Slavery in the Modern Middle East and North Africa: Exploitation and Resistance from the 19th Century - Present Day

What is the nature of slavery as practiced and at times reintroduced over the past two centuries in the Middle East and North Africa? In spite of the rich regional diversity of the areas studied - from Morocco to the Indian Ocean to Iran - this anthology demonstrates clear commonalities across the super-region. These include the regulation of slavery by Islam and local traditions, the absence of a rigid racial hierarchy as in North American slavery, the management of the sexuality and reproductive capacity of female slaves, and views on identity and heritage among descendants of slaves. Authors also examine the economic and theological underpinnings of contemporary slavery and human trafficking.

The book is among the first to focus on slavery across the Islamic world from the 19th century to the present - a period constituting the endgame of institutionalized slavery in the region but also the persistence of forms of de facto enslavement. Each chapter scrutinizes from a different vantage point - institutions, economics, the abolitionist movement, literature, folklore, and the moving image - creating a multi-dimensional picture of the phenomenon.

The authors have mined government archives and statistics, memoirs, interviews, photographs, drawings, songs, cinema and television. Not only are Arabic, Persian and Turkish sources leveraged, but a variety of materials in minor and endangered languages, such as Soqotri, Balochi and Sorani Kurdish, in addition to European languages.

Elena Andreeva is a Professor of History at Virginia Military Institute, USA. She is the author of Russia and Iran in the Great Game (2007) and Russian Central Asia in the Works of Nikolai Karazin, 1842-1908 (2021), and co-editor (with Rudi Matthee) of Russians in Iran (2018).

Kevin McNeer is the author of several documentary films including Stalin Thought of You, On One Day of the Days of God and Frame by Frame. He has filmed extensively in the Middle East and edited and translated numerous books and articles related to Eastern Studies, including Storied Land: Kurdish Culture Through the Eyes of Russian Scholars (2014), and Victims of their Faith (upcoming, with Touraj Atabaki and Lana Ravandi-Fadai).