- Raḍwā ʿĀshūr (1946 – 2014, Egypt) – Sirāj (1992, English trans. Siraaj: An Arab Tale, 2007). This novel describes Arab involvement in a slave rebellion against a dictatorial sultan on a plantation on a fictional east African island in the late 19th century (reference). Several Arab characters join the African uprising, among them Saʿīd, who returns to his native island after participating in the ʿUrabi rebellion in Alexandria, Egypt, which was met by British bombs in 1882. The revolution is eventually extinguished by the guns of a British fleet (reference). The island is modeled after 19th century Zanzibar, which was ruled by a despotic Arab dynasty and a center of the African slave trade (reference) (also in Colonial Rule of Northern Africa: 1882 British Occupation of Egypt).
- Al-Bashīr Khurayyif (1917 – 1983, Tunisia) – Barq al-Layl (‘Lightening in the night’, 1961), title of this novel refers to its protagonist Barq al-Layl, a black slave who was brutally separated from his mother by Moorish slave traders in the sixteenth century during the Hafsid dynasty. While living a life of enslavement, he falls in love with one of the wives of his owner, Rīm, who gives him the strength to carry on living and to defy the world around him (reference). Through Barq, the novel criticizes both social and racial classes and social hypocrisy in historical and modern Tunisian society (also above in Amazigh Dynasties).
- Salwā Bakr’s (1949-, Egypt) – Kūkū Sūdān Kabāshī (‘Kuku Sudan Kabashi’, 2004). This novel tells the story of the young lawyer Khālidah, who meets the Mexican Rudolfo, who is of Egyptian and Sudanese descent. Through him, she discovers the story of the Sudanese soldiers who fought for Napoleon III in Mexico. Khālidah starts her own investigation into the topic and her attention is drawn to the story of a Sudanese soldier by the name of Kūkū Sūdān Kabāshī, who received several war decorations in France after he was deployed by Egypt as part of their contribution to the Napoleon III’s 1863 invasion of Mexico (also in W: Outside the Arab World: Americas: Mexico). The novel’s theme is also treated in Muḥammad Mansī Qandīl’s Katībah Sūdāʾ (see below in this section).
- Layla Lalami (1968-, Morocco) – The Moor’s Account (2014). Written in English and set in the 16th century, this novel narrates the story of a Moroccan slave who was shipped to the New World as part of the Naváez expedition of 1527 and was one of the four survivors to reach Mexico City in 1536. These four survivors crossed through Latin America encountering different tribes. Among others, the novel won the 2015 American Book Award (also in W: Outside the Arab World: Americas: Mexico).
- Najwā Binshatwān (1970-, Libya) – Zarāyib al-ʿAbīd (2016. English trans. The Slave Yards, 2020). This novel tells of the lives of enslaved people in Libya under the Ottoman rule. The novel depicts ʿAtīqa’s search for her past, as she is daughter of a slave mother, Taʿawīḍah, and her master, Muḥamad Bin Shatwān. Though ʿAtīqa’s parents shared a loving bond, her father’s family forced her and her mother out of the house into Zarāyib al-ʿAbīd (‘the slave yards’), a neighbourhood in Benghazi in which only (former) slaves live and where ʿAtīqa grew up.
- Muḥammad Mansī Qandīl (1949-, Egypt) – Katībah Sūdāʾ (‘The black brigade’, 2015). Similar to Salwā Bakr’s Kūkū Sūdān Kabāshī (see above in this section), this novel is set between 1863 and 1867, when a battalion of hundreds of black slave fighters from Egypt and Sudan were sent to Mexico to fight for the French emperor Napoleon III in quenching the Mexican popular revolution against their European oppressors (reference). The alliance of the battalion and other European soldiers was eventually forced to retreat, and the destiny of many of the slave fighters remains unknown. Qandīl gives the unknown soldiers a voice and a story (also in W: Outside the Arab World: America: Mexico and 1800 – 1920: Ottoman Period).
- ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Barakah Sākin (1963-, Sudan) – Samāhānī (‘Forgive me’, 2017). In the year of 1652, when the Ottoman Empire invades what is now called Tanzania, enslaving its inhabitants, the Caliph rapes and impregnates one of his slaves who then gives birth a boy in the streets. The baby is found by a dog that raises him, to which he owes his name: Ibn al-Kalba (son of a bitch). The boy becomes a soldier and works at the caliph’s palace where he seduces his daughter, who he then rapes and kills as a revenge for his mother and his country. The title of the novel refers to the local pronunciation of ‘Sāmiḥnī’ meaning ‘forgive me’, which is what Ibn al-Kalba said to the corpse (reference) (also in W: Outside the Arab World: Sub- Sahara and West Africa: Tanzania).
- Farīd Ramaḍān (1961 – 2020, Bahrain) – al-Muḥīṭ al-Injlīzī (‘The English Ocean’, 2018). This novel is set from 1897 to 1935 and depicts the slave trade during the heyday of the British empire. The events of the novel begin with a ship carrying a group of slaves from Zanzibar, in East Africa, towards India. When the ship almost completely sinks, they are saved by a British Battleship and brought to Muscat, Oman, where they are taken care of by the Christian father Bītr. The novel includes many socio-historical depictions of different regions, such as Baluchistan, India, Oman, and Bahrain.
- Ḥammūr Ziyādah (1979-, Sudan) – Shawq al-Darwīsh (2014, English trans. Longing of the Dervish, 2014). This novel is set in the 19th century in Sudan, right after the fall of the Mahdist state, follows the story of Bakhāt Mandīl, who has just been released as a slave of European masters and seeks revenge for his imprisonment and the murder of his lover, the Christian missionary Thayūdūrā (reference). The novel also explores the social conflict between white Christian and Islamic Sufi cultures in Sudan, this latter of which determined the religious and intellectual vision of the Mahdist state (1844 – 1885) (reference) (also in L: Love, Lust, and Relationships: Inter-religious and ethnic (romantic) relationships: Between Muslims and Christians and 1844 – 1885 Mahdi State Sudan).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Ira Dworkin. 2018. “Radwa Ashour, African American Criticism, and the Production of Modern Arabic Literature.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 5(1): 1-18, p. 2
- Rana Assem Harouny. 2007/2008. “Book Review: Siraaj: An Arab Tale.” The Arab Studies Journal 15/16(1/2): pp. 169-172, p. 169, 170
- Samir Marzouki. 2008. “Fiction Historique et Subversion: Barq Ellil de Béchir Khareïef.” Revue de literature compare, 3(327): 367-377, p.371
- Haytham Ḥusayn. 2015. “‘Katībah Sūdāʾ’ .. Ḥurūb al-Ākhirīn wa Ṣafaqāt al-Abāṭirah wa al-ʿAbīd.” www.aljazeera.net, 9 May 2015, https://www.aljazeera.net/culture/2015/5/9/%D9%83%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%A9-%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A2%D8%AE%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%86-%D9%88%D8%B5%D9%81%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%AA (last accessed 4 December 2023)
- Ḥussayn, Haytham. 2017. “‘Samāhānī’ li-Baraka Sākin… fī Andalus Ifriqiyyā.” www.almodon.com, 15 September 2017 https://www.almodon.com/culture/2017/9/15/%D8%B3%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%87%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A-%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%B1%D9%83%D8%A9-%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%83%D9%86-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A3%D9%86%D8%AF%D9%84%D8%B3-%D8%A5%D9%81%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%82%D9%8A%D8%A7 (last accessed 21 November 2021)
- Muḥammad Najīb Muḥammad ʿAlī. 2014. “Shawq al-Sarwīsh .. Bayn al-Maḥkī wa al-Maskūt ʿAnhu.” www.ajnet.me, 30 October 2014, https://www.ajnet.me/culture/2014/10/30/%D8%B4%D9%88%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%B4-%D8%A8%D9%8A%D9%86-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%83%D9%8A-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B3%D9%83%D9%88%D8%AA-%D8%B9%D9%86%D9%87 (last accessed 23 March 2024)