Afro-Iranians

Afro-Iranians (Persian: ایرانیان آفریقایی‌تبار) are Iranian people of African Zanj heritage. Most Afro-Iranians are concentrated in the coastal provinces of Persian Gulf such as Hormozagan, Sistan and Baluchestan, Bushehr and Khuzestan.^[1] Most of the people of Lashar are Afro-Iranians.^[2]

History[]

A rare Safavid oil painting of an African soldier in Safavid Iran. Created in Isfahan, circa 1680-90, and likely one of the first ever depictions of African subjects in a Persian oil painting, and one of the earliest artistic records of the black African community whose descendants continue to reside in the Persian Gulf region

The Indian Ocean slave trade begun in the 6th century BC and was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labor, black slaves captured by Arab slave traders were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to the Persian Gulf, Egypt, Arabia, India, the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands and Ethiopia.^[3] Others came as immigrants throughout the centuries or from Portuguese slave traders who had conquered southern Iran.^{[citation needed]}

During Qajar rule, many wealthy households imported Black African women and children as slaves to perform domestic work along side Eastern European Circassian slaves. This slave labor was drawn largely from the Zanj, who were Bantu-speaking peoples that lived along the coast of the Southeast Africa, in an area roughly comprising modern-day Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi.^[4][5] However, Mohammad Shah Qajar, under British pressure, issued a firman suppressing the slave trade in 1848.^[6]

Notable Afro-Iranians[]

• Abdolreza Barzegari, footballer
• Ali Firouzi, footballer and coach
• Mehrab Shahrokhi, footballer
• Shanbehzadeh Ensemble, Iranian folk band
• Dennis Walker, footballer of Afro-Iranian descent, first black player to play for Manchester United^[7]

See also[]

• Zanj
• Shirazi people
• Lashar
• Afro-Iraqi
• Afro-Arab
• Afro Turks
• Slavery in Iran
• Haji Firuz
• Bandari music
• Districts of the Achaemenid Empire - note District XVII: "Paricanians and Asiatic Ethiopians"

Further reading[]

• Ehsaei, Mahdi (2015) "Afro-Iran", 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 "Unveiling the Veiled"
• Khosronejad, Pedram (2018), "Re-imagining Iranian African Slavery: photography as material Culture.", Exhibition Catalogue: 24 pp "Re-imagining Iranian African Slavery: photography as material Culture"
• Khosronejad, Pedram (2017), "Qajar African Nannies: African Slaves and Aristocratic Babies.", Visual Studies of Modern Iran, 1: 70 pp "Qajar African Nannies"
• 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 "Out of Focus, Photography of African Slavery in Qajar Iran"
• 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 "Photography of African Slavery in Iran"
• Khosronejad, Pedram (2016), "The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures.", The Guardian/"The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures"
• 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:10.1017/S1356186319000300.
• Lee, Anthony A. (2012), "Enslaved African Women in Nineteenth-Century Iran: The Life of Fezzeh Khanom of Shiraz.", Iranian Studies, 45:3 (3): 417–437, doi:10.1080/00210862.2011.637769, S2CID 162036760
• 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

References[]

External links[]

• Afro-Iranian Lives (a documentary film by: Behnaz Mirzai)
• Afro-Iran (an ethnographic photography project and book by: Mahdi Ehsaei)
• Afro-Iranians through the Lens of Documentarists (Review of Behnaz Mirzais' documentaries by: Pedram Khosronejad)
• A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800–1929 (Review of Behnaz Mirzai's Book by: Pedram Khosronejad)