Afro-Iranians

Afro-Iranians (Persian: ایرانیان آفریقایی‌تبار) are Iranian people of African Zanj heritage. Most Afro-Iranians are concentrated in the coastal provinces of Persian Gulf such as Hormozagan, Sistan and Baluchestan, Bushehr and Khuzestan.[2]

Afro-Iranians
ایرانیان آفریقایی‌تبار
Huts in the Afro-Iranian village of Lashar[1]
Regions with significant populations
Sistan and Balochestan, Hormozgan, Bushehr, Khuzestan
Languages
Majority Persian, minority Arabic and Balochi
Religion
Islam (predominantly Shia; Sunni)
Related ethnic groups
Zanj
Black people
African diaspora
Asia-Pacific
African-derived culture
History
Race-related
Related topics

History
A Safavid oil painting of an African soldier in Safavid Iran. Created in Isfahan in the last quarter of the 17th century, the figure was most likely a slave soldier in Safavid Iran's musketeer corps

The Indian Ocean slave trade was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, enslaved black people who were captured by Arab slave traders were sold in cumulatively large numbers over centuries to; the Persian Gulf, Egypt, Arabia, India, the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands and Ethiopia.[3] Others came as immigrants throughout many millennia or from Portuguese slave traders who occupied most of the contested Ormus's Bandar Abbas, Hormoz and Qeshm island ports in southern Iran by early 16th century.[4][5]

During Qajar rule, many wealthy households imported Black African women and children to perform domestic work alongside Eastern European Circassian slaves. This was largely drawn from the Zanj, who were Bantu-speaking peoples that lived alongside Southeast Africa.[6] In an area roughly comprising modern-day Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi.[7] Under British pressure, Mohammad Shah Qajar issued a firman suppressing slave trade in 1848.[8]

Notable Afro-Iranians

See also

Further reading
  • Ehsaei, Mahdi (2015) "Afro-Iran", Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag, ISBN 978-3-86828-655-7
  • Khosronejad, Pedram (2018), "Unveiling the Veiled: Royal Consorts, Slaves and Prostitutes in Qajar Photographs.", Exhibition Catalogue: 44 pp "Unveiling the Veiled"
  • Khosronejad, Pedram (2018), "Re-imagining Iranian African Slavery: photography as material Culture.", Exhibition Catalogue: 24 pp "Re-imagining Iranian African Slavery: photography as material Culture"
  • Khosronejad, Pedram (2017), "Qajar African Nannies: African Slaves and Aristocratic Babies.", Visual Studies of Modern Iran, 1: 70 pp "Qajar African Nannies"
  • Khosronejad, Pedram (2016), "Out of Focus, Photography of African Slavery in Qajar Iran.", The Anthropology of the Contemporary Middle East and Central Eurasia, 4: 1–31 "Out of Focus, Photography of African Slavery in Qajar Iran"
  • Khosronejad, Pedram (2016), "Photography of African Slavery in Iran.", The Guardian: Interview of Dr. Louise Siddons, Associate Professor of Art History (Department of Art, Oklahoma State University) with Dr. Pedram Khosronejad "Photography of African Slavery in Iran"
  • Khosronejad, Pedram (2016), "The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures.", The Guardian/"The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures"
  • Korn, Agnes; Nourzaei, Maryam (2019). "Notes on the speech of the Afro-Baloch of the southern coast of Iran". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 29 (4): 623–657. doi:10.1017/S1356186319000300.
  • Lee, Anthony A. (2012), "Enslaved African Women in Nineteenth-Century Iran: The Life of Fezzeh Khanom of Shiraz.", Iranian Studies, 45:3 (3): 417–437, doi:10.1080/00210862.2011.637769, S2CID 162036760
  • Mirzai, B. A. (2002), "African presence in Iran: Identity and its reconstruction in the 19th and 20th centuries", Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 89: 336–337
  • Tazmini, Ghoncheh (March 2017). "The Persian–Portuguese Encounter in Hormuz: Orientalism Reconsidered". Iranian Studies. 50 (2): 284.

References
  1. "Centers of Power in Iran" (PDF). CIA. May 1972. Retrieved 5 August 2013.
  2. Mirzai, Behnaz. Afro-Iranian Lives (documentary film). afroiranianlives.com. Retrieved 23 November 2011.
  3. Gwyn Campbell, The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, 1 edition, (Routledge: 2003), p.ix
  4. "Recalling Africa's harrowing tale of its first slavers – The Arabs". New African Magazine. 27 March 2018. Retrieved 24 May 2022.
  5. Tazmini, Ghoncheh. "The Persian–Portuguese Encounter in Hormuz: Orientalism Reconsidered". Association for Iranian Studies. 1 March 2017. (Cambridge University Press: 1 January 2022), vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 284. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
  6. F.R.C. Bagley et al., The Last Great Muslim Empires, (Brill: 1997), p.174
  7. Bethwell A. Ogot, Zamani: A Survey of East African History, (East African Publishing House: 1974), p.104
  8. "UNESCO: Fugitive Slaves, Asylum and Manumission in Iran (1851 – 1913)" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 March 2015. Retrieved 13 April 2010.
  9. Hern, Bill; Gleave, David (30 October 2020). "Dennis Walker: Manchester United's first and only black Busby Babe". theguardian.com. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
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