Zanj Rebellion - Background

Background

As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer during the Muslim Agricultural Revolution, agriculture and other manual-labor jobs were thought to be demeaning. The resulting labor shortage led to an increased slave market.

It is certain that large numbers of slaves were exported from eastern Africa; the best evidence for this is the magnitude of the Zanj revolt in Iraq in the 9th century, though not all of the slaves involved were Zanj. There is little evidence of what part of eastern Africa the Zanj came from, for the name is here evidently used in its general sense, rather than to designate the particular stretch of the coast, from about 3°N. to 5°S., to which the name was also applied.

The Zanj were needed to take care of:

the Tigris-Euphrates delta, which had become abandoned marshland as a result of peasant migration and repeated flooding, could be reclaimed through intensive labor. Wealthy proprietors "had received extensive grants of tidal land on the condition that they would make it arable." Sugar cane was prominent among the products of their plantations, particularly in Khūzestān Province. Zanj also worked the salt mines of Mesopotamia, especially around Basra.

Their jobs were to clear away the nitrous topsoil that made the land arable. The working conditions were also considered to be extremely miserable. Many other people were imported into the region, besides Zanj.

Also around the time of the revolts, the Abbasid caliphate was

mired in a period of financial weakness, both internally and externally… The financial strain imposed on the accession of each new caliph contributed to the ability of the Zanj revolt, which began in 868 AD, to sustain itself for as long as it did.

The rise of the Shīʻa also occurred around this time, so the Abbasid government was fighting on two fronts.

Some scholars believe that the Zanj revolt was not necessarily a slave revolt. In this view, there were also Zanj immigrants in Iraq who were a big part of the revolt. M. A. Shaban argued:

"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"