‘Race’, Slavery and Islam in Maghribi Mediterranean Thought: The Question of the Haratin in Morocco

Certain tenets are shared in North Africa that articulate Maghribi Mediterranean patterns of conceptualisation of power relations in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — one Islam, one nation (al‐maghrib al‐’arabi), one culture, one language, and a silence. This culture of silence — the refusal to engage in discussions on slavery and racial attitudes — is the subject of this article. Internally, in the name of hegemony ‐Arab‐Islamic hegemony in North Africa — this issue is concealed and, externally, Mediterranean slavery has been largely ignored by historians. It should be noted that we find a similar silence along the northern shoreline of the Mediterranean. Jacques Heers, a specialist in European history wrote, in his study of slavery in medieval Europe, that this silence reflects an embarrassment felt collectively throughout the centuries. The North Africans must have felt a similar embarrassment in questioning interpretations of Islam and its ethics when confronting the matter of slavery.