Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (9 page)

19. Iskandar shooting a duck from a boat, with boatmen.

Tabriz, Iran, 1526.

20. Magicians.

Istanbul, fifteenth century.

21. Humay's groom, who had a secret passion for her, murdering her at night when
she would not submit to him.

Mughal, India, ca. 1580-1585.

22. "The woman who discovered her maidservant having improper relations with
an ass."

Tabriz, Iran, ca. 1530.

23. "The old man who upbraided the Negro and the girl for flirting."

Mughal, India, 1629

24. A woman of the Sudan.

Istanbul, ca. 1793.

In another poem, he is even quoted as insulting his own mother:

Similar complaints are ascribed to other figures of the pre-Islamic and early
Islamic period, including, for example, a tribal chief called Khufaf ibn Nadba, a
contemporary of the Prophet. The son of an Arab father and a black slave
mother, Khufaf was a man of position and a chief in his tribe. A verse ascribed
to him remarks that his tribe had made him chief "despite this dark pedigree.-9

These stories and verses almost certainly belong to a later period and
reflect a situation which did not yet exist at that time. This is indicated by the
very fact that such men as `Antara, Khufaf, and others could rise to the social
eminence they attained, something which would have been very difficult a
century later. In pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia, there would have been
no reason whatever for Arabs to regard Ethiopians as inferior or to regard
Ethiopian ancestry as a mark of base origin. On the contrary, there is a good
deal of evidence that Ethiopians were regarded with respect as a people on a
level of civilization substantially higher than that of the Arabs themselves. A
slave as such was of course inferior-but the black slave was no worse than the
white. In this respect pagan and early Islamic Arabia seems to have shared the
general attitude of the ancient world, which attached no stigma to blackness
and imposed no restrictions on black freemen."'

There were many contacts between Arabs and Ethiopians, both in Arabia
and in Africa, and during the career of the Prophet several of his Meccan
Companions were able, for a while, to find refuge in Ethiopia from the
persecution of their pagan compatriots. Many prominent figures of the earliest Islamic period had Ethiopian women among their ancestresses, including
no less a person than the Caliph `Umar himself, whose father, al-Khattab, had
an Ethiopian mother. Another was `Amr ibn al-`As, the conqueror of Egypt
and one of the architects of the Arab Empire. There were several others of
Ethiopian descent among the Companions of the Prophet." One of the most
famous was Bilal ibn Rabah. Born a slave in Mecca, he was an early and
devoted convert to Islam and was acquired and manumitted by Abu Bakr, the
Prophet's father-in-law and eventual successor as first caliph. He is remembered chiefly as the first muezzin, when the call to prayer was instituted
shortly after the Prophet's arrival in Medina. He was also the personal attendant of the Prophet and is variously described in the sources as his mace
bearer, his steward, his adjutant, and his valet.'' Another Companion was
Abu Bakra, literally, "the Father of the Pulley," an Ethiopian slave in Ta'if.
He acquired this nickname by letting himself down with a pulley during the
Muslim siege of Ta'if, and joining the Muslims. He was accepted and manumitted by the Prophet and later settled in Basra, where he died in about 672 A.D.

During the period immediately following the death of the Prophet in 632
A.D., the great Islamic conquests took the new faith to vast areas of Asia and
also of Africa. A new situation was created, and many changes can be observed in the literature of the time.

The first of these is the narrowing, specializing, and fixing of color terms
applied to human beings. In time almost all disappear apart from "black,"
"red," and "white"; and these become ethnic and absolute instead of personal
and relative. "Black," overwhelmingly, means the natives of Africa south of
the Sahara and their offspring. "White"-or occasionally (light) "red"means the Arabs, Persians, Greeks, Turks, Slavs, and other peoples to the
north and to the east of the black lands. Sometimes, in contrast to the white
Arabs and Persians, the northern peoples are designated by terms connoting
dead white, pale blue, and various shades of red or ruddy. In some contexts
the term "black" is extended to include the Indians and even the Copts; but
this is not normal usage."

Together with this specialization and fixing of color terms comes a very
clear connotation of inferiority attached to darker and more specifically black
skins. A story is told concerning the Arab conquest of Egypt which, if authentic, may well be the last surviving example of the older attitude. The story tells
how a certain Arab leader called 'Ubada ibn al-Samit took a party of Muslims
to meet the Muqawqis, the great Christian functionary who at one point led
the defenders of Egypt. 'Ubada (the chronicler tells us) was "black," and
when the Arabs came to the Muqawqis and entered his presence, 'Ubada led
them. The Muqawqis was frightened by his blackness and said to them: "Get
this black man away from me and bring another to talk to me."

The Arabs insisted that `Ubada was the wisest, best, and noblest among
them and was their appointed leader, whom they obeyed and to whose judgment they deferred. The Muqawqis asked:

"How can you be content that a black man should be foremost among you? It is
more fitting that he should be below you."

"Indeed no," they replied, "for though he is black, as you see, he is still the
foremost among us in position, in precedence, in intelligence and in wisdom,
for blackness is not despised among us."

The Muqawqis asked 'Ubada to speak gently to him, because speaking
harshly would increase the dread already inspired by his blackness. The narrative concludes with 'Ubada stepping forward and saying to the Muqawqis: "I
have heard what you say. Among the men I command there are a thousand,
all of them black, indeed blacker and more frightening than I. If you saw
them, you would be very frightened indeed.""

There are two interesting points about this story. The first is that the black
man appears as a figure of terror rather than of contempt, though that element is not entirely lacking. The second, and far more important, is that
`Ubada is not an African or even of African descent but (as the chroniclers are
careful to point out) a pure and noble Arab. Here "black" is still a personal and relative term describing an individual's complexion and not an ethnic
absolute denoting the distinguishing marks of a race. "Blackness is not despised among us" means no more than that persons of dark complexion are
not considered inferior to those of light complexion. The episode of the noble
but swarthy `Ubada occurred at the very beginning of Arab expansion. Under
the patriarchal caliphs and still more under the Umayyad caliphs in the late
seventh and early eighth centuries, we find ample evidence of a radical change
of attitudes.