The Zanj Rebellion was the culmination of series of small revolts. It took place near the city of Basra, located in southern Iraq over a period of fifteen years (869−883 AD). It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over “tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq”[1]. The revolt was said to have been led by Ali ibn Muhammad, who claimed to be a descendent of Caliph Ali ibn Abu Talib. Several historians, such as Al-Tabari and Al-Masudi, consider this revolt one of the “most vicious and brutal uprisings” of the many disturbances that plagued the Abbasid central government.[1]
The Zanj revolt helped Ahmad ibn Tulun to create an independent state in Egypt. It is only after defeating the Zanj Revolt that the Abbassids were able to turn their attention to Egypt, and end the Tulunid dynasty with great destruction.
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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.[2].
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, [which] 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.[3]
Their jobs were to clear away the nitrous top soil 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.[1]
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. taken by M. A. Shaban who 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”[4]
The actual revolt started with a descendant of slaves named ʻAlī b. Muhammad. He had grown up as in Samarra and not much else is known about his early life. Eventually he moved to the "Abbasid capital, where he mixed with some of the influential slaves of Caliph al-Muntasir (861-862 A.D.)”[2]. It was here that ʻAlī b. Muhammad learned the workings of the caliphate and financial differences between the Muslim citizens. From here, ʻAlī moved to Bahrain[5], where he pretended to be Shīʻī and started to rouse the people into rebellion against the caliphate. “Ali’s following in the city grew so large that land taxes were collected in his name.”[6] The rebellion eventually failed and ʻAlī relocated to Basrah in 868 CE. Also in 868 C.E., a leader of the Zanj Rebellion claimed to be the incarnated form of the former Alid rebel Yahya ibn Umar.
In Basrah, ʻAlī b. Muhammad preached at the mosque, advocating against the caliphate and for the people.
His first actual contact with Basrah’s slaves seems to have been motivated by a vicious outbreak of hostilities between two Turkish regiments, the Bilaliyah and the Sa’diyah, which contributed to the weakening of Basrah’s political regime. Hoping to exploit the resultant anarchy to his advantage, he tried to win to his side members of one of these groups.
The Bilaliyyah and Saʻdiyyah were described by Tabari as guilds in the town or rivaling quarters.
When he heard news about another scuffle between Basrah’s factions he “began to seek out black slaves working in the Basrah marshes and to inquire into their working conditions and nutritional standards.”[2] He told the Zanj and other slaves that he was sent by God to liberate them from their bonds.
Origins have a large part in establishing oneself in Arab society and especially when dealing with slaves. Initially
‘Ali bin Muhammad’s paternal grandfather was said to have been a member of the ‘Abd al-Qays lineage and his paternal grandmother a Sindhi slave woman. His mother, a free woman, was a member of the Asad bin Khuzaimah lineage... later commentators have presumed him to have been of Persian rather than Arab origin.[2].
Sahib al-Zanj [ʻAlī’s title] declared his rebellion at al-Basrah, during the reign of al-Muhtadi, in 255 A.H. He claimed that he was descended from ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, but most people recognize this as a false claim and reject it.[7]
After ʻAlī’s lineage was not accepted, he started to preach the “extremely egalitarian doctrine of the Kharijites, who preached that the most qualified man should reign, even if he was an Abyssinian slave.”[2]The caliphate eventually sent out a large military force led by the Vizier Al-Muwaffaq.”[2]. After several encounters, the caliphate army started to make examples of rebellion leaders.
For instance, Yahya of Bahrain, a noted leader of the rebel troops, was taken with a small group of men and sent to Samarra. There he was flogged two hundred times while Caliph al-Mu'tamid watched. Both his arms and legs were amputated and he was slashed with swords. Finally, his throat was slit and he was burned.[6]
This did nothing to hinder the Zanjī and they continued to raid towns and villages. “When the caliphate became preoccupied with the Saffarid secessionist movement in Persia, the Zanjī extended their control further north with the aid of the surrounding Bedouin peoples.”[8] It was probably at this time that the Zanjī constructed their capital which was called Moktara (the Elect City). The Caliph sent vast armies and numerous commanders to suppress the rebellion but most of them were slaughtered by guerilla warfare waged by the rebels.
Towards the end of the revolution most of the former slaves themselves started to turn into the very masters they despised and started to break down as a community.
In 879 C.E., after the revolt in Persia was settled, Al-Muwaffaq came back and continued to wage war on the rebels. In 881 AD the better-trained and better-equipped Abbasid army surrounded and outnumbered the Zanj on all sides. With the capture and execution of ʻAlī after the fall of the Zanj capital city of al-Mukhtara[9] the revolt ended.
In the end, “most of the Zanj joined Al-Muwaffaq, but not all. Over 1000 died in the desert of exhaustion and thirst, trying to flee the embattled Iraqi territory. Others remained unsubdued in southern Iraq after their leader was killed; they continued to rob, plunder, and murder throughout Abbasid space until they either joined the Abbasid or died refusing to be anyone’s soldier.”[1]
By the tenth century, instead of using slaves as a sign of treaty between two cities, private trade was used.
Ghada Hashem Talhami, a scholar of the Zanj revolt, argues that the Zanj rebellion is inaccurately named. In fact, most of the military were not Zanjian to begin with. It was only after a time, after most of the other slaves were freed that the actual Zanj imported slaves took hold. Talhami cites from various historians and works to make her point that the rebellion was more of a religious/social uprising made by the lowly-classed and suppressed citizens of the Basrah area, and included a wide variety of people, including white and Indian slaves. She even says that the most significant element of the rebellion was not the Zanj slaves, but Bedouin from around Basra, who provided regular support throughout the conflict. "Despite much evidence to the contrary, including the absence of major Arab settlements along the coast, the silence of Arab and Persian geographers on an oceanic trade, and the generalized equation of Zanj with 'black,' it has been used to infer an important commercial relationship between Africa and the Middle East several centuries before such an exchange can be proven to have existed…. The assumption that ‘Abbasid writers used Zanj to mean specifically the East African coast, and that therefore the people they called Zanj originated in a specific part of that region, is completely unjustified."[10]
Much of the current knowledge of the Zanj Rebellion comes from the Persian Sunnī historian Tabarī's work "History of the Prophets and Kings". It has been the subject of research by such famous Orientalists as Theodor Nöldeke (Sketches from Eastern History) and Louis Massignon (The Passion of al-Hallaj); Alexandre Popović has authored a more recent monograph on the subject.