Peter J Brown

In this article, our Honorary Fellow in Archaeology @peterjbrown.bsky.social sheds new light on the story of the Zanj rebellion – a slave revolt that took place in the late 9th century in southern Iraq. Peter and his team have unearthed the timelines. Read more 👉 www.durham.ac.uk/research/cur...

My piece in The Conversation @africa.theconversation.com based on our recent article in @antiquity.ac.uk

Read the original article here: doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

CORONA satellite imagery of a landscape covered in linear ridge/earthwork features. A dotted line annotates a canal channel running through the earthworks. Photograph number DS1035-1040DF019 captured 23 September 1966 (reproduced courtesy of the US Geological Survey).

Earthworks cover southern Iraq, built by slave labour during the Early Islamic period
A slave rebellion was thought to have caused their abandonment, but new research suggests other factors, such as Mongol invasion and the plague, were responsible 🏺 #Archaeology

Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Aerial; view of several linear ridge features stretching across a desert landscape.

Did enslaved people build the monumental agricultural earthworks of Early Islamic Iraq? #MedievalMonday 🏺

Scientific #archaeology sheds light on the impact of the Zanj rebellion, Mongol invasion, plague and climate change on the Iraqi landscape.

Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Enslaved Africans led a decade-long rebellion 1,200 years ago in Iraq, new evidence suggests The Zanj, enslaved people largely from Africa, rebelled at the same time they were ordered to build a massive system of canals in what is now Iraq, a new study finds.

Around 1,200 years ago in what is now Iraq, enslaved people who were forced to build a vast canal system defied authority and rebelled
www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

CORONA satellite imagery of a landscape covered in linear ridge/earthwork features. A dotted line annotates a canal channel running through the earthworks. Photograph number DS1035-1040DF019 captured 23 September 1966 (reproduced courtesy of the US Geological Survey).

NEW Did a slave revolt cause the decline of medieval farming in southern Iraq? 🏺

New dates suggests earthworks in the region stayed in use following the 9th-century-AD Zanj rebellion, questioning the traditional historical narrative.

Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

More coverage of our recent research in @antiquity.ac.uk Read the original paper here: doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

(Durham University)

The Shatt al-Arab floodplain, an agricultural system outside of the Iraqi city of Basra, was likely dug by enslaved Africans exploited by the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th century A.D.

archaeology.org/news/2025/06/05/enslaved-africans-built-ancient-agricultural-system-in-southern-iraq/

A fascinating and highly thought provoking volume!

The landscape of the Zanj Rebellion? Dating the remains of a large-scale agricultural system in southern Iraq | Antiquity | Cambridge Core The landscape of the Zanj Rebellion? Dating the remains of a large-scale agricultural system in southern Iraq

🏺 Recent research suggests that thousands of earthen ridges and canals in the Shatt al-Arab floodplain outside Basra in Iraq, part of an ancient agricultural system, were constructed with slave labour during the early Islamic period associated with the 'Zanj rebellion'.

#Archaeology
#Iraq

Archaeologists shed new light on ancient Mesopotamian landscape - Durham University Archaeologists have uncovered new evidence about an ancient Mesopotamian landscape, offering fresh insight into the legacy of black slavery during the early Islamic Period.

📰 Discovery of over 7000 earthworks in southern Iraq offers fresh insight into slavery during the early Islamic Period

#AntiquityResearch #ArchaeologyNews via @arcdurham.bsky.social‬

www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/...

The landscape of the Zanj Rebellion? Dating the remains of a large-scale agricultural system in southern Iraq | Antiquity | Cambridge Core The landscape of the Zanj Rebellion? Dating the remains of a large-scale agricultural system in southern Iraq

New dating of ridges in southern #Iraq show the agricultural system developing not only in the 800s, but until the 1200s

This was the landscape at one point worked by the Zanj, slaves from sub-Saharan Africa whom I talked about in my @archumanities.bsky.social book The Medieval Persian Gulf

Coverage of our article published in @antiquity.ac.uk. Full paper available here: doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Archaeologists solve mystery of Iraq’s huge network of ridges and canals The researchers reviewed images from the 1960s showing the remains of more than 7,000 massive ridges

News article on our new paper www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

A slave revolt, Mongol invasion, spread of plague and climate change.

Find out how agricultural features in southern Iraq can teach us about all of these in this great thread, then check out the new Research Article in Antiquity 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Our latest article is out today. It describes results of remote sensing and OSL dating of archaeological earthworks near Basra in Iraq. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Big thanks to our funders @gerda-henkel-stiftung.de, co-authors Jaafar Jotheri, @louiserayne.bsky.social, Nawrast Abdalwahab & @ericandrieux.bsky.social & all other contributors at Radboud University, @arcdurham.bsky.social, @newcastleuni.bsky.social & the universities of Al-Qadisiyah & Basrah.

The landscape of the Zanj Rebellion? Dating the remains of a large-scale agricultural system in southern Iraq | Antiquity | Cambridge Core The landscape of the Zanj Rebellion? Dating the remains of a large-scale agricultural system in southern Iraq

While our work provides more details about this field system, it also opens many new questions which we hope to answer more fully in the future. Read more about these enigmatic features in our new paper published #OpenAccess in @antiquity.ac.uk today: doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

Climate change could have played a contributory role as any reduction in the amount of water flowing downstream in the Shatt al-Arab would have meant the tidal effects on the river would have been less pronounced, reducing the area that could be irrigated using this method.

The spread of plague in the 14th century, on the other hand, and the drop in population numbers this caused, may have impacted both the available workforce and the number of local consumers to such a degree that farming on this scale was no longer viable.

Possible explanations for the decline of this system might include the Mongol invasion of Iraq which caused significant disruption during the late 13th century.

While the ultimate origins of the system remain debatable, the ridges we sampled continued to accumulate between the 9th and 13th centuries meaning the surrounding area was farmed during this period.

Our results demonstrate that, while the ridges were likely there at the time of the slave revolt in the ninth century, the soil in the ridges continued to accumulate in the centuries that followed - so this agricultural system has a longer history than was previously assumed.

To provide more certainty, we retrieved samples from within the ridges themselves for analysis using ‘Optically Stimulated Luminescence’ methods. These date the last time individual grains in the soil were exposed to sunlight - when the earth was piled up to form the ridges.

But this narrative lacked any definitive evidence - it was based on very limited evidence from textual sources which was difficult to link beyond doubt with the features we can see on the ground today.

Most scholars who have studied these landscape features in the past, therefore, have associated them with these slaves - constructing and maintaining these features could even have been the catalyst for the 9th century revolt.

Historical sources tell of a slave revolt in the region in the late 9th century (869-883 CE). We have little information about the tasks these slaves undertook prior to the rebellion, but this almost certainly included agricultural labour of some kind.

But when exactly was this system created? How long did it last for and why was it abandoned?

In a few areas, farming still takes place among these ridge features today. These areas capitalize on the Shatt al-Arab river’s tidal effects. Since it lies close to the Gulf, the tide pushes freshwater upriver which can be drawn off via canals to irrigate farmland.