Tell This in My Memory : Stories of Enslavement From Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire

In the late nineteenth century, an active slave trade sustained social and economic networks across the Ottoman Empire and throughout Egypt, Sudan, the Caucasus, and Western Europe. Unlike the Atlantic trade, slavery in this region crossed and mixed racial and ethnic lines. Fair-skinned Circassian men and women were as vulnerable to enslavement in the Nile Valley as were teenagers from Sudan or Ethiopia. Tell This in My Memory opens up a new window in the study of slavery in the modern Middle East, taking up personal narratives of slaves and slave owners to shed light on the anxieties and intimacies of personal experience. The framework of racial identity constructed through these stories proves instrumental in explaining how countries later confronted―or not―the legacy of the slave trade. Today, these vocabularies of slavery live on for contemporary refugees whose forced migrations often replicate the journeys and stigmas faced by slaves in the nineteenth century. In the late 19th century, an active slave trade sustained social and economic networks across the Ottoman Empire and throughout Egypt, Sudan, the Caucasus, and Western Europe. Unlike the Atlantic trade, slavery in this region crossed and mixed racial and ethnic lines. Fair-skinned Circassian men and women were as vulnerable to enslavement in the Nile Valley as were teenagers from Sudan or Ethiopia. Tell This in My Memory opens up a new window in the study of slavery in the modern Middle East, taking up personal narratives of slaves and slave owners to shed light on the anxieties and intimacies of personal experience. The framework of racial identity constructed through these stories proves instrumental in explaining how countries later confronted--or not--the legacy of the slave trade. Today, these vocabularies of slavery live on for contemporary refugees whose forced migrations often replicate the journeys and stigmas faced by slaves in the 19th century. Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Prologue: ‘Abid, A Word with a Long History 20 1. Public Workers, Private Properties: Slaves in ‘Ali Mubarak’s Historical Records 26 2. Babikr Bedri’s Long March with Authority 58 3. How Salim C. Wilson Wrote His Own Enslavement 96 4. Huda and Halide and the Slaves at Bedtime 134 5. Black Mothers and Fathers, Sanctified by Slavery 168 6. The Country of Saint Josephine Bakhita 204 Epilogue: Laws of Return 226 Notes 234 Bibliography 252 Index 260