Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula

223 Pages·2015·1.88 MB·English

by  Benjamin Reilly

Benjamin Reilly
Slavery, Agriculture,
and Malaria in the
Arabian Peninsula
s e r i e s i n e c o l o g y a n d h i s t o r y
Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria
in the Arabian Peninsula
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Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula
Slavery, Agriculture, and
Malaria in the Arabian
Peninsula
Benjamin Reilly
OhiO UniveRsity PRess
Athens
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reilly, Benjamin, 1971–
Slavery, agriculture, and malaria in the Arabian Peninsula / Benjamin Reilly.
pages cm. — (Ohio University Press series in ecology and history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8214-2181-9 (hardcover : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-2182-6 (paperback :
acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-4540-2 (PDF)
1. Slavery—Arabian Peninsula—History. 2. Africans—Arabian Peninsula—History. 3.
Slaves—Arabian Peninsula—History. 4. Agricultural laborers—Arabian Peninsula—History.
5. Malaria—Social aspects—Arabian Peninsula—History. 6. Agriculture—Health aspects—
Arabian Peninsula—History. 7. Agriculture—Social aspects—Arabian Peninsula—History.
8. Agriculture—Environmental aspects—Arabian Peninsula—History. 9. Oases—Arabian
Peninsula—History. 10. Arabian Peninsula—Environmental conditions—History. I. Title.
HT1316.R45 2015
306.3’620953—dc23
2015026456
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Preface and Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Traditional Arabian Agriculture 22
Chapter 2 Diggers and Delvers 49
African Servile Agriculture in the Arabian Peninsula
Chapter 3 Case Study 82
Khaybar
Chapter 4 Oasis Fever 102
Malaria as a Factor in Arabian Agricultural Slavery
Chapter 5 Arabian Agricultural Slavery in the Longue Durée 123
Chapter 6 Conclusions 153
Notes 157
Glossary 181
Bibliography 185
Index 207

Illustrations
Figures
Figure 1.1. Traditional Arabian wadi farming techniques 34
Figure 1.2. Terracing in Yemen 40
Figure 1.3. Terracing in Oman 41
Figure 1.4. Cross-section of a qanat, or “chain of wells” 44
Figure 1.5. Cross-section of a jalib, or draw well 44
Figure 2.1. Professions of manumitted slaves, Jeddah 1926–33 76
Figure 3.1. Khaybar from above 87
Figure 5.1. Average annual slave imports from trans-Sahara,
Red Sea, and Indian Ocean trade, 1000–1900 CE 129
Figure 5.2. Y-chromosome vs. mitochondrial DNA
haplotypes of African origin in Saudi Arabia
and surrounding Arab populations 140
Maps
Map I.1. Regions of Arabia 6
Map I.2. Towns of Arabia 7
Map I.3. Travelers in Arabia, 1807–1949 CE 20
Map 1.1. The ITCZ (Intertropical Convergence Zone),
past and present 24
viii | Illustrations
Map 1.2. Palm tree distribution in traditional Arabia
and its environs 28
Map 1.3. Towns in Arabia c. 1900 CE 29
Map 1.4. Water resources in Arabian Peninsula agriculture 31
Map 2.1. African agricultural colonies of the Arabian
Peninsula 61
Map 3.1. Khaybar area map 86
Map 3.2. Map of Khaybar, 1884 CE 88
Map 3.3. Detailed map of modern Khaybar 96
Map 4.1. Well depth survey locations 120
Preface and Acknowledgments
This book is intended to be a contribution to two main fields of schol-
arship. on one hand, it seeks to expand our knowledge of slave practices
in the Arabic world, which remain vastly under-studied in comparison to
slave systems in the Atlantic world of the seventeenth through the nine-
teenth centuries, especially that of the American south. in particular, it
shines light on agricultural slavery in the Arabian Peninsula, an almost
entirely unstudied phenomenon. At the same time, this book seeks to con-
tribute to the field of environmental history, which i would define as the
study of human/landscape interactions as mediated by societal, cultural,
biological, and genetic processes. While the environmental histories of
other parts of the world, such as the American West and the Mediterra-
nean, have been well-charted by multiple scholars, the Arabian Peninsula
is still terra incognita from an environmental history standpoint, and this
book represents an initial foray into the field.1
since this book is written primarily for scholars of slavery and envi-
ronmental history, i have adopted a highly simplified Arabic orthography
throughout the text. Rather than use special characters for daad, saad, ta’,
za’, and haa’, which are emphasized versions of the English d, s, t, th, and h
sounds respectively, i have transliterated these letters as d, s, t, th, and h.
similarly, i have transliterated both the ayn and hamzah, letters which to
English-speakers sound like unvocalized breaks in the middle of a word, as
apostrophes. i have rendered vowels as the closest English equivalents,
without using special English characters; for example, i transliterated ةريد
as deera, not dīra. i did, however, retain the standard special characters in