Indigenous Black Iraqis: Shaping Blackness in the Arab World. From the Cushites to the ZanjsBefore the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the Western world was still unaware of the existence of a Black population in Iraq. Though almost two millions, one third of them living in the southern part of the country in Basra, they rarely drew the attention of Arab scholars. Like many countries of the Middle East which have an important Black community among them, the presence of these populations is only explained by the Arab Slave Trade, as they are always called the descendants of Zanjs. In reality, they embody a much more glorious past rooted in the Horn of Africa, a time when the whole Arabian Peninsula, as well as the Levant, were nothing less than the extension of Northeast Africa. It is through a serious amount of research and very few documents available about the Black Iraqis that author and scholar VKY managed to explore and rewrite the truth about their roots.