“Anyone who says that the Prophet is black should be killed”: The ...

were dark-skinned is attested in a number of sources. 17 It will be argued here that a convergence
of evidences – linguistic, ethnographic, and literary – suggests that the Christian depiction of a
dark-skinned MuÈammad is likely a more faithful historical representation – mutatis mutandis its
polemical distortions – of Islam’s prophet. It will be further suggested that, among other things, a
“cataclysmic shift in the demographic balance of power” in the Muslim world that followed the
#Abb§sid Revolution of 132/750 impacted the representation of MuÈammad in Muslim
literature. 18
II. Ancient Semites: MuÈammad’s African Ancestors?
The famed Muslim historian and Qur"§nic exegete al-•abarÊ (d. 310/923) recorded in his
Ta"rÊkh al-rusul wa"l-mulåk the following tradition on the authority of #Abd Allāh b. #Abbās
(d. 68/687), the cousin of the prophet MuÈammad:
The Children of Sam (Shem) settled al-Majdal, the center of the Earth, which is between
Satidim§ and the sea and between Yemen and Syria. Allah made the prophets from them,
revealed the Books to them, made them beautiful, gave them a dark complexion, luminous
and free of blemish (al-udma wa l-bay§∙). The children of Ham settled in the south, along the
course of the south and west wind-this region is called al-D§råm. Allah gave them a dark
complexion, a few of whom were also luminous and free of blemish…The children of
Japheth settled in al-‘afån, along the course of the north and east wind. They are ruddycomplexioned
and very fair-skinned (al-Èumra wa l-shaqra). 19
This tradition of dark-skinned Semites and Hamites in contrast to fair-skinned Japhites of
the north is found in Rabbinic Hebrew literature as well. 20 Al-•abarÊ’s report makes two curious
claims. First, while both Semites and Hamites are dark-skinned, there is a distinction between the
two complexions: the former’s dark complexion is characterized by being bay§∙, i.e. free of
blemish and imbued with a sheen or luminosity. 21
17 See below. We are using ‘black’ here chromatically, not ethnically.
18 The language “cataclysmic shift in the demographic balance of power” to describe the consequence of the
#Abb§sid Revolution is that of Saleh Said Agha, The Revolution Which Toppled the Umayads: Neither Arab
nor ‘Abbāsid (Leiden: Brill, 2003) 3.
19 Al-•abarÊ, Ta"rÊkh al-rusul wa"l-mulåk, edd. Michael Jan de Goeje and Lawrence Conrad, Annals of the
Apostles and Kings. A Critical Edition Including ‘Arib’s Supplement (Gorgias Press, 2005) vol. I, 220-
221; The History of al-•abarÊ Volume II: Prophets and Patriarchs, translated and annotated by William M.
Brinner (Alban, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985) 19.
20 For example the 8th century Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, Chapter 23 [28a] (Friedlander edition): “Noah brought his sons
and his grandsons, and he blessed them with their (several) settlements, and he gave them as an inheritance all the
earth. He especially blessed Shem and his sons, black but comely, and he gave them the inhabitable earth. He
blessed Ham and his sons, black like a raven, and he gave them as an inheritance the coast of the sea. He blessed
Japheth and his sons, they entirely white, and he gave them for an inheritance the desert and its fields; these (are the
inheritances with) which he endowed them.”
21 On al-bay§∙ as ‘luminous’ and free of blemish raher than as ‘white-skinned’ see below.
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On the other hand, the dark-complexion of
most (but not all) Hamites (i.e. Africans) lack this characteristic. This distinction will take on
greater significance for us later. Secondly, prophecy is the inheritance of a particular ethnic
group: dark-skinned Semites. It would then follow that the prophets were all dark-skinned