¹ Always referred to simply as Fezzeh in the existing literature. I have added the title “Khanom,” which is the customary honorific address given to any respectable woman in Iran, except perhaps a slave woman.

² There is a considerable literature on the Babi movement. The various works of Edward G. Browne are still important, especially his translation and extensive notation of ‘Abdu'l-Baha's A Traveller's Narrative (Cambridge, 1891) and Husayn Hamadani, Mírzá's The Táríkh-i-Jadíd or New History of Mírzá Alí Muhammad the Bab (Cambridge, 1893)Google Scholar, and Browne, 's own Materials for the Study of the Babí Religion (Cambridge, 1918)Google Scholar. The best recent academic treatments are to be found in Amanat, Abbas, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844–1850 (Ithaca, NY, 1989; paperback ed. Los Angeles, 2005)Google Scholar and in MacEoin, Denis, “From Shaykhism to Babism: A Study in Charismatic Renewal in Shí‘í Islam” (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 1979Google Scholar; published along with a number of other articles on the subject in idem., The Messiah of Shiraz [Leiden, 2009]). The classic Baha'i chronicle of the period is Nabíl-i A‘zam's hagiographic The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá’i Revelation, trans. and ed. Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette, IL, 1932). See also Balyuzi, H. M., The Báb: The Herald of the Day of Days (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar and Smith, Peter's sociological study, The Babi and Baha'i Religions: From Messianic Shi'ism to a World Religion (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar. The early volumes of the Studies in the Bábí and Bahá'í Religions series, gen. ed. Lee, Anthony A. (Los Angeles, 1982–)Google Scholar, are also useful.

³ See, for example, R. Brunschvig, “‘Abd,” Encyclopedia of Islam; Hamid Algar, “Barda and Barda-Dari, part vi: Regulations Governing Slavery in Islamic Jurisprudence,” Encyclopedia Iranica.

⁴ See, for example, the extraordinary Harem: The World Behind the Veil by Croutier, Alev Lytle (New York, 1989)Google Scholar, notable for its lush illustrations of harem women.

⁵ Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York, 1979)Google Scholar.

⁶ Cf. Tamara Loos, “Transnational Histories of Sexualities in Asia” and Peirce, Leslie, “Writing Histories of Sexuality in the Middle East,” both in American Historical Review, 114, no. 5 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ La Rue, George Michael, “African Slave Women in Egypt, ca. 1820 to the Plague of 1834–35,” in Women in Slavery: Volume One: Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic, ed. Campbell, Gwyn et al. (Athens, OH, 2007). 110Google Scholar.

⁸ There are exceptions, of course. Toledano, Ehud R.'s excellent volumes, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle, 1998)Google Scholar and As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East (New Haven, CT, 2007), should be noted. Neither book deals with Iran, however. Martin, Vanessa, The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the State in Nineteenth-Century Persia (London, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, includes two chapters on slavery in Iran and has made a major contribution to the field. Mirzai, Behnaz A. et al., Slavery, Islam and Diaspora (Trenton, NJ, 2009)Google Scholar, contains an essay on the Qajar harem. For the Safavid period, see Babaie, Sussan, Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran (London, 2004)Google Scholar, with brief discussions of African slaves. Also of interest, but with no mention of Iran, are: Hunwick, John and Powell, Eve Troutt, The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton, NJ, 2002Google Scholar); and de Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan and Pankhurst, Richard, The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean (Trenton, NJ, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁹ The only doctoral dissertation written on the history of Iranian slavery appears to be Mirzai, Behnaz A.'s “Slavery, the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and the Emancipation of Slaves in Iran (1828–1928)” (PhD diss., York University, Ontario, 2004)Google Scholar. By the same author, see also “African Presence in Iran: Identity and its Reconstruction,” in Traites et Esclavages: Vieux Problemes, Nouvelles Perspectives?, ed. O. Petre-Grenouilleau (Paris, 2002), 229–46; “The Slave Trade and the African Diaspora in Iran,” in Monsoon and Migration: Unleashing Dhow Synergies, ed. Abdul Sheriff (Zanzibar, 2005); and “Afro-Iranian Lives” (video). Niambi Cacchioli has also done work in this area: see “Disputed Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, Asylum, and Manumission in Iran (1851–1913),” UNESCO website. http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/files/38508/12480962345Disputed_Freedom.pdf/Disputed%2BFreedom.pdf. Other useful discussions of slavery in Islam, with brief references to Iran, include Harris, Joseph E., The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade (Evanston, IL, 1971)Google Scholar and Lewis, Bernard, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (New York, 1990)Google Scholar. Also Nahid Mozaffari, ed., Slavery in Iran (forthcoming).

¹⁰ Ricks, Thomas, “Slaves and Slave Trading in Shi'i Iran, AD 1500–1900,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 36, no. 4 (2001): 407–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In addition to Ricks’ comments, Ronald Segal comments at length on the paucity of academic work done on slavery in Iran in Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora (New York, 2001), 121–27. Apparently there is little memory of African slavery among contemporary Iranians, at least among those in Los Angeles. Whenever I raise the subject among Iranian friends and acquaintances they express shock and deny that such a thing could ever have existed in Iran.

¹¹ Martin, The Qajar Pact, 153, citing Kelly, J. B., Britain and the Persian Gulf 1785–1880 (Oxford, 1968), 414–16Google Scholar.

¹² Mirzai, “Slavery,” 70.

¹³ Miller, Joseph C., “Introduction,” in Women and Slavery; Volume One: Africa, the Indian Ocean World, and the Medieval North Atlantic, ed. Campbell, Gwyn, et al. (Athens, OH, 2007), 4–5Google Scholar; Kjekshus, Helge, Ecological Control and Development in Eastern Africa (Nairobi, 1979), 14–16Google Scholar; Campbell, Gwen, introduction to Abolition and Its Aftermath in Indian Ocean, Africa and Asia (London, 2005), 5Google Scholar; Campbell, Gwyn, Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (London, 2004), xiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ This was as much a matter of pretense as anything else. Lady Sheil noted, with regard to Tehran in the early 1850s: “[Women of] all classes enjoy abundance of liberty, more so, I think, than among us. The complete envelopment of the face and person [the veil, or chador] disguises them effectually from the nearest relatives, and destroying, when convenient, all distinction of rank, gives unrestrained freedom. The bazars [sic] are crowded with women in this most ungraceful disguise. The weekly bath and constant visits consume a large share of their time; and Thursday afternoon is devoted to a mock pilgrimage to some shrine outside the town, or else to the grave of some relation.” Leonora Sheil, Lady Mary, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (London, 1856), 145–46Google Scholar. I am grateful to Sen McGlinn for bringing this quote to my attention.

¹⁵ For a general discussion of the Qajar harem, see Behnaz A. Mirzai, “Qajar Haram: Imagination or Reality?,” in Mirzai et al., Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, 77–90.

¹⁶ Miller, “Introduction,” 11–12.

¹⁷ Ibid., 12.

¹⁸ Jonathan E. Brockkopp, “Concubines,” (Encyclopedia of the Qur'an.. In practice, such rights of a slave mother and child would only be respected if masters acknowledged paternity, which they normally did.

¹⁹ Slaves are, after all, commodities that must be classified and priced for sale.

²⁰ Certainly from Mombasa, a Swahili city on the East African coast.

²¹ Sheil, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia, 243–45.

²² See Ibid. The book also contains an early account of the Babi movement in Iran. See also Harris, The African Presence, 39–40, especially note 25.

²³ Mirzai, “Slavery,” 112.

²⁴ Mirzai, “Qajar Harem,” 82. This gradual process of African slaves in the Iranian diaspora becoming Afro-Iranians over time and over generations has yet to be adequately studied.

²⁶ Jamila's saga apparently begins in 1880. Quoted in Mirzai, “Slavery,” 72, from the statement of Jamila, 8 Shawwál 1323, File 2, Box 3, 1323, Center of Documents, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tehran. Mirzai suggests in footnotes 24 and 25 (ibid.) that Sāho is “a Cushitic-speaking group in northern Ethiopia,” and that Omrānīah presumably refers to the Oromo. The latter supposition is certainly not true because linguistic barriers would prevent such a shift in pronunciation. (Christopher Ehret, personal conversation, 2 July 2007.)

²⁵ Miller, “Introduction,” 13, and Paul Lovejoy, “Internal Markets or an Atlantic-Sahara Divide?,” both in Campbell, Women and Slavery. These were also probably considered to be the most sexually desirable slaves at the time.

²⁷ Muhammad Ibrahim Bastami Parizi cites a number of examples of selling wives and daughters to pay taxes during this period, as well as the regular practice of slavery in the eastern provinces of Kirman, Baluchistan, Sistan, and Khorasan in Hasht al-haft (Tehran, 1991), cited in Najmbadi, Afsaneh, “‘Is Our Name Remembered?’: Writing the History of Iranian Constitutionalism as If Women and Gender Mattered,” Iranian Studies, 29, no. 1/2 (1996): 91Google Scholar, note 17.

²⁸ Ibid., 85–109; Najmbadi, Afsaneh, The Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National Memory in Iranian History (Syracuse, NY, 1998)Google Scholar. Najmabadi does not discuss African slaves, however. For another article on the exclusion of the Other from Iranian national consciousness and history, see Cole, Juan R. I., “Marking Boundaries, Marking Time: The Iranian Past and the Construction of the Self by Qajar Thinkers,” Iranian Studies, 29, no. 1/2 (1996): 35–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Polak, Jakob Eduard, Persien, das Land und seine Bewohner (Leipzig, 1865), 248Google Scholar. Cf. Mirzai, “Slavery,” 80.

³⁰ Still, I am highly suspicious of the census category “household servants” in this context. The slave trade had been formally outlawed by the Iranian government in 1848, but the importation of slaves from Africa had continued, even increased. Under such circumstances it may have been prudent for the wealthy to refer to their African slaves as “household servants,” especially in official matters like a census. It may have been even more prudent for the Iranian government to refer to household slaves in public documents like a census with an ambiguous designation that would attract a minimum of foreign scrutiny and condemnation. Similarly, slave children who were purchased and brought into households could have been overlooked, or classified as “orphans.”

³¹ Segal, Islam's Black Slaves, 126, quoting an unpublished paper by Ricks, Thomas, which was eventually published as “Slaves and Slave Trading in Shi'i Iran, AD 1500–1900,” Journal of Asian and African Studies, 36, no. 4 (2001): 407–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² Tehran may not have been so different in this regard than other world capital cities. The black populations of both London and Lisbon during the mid-nineteenth century were in this same range. The black population of Lisbon may have been as high as 20 percent. See, for example, Rodrigues, Ana Maria, Os Negros em Portugal: sécs. XV a XIX: Mosteiro dos Jeronimos 23 de Setembro de 1999 a 24 de Janeiro de 2000 (Lisbon, 1999)Google Scholar; Fryer, A.P.D.G., Sketches of Portuguese Life, Manners, Costume, and Character (London, 1826)Google Scholar; , Peter, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (Sterling, VA, 1984)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Dr. Edward Alpers and Dr. Gregory Pirio for this information. According to Dr. Terence Walz, the figure for Cairo was 5% (Personal Conversation). A similar estimate for Cairo is found in Baer, Gabriel, “Slavery in Nineteeth-Century Egypt,” The Journal of African History, 8, no. 3 (1967), 417–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ Mirzai, “Slavery,” 97–98.

³⁴ Ibid., 74 and 78.

³⁵ ol-Soltaneh, Taj, Khaterat-e Taj ol-Soltaneh, ed. by Ettihadia, Mansura (Nizam Mafi) and Sa‘dvandian, Sirus (Tehran, 1361 [1982])Google Scholar; trans. as Crowning Anguish: Memoirs of a Persian Princess: From the Harem to Modernity, 1884–1914, ed. by Abbas Amanat (Washington, DC, 1993), 112–15. Taj ol-Soltana explicitly substitutes a description of her African nanny for tender memories of her mother. For a brief discussion of Taj ol-Soltaneh's attitudes towards her nanny, see Rahimieh, Nasrin, Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural History (Syracuse, NY, 2001), 117–20Google Scholar.

³⁶ Alpers, Edward A., “The African Diaspora in the Northwestern Indian Ocean: Reconsideration of an Old Problem, New Directions in Research,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (formerly South Asia Bulletin), 17, no. 2 (1997): 62–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Even Alpers’ article—while calling on evidence from Arabia and India—was unable to discuss Iran as the site of African cultural influence, however. Presumably, this is because so little has been written on the subject.

³⁷ Campbell's important volume, Women and Slavery, does not mention Iran, for example, as her earlier edited anthology, Structure of Slavery, did not.

³⁸ Segal, Islam's Black Slaves, 127. Such an assessment rests on the racial classification of the Iranian population into contemporary Western categories, which is questionable at best.

³⁹ Similar cautions are made for the study of slavery in Africa and Asia. See, Miller, “Introduction,” 25–29; Gwyn Campbell, “Introduction: Slavery and Other Forms of Unfree Labour in the Indian Ocean World,” in Structure of Slavery, viii–xviii; Suzanne Miers, “Slavery: A Question of Definition,” in Structure of Slavery, 1–14.

⁴⁰ Quoted in Martin, The Qajar Pact, 155; quoted from Talbot to Lascelles, in No. 34, 13.2.1892, FO 248/543.

⁴¹ Martin, Qajar Pact, 150, 151.

⁴² Ibid., 170–82.

⁴³ Afnan, Abu'l-Qasim, Black Pearls: Servants in the Households of the Báb and Baháu'lláh (Los Angeles, 1988, 2nd ed. 1999).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Balyuzi, Hasan's Khadijih Bagum: The Wife of the Báb (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar had mentioned her name. Since the publication of Black Pearls, Fezzeh Khanom has been mentioned briefly in the translation into English of Mirza Habibu'llah Afnan's memoirs, The Genesis of the Babi-Baha'i Faiths in Shiráz and Fárs, trans. and annotated by Ahang Rabbani (Leiden, 2008) and in Ma'ani, Baharieh Rouhani, Leaves of the Twin Divine Trees (Oxford, 2008)Google Scholar. She is always referred to simply as “Fid.d.ih.”

⁴⁵ See Jackson Armstrong-Ingram, “‘Black Pearls’: The African Household Slaves of a Nineteenth-Century Iranian Merchant Family” (paper presented at the Conference on Slavery, Islam, and Diaspora, Harriet Tubman Resource Centre on the African Diaspora, Department of History, York University, 24–26 October 2003).

⁴⁶ That is, “twigs” branched from the ”Holy Tree” (of the Báb). This, as opposed to the Aghsan (branches), the direct descendants of Bahá'u'lláh.

⁴⁷ Robert Balyuzi, in the foreword to Balyuzi, H. M., Khadijih Bagum: The Wife of the Báb (Oxford, 1981), xi–xiiGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁸ Afnan, Black Pearls. The book remains in print today and is no longer the subject of much controversy.

⁴⁹ Some African American Baha'is were outraged at the revelation that the central figures of their religion had been slave owners (see, for example, http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/3016/racism.htm). Others seemed unconcerned about that but felt that a public portrayal of early black believers as slaves—even if slaves to the founders—was unseemly and ill-considered. They preferred to see black Baha'is in history occupying more dignified positions. They also objected to Afnan's accounts as patronizing. The book was allowed to go out of print for a time.

⁵⁰ This very interesting little book (besides discussing Fezzeh and Mobarak) provides biographies of the African slaves and servants who served in the households of Baha'u'llah, and of his son ‘Abdu'l-Baha, in Iran and in Palestine. These narratives are also of considerable interest, but are beyond the scope of this study.

⁵¹ I am deeply grateful for Afnan's unprecedented attention to African slaves in his writings, despite any shortcomings that I discuss below.

⁵² Lee, Anthony A., “The Establishment of the Baha'i Faith in West Africa: The First Decade, 1952–1962” (PhD diss., UCLA, 2007)Google Scholar; idem, The Baha'i Faith in Africa: Establishing a New Religious Movement, 1952–1963 (Leiden, 2011).

⁵³ The Baha'i system of transliteration produces the spelling “Fiḍḍih.” I have used this journal's system of transliteration for this article.

⁵⁴ I am grateful to the late Jackson Armstrong-Ingram for some of these insights.

⁵⁵ Afnan, Black Pearls, 22. The transliteration of names in the quotations reproduces that in the original document. I should note that the other servants mentioned here lived in adjoining houses of the Báb's relatives. This remark indicates the importance of the African presence in these households and implies that the African servants were naturally close to one another and were expected to relate with “warm friendship.” Here we can catch a brief glimpse of slave networks that would be able to preserve and reproduce some aspects of Afro-Iranian culture.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 23.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 25.

⁵⁸ Afnan, personal conversation with the author.

⁵⁹ Armstrong-Ingram, “‘Black Pearls,’” 16.

⁶⁰ The Báb's house remained an important place of pilgrimage for Baha'is until it was razed to the ground by Muslim zealots after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

⁶¹ Ma'ani, Leaves, 54–56.

⁶² Kissing of hands is forbidden by Baha'i religious law (Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i Aqdas, K34).

⁶³ This statement was his response to objections which had been made by some African American Baha'is that his portrayal of Fezzeh was demeaning to black people. He insisted that Iranian Baha'is of a previous generation had regarded Fezzeh as a holy person, as did he. I remember quite vividly that at the end of our visit, perhaps in illustration of his point, Afnan embraced me and kissed my shoulder. The effect was indeed startling and inspired me with a sense of humility and deep respect for the man, who seemed to embody at that moment all of the traditional dignity, modesty, and rectitude of his illustrious family (Afnan, personal conversation with the author).

⁶⁴ Afnan, Black Pearls, 23.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 16–17. This is not an unusual strategy for dealing with the death of an absent relative within Iranian families. Quite often, the bad news will be kept from as many relatives as possible for as long as possible. Of course, the charade inevitably comes to an end. The dreaded truth is either revealed openly and deliberately or accidentally—and it is then either fully acknowledged within the family or a feigned ignorance is maintained as a polite fiction that is respected by everyone.

⁶⁶ Afnan, Black Pearls, 17–18.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 23. The “brutal circumstances” are a reference to the Bab's execution by firing squad.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Persecution became especially intense in 1852, after an attempt was made on the life of the shah by a group of Babis in Tehran.

⁷⁰ There may have been an element of self-interest at play here, as well. Mobarak and Fezzeh were, after all, slaves. If their master were determined to be dead, his property could be divided among his heirs. That property might include the two of them, and their household would be destroyed as a result (I am grateful to Dr. Mehrdad Amanat for this insight).

⁷¹ Afnan, Black Pearls, 17.

⁷² Ibid.

⁷³ For example, Will C. van den Hoonaard states categorically: “Neither Mubarak [n]or Fiddih became Babis” (“A Survey of the Baha'i Faith in Africa from Its Earliest Days to 1986,” Baha'i Studies Review, 11 [2003]: 12). More recently, one article concerned with Haji Mobarak, published in a Persian Baha'i journal, has begun to challenge this consensus, Nader Saiedi, “Soltan-e Habashi,” in Payam-e Baha'i (France), May 2010, 10–13.

⁷⁴ See Balyuzi, Khadíjih Bagum; Rabbani, Genesis; and Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal.

⁷⁵ As reported by Mohireh Khanom in her memoirs Munirih Khanum: Memoirs and Letters, trans. by Sammireh Anwar Smith (Los Angeles, 1986), 34–36. Obviously, it is not likely that these events or their significance could have gone unnoticed by the servants in the house.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 36.

⁷⁷ Ma'ani, Leaves, 40–41.

⁷⁸ For a discussion of the Babi/Baha'i transition, see Denis MacEoin, “Divisions and Authority Claims in Babism (1850–1866),” in Messiah of Shiraz, 369–407; Warburg, Margit, Citizens of the World: A History and Sociology of the Baha'is from a Globalization Perspective (Leiden, 2006), 169–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a Baha'i perspective see, Balyuzi, H. M., Bahá'u'lláh: The King of Glory (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Afnan, Black Pearls, 26.

⁸⁰ For further discussion, see Troutt Powell, Eve M., “Will the Subaltern Ever Speak? Finding African Slaves in the Historiography of the Middle East,” in Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century, ed. Gershoni, Israel et al. (Seattle, 2006)Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Afnan, Black Pearls, 40–41.

⁸² Through an Afnan child. For another example of an African slave (in Fez, Morocco) who was able to preserve her voice for posterity through repeated tellings of the story of her capture to a child in her care, see Mernissi, Fatima, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (Cambridge, MA, 1994)Google Scholar, especially Chapter 17, “Mina, the Rootless,” 157–73. I am grateful to Dr. Bernadette Andrea for bringing this testimony to my attention.