Based on the materials provided in this chapter, it is safe to say that a sub-stantial African servile agriculturalist population existed in the traditional Arabian Peninsula, at least in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
These African farmers were a mixture of slaves and mawlas who performed similar economic roles and had roughly similar social status in Arabian society. There seems to have been a slight shift from slave to mawla status over time, with the term “slave” used more frequently in the 1831–1918 travelogues, and “freedmen” used thereafter. This shift is probably a result of the gradual diminution of fresh slave imports by the beginning of the twentieth century, a side effect of the european “scramble for Africa” and of europe’s attempts to suppress the slave trade in their newly colonized African territory.101 Nonetheless, the most common term used by the trav-elogue authors is “negroes,” a purely racial category that tells us nothing about the legal status of the Africans mentioned.
Whether slaves or freedmen, African servile agriculturalists were overwhelmingly associated with date palm cultivation, though there are a few exceptions, such as the slaves of dhofar, who tended coconut palms, and the slaves of the Bani sakhr, who plowed wheat fields. Although sayl or ghayl irrigation is attested to in some cases, these water sources generally seem to have been supplemented by ground water, which was probably obtained by means of a jalib. While in many cases there was no clear separation of African servile agriculturalist communities from free Arab communities, in a number of cases Africans seem to have lived in autonomous colonies, which in at least three occasions were led by head-men of African extraction. Most, if not all, of these African agriculturalists were sharecroppers, compelled to surrender a fixed proportion of their dates, and often their grains, to Arab townsmen or Bedouin tribesmen at harvest time. For their own sustenance, they relied on their share of the date harvest as well as crops grown beneath and between the palms. These vegetable foods were apparently supplemented by animal products, such as clarified butter, which they purchased from the Bedouins. The economic basis of this slave system therefore consisted of the symbiotic exchange of oasis carbohydrates for desert proteins and fats, and thus was geared toward the subsistence needs of both parties rather than market forces.
80 | Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula
Although both parties benefitted from the exchange of desert for oasis resources, they did not benefit equally. The main beneficiaries of the sys-tem were the owners of the land, which in the Hijaz, Hadramaut, the Wadi dawasir, and the northern frontier area tended to be Bedouin tribes, and in Najd, Oman, and Yemen tended to be ashraf or urban elites, though rights of ownership could fluctuate with changing political circumstances.
Both Bedouin and wealthy townsmen received tribute from their slaves and mawla farmers and gave little (if anything) in return, except perhaps protection. it is therefore quite possible that the African servile colonies of Arabia, just like the sahelian slave oases described by James L. A. Webb, Jr., in West Africa, might have played a role as buffers against Arab famine.102 in a lean year, the Africans might be squeezed for resources by the domi-nant Arab tribes, thus transferring the worst of the starvation from the Arab tribes to the African servile agriculturalists of the palms.
The overall treatment of African servile agriculturalists, however, seems have been comparatively mild, and somewhat akin to the treatment of Medieval european serfs. indeed, it appears from the sources that Afri-can agriculturalists enjoyed considerable autonomy, especially those who farmed on behalf of Bedouin tribesmen, who might only visit the palms once a year during the summer date harvest season. Although these Afri-can agriculturalists were clearly exploited economically, there are few hints of physical mistreatment of slaves or mawlas, though Freya stark’s “tor-tured and twisted” slaves of Hadramaut and Thomas’s fettered runaways in al-Batinah are notable exceptions to this rule. Two main factors help explain this relatively mild slave regime: (1) agriculture in most of Ara-bia was geared toward a subsistence economy rather than a market-based economy, and (2) the absence of the Bedouin Arab masters for extended periods, combined with their unwillingness to enter the “feverish” oases themselves for long periods, would have made escape fairly easy and the implementation of a stricter regimentation of labor impossible. i suspect, in fact, that most of the ill treatment that runaway slaves described in the Jeddah manumission surveys was sheer neglect of their basic material needs by their absentee masters, though some agricultural slaves no doubt suffered from physical violence as well. it is also possible that African ser-vile labor may have been overseen more closely in communities headed by ashraf or other non-Bedouin elites who were permanent residents rather than seasonal visitors to oasis agricultural communities.
One final commonality shared by nearly all of the African colonies mentioned above is malaria. With few exceptions, African colonies seem
to have been located in areas notable for malaria infections, a subject we will return to in chapter 4.
BAsed ON the materials presented in this chapter, it reasonable to con-clude that a significant degree of African servile labor was employed in the agricultural landscapes of the traditional Arabian Peninsula. African labor was especially common in the jalib and qanat systems of irrigation, which demanded a large amount of labor for both construction and main-tenance. While most African slaves eventually achieved mawla (freedman) status, the social distinction between slaves and mawlas seems to have been minor. Both slaves and mawlas served predominantly as subordinate sharecroppers dependent on Bedouin or Arab townsman masters, though many servile Africans enjoyed some degree of autonomy. The autonomy of servile Africans was probably greatest in the various African agricultural colonies of the Arabian Peninsula. These colonies existed throughout the Arabian Peninsula, but were especially common in Najd and the Hijaz, and tended to be located in areas notable for malaria and/or fevers. We will turn to Khaybar, the location of the best-known of these African colonies, in the following chapter.