Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt

"A must read for any social historian of the region."--The American Historical Review

The individual lives of African slaves in the Middle East, with a new afterword, new in paperback

In the nineteenth century hundreds of thousands of Africans were forcibly migrated northward to Egypt and other eastern Mediterranean destinations, yet relatively little is known about them. Studies have focused mainly on the Mamluk and harem slaves of elite households, who were mostly white, and on abolitionist efforts to end the slave trade, and most have relied heavily on Western language sources. In recent decades new sources have become available, ranging from Egyptian religious and civil court and police records to rediscovered archives and accounts in Western archives and libraries. Along with new developments in the study of African slavery these sources provide a perspective on the lives of non-elite trans-Saharan Africans in nineteenth century Egypt and beyond. The nine essays in this volume examine the lives of slaves and freed men and women in Egypt and the region.

Contributors:
Kenneth M. Cuno, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Y. Hakan Erdem, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
Michael Ferguson, Concordia University, Canada
Emad Ahmad Helal Shams al-Din, Suez Canal University, Egypt
Liat Kozma, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
George Michael La Rue, Clarion University of Pennsylvania, USA
Ahmad A. Sikainga, Ohio State University, USA
Eve M. Troutt Powell, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Terence Walz Independent scholar, Washington, DC, USA