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

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administration but in all fields, including the religious sciences. 211 Iranian scholars would become some of the chief fashioners of Islamic tradition, and were instrumental in fact in creating a new Arab identity. 212 In this new philopersian environment, the Arabs themselves would become persona non grata. 213 A violently anti-Arab sentiment was expressed in the Shu#åbiyya literature, most of whose authors were Persian. 214 A common theme of this literature is Persian cultural superiority over the Arabs. The deep anti-Arab sentiment displayed in this literature did not spare MuÈammad’s own clan, the Banå H§shim. Said one Shu#åbÊ poet: I am a noble of the tribe of Jam-he called in the name of the nation-and I demand the inheritance of the Persian kings. Tell all the sons of H§shim: submit yourselves before the hour of regret arrives. Retreat to the Hejaz and resume eating lizards and herd your cattle While I seat myself on the throne of the kings supported by the sharpness of my blade and the point of my pen. 215 The Shu#åbÊ movement, which sought to remodel the whole spirit of Islamic culture on the model of Sasanian institutions and values, was highly influential at the caliphal court. 216 Sasanian strands were “woven into the fabric of Muslim thought,” including a pronounced antiblack ideology which, when combined with the anti-Arab sentiment, will have far reaching consequences for the development of post-Umayyad Islamic tradition in general and the unity declined visibly. The dissemination of Arabic as a cultural medium, the adoption of Arabic nomenclature by the islamized non-Arabs and not least the Arab origin of the dynasty were all factors tending to conceal the gradual disappearance of Arab preponderance in the #Abb§sid central administration.” While their political influence was reduced, the social or socio-religious prestige of the Arabs remained, Grunebaum notes. It was left to the Iranian shu#åbiyya to break the Arabs’ cultural monopoly. Ibid. 87. On the shu#åbiyya see below. 211 Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I:104-112, 140, 142.Hugh Kennedy notes that “It is characteristic of this intellectual activity (of the #Abb§sid period) that it was overwhelmingly conducted by non-Arabs”: “Intellectual Life in the First Four Centuries of Islam,” in Farhad Daftary (ed.), Intellectual Traditions in Islam (London and New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 2001) 24. 212 Richard W. Bulliet, Islam: The View From the Edge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) 146, 152- 153: “many practices, beliefs, and institutions most characteristic of the period when Islam invented a uniform identity for itself are rooted in the urban Muslim communities of eleventh-century Iran…the impact of the Iranian diaspora (also) went beyond institutional changes. It affected the content of religious thought and practice as well…”; Rina Drory, “The Abbasid Construction of the Jahiliyya: Cultural Authority in the Making,” Studia Islamica 83 (1996): 33-49: “the non-Arab maw§lÊ were the ones who actually constructed Arab identity for the Arab community through a colossal effort of collecting and organizing knowledge belonging to ‘the Arab (and Islamic) sciences’. (42)” 213 See Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I:138; Drory, “Abbasid Construction,” 34: “the #Abb§sids were notorious for their infatuation with Persian…sedentary, urban culture while condescending to ‘genuine Arabic’ (i.e. nomadic) culture.” 214 On the Shu#åbiyya see EI 2 s.v.al-Shu#åbiyya by S. Endwitz; H.T. Norris, “Shu#åbiyya in Arabic Literature,” in Julia Ashtiany et al (edd.), #Abbasid Belles-Lettres (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) 31-47; Roy P. Mottahedah, “The Su#ûbîyah Controversy and the Social History of Early Islamic Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (1976): 161-182; H.A.R. Gibb, “The Social Significance of the Shuubiya,” in Studies on the Civilization of Islam, edd. Stanford J. shaw and William R. Polk (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962): 62-73; Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I, Chapter Four. 215 al-Tha#§libÊ, Mukhtaßar§t, 272 #314. 216 Gutas, Greek Thought, 29; Drory, “Abbasid Construction,” 43; Lapidus, History, 76-77; Norris, “Shu#åbiyya,” 31; Gibb, “Social Significance,” 66; Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I:137-138. 30
epresentation of MuÈammad therein in particular. 217 Indeed, the hostility shown towards blacks in some Medieval Muslim Iranian writings provides a context in which to understand the proclamation that anyone who claims MuÈammd is black should be killed. 218 A number of incidents indicates the changed Zeitgeist. Under Abå Ja#far al-Manßår (r. 754 – 775), the second #Abb§sid caliph, it was a common scene for Arabs to wait vainly for admission at the caliphal gates, while Khurasanians freely entered, ridiculing the Bedouin Arabs (a#r§bÊ) on their way in. 219 It was al-Manßår too who mocked the intensely black-skinned pure 217 Lewis, Race and Slavery, 95, 96 points out that the stereotype of a black man as a monster or bogeyman figured prominently in Iranian mythology. See also Ibid., 53-54. Mino Southgate has documented that in Iranian sources of the 10 th – 14 th centuries, Muslim and non-Muslim, “no group was the butt of such fierce racial attack as were blacks…” Mino Southgate, “The Negative Images of Blacks in Some Medieval Iranian Writings,” Iranian Studies 17 (1984): 3-35 (9). Southgate notes further: “many medieval Islamic Iranian sources show color consciousness, depict negative black stereotypes, and reveal hostile sentiments toward blacks. This is not to say that negative sentiments are not expressed about other groups…It is fair to say, however, aside from mildly positive comments about Ethiopians, hardly anything good is said about blacks, and that the attack against this group…is much more fierce than that against any other group…What motivated Muslim Iran to develop the grotesque images and stereotypes…? (26)”. It seems clear that anti-black racism was absent from or minimal in pre- and early Islamic Arabia. Even though #Abduh BadawÊ’s study of Arabic poetry and the image of blacks therein, Al-Shu#ar§" al-Såd wa Khaß§"ißuhum fÊ l-Shi#r al-#ArabÊ (Cairo, 1973) found that “the Arabs despised the black color as much as they loved the white color,” Bernard Lewis is surely right when he points out: “There are verses, indeed many verses, attributed to pre- Islamic and early Islamic poets which would suggest very strongly a feeling of hatred and contempt directed against persons of African birth or origin. Most, if not all of these, however, almost certainly belong to later periods and reflect later problems, attitudes, and preoccupations…(emphasis mine)” Lewis, Race and Slavery, 22, 24-25, 87; idem, “Crows,” 90. There is good evidence, Lewis informs us, that in pre-Islamic Arabia Ethiopians were regarded with respect as a people with a higher civilization than that of the Arabs. There were African slaves, but these were treated no worse than white slaves. Lewis notes: “pagan and early Islamic Arabia seems to have shared the general attitude of the ancient world, which attached no stigma to blackness (Race and Slavery, 25)”. See further St. Clair Drake, Black Folk Here and There 2 vols. (Los Angeles: Center For Afro-American Studies University of California, 1987) II:85, 152; John Alembillah Azumah, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001) 130-131. It is also now clear that the Arabs themselves were a black-skinned people, a fact which forces us to look for other explanations for any hints of anti-African sentiments we might find among the early Arabs. A good illustration of this point is the case of Abå Dharr’s insulting Bil§l, the black-skinned Companion of MuÈammad and freed-slave whose mother was an Ethiopian. It is reported that Abå Dharr, from the Arab tribe Ghaf§r, insulted Bil§l by calling him ‘son of a black woman’. While this is frequently cited as an example of an early Arab anti-black sentiment, several factors mitigate against this explanation. (1) Abå Dharr was a black-skinned Arab. According to al-DhahabÊ, it was said that Abå Dharr was “black-skinned (§dam), huge, with a thick beard.” He goes on to quote Ibn Burayda who claimed: “Abå Dharr was a black man (rajul aswad).” Siyar, II: 47, 50, 74.(2) The insult is social, not racial, expressing the contempt of the highborn for the baseborn. The slave status of Bil§l’s mother was the point of the insult, not her dark-complexion. Secondly, the insult comments on the fact that she was a non-Arab, and Bil§l was thus a hajÊn or half-breed (his father was an Arab). Such persons across the board were looked down upon by purebred Arabs. “Son of a Persian woman (ibn al-f§risiyya)” and “Son of a Frankish woman (ibn al-ifranjiyya)” were insults hurled around equally. See Lewis, “Crows,” 89; Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I:120.(3) Abå Dharr reportedly later explained the insult, and race was not the factor: “Once there were heated words between a friend (Bil§l) and I. His mother was a non-Arab and I insulted her. Then the Prophet (s) asked me, ‘Did you insult so-and-so?’ I said yes. He (the Prophet) asked, ‘Did you mention his mother?’ I said, when a person insults another he usually mentions his mother or father. The Prophet then said: ‘Surely you are one with the Days of Ignorance in him.” Al-DhahabÊ, Siyar, II:72-73. From this report it is clear that blackness had nothing to do with the insult, but non-Arabness and slave-status. 218 We find in this literature for example the claim that blacks are enemies of God and Islam and the killing of each of them is penance for a lifetime of sin, for God wants them destroyed. See Southgate, “Negative Images,” 10. 219 Al-Ißfah§nÊ, Kit§b al-Agh§nÊ (Bål§q), XVIII:148; Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I:138. On al-Manßår as architect of the policy to incorporate Sasanian culture into mainstream #Abb§sid culture see Gutas, Greek 31
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