On google I entered ‘largest racist rebellion in world history” and found that google did not go much beyond American racial riots and rebellions. Something I expected. So then I went to ” Zang Revolt”on Google and read that it was a horrific revolt against the Abbasid Arab regime that occurred between 869-883. In fact it was a revolt against the corrupt and despotic Abbasid regime —but one had to read deeply into the article to understand that it was- in fact- a revolt of black slaves working the saltpetre mines and draining the swamps of of southern Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Black slaves brought primarily from Zanzibar were sold to Arab property owners of Iraq to do the back -breaking work.
The Zanj revolt. Not often mentioned because it does not fit the cultural Marxist narrative
Over time these people -subjected to inhuman conditions- were converted to the Kharajite sect of Islam- a sect of Islam which demanded the slaughter of of all non-Kharajite men (Muslim or not) and the enslavement of their women and children. The leader of the Zanj revolt was an Arab named Ali Ibn Mohammed who used his talents as a radical revolutionary, and employing his pretensions as a prophet of Allah claiming receiving omens and emanations from Allah and the Prophet Muhammad (PBUN). The Zayd leader’s exhortations to revolt were transmitted through his Black lieutenants since most of the slaves did not speak Arabic.
He was also a talented military leader. thwarting the efforts of the Abbasid military forces, who after the murder of Caliph Mutawakkil ( by his own son) failed to contain the revolt. Most of the Abbasid army was made up of Black or Turkish slaves of the Arab state. Many of the Black units defected to the Zayd rebels as soon as enjoined in battle.
The war was fought in southern Iraq in a region of swamps, canals, a veritable wilderness in which the Abbasid forces were unable to negotiate or trained to fight in. The early history of the war was a tale of continuous Abbasid defeats with a huge loss of life. “After one engagement the unclaimed heads of the Muslims (non Zayd) were so numerous the negroes dumped them into a canal which carried them to Basra where they could be identified by relatives and friends.”
Going to wikipedia-that source of information often a mixed crafted to meet the narratives of the left wing version of events and history – one is led to believe that it was a revolt carried out by a mixed group of Black slave and Arab rebels. The subtle inference is that there was no racism here- just an ideological war. Lefties do not like to write about cultural, religious, or racial wars (except in reference to the racial problems in the US).They prefer to dwell on economic disparities, and colonialism and the evils of capiutalism. In fact there were a few brief occasions when certain bedouin Arab tribes did join with the Black slaves but only for short periods, and they usually deserted to the Abbasid forces when confronted by them.. It was in fact the largest race war ever fought anywhere in the world with over a million lives being lost in the conflict- mostly non-combatants. Over 300,000 people were massacred by the Zanj when they conquered a number of the Iraqi cities.
So why is this relevant to anything of importance today? It pertains to the war in Gaza and the political propagandistic war being waged by the cultural marxists (*)and Islamists. who have very carefully turned the war into an East-West, North -South, white people versus “people of color” conflict. This has been accomplished with the assistance of the social media, press, and mass communication controlled by the usual elitist useful fools residing in the West.
Bernard Lewis-for my money the most erudite Middle East scholar in the world, wrote this,” “In reviewing the evidence of prejudice and discrimination in the Middle East past, The belief tat I have tried to correct the false picture drawn by the myth makers , a picture of idyllic freedom from such evils.” The cultural modern day marxists and their youthful followers, victims of a left-wing ideologically based education system, have had this myth inculcated into their belief system – the tenet that racism is an affliction that resides primarily in the West and especially, the beta noir of all cultural marxists -the United States. Lewis does not dismiss the anti semitism of an earlier era in the West but he challenges the elitist presumption of a color blind society in the East, South, third world or whatever one wishes to call the Non Western world. Certainly in my tours of duty in Vietnam, Korea, and over 8 years in the Middle East, I found racism in these countries far more pernicious and prevalent than in the United States.(2)
As I have explained in previous blogs it is not a matter of skin color but genealogy. Arab culture has established the concept of nobility in heritage as the greatest of factors separating the elite from the rest. Descent from a slave heritage or a family known for corruption or loose women condemns follow-on generations to poor marriage prospects, and political aspirations. In Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt, the social level of “people of color” based on their genealogy, has always carried a social stigma. The” little brown brothers” -the Sudanese and Sa’idi people( of southern Egypt). President Naguib who briefly held the reins of power after King Farouk was ousted was replaced by Nasser partly because his Sa’idi origins were not acceptable to the army officer middle and upper class junta that replaced him.
In Iraq, they use to the term the more derogatory “Zingi” for negroid people who still live in the south of Iraq. Anywhere in the Arab world the idea of a daughter of a noble middle or upper class family marrying into a slave descended family is unheard of. As the slave origin poet named Subayn wrote “If my color was pink, women would love me But the Lord has marred me with blackness.” When one views the portraits and representation the Arab greats of Islamic history, they are always depicted with fair skin. Whiteness is the color of honor for pure Arabs, black the color of Shu’ubiya- the Non Arab converts to Islam such as the Zanj. A more derogatory word for Blacks I sometimes heard is Abith which also means slave.
So the recent surge of the Western Edward Said aficionados and Western cultural marxists to color the Israelis as ‘White colonizers” is a gross fake depiction to fit into the rather jaded narrative of “White colonizers” of the long dead imperialistic era. It seems somewhat fanciful to brand 9 million Jews of Israel as colonizers of 457 million Arabs(2). But then hatred based on religion or race is rarely a result of a cognitive function.
My wife asked me, Why do so many people hate Jews? She answered her own question saying, “because people envy them.” History tells us that they are survivors and tend to get ahead of the others because of brains, love of learning and determination. When one looks at the number of Jewish Nobel Prize winners -some 214- as I remember-there is something to my wife’s conclusion
(1)Ironic in that Karl Marx was a rabid racist who wrote very derogatory reverences to all “people of color” as Nathaniel Weyl’s research in his book Karl Marx Racist peeled away the accumulated layers of Communist hagiography and reveals Marx to have been a bigot of the first order.
(2)In Korea and Vietnam children with a Black parent are not adoptable. In saw them in the orphanages.
(3) Taking the famous utterance of King Hussein after the IDF raid into 1968 Karameh , speaking for the Arab world “we are all Palestinians.”
My references for this blog were from Theodore Noldeke Sketches from Eastern History, Bernard Lewis, Race and and Slavery in the Middle East and Philip Hitti, History of the Arabs.
