The Transformation of Arabian Agriculture
Chapter 2: “Diggers and Delvers”
1. Anonymous, The Romance of ‘Antar: An Epitome of the First Part, trans.
Terrick Hamilton (UK: Dodo Press, 2008), 56–57.
2. Bernard Lewis, “The Crows of the Arabs,” Critical Inquiry 12, no. 1 (Autumn 1985): 92; and Akbar Muhammad, “The Image of Africans in Arabic Literature: Some Unpublished Manuscripts,” in Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, ed. John Ralph Willis (London: F. Cass, 1985), 1:50.
3. Lewis, Race and Slavery, 6.
4. Ibid.
5. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 202–3.
6. T. G. Otte, “‘A Course of Unceasing Remonstrance:’ British Diplomacy and the Suppression of the Slave Trade in the East, 1852–1898,” in Slavery, Diplomacy, and Empire: Britain and the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 1807–
1975, ed. Keith Hamilton and Patrick Salmon (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2009), 94.
7. Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World, 19.
8. Eldon Rutter, “Slavery in Arabia,” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Soci-ety 20, no. 3 (1933): 317–18.
9. Lewis, Race and Slavery, 7.
10. Daniel Pipes, “Mawlas: Freed Slaves and Converts in Early Islam,” in Willis, Slaves and Slavery (New York: Frank Cass, 1985), 1:203–4, 221. See also
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Mohammed Ennaji, Slavery, the State, and Islam (New York: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 2013), 190–96.
11. See Benjamin Reilly, “Revisiting Consanguineous Marriage in the Greater Middle East: Milk, Blood, and Bedouins,” American Anthropologist 115, no. 3 (2013): 374–87.
12. Toledano, Slavery and Abolition, 7.
13. William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 131–32.
14. Najwa Adra, “The Concept of Tribe in Rural Yemen,” in Arab Society:
Social Science Perspectives, ed. Saad Eddin Ibrahim and Nicholas S. Hopkins (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1985), 275, 280.
15. Scott, In the High Yemen, 182–83.
16. F. J. G. Mercadier, L’esclave de Timimoun (Paris: Editions France-Empire, 1971), 140–41. Note that I have converted the French term coudée, which means “cubit,” into meters using the common conversion rate of .45 meters = 1 cubit. My translation.
17. Ibid., 141–42.
18. Philby, Heart of Arabia, 2:103.
19. Antonin Jaussen and Raphaël Savignac, Mission archéologique en Arabie (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1909), 66.
20. Altorki and Cole, Arabian Oasis City, 55–56.
21. Ibid., 40.
22. Ibid., 41.
23. Huber, Journal d’un voyage en Arabie, 385; and van der Meulen, Aden to the Hadhramaut, 149.
24. Portions of this section have been drawn from my earlier article on the subject: Reilly, “Mutawalladeen and Malaria,” 1–19.
25. Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World, 50.
26. Gazetteer of Arabia (Simla, India: General Staff of India, 1917) 1:354, 760; Gazetteer of Arabia, 2:1517. Thomas M. Ricks notes in his study of slavery in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gulf that some African slaves were used “as farm laborers” in Bahrain as well as Basra and Muscat, but gives no indication as to the scale of this phenomenon, nor does he list his sources; see Thomas M. Ricks, “Slaves and Slave Traders in the Persian Gulf, 18th and 19th Centuries: An Assessment,” in Clarence-Smith, Indian Ocean Slave Trade, 65.
27. Gazetteer of Arabia, 354
28. L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 129–30, 146–48.
29. Alan de Lacy Rush, ed., Ruling Families of Arabia: Qatar, the Ruling Family of Al-Thani (Slough, UK: Archive Editions, 1991), 137.
30. Gazetteer of Arabia, 2:1512.
31. Ibid., 1:271–72.
Notes to Pages 53–60
32. Ibid., 276.
33. Wilfred Thesiger, “A Journey through the Tihama, the ‘Asir, and the Hijaz Mountains,” Geographical Journal 110, no. 4/6 (October–December 1947): 192, 196. A similar but more superficial description of the Tihamah African population is provided by R. B. Serjeant, “Société et gouvernement en Arabie du Sud,” Arabica 14, no. 3 (October 1967): 287.
34. Thesiger, “Journey,” 192.
35. Gazetteer of Arabia, 1:46.
36. G. Wyman Bury, The Land of Uz (London: Macmillan, 1911), 11.
37. Ibid., 32–33.
38. Joseph Halévy, Rapport sur une mission archéologique dans le Yémen (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1872), 25; and Halévy, “Voyage au Nedjran,” Bul-letin de la Société de Géographie, July–December 1873: 594.
39. Halévy, “Voyage au Nedjran,” 271–72.
40. Floor, Persian Gulf, 377.
41. Sheriff, Slaves, Spices, and Ivory in Zanzibar, 35–37.
42. Cooper, Plantation Slavery, 37.
43. Hopper, “Economics of African Slavery,” 116.
44. A. L. P. Burdett, ed., The Slave Trade into Arabia: 1820–1973 (Slough, UK: Archive Editions, 2006), 6:271–72.
45. Thomas, Alarms and Excursions in Arabia, 238.
46. Bertram Thomas, Arabia Felix: Across the Empty Quarter of Arabia (London: Reader’s Union, 1938), 9.
47. Ibid., 29–30.
48. Ibid., 194–97. C. Snounk Hurgronje, who describes the zar possession cult in Mecca in some depth, ascribes this ritual primarily to Abyssinian slaves, though he also notes that the cult had a “Maghrebin [North-West African], a Sudanese, an Abyssinian, and a Turkish method.” C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century, trans. J. H. Monahan (Leiden, NL: E. J.
Brill, 2007), 112–16.
49. Janzen, Nomads, 149–50.
50. Bent and Bent, Southern Arabia, 79–80.
51. van der Meulen and von Wissmann, Ḥaḍramaut, 69.
52. Freya Stark, A Winter in Arabia: A Journey Through Yemen (New York:
Overlook Press, 2002), 72.
53. Ibid., 264.
54. Ibid., 295.
55. Harold Ingrams, Arabia and the Isles (London: John Murray, 1943), 280–81.
56. Gazetteer of Arabia, 2:1019; Gazetteer of Arabia (Simla, India: General Staff of India, 1917), 3:1829.
57. Gazetteer of Arabia, 3:1717.
58. Ibid., 2:1582.
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59. Philby, Arabia of the Wahhabis, 179, 181.
60. Ibid., 337.
61. Gazetteer of Arabia, 3:1784.
62. G. Leachman, “A Journey through Central Arabia,” Geographical Jour-nal 43, no. 5 (May 1914): 513.
63. Philby, Arabia of the Wahhabis, 136.
64. Gazetteer of Arabia, 2:1452.
65. Alois Musil, Northern Neğd: A Topographical Itinerary (New York:
American Geographical Society, 1928), 239–40.
66. Musil, Northern Neğd, 85.
67. Philby, Heart of Arabia, 2:12–13.
68. Gazetteer of Arabia, 1:533. The Gazetteer seems to imply, implausibly, that Jau-as-Sabaini is a satellite town of Dhurma, which lies about 60 kilometers away from Riyadh and the Wadi Hanifa, across a mountainous escarpment.
69. Philby, Heart of Arabia, 2:92–94.
70. Gazetteer of Arabia, 1:118.
71. Ibid., 163.
72. Philby, Heart of Arabia, 2:189.
73. Marcel Kurpershoek, Arabia of the Bedouins, trans. Paul Vincent (Lon-don: Saqi Books, 1995), 180.
74. Gazetteer of Arabia, 2:949. See also Wallin, Travels in Arabia, 115.
75. Gottlieb Schumacher, Across the Jordan: An Exploration and Survey of Part of Hauran and Jaulan (London: Alexander Watt, 1889), 154–55, 187–93.
76. H. B. Tristram, The Land of Moab: Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and the Jordan (London: John Murray, 1873), 303.
77. Abujaber, Pioneers over Jordan, 85.
78. William Lancaster, The Rwala Bedouin Today, 2nd ed. (Long Grove, IL:
Waveland Press, 1997), 108.
79. J. R. Wellsted, “Observations on the Coast of Arabia between Ras Mohammed and Jiddah,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London 6 (1836): 55.
80. Wallin, Travels in Arabia, 115–16.
81. Gazetteer of Arabia, 2:1022.
82. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, 2:183.
83. Gazetteer of Arabia, 2:1021.
84. The term “Takruri” (also written Takruzi or Takrasi) was a general term for slaves of West African origins, whether they were from “Nigeria, the Congo, the Cameroons, French West Africa, or elsewhere.” See British Consulate of Jeddah to the Foreign Office, “Note on Slavery in the Hejaz, with suggestions for Checking it,” 9 June 1925, in The Slave Trade into Arabia: 1820–1973, ed. A.
L. P. Burdett (Slough, UK: Archive Editions, 2006), 5:565.
85. T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, 1st Anchor Books ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1991), 89.
Notes to Pages 66–72
86. Ibid.
87. Philby, Heart of Arabia, 1:213–15.
88. Motoko Katakura, Bedouin Village: A Study of a Saudi Arabian People in Transition (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1977), 55, 59.
89. Philby, Heart of Arabia, 1:170–73.
90. Gazetteer of Arabia, 3:1615–16.
91. Philby, Heart of Arabia, 1:168–69.
92. Maurice Tamisier, Voyage en Arabie (Paris: Louis Desessart, 1840), 1:258. My translation.
93. Tamisier, Voyage en Arabie, 2:62, 107, 124. My translation.
94. See Onn Winckler, “The Surprising Results of the Saudi Arabian 2004 Demographic Census,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 1 (2008): 13.
95. Suzanne Miers, “Slavery and the Slave Trade in Saudi Arabia and the Arab State of the Persian Gulf, 1921–1963,” in Campbell, Abolition and Its Aftermath, 120.
96. Sir A. Ryan to the Foreign Office, “Memorandum on Slavery in Saudi Arabia,” 15 May 1934, in Burdett, Slave Trade into Arabia, 6:683.
97. Alaine S. Hutson, “Enslavement and Manumission in Saudi Arabia, 1926–38,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 11, no. 1 (Spring 2002):
60–66.
98. In 1848, for example, British officials estimated that female slaves imported into Muscat outnumbered men by a ratio of 6 to 5, while in 1894 a British official in Jeddah estimated the ratio of imports was 2 females to 1 male.
See Letter from H. D. Robertson, Officiating Resident, Persian Gulf, Karrack, to Lt.-Col. Sheil, 9 July 1842, in The Slave Trade into Arabia: 1820–1973, ed.
A. L. P. Burdett (Slough, UK: Archive Editions, 2006), 1:320–21; and “Notes on slaves, answers by Dr. Abdul Razzack, to queries by Commander Paget,”
12 June 1894, in The Slave Trade into Arabia: 1820–1973, ed. A. L. P. Burdett (Slough, UK: Archive Editions, 2006), 4:764.
99. British Embassy in Jeddah to the Earl of Home, 12 September 1963, in The Slave Trade into Arabia: 1820–1973, ed. A. L. P. Burdett (Slough, UK:
Archive Editions, 2006), 8:404–5.
100. Ibid.
101. Suzanne Miers, “The Anti-Slavery Game: Britain and the Suppression of Slavery in Africa and Arabia, 1890–1875,” in Hamilton and Salmon, Slavery, Diplomacy, and Empire, 198; and Benjamin Reilly, “A Well-Intentioned Failure:
British Antislavery Measures and the Arabian Peninsula, 1820–1940,” Journal of Arabian Studies, forthcoming.
102. Webb, Desert Frontier, 25.