The Black Guard or ‘Abid al-Bukhari were the corps of black-African slaves and Haratin slave-soldiers assembled by the 'Alawi sultan of Morocco, Isma‘il ibn Sharif. They were called the "Slaves of Bukhari" because Sultan Isma‘il emphasized the importance of the teachings of the famous imam Muhammad al-Bukhari, going so far as to give the leaders of the army copies of his book. This military corps, which was loyal only to the sultan, was one of the pillars of Isma'il's power as he sought to establish a more stable and more absolute authority over Morocco.
The sultan of Morocco with the Black Guard, 1862 painting by Eugène Delacroix
Moroccan Black Guards in 1926
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.
Haratin women, a community of recent Sub-Saharan African origin residing in the Maghreb
An Ibenheren (Bella) woman
A Bantu Servant woman in Mogadishu (1882–1883)
Bilal ibn Ribah (pictured atop the Kaaba, Mecca) was a former Ethiopian slave and the first muezzin, ca. 630.