White Camphor and Peppercorn Hair

Abstract

Reading classical Arabic and Chinese sources at once comparatively and intersectionally, this article initiates an investigation of Black labor—specifically Black sailors and slaves—employed in medieval trade networks that connect Africa, Arabia, and Persia to South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. It does not presume a homogeneous definition of Blackness, nor a generalized notion of slavery. While informed by concepts developed in scholarly studies of transatlantic slavery and Euro-American colonial history, this article strives to expand our understanding of the global articulation of Blackness beyond both the modern period and the Atlantic world. I draw on numerous genres of classical literature—Islamic ḥadīth commentaries, stories of marvels, geographical works, poetry, Buddhist dictionaries, and polemical treatises—and corroborate them with visual evidence from the same or adjacent periods. Rather than aiming for a social history of Black labor, I suggest that we harness the magical qualities of these half-true, half-invented narratives, capitalize on their marvelousness, and instead of laying claim to a definitive account of who the Black sailors were and what they did, create new avenues of research and imagination that may help us regain access to the breathtakingly rich and layered world of a Black subalternity articulated translingually across the medieval Indian Ocean world.