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Revisiting Race and Slavery through 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti's 'Aja'ib al-athar
- Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
- Duke University Press
- Volume 38, Number 2, August 2018
- pp. 230-245
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
The study of something termed Arab/Islamic slavery has flourished in recent years. Through a close reading of a seminal text, 'Aja'ib al-athar fi'l-tarajim wa'l-akhbar by the late eighteenth-century Ottoman scholar 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, Gubara's essay critically engages this literature and its key organizing concepts: namely, the ideas of race, slavery, and freedom. In place of the free-unfree, black-white dichotomies pervading contemporary understandings of labor and subjectivity, the essay calls for greater attention to other concepts and grammars before and outside of Europe.