Meet Khyzran
She is a daughter, a sister, a mentor, and a friend. In 1856, she sought freedom for herself and others as an enslaved woman in Lengeh. She was 22 years old.
She is here to tell more of her story.
It is not exactly clear when Khyzran was born. Historical documents tell us that it was somewhere around 1834 near Zanzibar, an island off of Tanzania, Africa.
Records also show that Khyzran was brought into the port city, and sold to a man into slavery.
The man kept Khyzran enslaved until she was 13.
Upon his death, Khyzran was free again, until….
...one night, Khyzran and her sister walked home from a dance through the narrow, stone-paved streets of Zanzibar when a band of three men kidnapped them.
They dragged them to a rowboat.
The boat set sail away from everything Khyzran knew, into unfamiliar sounds, smells and sights…
...into the Persian Gulf.
Hunger, seasickness, thirst, and fatigue.
Weeks passed. The boat that stole Khyzran away from Zanzibar, away from Africa, arrived in Ras al-Khaimah, a port city on the southern side of the Persian Gulf in the present day UAE. Khyzran remained there for 6 days. Then she and twenty other captives were boarded into another boat for Lengehone of several points of entry for the smuggling of enslaved Africans into Iran.
Within a day or two, Khyzran arrived in Iran. She was sold to a local resident. His name was Kamal.
In Iran, Khyzran found herself enslaved again, this time to a man named Kamal. He forbade Khyzran from leaving the house. The English Agent might see her, he told her.
But one day, when Kamal left Lengeh for his hometown of Basra, Khyzran knew she had to leave. A friend of Khyzran’s, another enslaved woman in Lengeh, told her to go to Mulla Ahmad’s house. He could help her, she said.
Khyzran went to Mulla Ahmad, then a local employee of the English Agent in Lengeh. He took down her story, her testimony. Khyzran had arrived in Iran after the Qajars had signed treaties with the British banning the Persian Gulf Slave trade. Therefore, her enslavement, according to Mulla Ahmad, was illegal. She should be free.
As Khyzran waited for the British to determine her status, she ran into Walladee, a thirteen-year-old boy she recognized from the boat who had been smuggled into Lengeh with her.
Khyzran went back to Mulla Ahmad, a local employee of the British Agent in Lengeh, but this time with Walladee. They recounted their stories, again. Mulla Ahmad listened and concluded that Walladee, like Khyzran, had been enslaved illegally. He sent them to Basaidu, on the island of Qeshm, where the Naval Commodore would see to their cases.
Again, Khyzran and Walladee boarded a boat. They sailed to Basaidu, where they stayed.
But not for long.
Walladee’s enslaver went to other local sheikhs and lodged a complaint against Mulla Ahmad. Walladee was his, and had been his for over two years, he wrote. He wanted Walladee back. Or else. The letters caused a commotion. His enslaver was not just an Iranian, but rather, the sharif of Iwaz in Larestan.
Mulla Ahmad wrote to the commissioner. Walladee, he was certain, had only been smuggled into Iran that season, he argued. He could even provide a name for the smuggler: Feerooz of Ras al-Khayma.
But it was just Walladee’s word against his enslaver’s.
The British sent letters among themselves, detailing the ways Mulla Ahmad had embarrassed them. True, they wanted to free slaves, but they didn’t want to ruffle feathers while doing it. This was a political enterprise. They didn’t need powerful sheikhs threatening them. Mulla Ahmad’s decisions, no matter the intention, had jeopardized their power.
Bring back the slaves, they wrote. Walladee and Khyzran boarded a boat, again, back to Lengeh.
After arriving in Lengeh, the British returned 13 year-old Walladee to his enslaver, the Sheikh of Iwaz in Larestan in Southern Iran. We never hear from Walladee in the records again.
Mulla Ahmad was fired. His actions were a liability. They fired him for freeing Walladee and Khyzran.
As for Khyzran, we can’t say. The British stopped writing about her. We never know if Kamal came back to claim his ownership of her, or if someone else managed to kidnap and enslave her, again.
We’d like to think that she was finally free.
Sources:
British Library IOR:1:15:157, Letters no. 238, 276.
Anthony Lee, “Recovering Biographies of Enslaved Africans in 19th century Iran.”
Niambi Cacchioli, “Fugitive Slaves, Asylum and Manumission in Iran (1851-1913),” UNESCO Culture, The Slave Route.
Hideaki Suzuki, “The Transformation of East African Coastal Urban Society with Regard to the Slave Distribution System” in Slave Trade Profiteers in the Western Indian Ocean (Palgrave, 2017), 97-113
Produced with:
Creative Direction: priscillia kounkou hoveyda
Historian: Prof. Beeta Baghoolizadeh
Artist: Mina M. Jafari