In his memoirs the Persian sea-captain Buzurg ibn Shahriyar turns repeatedly to tales of adventure in the Land of Zanj (with many hints that he writes from personal experience), and slavery is the subject of the most telling of all his stories. Behind its improbabilities lies a realism which vividly evokes the world in which he lived, and he shows a remarkable sympathy towards the principal character, an African chief. The narrator is a wealthy shipowner called Ismailawayh, who has sailed to every part of the Indian Ocean, but knows Africa especially well. In the year 922 he is on a voyage to Qanbalu (the main town on Pemba island, just north of Zanzibar), but storms drive his ship far to the south, towards Sofala. It is swept on to a notorious stretch of coast where the crew fear they are going to be captured and killed or, worst of all, eaten.5
On shore, the reception given to the strangers proves far better than Ismailawayh had dared to hope. The chief of the region, ‘a young negro, handsome and well made’, questions them, and says bluntly that he knows they are lying when they claim it had always been their intention to visit his country. But he promises them that they can trade freely, and will not be harmed. After doing good business the shipowner and his crew return to their vessel; the friendly chief, with several of his men, even comes on board to see them off. At this point Ismailawayh reveals his scheme: he will kidnap the unsuspecting blacks, carry them back to Oman, then sell them into slavery.
So as the ship begins to move and the puzzled chief and his men vainly try to get back into their canoes secured alongside, the Arab traders tell them what their fate is going to be. The chief replies with dignity: ‘Strangers, when you fell upon our beaches, my people wished to eat you and pillage your goods, as they had already done to others like you. But I protected you, and asked nothing from you. As a token of my goodwill I even came down to bid you farewell in your own ship. Treat me as justice demands, and let me return to my own land.’
His pleas are ignored and he is pushed down into the hold of the ship with other prisoners: ‘Then night enfolded us in its shrouds and we reached the open sea.’ During the journey northwards, across the equator and into the Arabian Sea, the kidnapped chief never speaks a word, and behaves as if his captors are totally unknown to him. When the ship reaches port he is led away into a slave market and sold, together with his companions.
That seems like the end of a profitable piece of business for Ismailawayh. But some years later he is once again sailing down the Zanj coast with his regular crew and another storm drives them on to the same stretch of shoreline. The ship is quickly surrounded and the crew are marched away to be paraded before the local chief. To their horrified astonishment, the very man they had sold into slavery long ago is seated there once more on the chief’s chair.
‘Ah!’ he says, ‘here are my old friends.’
Ismailawayh and his sailors throw themselves on the floor, and are afraid to look up. ‘But he showed himself gentle and gracious until we had all lifted up our heads, but without daring to look him in the face, so much were we moved by remorse and fear.’ The chief tells them a remarkable story, of how he had been taken as a slave to Basra, then to Baghdad. From there he had escaped from his Arab master, had gone to Mecca, and finally arrived in Cairo. Seeing the Nile, the chief had asked where it flowed from, and was told: the Land of Zanj. He decides to follow its course, in the hope of reaching his homeland. After many adventures in the interior of Africa he succeeds. The first person he meets is an old woman, who does not recognize him but says the witch-doctors have divined that the country’s lost chief is still alive and in the land of the Arabs. At that the wanderer goes joyfully back and reclaims his throne.
The chief tells his former captors that during his years as a slave he became converted to Islam. That is why he has decided to show magnanimity towards them; indeed, thanking them for being the cause of his conversion. But when they start preparing for their voyage back to Arabia, he lets them know that he cannot trust them too far, even though he is now a fellow-Muslim.
‘As for accompanying you to your ship,’ he says, ‘I have my reasons for not doing that.’
With its pointed ironies, the tale of the black king and his white captives would have amused an Islamic audience. The closing message of brotherly reconciliation fitted well with a popular defence of slavery: that Africans so respected their masters that they bore them no grudges. In reality, however, slaves did not always submit quietly to being dragged from their tribes, their villages and the sheltering African forest. There was an Arabic saying: ‘If you starve a Zanj he steals, if you feed him he becomes violent.’ It reflected the fear that slaves would always seek a chance for revenge.
History reveals that they often did. As early as A.D. 689, less than sixty years after the death of Muhammad, there was an uprising by slaves working in the swamps near Basra, at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It did not last long, and the bodies of the rebels were left hanging from their gallows as a warning. Five years later the slaves rose up again, led by an African called Riyah, ‘The Lion of the Zanj’. This time the defiance was better organized and was not put down until 4,000 troops, also black, were let loose in a campaign of extermination. Ten thousand slaves, including women and children, were massacred.
In the middle of the ninth century a still more ferocious event took place: the third ‘Revolt of the Zanj’. This happened during a period of widespread disorder, when there was a host of military and religious challenges to Islam.
A constant threat came from the radical Shi’ite movement, one of the two great contending forces of Islam. The Abbasid dynasty had chosen the other, the Sunni orthodoxy. The Shi’ites, who had helped to put the Abbasids in power, now felt rejected. They were also hostile to the luxurious habits of the caliphs. Power was fragmented, with the law in the hands of the Arabs and the Persians controlling the administration. The army was run by Turks, who were always prone to mutiny.
In the confusion leading up to the third ‘Revolt of the Zanj’ it was a Shi’ite who took advantage of the revolutionary possibilities.6 He was a visionary zealot named Ali bin Muhammad – a Persian, but partly of Indian extraction. As a young man he had led an uncertain life, writing poetry and wandering through the deserts with nomadic tribes. Clearly, he had messianic instincts, probably stimulated by his fanatical father, who is reputed to have had a dream, when Ali was still a child, that his son would grow up to destroy Basra, their home-town. As an adult, Ali made it known that he could see writing done by an invisible hand, and could read the thoughts of his enemies. These claims, similar to those being made by ‘holy men’ elsewhere during this time of fanaticism, brought round him a clique of dedicated followers; they included some petty businessmen, including a miller and a lemonade seller.
His verses, of which more than a hundred survive, express his contempt for the self-indulgent rulers of Islam.
How my soul grieves over our palaces in Baghdad and who they contain – every kind of sinner -
And for wines openly drunk there, and for men lusting after sins.
He did not conceal the way his thoughts were moving:
Submissively to adopt a moderate stance is humiliation for God’s servant.
When the spark will not catch, I will fan it;
When some leave the sharp blade in its sheath on the day of battle, others will draw theirs.
Shortly before the Zanj slaves rose in revolt, Ali had been in Bahrain. When he went home to Basra he was, unsurprisingly, viewed by the authorities as a potential troublemaker; although he escaped into hiding in Baghdad, his wife and children were jailed. In August 869, Ali’s moment arrived. There was