Afro-Iraqi

Afro-Iraqis descend from East Africans brought to southern Mesopotamia over more than a thousand years: the Zanj of the Swahili coast who drained the salt flats near Basra under the Abbasids and rose in the Zanj Revolt (869-883), and later captives of the Ottoman-era trade through Zanzibar, Arabia and the Gulf, suppressed from 1847 and abolished in Iraq by royal decree in 1924. Their ancestors came from today's Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan and served as household servants, labourers on date estates and in pearling, and soldiers. Their descendants speak Iraqi Arabic, are Muslims and fully Iraqi, yet are still called 'abeed' (slaves) and set apart by colour.

They call themselves Black Iraqis or Iraqis of African descent. A rights movement emerged after 2003: the Free Iraqi Movement founded by Jalal Dhiyab in Zubair, who was killed in 2013, and later groups such as Ansar Hurriya, demanding recognition as a minority and a parliamentary quota.

The community keeps African-derived music and healing: the mekayyad (mkeda) houses of Zubair and Basra hold gatherings with drums, the tambura lyre and dance, singing partly in Swahili or other African languages mixed with Islamic chants, to heal those afflicted by zar spirits; groups announce a ceremony by the colour of the flag on the roof. The nouba and shtanga are related rituals. Afro-Iraqi bands play at weddings across the south, and musicians such as Ahmed Moneka carry the tradition abroad. Family life, dress and food follow southern Iraqi norms; marriage with non-Black Iraqis is rare because of prejudice.

Afro-Iraqis practise Shia Islam (and in Zubair partly Sunni Islam), keeping Muharram mourning and other observances. Zar-type healing ceremonies, disparaged by some clerics as un-Islamic, are held privately alongside mosque practice; spirit possession, saints' tombs and amulets are part of everyday belief.

Afro-Iraqis speak Iraqi Arabic, so the Standard Arabic Bible and Iraqi Arabic resources apply: the JESUS Film in Baghdadi dialect, GRN recordings, Sabeel Media Bible stories and films, Bible.is audio, and Arabic satellite TV. No ministry focused on Afro-Iraqis is known.

Under the Abbasid caliphate, tens of thousands of East Africans (Zanj) were forced to clear the salt-encrusted marshland east of Basra for farming. In 869 they rose under Ali ibn Muhammad, founded a capital at al-Mukhtara, sacked Basra in 871 and held much of lower Iraq and Khuzestan for fourteen years before the Abbasid regent al-Muwaffaq crushed them in 883. Afro-Iraqi activists today look back to the revolt as a symbol of resistance and of their thousand-year presence in Iraq.