New Book: Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam by Chouki El Hamel (Cambridge UP 2012)
Jacob Mundy
Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam
chronicles the experiences, identity, and achievements of enslaved black
people in Morocco from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the
twentieth century. Chouki El Hamel argues that we cannot rely solely on
Islamic ideology as the key to explain social relations and particularly
the history of black slavery in the Muslim world, for this viewpoint
yields an inaccurate historical record of the people, institutions, and
social practices of slavery in Northwest Africa. El Hamel focuses on
black Moroccans’ collective experience beginning with their enslavement
to serve as the loyal army of the Sultan Isma’il. By the time the Sultan
died in 1727, they had become a political force, making and unmaking
rulers well into the nineteenth century. The emphasis on the political
history of the black army is augmented by a close examination of the
continuity of black Moroccan identity through the musical and cultural
practices of the Gnawa.
• Fills a gap in the scholarship concerning slavery, race and gender in Morocco
• Deconstructs familiar concepts by focusing on the agency of the
enslaved people and investigating the subaltern relationship to the
ruling institutions, power, race and gender politics
• Argues that we cannot rely solely on Islamic ideology as the key to
explaining the history of black slavery in the Muslim world
Learn more about Black Morocco at the publisher’s website (Cambridge) and Amazon.