Published with license by Koninklijke Brill NV | doi:10.1163/15700585-12341655 © Sanna Dhahir, 2022 | ISSN: 0570-5398 ( print ) 1570-0585 ( online) Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 brill.com/arab What It Means to Be Black in Saudi Arabia: Slavery and Racial Discrimination in Saudi Women’s Fiction Sanna Dhahir | ORCID: 0000-0002-9907-1989 English and Translation Department, Effat Universit y , Jedda h , Saudi Arabia sdhahir@e ffatuniversit y.ed u.s a Abstract Significant among the various taboos broken by contemporary Saudi women writers is the issue of slavery and its concomitant racial and colour prejudice. To explore the treatment of this subject, which remains strikingly understudied, this article focuses on three fictional works by two Saudi writers, Badriyya l-Bi šr and Laylā l-Ǧuhanī, who have boldly faced a grave matter with complex psychological and socio-political aspects in order to expose and redress the oppression directed towards not only slaves but their descendants and other black-skinned individuals, male and female. My research argues that both writers, employing literature as a platform for reform, reveal that to a mainstream, tribe-conscious, colour-conscious Arabian culture, black skin can still signify and invite tacit and open forms of stigmatization, denigration, and abuse. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, coupled with textual analyses, this paper shows that the novels aim to restore legitimacy and dignity to a social segment long degraded and objectified due to their race and skin colou r. Keywords slaver y , black ski n , racis m , marginalizatio n , physical abuse, sexual abuse, anti- miscegenation, Saudi women writers Résumé Parmi les tabous bris é s par les é crivaines saoudiennes contemporaines figure en bonne place la question de l’esclavage et des pr é jug é s raciaux et de couleur qui 114 Dhahir Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 l’a ccompagnent. Pour explorer le traitement de ce sujet, qui reste é tonnamment peu é tudi é , cet article se concentre sur trois œ uvres de fiction de deux é crivaines saou- diennes, Badriyya l-Bi šr et Laylā l-Ǧuhanī, qui ont abord é avec audace un sujet grave aux aspects psychologiques et sociopolitiques complexes afin d’exposer et de r é parer l’o ppression dirig é e non seulement contre les esclaves, mais aussi contre leurs descen- dants et d’autres individus, hommes et femmes, à la peau noire. Cet article d é fend l’i d é e que les deux é crivaines, utilisant la litt é rature comme moyen de r é forme, r é v è lent que, dans une culture arabe dominante, consciente de la tribu et de la couleur, la peau noire peut encore signifier et inviter à des formes tacites ou ouvertes de stigmatisation, de d é nigrement et d’abu s. En utilisant une approche multidisciplinaire, coupl é e à des analyses textuelles, cet article montre que les romans visent à restaurer la l é gitimit é et la dignit é d’un segment social longtemps d é grad é et r é ifi é en raison de sa race et de la couleur de sa peau. Mots clefs esclavage, peau noire, racisme, marginalisatio n , abus physique, abus sexue l , anti- mé tissage, femmes é crivaines saoudiennes 1 Introduction Since they began to publish literature in the mi d-1 950 s, Saudi women have taken a firm stand against social, cultural, and political oppressio n. Starting with issues related to wome n’s lack of freedom in a male-oriented society, they have steadily widened their writing interests to include tabooed subjects previ- ously avoided out of respect for traditions or the fear of upsetting them, espe- cially the depiction of sexual relations and religio n. 1 Naturally, Saudi wome n’s sharp awareness of the socio-political forces governing their world stems from their disadvantaged situatio n. The writers, however, generally prefer to broadcast their bold concerns through literature, where they can say what 1 Starting with the defiant fiction of Saudi writer Zaynab Ḥifnī (especially her collection of short stories Nis āʾ ʿind ḫ a ṭ ṭ al -istiwāʾ , Beirut, D ār al-sāqī, 199 6), who shocked the reading public by being outspoken about sexuality, especially female sexuality, busting taboos has become a literary reality in the twenty-first century, which has also witnessed the rise of “Saudi chick lit.” This daring stance by Saudi women writers, helped by the ability to publish on the Internet, has been widely commented on by critics, as well as literature writer s. See Madawi al-Rasheed, “Saudi chick lit: the girls are doing it,” Le Monde Diplomatiqu e , May 2011, n.p., web retrieved 22 April 2019: mondedipl o.co m/2011/05/05saudisexnovels, last accessed 15 September 2022. 115 What It Means to Be Black in Saudi Arabia Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 they cannot dare to say in journalism or autobiography, and reshape the world according to their visio n. 2 Although many well-known writers (such as Raǧāʾ ʿĀ li m, Badriyya l -Bi š r, Umayma l-H am īs, Laylā l-Ǧuhanī, and Zaynab Ḥifnī ) have continued to focus on wome n’s rights, marriage laws, and male guard- ianshi p, they have also ventured on territories not so familiar to Saudi writers in general, such as wome n’s sexuality (including lesbianism), drug addiction, religious extremism, jihadism, mainstream Wahhabi/Sunni intolerance of Shiites, and the practices of the Saudi religious police.3 And within more inclu- sive visions of modern times and the aftermath of oil wealth, women have, no less than men, directed public attention to the conditions of foreign laborers and other outsiders in a place that continues to evaluate the individual and his/h er relationships in terms of tribal structure s. 4 One of the most serious issues women have handled in recent years is slavery and its legacies of racial discrimination, marginalization, and oppressio n. This is a subject Saudi fiction had either dodged or casually treated throughout the twentieth century,5 thus avoiding a grave issue with complex psychological and socio-political aspects, which will be explored in this article. Since the subject of slavery and racial discrimination in modern Saudi fiction, whether by men or women, has remained an understudied body of Arabic literature,6 I intend to examine it in Badriyya l-Bi šr’s novels Hind wa-l-ʿ askar 7 and al-Ur ǧ ūḥ a ,8 and in Laylā 2 Ibrā h īm al- Š itwī, “Suʾāl al-qiyam f ī riw āyat Ǧā hiliyya li-l-kātiba Laylā l-Ǧuhanī, ” Ma ǧ allat al- ʿ ulū m al-isl ā miyya , 2 5/3 (2015), p. 3 83. 3 For well-researched sources on gender, politics and religion in Saudi Arabia, see Madawi al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine Stat e: Gender, Politic s, and Religion in Saudi Arabi a , Cambridge- New York, Cambridge University Press (“Cambridge Middle East Studies,” 43), 201 3; and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-H i ḍr, al-Sa ʿū diyya: s īrat dawla wa-muǧtam aʿ , Beirut, al- Š abaka l-ʿarabiyya li-l- ab ḥāṯ wa-l-na š r, 200 6. 4 A thorough discussion of this reluctance in modern Gulf societies to let go of elitism and zealous identification with ancestral roots can be found in Miriam Cooke, Tribal Moder n : Branding Nations in the Arab Gulf , Berkeley-Los Angeles-London, University of California Press, 2014. 5 Some brief, albeit poignant, references to a household slave/nanny can be seen in one of Sulṭāna l-Ṣidayrī ’s poems discussed in Mansour I al-Hazimi, Ezzat A. Khattab and Salma Khadra Jayyusi (eds), Beyond the Dune s: An Anthology of Modern Saudi Literatur e , London- New York, I.B. Tauris, 2006, p. 4 9 2-5 00. 6 References will be made in this study to relevant critical and literary works written on the subject. 7 Badriyya l-Bi š r, Hind wa-l-ʿ askar , Beirut, Dār al-sāqī , 200 6; translated by Sanna Dhahir as Hend and the Soldier s: A Nove l , Texas, Texas University Press (“Modern Middle East Literatures in Translation Serie s” ), 201 7. In this article, translations of the nove l’s Arabic text will be taken from this English translatio n. 8 Badriyya l-Bi š r, al-Ur ǧ ūḥ a , Beirut, D ār al-sāqī, 201 0; translations of passages quoted from al-Ur ǧ ūḥ a are all mine. 116 Dhahir Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 l-Ǧuhanī ’s novel Ǧā hiliyya 9 Besides being serious artistic forms whose mission is to break the silence about slavery and racial prejudice, these three novels, put together, represent what it means to be black in Saudi Arabia by dealing with a broad range of the socio-cultural hurdles a black person can wrestle with in a color -conscious, elitist societ y. They also explore the situation where cultural conventions supersede religious laws and perpetuate a negative black body image that encourages power control and leads to various states of ostra- cization, denigration, and physical and sexual abuse. The novels complement each other: al-Bi šr’s works go back to pre-emancipation times and follow up with the slaves, mostly female, and their descendants up to the twenty-first centur y; al-Ǧuhanī ’s novel fills in the gap by focussing on a black male charac- ter, a descendant of African immigrants who have never been slaves but who, due to skin color, have equally born the stigma of slavery in a place where a black person is still referred to as ʿabd (slave) In the Middle East, the history of slavery is long, stretching over many centuries and, therefore, detailed analyses of this institution fall beyond the range of this stud y. Yet a view of some aspects of slavery, especially in the Arabian Peninsula, can help frame this research and provide a setting for the soci o-cultural attitudes directed towards black skinned individual s. Slavery, as historians have agreed, is universal, having been practiced by world societ- ies and cultures since ancient civilization s. 10 The legal code of the Babylonian Hammurabi, a code based on laws of earlier nations, and the codes of ancient Egyptians and classical Greeks and Romans, have articles handling slavery and the ownership of slaves for cultures that accepted human enslavement as fact of life. Slavery was also known to the pre-Islamic world of Arabia, where slaves were a part of the social fabric of the Arab tribal culture.11 Throughout history, slaves were envisioned and treated as chattel, to be owned, disposed of, and dominated physically, mentally, and psychologicall y; at the same time, they were also viewed as humans deserving kindness and justice in philosophy and in religion, including the three major religions known to humanity: Judaism, 9 Laylā l-Ǧuhanī, Ǧā hiliyya , Beirut, Dār al-ādāb, 200 7; translated by Nancy Roberts as Days of Ignoranc e , Doha, Bloombsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2014; translations of the nove l’s Arabic texts will be taken from the English translatio n. 10 See for example Ehud Toledano, As if Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East , New Haven, Yale University Press, 2007, p. 1. 11 For a well-documented source on the nature of slavery in ancient cultures and its con- nection with counterparts in pre-Islamic Arabia, see Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocc o: A History of Slaver y, Rac e, and Isla m , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (“African Studies,” 123), 2013, p. 19-20. 117 What It Means to Be Black in Saudi Arabia Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 Christianity, and Isla m. 12 Yet the fact that slavery was not outlawed by any of these religions has no doubt contributed to the lingering of the trade until our modern time s. Islam, the religion most relevant to this study, has emphasized equality among people of all races and colors, markedly regulated the practice of slavery, restricted its limits, and stressed the heavenly rewards involved in manumission, all to protect the rights of the enslaved and improve their liv- ing condition s; 13 yet Muslim nations continued to traffic with slaves long after other nations had banned the trade, and they often justified owning slaves as a right bestowed on them by religio n. 14 In the Gulf area and the Arabian Peninsula (which were under Ottoman rule before World War 1), slavery was not abolished until well into the twenti- eth century despite the diplomatic pressure exercised by Britain and the trea- ties signed between the British government and Arab leaders with the aim to prohibit human trafficking in the Indian Ocean15 (the main navigation route for the Eastern slave trade with the African continent, especially its east coast). In Saudi Arabia, slavery was not abolished until 1962, during the rule of King Faisal (r. 1 96 4-1 97 5), at a time when, as Mathew Hopper contends, manumis- sion was more feasible than before owing to oil wealth and related industries, which helped the state compensate slave owners and also absorb and pay for the labour of employable freed slave s. 16 Hopper, in fact, argues that both the 12 See Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquir y , Oxford- New York, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 4-8. 13 Sources abound on the liberal, progressive, emancipatory, and unique laws of Islam in rela- tion to slaver y. See, for example, Jonathan A.C. Brown, Slavery & Isla m , London, Oneworld Academic, 201 9. In Black Morocc o , Chouki El Hamel makes ample, well-documented ref- erences to the Qurʾān and Prophet Muḥ amma d’s sayings, as well as to other scholars, to illustrate the egalitarian principles of Islam, its humanitarian ethics, its emphasis on manumission, and its efforts to lead towards the gradual phasing out of slaver y. 14 Zdanowski, for example, discusses several archived interactions in the 1920s between King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Saʿūd of Arabia and the British empire, including Ibn Saʿūd’s standing for his people’s reluctance to manumit their slaves on the grounds that it is legal in Islam (besides being a costly undertaking). See Jerzy Zdanowski, “The Right to Manumit and British Relations with Ibn Saud and Persia in the 1920s,” Journal of Contemporary Histor y , 5 0/4 (2015), p. 7 8 6-8 0 4. Relevantly, too, Toledano, in As if Silent , states that “n otably in the Hijaz” (as an Ottoman province), slavers “were less willing to accommodate the desire of the enslaved to free themselve s. Indeed, some Bedouins in that province resorted to violence in order to put an end to British consular intervention in what they considered their domestic affair s” (Toledano, As if Silent and Absent , p. 117) 15 Zdanowski, “The Right to Manumit and British Relations with Ibn Saud and Persia in the 1920s,” p. 7 8 6-8 0 4. For another source that documents and analyzes the British treaties with Arab leaders, see Mathew S. Hopper, Slaves of One Maste r: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empir e , New Haven, Yale University Press, 201 5. 16 Ibi d. , p. 2 09. 118 Dhahir Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 ending of slavery and its peaks during the nineteenth and early twentieth century were closely connected with the Gulf economy and the earlier phases of globalizatio n. To cultivate the widespread plantations of date palms and to boost the pearling industry (dates and pearls being ardently sought by the West), Gulf areas relied heavily on the labour of African slaves, who had to be imported in numbers larger than ever before. And, whereas some Western historians uphold the British empire for its manumission campaigns and other efforts to end the Indian Ocean slavery,17 Hopper sees the dwindling of the trade as equally tangled with global economies, namely the shortage of demand dur- ing the early twentieth century for Gulf products of dates and pearls follow- ing the cultivation of date palms (brought in as seedlings mainly from Iraq and Oman) in the States and the production of cultured pearls by Japanese manufacturer s. These factors (followed by the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930’s) resulted in a declining economy and a shortage of demand for the labor of slave s. In the same vein, Benjamin Reilly argues that the British manumission campaigns in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, upheld as mor- ally intentioned (though beset by several hurdles) by some historiographers,18 were a “well-intentioned” failure to end slavery for many reasons, such as the lack of preparedness and the shortage of appropriate sea vessels that could outmaneuver the more experienced Arabian dhows, especially in their tactics to dodge the British ships deployed to capture slave vessel s. He also sides with Hopper in his view that the British economic, diplomatic, and overall politi- cal interests in the Gulf region and the Arabian Peninsula influenced Britai n’s seriousness as an anti-slavery agent.19 Historiographers have no doubt clarified crucial issues connected with slav- ery, its persistence, and its eventual abolition in the Middle East. However, most of them have continued to underscore the shortage of information avail- able in the field.20 According to Eve M. Troutt Powell, Bernard Lewi s’s emphasis 17 See, for example, Jerzy Zdanowski, Slavery and Manumissio n: British Policy in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf in the First Half of the 20th Centur y , Reading, Ithaca Press, 201 3. In this work, Zdanowski strongly defends the British Indian Ocean anti-slavery campaign, argu- ing for Britai n’s “h uge” and “effective” efforts (p. 80, 143) that dramatically weakened slave trafficking in the Indian Ocea n. 18 See Jerzy Zdanowski, “The Right to Manumit and British Relations with Ibn Saud and Persia in the 1920s,” p. 7 8 6-8 0 4. 19 Benjamin Reilly, “A Well-Intentioned Failure: British Anti-slavery Measures and the Arabian Peninsula, 1820-1940,” Journal of Arabian Studie s , 5/2 (2015), p. 91-11 5. 20 Writing in 2015, Hopper, in Slaves of One Maste r , declares that his research on the con- dition of slaves in the Middle East was based mostly on British anti-slavery archives, including the few manumission documents awarded to slaves who sought the British ships for emancipation certificate s. He also reveals the dramatically varied estimates, 119 What It Means to Be Black in Saudi Arabia Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 on this “deart h” of information, the result of the silence of history about what is considered a sensitive subject, has indeed encouraged many new research efforts aiming at a better understanding of slavery in the Middle East. Yet what requires more representation and investigation, Troutt Powell asserts, is the voice of the enslaved themselves, thus she calls for further studies that can penetrate the silence of the “s ubalter n” in cultures notable for shortage of nar- ratives where slaves speak for themselves – not just through travellers in the region or certificates of manumission written by British officials according to a set format.21 With this shortage of documented slave narratives in many parts of the Middle East,22 including Saudi Arabia, how can one make informed con- clusions about the way slaves truly functioned or felt in systems described so variedly as either benign or pernicious (or anywhere in between), by apologists or abolitionists (or those in between)? Jonathan Brown repeatedly maintains that slavery is an “a bsolute evi l” throughout history no matter how we look at it and how it differs from one place or period to anothe r. 23 To Brow n’s argument I would like to add that, even if Middle Eastern slaves were treated in more thoughtful ways than they were in areas such as the American South, facts remain that the way Arabs have viewed the enslaved and their descendants has carried and maintained so much of slaver y’s evi l. In the absence of slave nar- ratives, to have an image of the socio-cultural status of a black male or female living nowadays in the Arab World, one needs to go no farther than the daily real-life episodes of racial slurs and the barriers placed between Afro-Arabs or “g uestimates,” derived from qualitative observations made by earlier researchers and travellers in the Middle East (p. 36-37). Toledano, too (in As if Silent and Absent ), trying to see slavery from the viewpoints of the enslaved, bases his interpretations on some often incomplete, gap-riddled court and other slavery cases found in Ottoman, as well as British, archive s. He tries to patch the gaps by using, throughout his study, a “m ethod of backing and filling, of applying historical imagination to gaps in the historical record” (Toledano, As if Silent and Absent , p. 1 5 6) 21 See Eve M. Troutt Powell, “Will That Subaltern Ever Speak? Finding African Slaves in the Historiography of the Middle East,” in Middle East Historiographie s: Narrating the Twentieth Centur y , eds Israel Gershoni, Amy Singer and Y. Hakan Erdem, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2006, p. 242-2 6 1. 22 Some recent efforts have been done to penetrate the silence of the enslaved in the Arab World. See, for example, Eve M. Troutt Powell, Tell This in My Memory: Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan and the Ottoman Empir e , Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2012. See also E. Ann McDougall, “A Sense of Self: The Life of Fatma Barka,” Canadian Journal of African Studie s/R evue Canadienne des É tudes Africaine s , 32/2 (1 99 8), p. 2 8 5-31 5. The life stories in these works and others may not be typical or representative of the lives led by slaves in any given time or place, they nevertheless help to establish identities and reconstruct life histories lived by slaves and their owner s. 23 Brown, Slavery & Isla m 120 Dhahir Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 and the “v isibly” mainstream, lighter-skinned populatio n. If this verbal and mental aggression can pass by undocumented, it is not so well veiled in pub- lished fictional narratives dealing with black figure s. Literature has repeatedly mirrored the ways writers, enlightened elites, have envisioned black ski n. In his work on the depiction of black characters in literature written in Arabic, Xavier Luffin examines more than 170 literary outputs to argue that, with few exceptions, Arabic literature has marginalized, stereotyped, and dehumanized black people, presenting them in minor roles, often as unattractive, insignifi- can t, and/or immoral figures that speak eloquently of their creator s’ opinion of what it means to be black.24 In Luffi n’s discussion, black characters are assigned such vocations as janitors, shoe shiners, alcohol sellers, and other humble jobs, thus perpetuating a socio-cultural voice that demotes and stigmatizes black ski n. Significantly, too, Luffin deals with works that sexualize black women, showing them as lasciviously oversexed, hence an instrument for the sexual initiation of young me n. How hard it is, reading Luffin, not to think of some still circulating oral sayings that pin down the “virtue” of a black woman, such as the following: in zanat bint al-zawā n ī wa-in ʿaffat ḫ ayr ka ṯī r , meaning that “i f she fornicates, that is to be expected from the progeny of whore s; and if she turns out to be chaste, this is something to be very grateful fo r.” Luffi n’s main theme – the physically, mentally, or morally tarnished black characters, doubly negative in their small, lowly positions – and the large num- ber of works his book surveys, allows a partial focus on writers who seriously lobby the cause of black people in the Arab World – especially in the twenty-first century (on which Luffi n’s focus falls much less heavily than it does on the twentieth century), which has witnessed a “l eap” ( ṭ afr a ) in fiction, or a writing marathon,25 and produced several writers who strive to correct socio-cultural stereotypes and misconceptions regarding minorities, including black-skinned individuals, by re-reading history to set the records of racism right. Most of these writers grew up in the second half of the twentieth century and have wit- nessed, first or second hand, how slaves, ex-slaves, and other black individuals have been perceived by societ y. One such writer is the Saudi Maḥ m ūd Trāwrī (a descendant of African immigrants from Mali), whose novel Maym ū na 26 spans the life of three generations of free Muslim immigrants who start the narrative by undertaking a harrowing journey from west Africa to the Arabian Peninsula 24 See Xavier Luffin, Les fils d’A ntara : repr é sentations des Africains dans la fiction arabe con - temporain e, 191 4-201 1 , Bruxelles, É ditions Safran (“Cultures et langues orientales,” 3), 2012. 25 Muḥammad Ismāʿī l, “Kātiba saʿūdiyya akkadat rūḥ riwāʾiyya ǧadī da fī l-mamlaka,” al-Imā r āt al-Yawm , 10 March 2010, n.p. web retrieved 30 May 2021: https: / /www.emaratalyou m .com/l ife/culture/2010-03-10-1.66817, last accessed 15 September 2022. 26 Maḥ m ūd Trāwrī, Maym ū na , Damascus, Dār al-madā, 200 7. 121 What It Means to Be Black in Saudi Arabia Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 to perform Hajj and then settle in the vicinity (known as muǧāwar a ) of the Holy Mosque in Medin a. Significantly, the novel dwells on the vulnerability of black immigrants during the early decades of the twentieth century: their being Muslim and free did not rule out their being kidnapped and enslaved illegall y. 27 Coming from major tribes, such as the Hawsā and Fallāta among others, they have been lumped together under the generic name takā rina (singular takrū n ī ), which has become a pejorative term for black people living in Hijaz.28 Among other novels that focus on slaves/ex-slaves in Saudi Arabia is Yūsuf al-Muḥ aym īd’s Fiḫāḫ al-r ā ʾ i ḥ a 29 (discussed by Luffin), which deals with a black man kidnapped as a boy from Sudan, castrated, and sold to a family in Arabi a. In this novel, al-Muḥ aym ī d handles the serious problem of male slaves meant to serve in rich people’s homes (or in religious places), showing that castration, which involves high health risks,30 leaves the slave in limbo, both physically and psychologicall y. Al-Muḥ aym īd also probes issues related to emancipated black Africans and reveals the paradoxes of their freedom, espe- cially after a long life of being equipped with hardly any skills other than servi- tude, a “qualificatio n” which becomes rather useless in old age, failing health, and lack of protectio n. A third novel that sets out to deal with black Saudis in modern times is Muḥammad al-Muzaynī ’s al- Ṭaqqāqa Ba ḫīt a ,31 which tackles the issue of black women who try to fend for themselves by doing one of the 27 The kidnapping and enslavement of black Africans coming for Hajj (as is the case with the narrato r’s teenage uncle in this novel) has been corroborated by historian s. According to Reilly in “A Well-Intentioned Failure,” African pilgrims were a “m ajor market for slave s” (p. 1 0 1), especially during the early part of the twentieth centur y. 28 Modern scholars maintain that takrū n ī is perhaps a distortion of the word takrū r ī , which denotes a person from Takrūr, the ancient African state which existed on the Senegal basin from ca. AD 100 0. As pious Muslims, many of these Africans, and their descendants, came with the intention to settle in the Arabian Peninsula, as the center of Islam, early in the twentieth century, especially after their countries had been colonized by the Britis h. For a study of the origins of west Africans settling in Hijaz, see ʿUmar al-Naqar, “Takrur: The History of a Name,” The Journal of African Histor y , 1 0/3 (1 96 9), p. 3 6 5-3 7 4. 29 Yūsuf al-Muḥ aym īd’s Fiḫāḫ al-r ā ʾ i ḥ a , Beirut, Riyadh al-Rayyis, 200 3; trans l. Anthony Calderbank, Wolves of the Crescent Moo n , Cairo, the American University Press, 200 7. 30 In her paper “The Location of the ‘Manufacture’ of Eunuchs,” in Slave Elites in the Middle East and Afric a: A Comparative Stud y , eds Miura Toru and John Edward Philips, London, Kegan Paul International (“Islamic Area Studie s” ), 2000, p. 41-68, Jan S. Hodgendorn studies the life-threatening traumas attending castration (such as infections and urethra blockage) as a part of her argument that the high death rate occasioned by a eunuch-making sur- gery accounts for the high prices placed on the head of each gelded slave brought to be sold in the Arab/Muslim world. 31 Muḥammad al-Muzaynī, al- Ṭaqqāqa Ba ḫīt a , Beirut, al-Intišā r al-ʿ arab ī, 2011. 122 Dhahir Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 few sustaining jobs available to them,32 entertaining in public by drumming, singin g, and dancing,33 especially at weddings and other celebration s. The novel directs attention to the socio-cultural view of the female entertainer, a profession linked doggedly to black Africans, in life as in fiction – singing and dancing being activities frowned against in Arab societies, and doubly denounced by the strict Wahhabi religious creed, practiced widely in Saudi Arabi a. Al-Muzaynī shows the irony in modern times of how mainstream Arab women, who shy away from the trade, are slowly, though furtively, engaging in it (hiding behind a niqab or face cover) to make mone y. In this novel, mod- ern materialism is shown as gradually superseding cultural conventions and, ironicall y, depolarizing (at least in fiction) the differences between the “l owl y” black entertainer, who is not worth qir šayn 34 (two pennies), and those who denigrate he r. To the above, one can add a few other Saudi writers who have equally prod- ded society for its elitism and racial discriminatio n. These include ʿAbduh Hāl, Raǧā ʿĀ li m, Umayma l-H am īs, ʿAbd Allāh b. Baḫīt, and others, whose novels represent the situation and the voices of black Saudis, a subject which his- tory has kept silent about even in modern time s. In these writer s’ works, black 32 Currently, and due to the wide-spread education for females, black Saudi women have assumed some high-profile jobs (Nawāl al-Hawsāwī, for instance, is the first Saudi woman to be an airplane pilot); however, many of them still engage in occupations mainstream women refuse to do, such as serving in people’s homes and as janitors in segregated school s, universities, banks, and other businesse s. During the last few years, black women have been employed as salespersons or cashiers in stores (a step far above having to sell simple wares door-to-door or on the market floor, something which black women still do). There has been no quantitative, systematic research on black wome n’s presence in the job market (a subject crying out for more research), and it is only recently that Saudi publica- tions, such as the Arab New s , have started to include short stories about black individuals making their ways to such professions as modellin g. See, for example, Asīl B āš r āḥīl, “What it means to be a black Saudi,” Arab New s , 1 March 2018, n.p., web retrieved 30 May 2021: https: / /www.arabnew s.com/n ode/1256671/saudi-arabia, last accessed 15 September 2022. 33 Hence the word ṭ aqqāqa (or ṭ agg ā ga in Saudi colloquial Arabic), which literally means “b eater,” usually of a daff drum or other, mostly percussio n instrument s. Relevantly, most of the female singers that have appeared in Saudi Arabia (as well as in some Gulf areas) are black. One such example is the Saudi singer ʿItāb (1947-2 00 7), who started as a wed- ding entertainer and had to move to Egypt in order to establish her career as a singe r. The fact that she danced (Saudi style) in her songs banned her return to Saudi Arabi a. In a recent short film (2018), Bint al-muṭriba ( The Wedding Singer’s Daughte r ), written and directed by Saudi film maker Hayfā al-Manṣūr, both the singer and her young daughter (who helps her in her career), are thought of as candidates for hel l. The vocation of the wedding singer, the film asserts, is still beset by socio -cultural hazards, which can only be offset by a new and enlightened Saudi generatio n. 34 Al-Muzaynī, al- Ṭaqqāqa Ba ḫīt a , p. 24 9. 123 What It Means to Be Black in Saudi Arabia Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 people may still occupy “h umble” positions and may still live up to societ y’s expectation of them, but it is their being stuck in a cycle of oppression and their efforts to challenge their destinies that give rise to the themes explored by the new generation of Saudi writer s. For example, the character Šin ġ ā fa in ʿAbd Allāh b. Baḫīt’s Šā r iʿ al-ʿ A ṭ ā yif does brew and sell alcohol (secretly, of course), but he is much more than that; he comes across as a complex human being whose circumstances after emancipation have left him with a shallow concept of freedom in which he continues to be called ʿabd (slave), carry a name that is not his own,35 wear the mental fetters of slavery, and live mostly by his wits instead of the skills needed for social empowerment or personal satisfaction (such as marrying the woman he loves, something which he never does). As I indicated above, a l-Bi šr and al-Ǧuhanī, whose works will be discussed belo w, represent this new culture of awareness and sensitivity regarding the burden carried by black individuals, the intergenerational stereotypes attached to them, and the body politics pre-ordained and perpetuated by a society that can see little beyond black ski n. Born and brought up in Saudi Arabia, both al-Bi šr and al-Ǧuhanī, who hold a doctorate in sociology and education, respectively, use literature to contest and debunk the current power structure in their society with the aim to cor- rect deeply ingrained stereotypical views of black people, which turn them into an easy prey for pejorative and aggressive attitude s. This paper focuses on the writer s’ campaign against cultural and political postures that cheapen the identity and life experiences of black-skinned individuals thus justifying body politics that continue to preserve multiple images tenaciously connected with the institution of slaver y. This paper also argues that the novels studied here aim not only to show the grievances of slaves, ex-slaves, and other black individuals, but also to restore legitimacy and dignity to a social segment long degraded and objectified due to their race and skin colo r. In doing so, this 35 Just before his public execution (having been wrongly accused of sorcery), people discover that his name is Taysīr – Šin ġ ā fa being his slave nickname, which means “long” or “t all” in Saudi colloquial Arabic (as well as in Standard Arabic: see Ibn Manẓūr, Lis ā n al- ʿ ara b , eds ʿAbd Allāh ʿAlī l-Kabīr, Muḥammad Aḥmad Ḥasb Allāh and Hāšim Muḥammad a l-Šāḏ il ī, Le Caire, Dār al-m a ʿā ri f, 1981, IV, p. 2340, s.v. Š.N.Ġ.F, where Šin ġ ā fa can also mean “ al- ṭ awī l al -daqīq min al-a ġṣā n ” ): the African male slave rarely failed to be seen in terms of his physicality and his fitness for hard work. Significantly, too, Fr é d é ric Lagrange finds the nickname both demeaning and revolting for denoting both “sno t” and parasites of the nose in humans and cattle. See Fr é d é ric Lagrange, “Arabies malheureuses, corps, d é sirs et plaisirs dans quelques romans saoudiens r é cents,” Revue de Litt é rature Compar ée , 333 (2010), p. 114. Relevantly, Toledano, in As if Silent and Absent , indicates that renaming slaves “was part of a process of recreating the enslaved perso n’s new identity, often with the intention of wiping out the older identit y” (Toledano, As if Silent and Absent , p. 31) 124 Dhahir Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 study endeavors to enrich literary scholarship in Saudi literature and show its involvement in wider humanitarian and political issue s. In a blog on slavery in Saudi Arabia, Maḥ m ūd Ṣ abb āġ commemorates the passage of fifty years after the legal banning of slavery in Saudi Arabia, hailing the triumph of justice over centuries of crime against fellow human being s. 36 The abolishment of slavery was no doubt a notable edict, coming after decades of internal resistance to outlaw this institutio n; 37 however, as al-Bi šr succinctly puts it in Hind wa-l-ʿ askar , the issuance of a document banning slavery does not remove centuries of discrimination overnight.38 Similarly, al-Ǧuhanī ’s fic- tion asserts that slavery has been so deeply seated in societ y’s consciousness that it has never ceased to cling to those who have been branded by it. Both writers strive to show that black skin signifies tacit and open forms of deni- gration, disparagement, and abuse, and they take it as their responsibility to use literature as a platform for raising awareness ( t a wʿ iya ) about socio-cultural discrimination and for socio-political interventio n. To bolster their ideas, both writers ground their fiction in history, sociol- og y, psychology, and religion, which lend authority to their view s. In Hind wa-l-ʿ askar , for instance, a l-Bi šr describes episodes of slave trafficking main- tained across sea and desert throughout the first half of the twentieth century to prod a social conscience that kept silent about violations of human right s. She also uses strategies to confer on slaves and ex-slaves a distinct identity, a face and a voice denied to them by both history and mainstream societ y. In Ǧā hiliyya , al-Ǧuhanī constantly moves between the past and present to show how little has changed in people’s attitudes towards black skin, and to dismantle a cultural consciousness of ethnicity and color grounded in a per- nicious enslavement to elitism and bigotry, which has blocked the very prin- ciples people pride themselves on: Islamic values of equality and tolerance. Both writers investigate the cultural, psychological, and economic factors that construct the image of the black individual in Saudi society to reveal hi s/h er internalized feelings of class and color and to subvert centuries-old myths about the nature of black skin, especially when conceived as an alibi justifying the physical and emotional abuse practiced on black women and men alike. Notably, too, the two writers frame their views within feminist, transcultural, trans-historical perspectives grounded in a radical awareness that typifies Bell 36 See Maḥ m ūd Ṣ abb āġ , “ H ams ūn ʿām ʿalā ibṭāl al -raqī q: Tiǧārat al-ʿ ab ī d fī l-Ḥ i ǧāz 1855-1 96 2,” 7 September 2012, n.p. web retrieved 17 June 2018: https: //mahsabbagh.n et/2012/09/07 /slavery-in-hejaz/, last accessed 15 September 2022. 37 See note 14 above. For more details on the internal resistance to slavery, see Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East , p. 78-84. 38 Al-Bi š r, Hind wa-l-ʿ askar , p. 23. 125 What It Means to Be Black in Saudi Arabia Arabica 70 (2023) 113-156 Hook s’ well-known belief that “feminism is for everybody, ” 39 and calls for a bal- ance of power among multiple factions of societ y. 2 Hind wa-l -ʿaskar : Slavery and Its Aftermath This novel is a bildungsroman, tracing the narrato r’s growth in a traditional background; but to present a full picture of the setting that engenders the title character, al-Bi šr sheds ample light on the slaves and their descendants, who in reality formed an indispensable part of Najd’ s rural villages occupied by land- owners before the emancipation act of 1962. After this date, freed slaves, who had nowhere else to go and hardly any training other than farming or domestic work, continued to live in the same village,40 later moving to city centers, some- times with their ex-masters, for better chances of livin g. Importantly, as she traces the genealogy of the Arab characters, al-Bi šr travels to the first quarter of the twentieth century to depict, analogously, the lives of slaves and master s. This structuring, pairing slaves with masters, becomes one of al-Bi šr’s tech- niques purposed to highlight not just the difference in the living conditions of the two socially and economically polarized groups, but also the humanity and integrity of the enslaved and their descendants – thus shifting them from a peripheral, pre-conceived form of being into more central grounds in the narrative, where they act on the scene and emerge as individuals with a pres- ence and a voice. Al-Bi šr’s interest in matriarchy, evident in her portrayal of distinctly strong women in this novel and in others, seems to account for her focus on female rather than male slave s. 41 Therefore, out of the first generation