Zanj Rebellion
The Zanj Rebellion refers to a series of uprisings which took place over a period of fifteen years (869-883 AD) near the city of Basra (also known as Basara) in modern day Iraq.
The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in hard agriculture-related outdoor work. In particular, Zanj slaves were used in labor-intensive plantations, harvesting crops like sugarcane in the lower Mesopotamia basin of southern modern-day Iraq, a relatively unusual development in the Islamic world, which generally reserved slave labor for household chores and as soldiers. Harsh circumstances apparently motivated, between the seventh and ninth centuries, three rebellions, the largest of which occurred between 868 and 883.
Others have taken a different interpretation of the Zanj rebellion believing that it was not a slave rebellion but that the revolt was mostly Arabs supported by East African immigrants in Iraq. This view was taken by M. A. Shaban who argued:
"It was not a slave revolt. It was a zanj, i.e. a Negro, revolt. To equate Negro with slave is a reflection of nineteenth-century racial theories; it could only apply to the American South before the Civil War."
"All the talk about slaves rising against the wretched conditions of work in the salt marshes of Basra is a figment of the imagination and has no support in the sources. On the contrary, some of the people who were working in the salt marshes were among the first to fight against the revolt. Of course there were a few runaway slaves who joined the rebels, but this still does not make it a slave revolt. The vast majority of the rebels were Arabs of the Persian Gulf supported by free East Africans who had made their homes in the region."
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