ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Africanness was important. Africanness was a determinant for how slave holders utilized slaves at work. The chapter provides evidence that African culture and notions of gender were central to the ways enslaved women and men imagined and reimagined their lives, families and strategies for surviving slavery. It shows that African culture and notions of gender were also central to the ways enslaved women and men negotiated their subordination within slavery. The chapter engages the lives and work of slaves, most engaged in domestic and manual labor in close proximity to their Arab owners and all their owners' demands, control and negotiation. It concentrates on Saudi Arabia in an attempt to reveal the lived rules of slavery in a Middle East context. The chapter compares the official image of slavery projected by the Ottomans with the lived experiences that can be extracted from the narratives of runaways: Runaways Enslaved and Manumitted on the Arabian Peninsula (REMAP).
