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

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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. 4 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
Semites, probably all genealogically related. 22 We know Mås§ (Moses) was black-skinned and, 23 while this is controversial, according to a number of reports Is§ (Jesus) was as well. 24 From this perspective one might expect Islam’s last prophet to be a dark-skinned Semite too. This religio-literary tradition of dark-skinned Semites is consistent with the linguistic evidence. “Semitic” is properly a linguistic designation, not racial, and describes several living and dead languages and their native speakers. The Semitic family of languages, the most widespread of which is Arabic, is a branch of a larger language phylum, called by some scholars Afroasiatic (hereafter AA), which consists of the Semitic, Ancient Egyptian, Berber, Cushitic, Omotic and Chadic families. 25 While a few scholars maintain that the AA family originated in Asia, 26 most now seem to argue that it originated in Africa where five of the six generally recognized branches still reside. 27 The Proto-Semites likely originated from these African AA speakers, either in Africa itself or maybe, after migrating northward, in the Levant. 28 22 The Qur"§n suggests that the prophets were all of the same family, the progeny (dhurriya) of Adam through Abraham (57:26; 29:27; 4:163; 19:58). MuÈammad referred to the prophets as paternal brothers (awl§d #al§t): ‘aÈÊÈ BukharÊ, kit§b aÈ§dith al-anbiy§", # 651, 652. See further David S. Powers, MuÈammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men: The Making of the Last Prophet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) 51; Willem A Bijlefeld, “A Prophet and More than a Prophet?” Muslim World 59 (1969): 17-18. 23 Moses was reportedly tall, thin, curly (ja#d) or straight (sabiã) haired and black-skinned (§dam): ‘aÈÊÈ BukharÊ, kit§b aÈ§dith al-anbiy§", # 574, 607, 608, 647, 648. 24 According to an oft-quoted hadith: “Ibn Umar narrated: the Prophet (s) said: “[During my Ascension to Heaven] I saw Moses, Jesus, and Abraham. Jesus was white-skinned (aÈmar), curly haired with a broad chest; Moses was blackskinned (§dam), straight-haired and tall as if he was from the people of al-£uãã”: ‘aÈÊÈ BukharÊ, kit§b aÈ§dith alanbiy§", # 648; Ibn Sa#d, Kib§b al-ãabaq§t al-kabÊr, I/ii,125 (=Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, I/ii, 492). On this account it is popularly accepted that, while Moses was black-skinned, Jesus was white-skinned. However, another report insists that this is erroneous: “S§lim narrated from his father: ‘No, By Allah, the Prophet (s) did not say that Jesus was white-skinned but said: “While I was asleep circumambulating the Ka’ba (in my dream), suddenly I saw a black-skinned man (rajul §dam) with straight hair walking between two men, and water dripping from his head. I asked who he was, and the men said he is the Son of Mary (Jesus). Then I looked behind and saw a white-skinned man (rajul aÈmar), fat, curly-haired and blind in the right eye which looked like a bulging grape. I asked whom he was and they said, ‘This is al-Dajj§l’.”’”: ‘aÈÊÈ BukharÊ, kit§b aÈ§dith al-anbiy§", # 650, 649. In other words, the whiteskinned man seen in MuÈammad’s vision was not Jesus, who was seen as a black-skinned man, but al- Dajj§l. #AlÊ Q§wÊ al-HarawÊ (d. 1014/1605) in his commentary on al-TirmidhÊ’s famous al-Sham§"il al-MuÈammadÊyah mentions a variant hadith according to which MuÈammad said regarding Jesus: “I saw a black-skinned man (rajul §dam), the best one can see among black-skinned men.” Q§wÊ al-HarawÊ, Kit§b jam# al-was§"il fÊ sharÈ alsham§"il (Istanbul: Maãba’at Shaykh YaÈy§, 1874) 58. 25 See John Huehnergard, “Afro-Asiatic,” in Roger D. Woodard (ed.), The Ancient Languages of Syria- Palestine and Arabia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 225-246. 26 Jared Diamond and Peter Bellwood, “Farmers and Their Languages: The First Expansions,” Science 300 (2003): 597-603; idem, “Response,” Science 306 (2004) 1681; Alexander Militariev, “Home for Afrasian: African or Asian,” in Cushitic and Omotic Languages: Proceedings of the Third International Symposium, Berlin, March 17-19, 1994 (Berlin, 1994) 13-32; “Evidence of Proto-Afrasian Cultural Lexicon (1. Cultivation of Land. II. Crops. III. Dwelling and Settlement),” in Hans G. Mukarovsky (ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-Semitic Congress (Wien, 1990) I: 73-85; Werner Vycichl, “The Origin of the Hamito- Semitic Languages,” in Herrmann Jungraithmayr and Walter W. Müller (edd.), Proceedings of the Fourth Internation Hamito-Semitic Congress, Marburg, 20-22 September, 1983 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjaminus Publishing Company, 1987) 109-121. 27 Huehnergard, “Afro-Asiatic,” 225; Christopher Ehret, S.O.Y Keita and Paul Newman, “The Origins of Afroasiatic,” Science 306 (2004) 1680-1681; Carleton T. Hodge, “Afroasiatic: The Horizon and Beyond,” in Scott Noegel and Alan S. Kaye (edd.), Afroasiatic Linguistics, Semitics, and Egyptology: Selected Writings of Carleton T. Hodge (Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press, 2004) 64; Christopher Ehret, Reconstructing Proto- Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): vowels, tone, consonants, and vocabulary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) 487; Nicholas Faraclas, “They Came Before the Egyptians: Linguistic Evidence for the 5
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