Pretty sure it was Mumford and Sons <| sep |> re OrientalismSure . re Scholarship on the RevoltThe first problem with your claim is the belief that mainstream ' Orientalists ' aren ' t able to assess what occurred during the Zanj Revolt though scholars like those revisionists you named could . Note that Talhami ' s article was written in 1977 and has had no real impact upon the scholarship of the Zanj Revolt because her arguments had no basis in fact . In fact , the gist of her argument was that the Zanj Revolt could not have been an African revolt because the East African slave trade wasn ' t as active during the 9 th century CE as it was during the 19 th century extremely incorrect because the Zanj or AfroIraqis have been inhabiting Southern Iraq for more than 1000 years . But looking at your argument pertaining to AlTabari . Al ' s appeal to enslaved African population was based upon granting them their freedom . They revolted to free themselves from Abbasid rule . That ' s hits home to the very definition of a servile revolt . Moreover , even if there was a religious element to it like there was a religious element to the Haitian Revolt or Nat Turner ' s Slave Revolt in 1831 , it ' s still a servile revolt . Again , trying to bury the participation of Africans in the revolt as merely a religious revolt is an attempt to hide slavery in the Gulf of Persia during the Abbasid era .