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

Ottoman culture on Islamic tradition is conspicuous in the ‘reconstituted SÊra’ with its
‘reconstructed’ image of MuÈammad.
VII.1. ‘Tell all the sons of H§shim…Retreat to the Hejaz and resume eating lizards’
Recent research has demonstrated that, while Arabized mawl§ from Kufa and Persianized
Arabs in Khurasan were involved, the preponderant element of the Revolution that toppled the
Umayyads was the Iranian masses who were resentful both of the Arabs’ putting an end to
eleven-hundred years of Persian civilization and the Arab racial arrogance and discrimination
that followed. 203 The success of the Revolution meant a redistribution of the ethnic weights. 204 It
is somewhat of an understatement to say that the Persians benefitted most under the #Abb§sid
caliphs, 205 most of whom were sons of non-Arab mothers. 206 The Persians in fact were so
influential under the new caliphs, a number of Muslim authors have characterized the Umayyad
and the #Abb§sid dynasties as Arab and Khurasanian respectively. 207 #Abb§sid culture was
profoundly shaped by Persian, 208 such that it can be said that Persian civilization would
“rebound…mutatis mutandis its Islamicization, slowly almost stealthily in less than a century.” 209 In
the process ethnic Arabs became less and less observable, 210 not only in administration but in all
203 Saleh Said Agha, The Revolution Which Toppled the Umayads: Neither Arab nor ‘Abbāsid (Leiden:
Brill, 2003) has made a strong and very convincing case in favor of the original thesis of Julius Wellhausen, Das
Arabische Reich und sein Sturz (1902) which fell out of favor largely due to the researches of M.A. Shaban (The
#Abb§sid Revolution [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970]) and Moshe Sharon (Black Banners
From the East [Jerusalem and Leiden: the Hebrew University, 1983]). Restö, Arabs, 24 notes as well: “the
Abbasid revolution in 750 was, to a large extent, the final revolt of the non-‘arab Muslims against the ‘arab and their
taking power. This revolt was dominated by the Iranian ‘aÆam (non-Arabs), and the outcome was the establishment
of at least formal equality between the two groups.” The Arabs in Khurasan were assimilated into Persian society.
Many spoke Persian, married Persian women and observed local Persian customs and holidays. See Ira M. Lapidus,
A History of Islamic Societies, 2 nd Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 40. On the Arab
discrimination against non-Arabs in the early empire see Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I, Chapter Three.
204 Agha, Revolution, 324: “Arabs lost supremacy, but Islam and Arabic continued to prosper. The Establishment,
inasmuch as it was an Islamic edifice, was not destroyed, but was taken over and overhauled. It was…de-
Arabianized…The ‘Arab’ Muslim kingdom fell, and the inter-racial ‘Muslim’ empire rose, with Persian overtones.”
205 Afsaruddin, First Muslims, 107: “The group that benefitted the most from this sea change were the Persians, a
significant number of whom assumed important official positions in various ‘Abbasid administrations and who
wielded significant political as well as cultural influence…” Goldziher noted that “The preference for Persians was a
tradition of the #Abb§sid house.” Muslim Studies, I:139.
206 Only the first #Abb§sid caliph al-Saff§È (r. 749-754) was a pure Arab, in contrast to the Umayyad caliphs, almost
all of whom were pure Arabs. See Lewis, Race and Slavery, 39; Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I: 118-119.
207 Al-J§Èií, Bay§n wa-al-taly§n, 4 vols. ed. #Abd al-Sal§m MuÈammad H§rån (Egypt: Maktabat al-Kh§njÊ,
1960-61) III:366; al-DhahabÊ, Siyar, VI:58.
208 Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in
Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (London and New York: Routledge, 1986) 34: “The transfer of the seat of
the caliphate to #Ir§q, and eventually to Baghd§d, after the accession of the #Abb§sids to power, placed #Abb§sid life
in the center of a Persian-speaking population. The history and culture of this population thus inevitably played a
crucial role in defining the new #Abb§sid culture that was being formed.”
209 David Levering Lewis, God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 (London and New
York: W.W. Norton, 2008)76. Johathan P. Berkey, The Formation of Islam. Religion and Society in the
Near East, 600-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 117 notes that, following the Revolution,
Persian was the non-Arab cultural tradition that “shaped Islam more than any other.”
210 G.E. von Grunebaum, Classical Islam. A History, 600 A.D. to 1258 A.D. (New Brunswick and London:
AldineTransaction, 2005 [1970]) 80: “The victory of the #Abb§ssids signified the pushing back, but not the
elimination of the Arabs…in the transition to national states the importance of the Arabs as a racial and military
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