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

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Some Rabbinic literature suggests that on the eve of MuÈammad’s preaching in Mecca the Arabs were still identified as Kushites. The King of the Arabs put this question to R. Akiba: “I am black (kûšī) and my wife is black (kûšīt), yet she gave birth to a white son. Shall I kill her for having played the harlot while lying with me? (Num. R. IX.34) 39 While this midrash is probably completely legendary, it does give us a hint of Arabian ethnography, or what the views of the 5th /6th century CE redactors of this text were regarding Arabian ethnography at the time. 40 See also the Targum Shir ha-Shirim commenting on Song of Songs 1:5 (“I am black but comely, O Daughters of Jerusalem, [black] as the tents of Qedar”): When the people of the House of Israel made the Calf, their faces became black like the sons of Kush who dwell in the tents of Qedar. 41 The Qedar were a powerful Arab tribe of Syria and North Arabia in the 7th century BCE. 42 Here they are identified with Kush. They were not active at the time of Rabbi Akiba’s 5th /6th century CE redactors, but apparently their memory was still alive and was transferred to the contemporary black Arabs of the time. “The blackness of the Arabian king,” Restö observes, “is due to his dwelling in the land of the Qedar whose inhabitants are black, according to the Song of Songs.” 43 Today the southern portion of the peninsula is home to this dark-skinned Arab, like the Mahra, Qara, and Shahra tribes of Oman and Hadramawt, 44 which show some affinity to the Arabian Peninsula: Occupations, Adaptations, and Dispersals,” Journal of World History 17 (June 2003): 173; Norman M. Whalen and David E. Peace, “Early Mankind in Arabia,” ARAMCO World 43:4 (1992): 20, 23]. Arabian archaeology shows links with African materials [Jakub Rídl, Christopher M. Edens, and Viktor 1erny, “Mitochondrial DNA Structure of Yemeni Population: Regional Differences and the Implications for Different Migratory Contributions,” in Michael D. Petraglia and Jeffrey I. Rose (edd.), The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia: Paleoenvironments, Prehistory and Genetics (London and New York: Springer, 2009) 71; Whalen and Peace, “Early Mankind in Arabia,” 20, 23]. For further links between southern Arabia and Africa see below n. 45. Craniofacial measurements in nearly 2000 recent and prehistoric crania from major geographical areas of the Old World indicated that ancient West Asians and Africans resembled each other. See Tsunehiko Hanihara, “Comparison of Craniofacial Features of Major Human Groups,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 99 (1996): 389-412. On the colonization of Western Asia from Africa see Ofer Bar-Yosef, “Early colonizations and cultural continuities in the Lower Palaeolithic of western Asia,” in Michael D. Petraglia and Ravi Korisettar (edd.), Early Human Behaviour in Global Context: The Rise and Diversity of the Lower Palaeolithic Record (London: Routledge, 1998): 221-279. 39 Num. R. IX.34 on Numbers 5:19 (Soncino translation). 40 Retsö, Arabs in Antiquity, 530. On the rabbinic view of the Arab as dark-skinned see further Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 122-24. 41 The Targums of Canticles (The Aramaic Bible 17A), Translated, with a Critical Introduction, Apparatus, and Notes by Philip S. Alexander (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1986) 81. 42 On Qedar see Jaroslav Stetkevych, MuÈammad and the Golden Bough: Reconstructing Arabian Myth (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996) 68-77. 43 Restö, Arabs in Antiquity, 530. 44 On these tribes see J. E. Peterson, “Oman’s diverse society: Southern Oman,” The Middle East Journal 58 (Spring 2004): 254ff; Encyclopedia of Islam [Second Edition; hereafter EI2 ] 6:81-84 s.v. Mahra by W.W. Müller; Bertram Thomas, “Among Some Unknown Tribes of South Arabia,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 59 (1929): 97-111; For photos of these black-skinned South Arabians see further Richard F. Nyrop (ed.), The Yemens Country Studies (Washington D.C.: The American University, 1985): 5-7; D. Van der Meulen, 8
Veddoid-Dravidoid racial type of India and the Ethiopian type of East Africa. 45 However, as late as the 19th century dark-skinned Arabs were still noticeable in the Hejaz as well. Muhammad Sadiq Bey, who traveled to Medina in 1861, noted that while there were some light-skinned, almost white Medinese, the people were still basically of “a dark, almost black complexion.” 46 If the Proto-Semites in general and the early Arabs in particular were a Kushite or dark-skinned people, on this basis we would, again, expect the Arab prophet of noble genealogy to be a darkskinned Arab. Evidence from the Classical Islamic literary tradition suggests that the alternative – a white-skinned Arab prophet – is not only unlikely but even quite absurd. III. The Black Arabs in Islamic Literary Tradition The idea that true Arabs were black-skinned and that a fair complexion characterized non-Arabs – Persians, Byzantines, Turks, ect. – is frequently met with in Classical Arabic/Islamic literature. Ibn Maníår (d. 711/1311) in his Arabic lexicon, Lis§n al-#arab, notes the opinion that the phrase aswad al-jilda, ‘black-skinned,’ idiomatically meant kh§liß al-#arab, “the pure Arabs,” “because the color of most of the Arabs is dark (al-udma).” 47 In other words, blackness of skin among the Arabs indicated purity of Arab ethnicity. Likewise did the famous grammarian from the century prior, Muhammad b. BarrÊ al-‘AdawÊ (d. 589/1193) note that an akh∙ar or black-skinned Arab was “a pure Arab (#arabÊ maÈ∙)” with a pure genealogy, “because Arabs describe their color as black (al-aswad).” 48 Al-JaÈií (d. 255/869), in his Fakhr al-såd§n #al§ lbidan, thus declared: “The Arabs pride themselves in (their) black color (al-#arab tafkhar bi-saw§d al-lawn).” 49 “Into Burning Hadhramaut” The National Geographic Magazine 62 (1932): 393-421; Sir Arthur Keith and Dr. Wilton Marion Krogan, “The Racial Characteristic of the Southern Arabs,” in Bertram Thomas, Arabia Felix, Across the ‘Empty Quarter’ of Arabia (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932) 327 facing, 330 facing 333. 45 Speaking of the Qara Peterson (“Oman’s Diverse Society,” 261) notes: “European observers have made much of their physical resemblance to Somalis or Ethiopians”. Vitaly V. Naumkin, Island of the Phoenix, an Ethnological Study of the People of Socotra (Ithaca Press Reading, 1993) 67 notes also: “Socotra, and possibly all of Southern Arabia, may after all be the missing intermediate link in the race-genetic ‘west-east’ gradient for which anthropologists search in order to fill the gap between the African Negroids and the Australo-Veddo- Melanesian types in the equatorial area.”. The Encyclopedia Britanica [9th Edition; 1:245-46 s.v. Arabia] lists ten literary, linguistic, cultural, and ethnological evidences suggesting some relation between South Arabians and Africa. See also EI 1 VIII: 1156 s.v. al-Yaman by Adolf Grohmann; Carleton Stevens Coon, The Races of Europe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939) 402-3; Sir Arthur Keith and Dr. Wilton Marion Krogman, “The Racial Characters of the Southern Arabs,” in Bertram Thomas, Arabia Felix, Across the ‘Empty Quarter’ of Arabia (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932) 301-333; Bertram Thomas, “Anthropological Observatins in South Arabia,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 62 (1932) 83- 103. For a discussion of the recent genetic data suggesting ancient and more recent gene-flow from Africa to Yemen see Rídl, Edens, and 1erny, “Mitochondrial DNA Structure of Yemeni Population,” 69-78. On the cultural links between Bronze Age Yemen and the Horn of Africa see Christopher Edens and T.J. Wilkinson, “Southwest Arabia During the Holocene: Recent Archaeological Developments,” Journal of World History 12 (1998): 55-119. 46 John De St. Jorre, “Pioneer Photographer of the Holy Cities,” Saudi Aramco World (Jan-Feb 1999) 45. 47 Ibn Maníår, Lis§n al-#arab (Beirut: D§r al-‘§dir - D§r al-Bayråt, 1955-1956) s.v. ﺮﻀﺧﺍ IV:245f; See also Edward William Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (London: Williams & Norgate 1863) I: 756 s.v. ﺮﻀﺧ . 48 Ibn Maníår, Lis§n al-#arab, s.v. ﺮﻀﺧﺍ IV:245. On akh∙ar (lit. green) as black (aswad) see further al-MawardÊ, al- AÈk§m al-sulã§niyya w"al-wil§y§t al-dÊniyya, trans. Wafaa H. Wahba, Al-MawardÊ: The Ordinances of Government (Reading: Garnet Publishing, Ltd, 1996) 190; K. Vollers, “Über Rassenfarben in der arabischen Literatur,” Centenario della nascita di Michele Amari 1 (1910) 3. 49 Al-JaÈií, Fakhr al-såd§n #al§ al-bidan, in Ris§"il Al-JaÈií, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1964) I:207. See also the English translation by T. Khalidi, “The Boast of the Blacks Over the Whites,” Islamic Quarterly 25 (1981): 3-26 (17). 9
Page 1 and 2: “Anyone who says that the Prophet
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