Abstract: African Diaspora
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This is a list of my webpages in which African people are mentioned in Asia or N-Africa. I do not give all sources and do not study them. But as a significant number among them might have arrived as slaves from East Africa, a short mention of the main happenings in the African Diaspora is needed.
Ja’far al Sadiq; Tauhid al Mufaddal: (Prefered Unity) (d765)
-female circumcision.
Asmaee: Sirat Antar ibn Shaddad; (The Romance of Antar) (around 800)
-Antar the black slave and his struggle to be recognized by his father.
Jahiz's Kitab al-Hayawan (book on animals) second part: on castration (869)
-Castration.
Ibn Qutayba: Uyun al-akhbar (Book of useful knowledge) (880)
- Eunuchs.
Ahmed bin Yahya bin Jabir (Al-Baladhuri) (AD 893): Ansab al-ashraf (Genealogy of Illustrious Men)
-African slave colony in Bahrayn.
-Several Zanj rebellions at the Euphrates.
Bundahishn; (Creation of the Origins) (additions till 9th century)
-Black people in Iran in ancient times; and newly brought in by the Arabs.
Al-Tabari;(838-922) Tarikh Al Tabari (The History of Al Tabari) Historian, lived in Baghdad
- The Zanj Rebellion
-The Ethiopians conquer Yemen.
Abu’l-Faraj al-Isfahani: Kitab al-aghani; (Book of songs) (d971)
- The black poet Nusayb; trying to free his relatives from slavery.
Ibn Abi al-Qasim al-Qayrawani: altahdhib fi aikhtisar (Discipline in the code) (d983)
-Selling African Slave-girls.
Al-Muqaddasi: Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Ma'rifat al-Aqalim (The best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions) (985) from Jerusalem florished in Bust, Sijistan
-About white and black eunuchs.
Umarah ibn Ali al-Hakami: Tarikh al-Yaman; (History of Yemen) (d1174)
- Najahid dynasty was a slave dynasty of Abyssinian origin founded in Zabid
Ibn Al Athir : Al Kamil fi al-Taritk (The complete Accounts of History) (1231)
-Shir-i- Zanji the revolt of the Lion of the Zanj (695AD)
-in 750AD: In Mosul; Zanj mercenaries take the women as loot.
-In 929AD Rebellions in the army: the Sudan burned the houses, and took children, and women, in Wassit.
-in 974AD In Oman an uprising of the Zanj.
Ibn-al Mujawir(1232)(Tarikh al-Mustabsir)(Guide to Arabia)
- Added is a detailed description, with complete revealing of the slave of the auction sale of slave woman.
Ibn Khallikan: Wafayat al-A'yan (The death of the Notables) (d1282)
-Kafur the Black ruler of Egypt
Written for Sultan al-Muzaffar: Nur al-ma'arif (Light of Knowledge) (1295)
-prices of slaves; cost of transporting and feeding them.
Abu al-Fida (1331) Tarikhu al-Mukhtasar fi Akhbar al-Bashar (History of Humanity or Chronicles)
- 4000 Zanj soldiers killed because they married Arab women in Mosul.
Al Janadi: Al suluk fi tabaqat al ulama wa l muluk. (The Spirituality of Scholars of the Kings) (d1332)
-kutba given by Aly ibn Mahdy calling to bring the Abyssinians that ruled Zabid into slavery.
Al-Khazraji: al-Kifayah (History of Yemen) (1400)
-The Ethiopians conquer Yemen.
Al Qalqashandi (d1418) Subh al a'sha fi Sina at al Incha
- Egypt has an army of 12000 Sudan.
- Wars between Ethiopia and the Muslims.
Sheikh Bighami; Darab Nama (1418 ) (The history of Darab)
- In this fiction story Zanzibari armies invade Yemen. (As really had happened in early Medieval Times). Also Arab leaders have an army of Zanzibari soldiers (which happened during the whole Middle Ages).
Saraf-ad-din Ali Yazdi; Zafar Namah Emir Timur (The history of the conquests by Prince Timur)(1424)
- While concurring India and Central Asia Timur acquires many Zanzibari slaves which he distributes among the nobles.
-One of his sons has made a lady pregnant. The child is given to the empress, the lady to a black slave.
Muhammad al Fasi, Maliki: He was Qadi at Mecca (d1429-30)
- Zanj slaves in Mecca.
Yahya bin Ahmad Sirhindi (1434) Tarikh-i Mubarak Shahi (a History of India during the Sultan Period)
- African slaves reach high positions in India.
Abu al-Mahasin (1441): al-Manhal al-safi wa'l-mustawfi ba'd al-wafi:
-cannibalism by blacks in Cairo in 1428 and again in 1438
- Black slaves dying from the plague in Egypt.
- Black slaves appoint their own Sultan on the pasture lands of Egypt.
Muhammad al-Husayni al-Din al Maqrizi (1441) In: Kitab al-Khitat (book of plans)
-During the Muslim conquest of Egypt; the Roman leaders in Egypt are frightened by the black soldiers in the Muslim army.
- Problems with black soldiers in Egypt; they finally get killed.
-The (black) mother of al Moustansir (=Sultan) imports many black slaves. Lots of fighting between Black and Turk slaves.
- in 1024: hunger in Egypt and Syria which makes black slave plunder and kill.
- in 1174: many blacks were blinded with red hot iron.
- in 1285: from Yemen the gift of many black slaves, castrated and not castrated.
- in 1304: blacks are abusing people in Mecca.
- In 1309 fights against the abusing black in Mecca.
- in 1353+1392; slaves donated.
Ibn Arabshah: Timur-Nahmeh (History of Timur) (before1450)
- Timur orders Zanj slaves to be collected as he prefers them.
al-Abshihi (1450): al-Mustatraf (The Collector)
-problems having mulatto children.
Copy of Amir Khusrau's Khamsah: (1470)
-African slaves building the city of Mandu.
Najm al-Din Umar ibn Fahd: Al Durr al-Kamin bi Dhayl al’iqd al Thamin fi Tarikh al Balad al-Amin (d1480)
- the slaves from Mogadishu are used to bring water to Mecca.
Aayani : Fateh-Namah Mahmood Shah. (1495)(History of Shah Mahmood)
- In India the war of the sultan against a black noble in 1495.
Al-Sakhawi, al-Maqasid al-Hasanah (The purposes of good) (1497)
- a racist hadith about black people
- the black slaves of Cairo elect their own Sultan.
-story of the black slave set free and returned home and later finds his old master shipwrecked.
Alf layla wa layla (15th cent)
-several stories of Sexual jealousy towards black slaves.
Hamzanama (The Story of Hamza)(15th)
- Black champions in the armies of Persia and India.