US EditionArchaeologists Find New Evidence of Ancient Slave Labor in Southern Iraq
- An international team of archaeologists discovered evidence near Basra, Iraq, showing a large system of earthen ridges and canals built from the 9th to 13th centuries A.D.
- This system, spanning the Shamm al-Arab floodplain, was long believed to be an agricultural network constructed with slave labor amid and after the 9th-century Zanj rebellion.
- Using satellite imagery and dating tests on ridge crests, researchers confirmed the ridges date to the late ninth through mid-thirteenth century, overlapping the Abbasid era slave labor use.
- The report in Antiquity highlighted that the extensive scale of the network reflects a substantial amount of human effort, indicating that slave labor persisted in the region for several centuries following the well-known Zanj revolt of 869 AD.
- The findings challenge previous views about the revolt's economic impact and highlight the need to protect these structures as significant but underdocumented Iraqi heritage.
20 Articles
20 Articles
Enslaved Africans Built Ancient Agricultural System in Southern Iraq - Archaeology Magazine
Aerial view of Zanj irrigation system, Basra, Iraq BASRA, IRAQ—The Shatt al-Arab floodplain outside of Basra is marked with thousands of manmade earthen ridges and canals. Archaeologists have long suspected that these may have been part of an ancient agricultural system, but they did not know when or by whom it was built. New research has demonstrated that not only is this theory true, but that the massive infrastructure was dug by a huge labor …
Archaeologists find new evidence of ancient slave labour in Iraq
A system of thousands of ridges and canals across a floodplain in southern Iraq has long been believed to be the remnant of a massive agricultural system built by slave labour. Now an international team of archaeologists has found new evidence to support the theory. The team undertook testing to determine the construction dates of some of the massive earthen structures and found that they spanned several centuries, beginning around the time of a…
New evidence of ancient slave labour in southern Iraq
A system of thousands of ridges and canals across a floodplain in southern Iraq has long been believed to be the remnant of a massive agricultural system built by slave labor. Now an international team of archaeologists has found new evidence to support the theory. The team undertook testing to dete...
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