Eunuchs in Qajar Persia

[JesusA (imported)]

The Guardian has just published a photo essay of slavery in Qajar Dynasty Persia. There are 16 photographs (about 1 meg. each on-line) with detailed captions. Most of the photographs include a eunuch or two -- one of them is of 53 child eunuchs inside the royal harem.

The Qajar Dynasty ruled Persia (modern Iran) from 1785 to 1925. The dynasty was founded by Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (1742-1797). "Agha" is a common title given to eunuchs who serve at court. The future ruler of Persia was castrated at about the age of 5 or 6 and later rose to become a military commander who overthrew the last of the Zand Dynasty. He was followed as ruler by a nephew.

Since web links do not always last forever, I am posting here the text of the article and the captions of some of the 16 photographs. You can (currently) go to the link at the bottom of the article to see the photographs.

The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures

Anthropologist Pedram Khosronejad has embarked on a new and controversial topic in Iranian studies, developing a narrative on African slavery in Persia through archival photography, interviews and scattered text. Here he curates from his burgeoning collection

Denise Hassanzade Ajiri for Tehran Bureau

The Guardian

Thursday 14 January 2016

The African slave trade in the Persian Gulf began well before the Islamic period. Mediaeval accounts refer sporadically to slaves working as household servants, bodyguards, militiamen and sailors in the Persian Gulf including what is today southern Iran (http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran). The practice lasted, and evolved, through many centuries.

In Iran’s modern history, Africans were integral to elite households. Black men were mostly eunuchs working inside the king’s harem and houses, while black women were servants to Iranian women.

Despite its ancient roots, the topic of African slavery is rarely discussed or even acknowledged in Iran. This is partly because there has not been comprehensive research on either African slavery of the subsequent use of African domestic servants.

But there are photographs that offer glimpses, and these have been the focus of anthropologist Pedram Khosronejad for the past four years.

Khosronejad was recently appointed Farzaneh Family Scholar for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies, a new programme at the Oklahoma (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/oklahoma) State University. The topic of African slavery in Iran came to his attention in the late 1990s when he was working on a two-year ethnographic project in the Persian Gulf including the cities of Minab, Bandar Lengeh and Bashagard county in Hormozegan province. His studies of the traditional dress of black Iranians led him to the issue of slavery.

Later, in 2011, when Khosronejad was organising an event on Qajar photography and cinematography at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, he came across several photographs from the late 19th century of Africans living inside the harem of the monarch Nasser al-Din Shah (1831-1896).

Since then Khosronejad has been collecting photos that tell the story of African slaves and modern African domestics in Iran. His research has taken him to Iran, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, and he has sifted through several private archives including the personal collection of author Farhad Diba in Spain and the Archive of Modern Conflict in Holland Park, London. He has conducted dozens of interviews with Iranians including Haleh Afshar, the Iranian-born British baroness, who had African servants during the early 1950s and 1960s.

So far Khosronejad has collected around 400 photos, which he is planning to gather in the first-of-its-kind visual analysis book on African domestic servants in Iran. He is also preparing several related exhibitions around the world.

The work is sensitive. “There are some Qajar families who have issues with the term ‘slave’,” Khosronejad explains. “They say what their families had were domestic servants and they were not treated as slaves. This might be correct, but slavery is slavery and we should be able to talk about it openly.”

The presentation of these photos is the first step toward what Khosronejad sees as a new methodology in the visual anthropology of modern Iran: “We have lots of visual materials that have research value. Some of them have been analysed by visual artists or historians but not anthropologists. We need to read these photos as texts and data for anthropological purposes.”

As part of his responsibilities at Oklahoma State University, Khosronejad and his team are developing a methodology for assessing photos and documentary films from an anthropological standpoint. “These visual materials bear information that cannot be found in texts,” he says. “Analysing them can help anthropologists advance their studies on Iran.”

Captions by Pedram Khosronejad. The Tehran Bureau is an independent media organisation, hosted by the Guardian. Contact us @tehranbureau (https://twitter.com/TehranBureau)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-b ... -in-photos

PHOTO CAPTIONS:

Photo-7

In this photo taken and captioned by the king himself, a group of his wives and eunuchs are shown inside the harem garden in one of the royal complexes in north Tehran, Shahrestanak. The five African slaves include two adults, probably Ethiopian, and three adolescents: Haji Bilal (the first adult African slave from the right), Maqrur Khan (the fourth adult African slave from the right), Ismail Khan (the first adolescent white slave from the right), Haji Rahim (the second white slave from the right, head of the harem slaves), 1883.

Photograph: Nasser al-Din Shah/Photo Archive, Golestan Palace Museum, Tehran, Iran

Photo-8

This photo was probably taken by Masoud Mirza Zell-e-Soltan (1850-1918), governor of Isfahan (1872-1907), and the eldest son of Nasser al-Din Shah. Zell-e-Soltan’s son Bahram Mirza sits in the middle on a chair accompanied by two members of his court (Reza Qoli Khan, private secretary in the right and Aqabaji eunuch chief in the left) sitting on the right and eight African eunuchs. The design of the jacket and hat of the Africans slaves could be considered a type of ethnic segregation.

Photograph: Farhad and Firouzeh Diba Collection of Qajar Photographs

[The oldest of the 8 African eunuchs looks to be no older than a young teen.]

Photo-13

A young aristocrat posing next to her personal African eunuch.

Photograph: Unknown photographer/Central Library, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Photo-16

Nasser al-Din Shah had a special interest in taking photos of his own slaves inside the harem. In this photo, 53 eunuch slaves of different ethnic backgrounds in their early childhood, had probably been recently sent from abroad to the local southern markets, and to the king’s harem. Among them four African boys (qolam bachehha), inside Nasser al-Din Shah’s harem, Golestan Palace, Tehran. Date unknown.

Photograph: Central Library, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

[Naser al-Din Shah Qajar ruled Persia from 1848 to 1896. He made three trips to Europe during his reign. He was a great patron of photography and a fine painter and poet. He introduced many other western ideas to Persia, including the first telegraph, a postal service, the first western-style school, and the first newspaper.]

[SplitDik (imported)]

That's a good find. Very interesting pictures. You can see how some of the eunuchs had weirdly elongated limbs. It also shows how much the rulers trusted castration that they let these eunuchs interact so personally with the royal women and children.

Although the article is primarily about African slaves, the picture of 53 eunuch children is interesting because only four are black. It would be interesting to know who else was being made eunuch -- just local poor people, or from other countries, maybe even Europeans...