Country: Morocco

Group: Gnawa/Haratin

Date: 07/19/2021

Team: Alicia Hernandez (Lead) and  Vianney Mancilla

Content Warning: forced labor, racism, slavery

Approximate Time Period: 1670-1925

There is ample evidence suggesting that the Haratin endured forced labor in Morocco. The data quality would be rated a 3.

The Haratin have traditionally occupied the lower rungs of society in Morocco and are defined in part by their darker skin color.  Scholars have long debated the origins of the Haratin, with some arguing that they were original inhabitants who were then oppressed after Berber and Arab invasions and others arguing that they were former slaves imported from sub-Saharan Africa (El Hamel, 2014; El Hamel 2002; Alexander, 2019). In the late seventeenth century, the Moroccan Sultan Ismail enslaved many of the apparently free Haratin when he forcibly conscripted more than 221,000 of them into a slave army he called the ‘Abid al-Burkhari (Stainback, 2015, p. 3). Information on other instances of forced labor is scarce. El Hamel explains that Morocco’s past with slavery contradicts Islamic ethics making the topic taboo and hardly discussed in Moroccan culture and academia (Alexander, 2019).

Sources

  1. CLEAVELAND, T. (2015). RACE AND SLAVERY IN MOROCCO. The Journal of African History, 56(2), 347-349.
  2. E. Ann McDougall (N.D.). MOROCCO Pages. Retrieved from 1-3https://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/amcdouga/Hist347/resources/mcd_morocco_slavery.pdf on July 30th,2021
  3. El Hamel, C. (2002). ‘Race’, slavery and Islam in Maghribi Mediterranean thought: the question of the Haratin in Morocco. The Journal of North African Studies, 7(3), 29-52.
  4. El Hamel, C.(2013) Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam. Cambridge University Press.
  5. El Hamel, C. (2014) Race and the Making of the Arab Majority in Morocco. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267540286_Race_and_the_Making_of_the_Arab_Majority_in_Morocco on August 1st,2021
  6. Alexander, I. (2019) Trapped on the island: the politics of race and belonging in Jazīrat al-Maghrib. The Journal of North African Studies 24:5, pages 786-806.
  7. Stainback, M (2015). The Racialization of Morocco. CERS Working Paper 2015. Pp. 1-9 Retrieved from https://cers.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/97/2016/04/Racialisation-of-Moroco-Maya-Stainback.pdf on July 29th, 2021