants of slaves and slave-owners to its building and contrast the Bin Jelmood experience with contemporary efforts at organization by Arabian residents of African descent. This analysis endeavors to shed light on the question “Is there an African diaspora in the Middle East?” by finding out whether there is more, less or any evidence of diaspora self-identification in efforts to represent itself in public spaces. This includes looking at whether Afro-Arabian people might be participating in a kind of public history – genealogical research. Newspaper reports, social media posts, any publicly available data analytics from the qdl.qa site and interviews with experts consulted for the Bin Jelmood House project and participants in burgeoning Afro-Arabian advocacy groups will be the basis of this paper. Keywords: slavery, public history, African diaspora, manumission, Middle East slavery, Indian Ocean slavery
Date: 10/12/2017
Conference Name: Museums in Arabia 2017

"By Appearance She is an African": A Short History of Africans' Presence in Arabia and the Mekran Coast Prior to the 1920s (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "By Appearance She is an African": A Short History of Africans' Presence in Arabia and the Mekran Coast Prior to the 1920s
Author: Alaine Hutson
Abstract: A short history of Africans’ presence in Arabia and the Persian Baloch Mekran coast prior to the 1920s 1920s and the racial contexts they lived in over the different eras. By Appearance includes information about Arabic and Persian poetry and prose that references Africanness and blackness starting in the pre-Islamic period in Iraq and Arabia and going forward to the early twentieth century. The paper focuses on writers who were of Afro Arab themselves, especially the group of historical writers known as Crows of the Arabs.
Date: 4/8/2017
Conference Name: Scholars at the Intersection of South Asian and Africana Studies (SISAAS)

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