In this powerful and thought-provoking book, Beeta Baghoolizadeh persuasively argues that enslavement in Iran in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has not yet been fully studied, and that the very awareness of the historical presence of slaves, as well as many of the sources that could be used to write their history, have been “erased” in modern Iran. As the saying goes, “Denial is not just a river in Africa.” All who have studied slavery and its long consequences—whether in the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, or elsewhere—are familiar with a general tendency to deny or downplay its historical importance. Long ago, I was told in Tunisia, “There has been no slavery in Islam since the time of the Prophet Muhammad.” In Iran, the author was often told “We never had bardeh.” But this very generic term for enslaved is discussed at length in the text.
Fully aware of previous scholarly works on enslavement in Iran and the Gulf (including recent books by Mirzai, Hopper, and Suzuki), the author seeks alternatives and complementary material (including consideration of the architecture of imperial and elite homes, the use of a changing racialized vocabulary, naming practices, and more) to augment the information in conventional archival sources. Local archival practices and terms make it challenging to locate relevant historical sources. Headings and summaries of documents are often misleading or inaccurate, obfuscating material on enslavement that is embedded in many diffuse categories. Of course, material that is hard to find is also difficult to erase. This well-organized book will lead its readers to reconsider the history, iconography, and historiography of enslavement in Iran.
Chapter 1 addresses both the promise and the frustrations of conventional archival material. The 1867 census of Tehran enumerated 147,256 people in six categories: “men, women, military personnel, servants, enslaved black women, enslaved black men.” There were some four thousand black slaves in the city. Later in the chapter, the author laments that enslaved voices are only heard through intermediaries, translated and filtered to suit the requirements of a foreign bureaucracy. One example is a portion of the life trajectory of Khyzran, born a slave in Zanzibar, freed after her master's death, kidnapped there, and transported to Iran by boat by 1856. Because she went to a British agent in Lengeh seeking freedom, her story was recorded. The agent agreed that she should be free due to the decree banning the Persian Gulf slave trade signed by Mohammed Shah Qajar in 1848. But the documentation is frustrating: due to its formulaic nature, it does not explain her relationship to Walladee, a younger male she brought to the same British agent, nor does the paperwork reveal their subsequent fates.
The broader literature on slavery in the Middle East has established that “Caucasians, Central Asians, South Asians and others”(p. 2) were enslaved as well as Africans. But Africans were the most visible (as reflected in the 1867 census categories), and in the nineteenth century other sources of slaves faded away. British abolitionist efforts targeted seaborne trade from East Africa, on the Red Sea, and in the Gulf, and were modeled on earlier efforts in the Atlantic system. To evade such efforts, Iranian elites contrived to move African slaves overland, including bring them back from pilgrimages to Mecca. As other sources of slaves fell away, terms specifying enslaved Africans’ origins (Zanzibari, Sudani, Habashi, Bombasi) were supplanted by a color spectrum ranging from “olive” to “very black.” Enslavement became exclusively associated with Africans, differentiated only by skin tone. The earlier geographic diversity of the enslaved was erased, and only Africans remained visible. Even their original African names, family histories, local ethnicities, suffering during capture and transport, and earlier masters before arrival in Iran have been all but erased.
In two chapters, the author argues that because visibility was a feature of enslavement, photographic images can be used to refute other narratives that deny its presence in Iran. From the royal family down through the country's wealthy elites, African slaves were often family representatives, greeting guests, bearing messages, and more. Because photography arrived relatively early and found royal patronage and support, photographic evidence recorded the status of royal and elite families. By studying and providing carefully posed family portraits, the author successfully argues that they expose the marginality, lower status, and resistance of the enslaved to inclusion within the portrayed household. The photographs were for the benefit of those who commissioned them, not for the enslaved. Captions carefully preserve the names of the family, yet provide only varying (and often insulting or demeaning) names for the enslaved, such as “cockroach,” “chick,” or “flowerface.” Archival sources yield supporting evidence of resistance and disrespect: enslaved individuals who could protect others who ran away; or whose children were largely respected by Iranian society, although still subject to racial comments.
Among the most visible enslaved Africans were the royal eunuchs, with their photos recorded by Naser ed-Din Shah. He foresaw that the elderly eunuchs of his household would be the last such individuals to serve at court. Imperial eunuchs had power as long as they served the purposes of the shah, but their fall could be precipitous. Certain names were recycled as a new eunuch assumed the duties of one who was removed; the institution continued as the individuals were replaced. These observations parallel those which are being discovered in studies of the Ottoman Empire. When Iran sought to change its image from its traditional past to a shining modernity, writers and comics caricatured eunuchs to indirectly criticize the practices of the past. Drawing on examples from literature and popular culture, the author traces this trend from books to cartoons to minstrelsy, in which “playing black” drew laughs first with a few black actors, and later with others in blackface or stylized masks, using falsetto and pidgin Iranian to portray bumbling fools.
In 1929, Iran's reformist government passed a law declaring all slaves to be free. This began the erasure of history and memory of enslavement in Iran. Slaves were now secluded inside households, or sent away to the countryside. All Iranians received birth certificates and other documentation, including last names. For the enslaved and their descendants, their new last names reflected their African or slave status, with geography, status, or racial insults embedded in their new identity papers. Even the manumission law was framed as a mere formality, and used the generic bardeh, rather than any of the more specific terms for the various types of slavery that were known in Iran. This distanced the experience from the vocabulary commonly used for the enslaved.
The book amply documents multiple facets of erasure. In architecture, the harem building of the Golestan Palace where enslaved women had lived was demolished, and modern elite domestic architecture eliminated slave quarters, although examples survive in some former elite buildings that have been repurposed. Slavery was gradually redefined as only American-style plantation slavery to suggest that slavery had not existed in Iran. In the 1960s, Iranian press and scholarly publications emphasized the events and personalities of the American civil rights and Black Power movements. Enslavement and racism were seen as American problems, not Iranian ones. Yet in popular culture “acting black” still got laughs, and became incorporated into celebrations of Nauruz. Haji Firuz, once an actual eunuch in the royal court, became a caricature associated with the holiday. Other blackface characters mugged their way through stage productions aimed at mass audiences. Such characters appeared in humor magazines from the 1920s to the 1970s.
The last chapter analyzes the reworking of elite memories of enslaved household members. Typical elite narratives avoid the exploitative aspects of the relationship between the enslaved and households in which they worked. Instead, five themes emerge: a romanticized notion of the devotion of the enslaved to the family; the enslaved “being a member of the family”; that the relationship was not really slavery or it benefited the enslaved; the insights it gave the elite into race and racism; and the elite family's special position to explain to others about enslavement, the blamelessness of their ancestors, and their own special insights that were not obvious to others without their experiences. These memories only attempt to exculpate the elite families, not to illuminate the lives of the enslaved in Iran.
In the epilogue, Baghoolizadeh seeks to lift up the voices of the enslaved and their descendants by turning to Black Iranian communities such as that in Bushehr, where black freedpeople have preserved their communal memories in photographs, poetry, and songs. The Collective for Black Iranians has worked to establish a social media presence, and to reclaim the images of Black Iranians seen in art exhibitions and photographs.
This well-written, beautifully illustrated, and well-annotated book works well for those familiar with Iranian society and history; others may wish to pair it with more introductory material on Iran.
