East African Zanj slaves led a long revolt that shook the Abbasid caliphate.

Evidence

J. O. Hunwick provides a somewhat fuller description. “[I]n a limited number of instances African slave labour was used in large-scale agricultural works, as it was also used, on a lesser scale, in mining and industry. The best known and best documented instance of such ‘plantation slavery’ is the use made of large numbers of East African slaves-Zanj-in draining the salt marshes at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers around Basra… . The Zanj enter history only in 868 when they began their fifteen-year revolt which shook the foundations of the ‘Abbasid caliphate.’” Hunwick continues: “Once the movement gained success it was joined by some of the Black troops of the caliphal guard sent to fight it, and by some Bedouin and marsh Arabs The Zanj built their own capital, al-Mukhtara and another fortified town, al-Mani’a. In 870 they captured the flourishing seaport of Ubulla and in 871 they sacked Basra with enormous slaughter… . It was not until 880 that the caliph’s brother, freed of other pressing military preoccupations, was able to take serious steps against the Zanj. Even then, it took three years of very hard campaigning to crush the movement and seize its towns… . The major experiment with ‘plantation slavery’ in the Islamic world had ended in disaster” (Hunwick, op. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1787

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The Zanj revolt fits the reader’s research on the Black radical tradition as a history of revolt — an early instance of enslaved Africans organizing mass rebellion against a plantation system. Also connects to ‘On Sacrifice’ themes of enslaved mass action.
• STORYSTEM: The Zanj building their own capital cities al-Mukhtara and al-Mani’a during a fifteen-year revolt is strong material for historical fiction — a self-governing slave-maroon society at the heart of the caliphate.