Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry

by Bernard Lewis

  47. See E12 suppl., S.V. "Bigha'."

  Chapter 2

  1. When I joined the British Army in 1940, one of the items on the form which I had to complete was "race." This was the first time I had seen the word "race" in an official document, and, given the circumstances at the time, I was at a loss what to write. Nowadays, asked the same question, I would unhesitatingly write "white" or "Cauca sian." It would not have occurred to me to do so then. For me at that time, white was a color, not a race; Caucasian-except among anthropologists-meant natives of the region of the Caucasus Mountains. The only people who were currently using the term "race" in official documents were our enemies, and I was sure that the British Army did not want to know whether I was or was not Aryan. I therefore sought the guidance of the sergeant, who explained to me that as far as the British Army was concerned, there are four and only four races-English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish. Even a black recruit-and there were some already-was obliged to choose one of these four. The choice was of course entirely voluntary. You put down what you felt yourself to be.

  2. When I called my first article on this topic-published in England in 1970 "Race and Colour in Islam," these two words, at that time and in that place, meant different things. Today, such a title would be tautologous.

  3. According to Sabatino Moscati, Historical Art in the Ancient Near East (Rome, 1963), pp. 48-50:

  The characterization of peoples is very clearly defined in constant schemata in the art of the ancient Near East. Egyptian examples are well known: Asiatics with full heads of hair bound with ribbons, and pointed beards; Libyans with long curls along their ears; beardless Hittites with broad, protruding noses; Negros [sic] with flat noses and thick, kinky hair; the "Peoples from the Sea" with feathered head coverings, etc. And Mesopotamian examples, albeit little studied, are also noteworthy: for example, in Neo-Assyrian reliefs, the Hebrews deported from Lachish are depicted with straight, protruding noses, kinky hair joining rounded, tightly curled beards, and wearing long, unbelted tunics; Arabs in short belted skirts are represented with smooth straight hair contrasting with their curled beards; and Persians, with broad, ornate bands on their hair, the thin nose that forms a single line with the forehead, the short flat beard and the elegant armour.

  4. Juvenal, Satires III, 62; Ammianus Marcellinus, History XIV, 4. Glen W. Bowersock (Rome and Arabia [Cambridge, 1983], p. 124, n. 4) has dismissed as absurd the notion that "the Roman Empire knew cultural but not racial prejudice." The examples of prejudice which he quotes, directed against Syrians, Arabs, and Jews, can only be defined as racial if one defines Syrians, Arabs, and Jews as races.

  5. The "Southern boundary, made in the year 8, under the Majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Khekure (Sesostris III) who is given life forever and ever; in order to prevent that any Negro should cross it, by water or by land, with a ship. (or) any herds of the Negroes, except a Negro, who shall come to do trading in Iken, or with a commission. Every good thing shall be done with them, but without allowing a ship of the Negroes to pass by Heh, going downstream, for ever" (J. H. Breasted, ed., Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. 1 [Chicago, 1906-07], pp. 293, 652).

  6. In the Roman Empire, the number of Ethiopian and other dark-skinned slaves, even in Egypt, was small (William L. Westermann. The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity [Philadelphia, 1955]. p. 97).

  7. Thus Cicero, in De provinciis consularibus, speaks of the Syrians and the Jews as "nations born for slavery." This occurs in a letter in which he is commiserating with certain tax farmers who had been handed over as slaves to the Syrians and the Jews.

  8. A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 1 (London 1939), p. 266. For the historical record of Muslim racial attitudes, the reader must look elsewhere. The problem of relations between Arab and non-Arab Muslims in early Islamic society was first examined, with a wealth of documentation, in Ignaz Goldziher's classic Muhammedanische Studien, vol. 1 (Halle, 1888) (Muslim Studies, vol. 1 [London, 1967]); that of color in K. Vollers, "Ober Rassenfarben in der arabischen Literatur," in Centenario delta nascita di Michele Amari, vol. 1 (Palermo, 1910), pp. 84-95. Briefer and more general accounts are given in R. Levy, The Social Structure of /slam (Cambridge, 1957) (rev. ed. of Sociology of Islam [London, 1931-33]), chap. 1; G. E. von Grunebaum. Medieval Islam, 2d ed. (Chicago, 1953). p. 199ff. (The German version, Der Islam im Mittelalter [Zurich-Stuttgart, 1963], pp. 256ff., has fuller documentation.)

  The place of the black in Arab-Islamic society was extensively studied in an excellent German doctoral thesis by G. Rotter (Die Stellung des Negers in der islamisch- arabischen Gesellschaft bis zum XVI Jahrhundert [Bonn, 1967]) and, in a brief but illuminating survey, by J. O. Hunwick, "Black Africans in the Islamic world: An understudied dimension of the Black Diaspora," Tarikh 5, no. 4 (1978), pp. 20-40. Mention may be made of three studies in Arabic: an article by 'Awn al-Sharif Oasim. on the blacks in Arabic life and literature, "Al-Sudan fi hayat al-'Arab wa-adabihim," Bulletin of Sudanese Studies (Khartoum) 1 (1968), pp. 76-92, and two books by 'Abduh Badawi, Al-Sud wa 'l-Hadara al Arabiyya (Cairo, 1976) on the blacks and Arab civilization and Al-Shu ark' al-SW wa-khasa'isuhum fi'l-Shir al-Arabi (Cairo, 1973) on black poets in Arabic literature. For a pioneer study on some racial attitudes in classical Persian literature, see Minoo Southgate, "The negative images of blacks in some medieval Iranian writings," Iranian Studies 17, no. 1 (1984), pp. 3-36. Some Turkish images of blacks have been studied in two articles by Pertev Naili Boratav: "The Negro in Turkish folklore," Journal of American Folklore 64 (1951), pp. 83-88, and "Les Noirs dans le folklore turc et le folklore des Noirs de Turquic," Journal de la Societe des Africanistes 28 (1958), pp. 7-23. For two studies dealing specifically with North Africa, see Leon Carl Brown, "Color in Northern Africa," Daedalus 96 (1967), pp. 464-82, and Lucette Valensi, "Esclaves chretiens et esciaves noirs a Tunis au XVIIIe siecle," Annales 6 (1967), pp. 1267-88. For translations of relevant texts, see B. Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, vol. 2, Religion and Society (New York, 1974), esp. chaps. 5-12; Graham W. Irwin, Africans Abroad (New York, 1977), pp. 57-119. A number of relevant articles dealing with aspects of the problem may be found in J. R. Willis, ed., Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, vol. 1, Islam and the Ideology of Slavery, and vol. 2, The Service Estate (London, 1985), and in UNESCO, African Slave Trade (Paris, 1979).

  9. The Thousand and One Nights, trans. E. W. Lane, rev. ed., vol. 1 (London, 1859), pp. 4-5. I have preferred Lane's sometimes rather coy translation to that of Sir Richard Burton, who not only preserves but also greatly augments the indecencies of the original. His is the more serious misrepresentation.

  10. 467th and 468th nights, R. F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol. 4 (London, 1894). pp. 212-14. This story is omitted by Lane. The theme of whiteness as a reward is a common one. Cf. Rotter, Stellung des Negers, pp. 179-80. Another rather humorous story in the Thousand and One Nights tells of a Yemenite who arrived in Baghdad with six slave women, one black, one white, one fat, one thin. one yellow, one brown (Burton, Thousand Nights and a Night, vol. 3 [London. 18941, pp. 360-81.) In a kind of literary competition organized by their owner, the slave girls are divided into three pairs, and each girl is invited to sing the praises of her own qualities and decry those of her paired opponent in poetry and prose. The fat and the thin discuss the merits and defects of fatness and thinness; the others deal with colorblack against white, and yellow against brown. The narrator adopts a position of apparent neutrality, but the narrative reveals a number of underlying assumptions. For an excellent analysis, see Andre Miquel, Sept conies des mille et one nuits, ou it n'v a pas de conies innocents (Paris, 1981), pp. 165-89.

  Chapter 3

  1. This would appear to be the original meaning of the Arabic shuub wa-gaba`il. According to some later commentators, the terms shu`ub and gaba'il denote, respectively, non-Arab and Arab groupings.

  2. Ignaz Goldziher, Muhaimnedanische Studien, vol. 1 (Halle, 1888), pp. 103-
4, 268-69 (Muslim Studies, vol. I [London, 1967]. pp. 99-100, 243-44): cf. G. E. von Grunebaum, "The nature of Arab unity before Islam," Arahica 10 (1963), p. 10. On the interesting question of the classical Arabic terms for colors, see W. Fischer, Farh- und Form bezeichnungen in der Sprache der altarabischen Dichtung (Wiesbaden, 1965): Guy and Jacky Ducatez, "Formation des denominations dc couleur et de luminosite en arabe classique et pre-classique: Essai de periodisation selon une approche linguistique et anthropologique," Peuples Mediterraneens 10 (1980), pp. 139-72.

  3. Sometimes the Greeks and other Europeans are called yellow (asfar). It is not clear, however, whether this word denotes racial color or has some other significance. See E12, S.V. "Asfar" (by 1. Goldziher). On the use of red for the Greeks, see Frithiof Rundgren, "Sillagdun = al-ahamira = al-Rum nebst einigen Bemerkungen zu lbn al- Sirafis Sarh abyat Isiah al-mantiq," in Donum natalicium H. S. Nyberg Oblatum, ed. Erik Gren, Bernhard Lewin, Helmer Ringgren, and Stig Wikander (Upsala, 1954), pp. 135-43.

  4. The expedition is referred to in the Qur'an, chapter CV.

  5. Abu'l-Faraj al-Isfahani, Kitab al-Aghani, vol. 2 (Bulaq, 1285/1868-69), p. 149. See also R. A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge, 1938), p. 155.

  6. W. Ahlwardt, ed., The Divans of the Six Ancient Arabic Poets (London, 1870), p. 32, line 9. See Eh, s.v. "Antara" (by R. Blachere).

  7. `Antara, Diwan (Cairo, 1329/1911), p. 196.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibn Qutayba, Kitab al-Shi `r wa'l-Shu `ara', ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1904), p. 146.

  10. See above, pp. 18 and 54.

  11. These are listed by Muhammad ibn Habib, Kitab al-Muhabbar, ed. Ilse Lichtenstadter (Haydarabad, 1361/1942), pp. 306-9.

  12. E!s.v. (by W. Arafat), where sources are cited.

  13. An interesting example of present-day usage of color terms may be seen in the Republic of the Sudan. The term Sudan in Arabic means "blacks." and is a shortened form of the medieval Bilad al-.Sudan, "land of the blacks," used loosely of black Africa as a whole. In the modern Sudan the northerners, Arabic-speaking, Muslim, and lightbrown, are known as "reds while the southerners, deep black, speaking a variety of Nilotic languages and professing either Christianity or traditional African religions, are known as "blues."

  14. Ibn `Abd al-Hakam, Fuuih Misr, ed. C. C. Torrey (New Haven, CT, 1922), p. 66: cf. G. Rotter, Die Stellueg des Negers (Bonn. 1967), p. 92. This passage is now available in an English translation by Daniel Pipes ("Black soldiers in early Muslim armies," International Journal of African Historical Studies 13 [19801, pp. 90-91 ). `Ubada's concluding remark means no more than that his command includes a large number of men of swarthy or dark complexion. Pipes's inference, that 'Ubada commanded a separate unit of a thousand Africans, is not supported by any other evidence in the rich Arabic historiography dealing with this period.

  Chapter 4

  1. These and other poets are discussed, with specimens of their verse, in the great literary anthology, Abu'l-Faraj al-Isfahani (897-967), Kitab al-Aghani, 20 vols. (Bulaq, 1285/1868-69) ; ibid (Cairo, 1345/1927-)-hereafter Aghani (1868) and Aghaui ( 1927). For studies in Arabic on the black poets, see `Abduh Badawi, Al-.Shuara'al-Sid wa- khasa'isuhutn fi'l-.shi'r al 'arabi (Cairo, 1973) ; Muhammad Bagir Fir'awn, "Aghribat alArab," Al-Mawrid 2 (1973), pp. 1 1-13. According to Badawi, "This name [the crows of the Arabs] was applied to those [Arabic] poets to whom blackness was transmitted by their slave mothers, and whom at the same time their Arab fathers did not recognize, or recognized only under constraint from them." The reason for this reluctance, according to Badawi, was their color, since "the Arabs despised the black color as much as they loved the white color; they described everything that they admired, material or moral, as white. A theme in both eulogy and boasting was the whiteness of a man, just as one of the signs of beauty in a woman was also whiteness. It was also a proof of her nobility. In the same way, a man could be eulogized as 'the son of a white woman.' Similarly, they would boast that they had taken white women as captives" (Al-.Shu'ara', p. 1). For general accounts, see R. Blachere, Histoire de la litterature arabe (Paris, 1952): Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, vol. 2 (Leiden, 1975).

  2. Dwain, ed. Maymani (Cairo, 1369/1950), p. 26. On Suhaym, often referred to by Arabic authors as "the slave of the Banu'I-Hashas," see Aghani (1868), vol. 20, pp. 2-9; Blachere, Histoire de la litterature arabe, pp. 318-19; and the German translations of his poems by O. Rescher, Beitrage zur arabische Poesie, ser. 6, pt. 2 (Istanbul, 195658), pp. 30-50. He was killed and burned by his owners because of his attentions to their women.

  3. Suhaym, Diwan, p. 55; cf. F. Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept of Freedom (Leiden, 1960), p. 91.

  4. Suhaym, Diwan, p. 69.

  5. For a detailed study, see U. Rizzitano, "Abu Mingan Nusayb b. Rabah" Revista degli study orientali 20 (1943), pp. 421-71; idem, "Alcuni frammenti poetici di ... Nusayb," Rivista degli study orientali 22 (1945), pp. 23-35. Nusayb's full name is significant. Unlike freemen, slaves are usually known by a single name, without patronymic and without tribal, regional, or other cognomen. Nusayb's patronymic. ibn Rabah, "son of Rabah" is the same as that of Bilal, the first black Muslim and a Companion of the Prophet, and is surely a conscious evocation, as is that of Sunayh ibn Rabah, an earlier black poet. In the same way, converts to Islam were usually called ibn 'Abdallah or equivalent, adopting the Prophet's patronymic, and not their physical, infidel father's name. Cf. the similar use of hen Abraham, "son of Abraham," by converts to Judaism.

  6. The translation of this line is slightly paraphrased. The poet is playing on the two associated meanings of the root z-1-m, the one conveying the idea of darkness or blackness, the other of oppression or wrongdoing.

  7. Aghani (1868), vol. 1, pp. 140-41; Aghdni (1927), vol. I. pp. 352-54; Rizzitano, "Abu Mihgan Nusayb," pp. 453, 456, and frags. 3, 34.

  8. An untranslatable play on words. Sabt, used of hair, means "straight" or "lank," as contrasted with curly or frizzy. Used of the hand, it means "openhanded, generous."

  9. For the story and poem, see Jahiz, "Fakhr al-Sudan," in Rasa'il, ed. 'Ahd alSalam Muhammad Harun, vol. 1 (Cairo, 1965), pp. 182-85; German translation in 0. Rescher, Orientalische Miszellen, vol. 2 (Istanbul, 1926), pp. 149-51. Jahiz relates a similar story, with an appropriate exchange of insults, concerning Jarir and Sunayh ibn Rabah. See, further, Badawi, Al-.Shuinrd', pp. 123-25; J. O. Hunwick. "Black Africans in the Islamic world," Tarikh 5, no. 4 (1978), pp. 35-36.

  10. AghanF (1868), vol. 20, p. 25; Badawi, Al-Shu `ara', p. 158.

  11. Mohammed Ben Cheneb, Abu Doldma, poete bouffon de la coi:r des premiers califes ahhassides (Algiers, 1922), pp. 35, 136.

  12. AghanF (1868), vol. 1, p. 130; AghanF (1927), vol. I , p. 325; Rizzitano, "Abu Mingan Nusayb," p. 431.

  13. Aghani (1868), vol. 1, p. 136; Aghani (1927), vol. 1, p. 341; Rizzitano, "Abu Milan Nusayb," p. 439: G. Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers (Bonn, 1967), pp. 89-90.

  14. AghanF (1868), vol. 5, p. 137; Aghdni (1927), vol. 6, p. 10.

  15. Aghani (1868), vol. 3, p. 87; Aghani (1927), vol. 3, pp. 282-83; R. Levy, The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 62-63; Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers, pp. 80-90. On the musician Ibn Misjah, see H. G. Farmer, A History of Arabian Music (London, 1929), pp. 77-78, and Eh, s.v. "Ibn Misdjah" (by J. W. Fuck). Part of the text is translated in Graham W. Irwin, ed.. Africans Abroad (New York, 1977), pp. 58-59.

  16. One of the most notable among them was Dhu'l-Nun al-Misri, born in Upper Egypt in about 796 A.D. He is known as al-Misri, the Egyptian. because of his Egyptian birth; but his parents were Nubian, and his father is said to have been a freed slave. Dhu'l-Nun traveled and studied extensively and at one time was arrested and imprisoned in Baghdad but was released by the order of the caliph. He returned to Egypt, where he died in 861 A.D. He is known as "the head of the Sufis" and is regarded as a founder of the Sufi school of Islamic mysticism. Some hooks on magic and alchemy are attributed to him but are probably not authentic. A numbe
r of his prayers and some of his poems are preserved by other writers; and it is on these and on his disciples that we must rely, in the main, for knowledge of his mystical doctrines. He is said to have been the first to formulate the characteristic Sufi doctrine of the ecstatic states, the stations on the mystic way toward Gnosis, the true knowledge of God. Interestingly, he is credited with having named music as a means to this end: "Music is a divine influence which stirs the heart to see God; those who listen to it spiritually strain to God, and those who listen to it sensually fall into unbelief" (cited in R. A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam [London, 1914], p. 65). Like other Sufis, Dhu'l-Nun preached the merits of penitence, renunciation, self-discipline, and sincerity and saw in affliction and solitude aids toward spiritual progress. He was among the first to use the language of passionate love in his religious poems, thus helping to establish what became a major feature of the Sufi tradition not only in Arabic but also-indeed, more-in Persian, Turkish, and other Islamic languages.

  17. On Jahiz, see C. Pellat, Le Milieu hasrien et la formation de Gdhiz (Paris, 1953); idem, The Life and Works of Jahiz (London, 1969); Eh S.V. "Djahiz" (by C. Pellat).

  18. First edited by G. van Vloten, in Jahiz, Tria opuscula, auctore al-Djahiz (Leiden, 1903), pp. 58-85; reedited by `Abd al-Salam Muhammad Harun, in Jahiz, Rasa'il al-Jahiz, vol. I (Cairo, 1385/1965), pp. 173-226; German translation by Rescher, Orientalische Miszellen, vol. 2, pp. 146-86; cf. Pellat, Life and Works of Jahiz, pp. 195-98; abridged English translation in B. Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, vol. 2, Religion and Society (New York, 1974), pp. 210-16. The word Zanj refers strictly to the natives of East Africa-south of Ethiopia-and thence more generally to Bantu-speaking Africans. See above, p. 50.

  19. Jahiz, Kitab al-Bukhala' (Damascus, 1357/1938), p. 253; French translation by C. Pellat, Le Livre des avares (Paris, 1951), p. 232.