A Safavid oil painting of an African soldier in Safavid Iran. This painting was created in Isfahan in the last quarter of the 17th century.

Afro-Iranians (Persian: ایرانیان آفریقایی‌تبار) refers to Iranian people with significant black ancestry. Most Afro-Iranians are concentrated in the southern provinces of Iran, including Hormozgan, Sistan and Balochistan, Bushehr, Khuzestan, and Fars. They are split between Afro-Iranians who identify as Persians, Iranian Arabs, or Balochs.

History

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. 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.

During Qajar rule, many wealthy households imported Black African women and children to perform domestic work alongside Circassian slaves. This was largely drawn from the Zanj, who were Bantu-speaking peoples that lived alongside Southeast Africa. In an area roughly comprising modern-day Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. Under British pressure, Mohammad Shah Qajar issued a firman suppressing slave trade in 1848. Iran abolished slavery in 1929.

Notable Afro-Iranians

See also

Further reading

  • Ehsaei, Mahdi (2015) , 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
  • Khosronejad, Pedram (2018), "Re-imagining Iranian African Slavery: photography as material Culture.", Exhibition Catalogue: 24 pp
  • Khosronejad, Pedram (2017), "Qajar African Nannies: African Slaves and Aristocratic Babies.", Visual Studies of Modern Iran, 1: 70 pp
  • 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
  • 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
  • Khosronejad, Pedram (2016), "The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures.", The Guardian
  • 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:.
  • Lee, Anthony A. (2012), "Enslaved African Women in Nineteenth-Century Iran: The Life of Fezzeh Khanom of Shiraz.", Iranian Studies, 45 (3): 417–437, doi:, S2CID
  • 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). . Iranian Studies. 50 (2): 284. doi:. hdl:.

External links

  • (a documentary film by: Behnaz Mirzai)
  • (an ethnographic photography project and book by: Mahdi Ehsaei)
  • (Review of Behnaz Mirzais' documentaries by: Pedram Khosronejad)
  • (Review of Behnaz Mirzai's Book by: Pedram Khosronejad)