Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (14 page)

The ancient Arabs, like every other people known to history, divided the world
into themselves and others. For the ancient Greeks, the outsider was the barbarian, a term with a connotation of language and culture; for the Israelites, he was
the Gentile, with a connotation of belief and worship. Modern societies make
many distinctions, but the only one that is universally and officially accepted is
between the citizen and the alien-a term that for some seems to combine the
worst features of the barbarian and the unbeliever.

In ancient Arabia, those who were not Arabs were Ajam, a term which
included the Persians, the Greeks, the Ethiopians, the Nabataeans, and the
various other peoples with whom the ancient Arabs had contact. Later it was
specialized to mean the Persians, though it continued in occasional use in the
broader sense. In modern Turkish, by a curious development of an earlier
usage, ajemi (in modern Turkish orthography, acemi) has acquired the meaning of "clumsy" or "inept."'

The ancient Arabs showed an acute awareness of ethnic, but very little
consciousness of racial, differences. At first, their main concern was not with
the difference between Arabs and non-Arabs but rather between the different
tribes into which they themselves were divided. A conventional genealogical
table of eponymous tribal ancestors divided the Arab tribes into two main
groups, the Northern and the Southern. These terms related not to their
current position in Arabia, where the so-called Southern tribes were often in
the Syrian and Iraqi borderlands (to the north of the so-called Northern
tribes), but to their presumed ancestry.

Tribal loyalty was intense, to the larger league or confederacy of tribes of
presumed common ancestry, to the individual tribe, and even to the clan or
sept within the tribe to which one belonged. These tribal loyalties gave rise to
severe feuding and sometimes warfare and to bitter controversies which spilled over into the political life of the caliphate and even the religious life of
Islam. Much of early Arab historiography, at least until the mid-ninth century,
is concerned with tribal rivalries. Ancient Arab literature, for longer than
that, is dominated by inter-tribal polemics, and the invectives which tribal
2
spokesmen hurled at one another.

The Arab expansion, and the creation of a far-flung empire in which the
Arabs were a dominant but small minority among the vast non-Arab population, did not at first change, but rather intensified, this situation. The Arabs,
with much larger prizes at stake, continued their feuding, in clans, in tribes,
and in confederacies. These involved the growing number of half-breed
Arabs; in addition, the non-Arab converts to Islam, enrolled as mawalf in one
tribe or another, shared in their alliances and enmities.'

The involvement of the half-Arabs at the higher levels of Arab society
paved the way for the non-Arab converts to Islam, many of whom by now
shared the language and culture as well as the religion of the conquerors. By
the ninth century Arabic literature-now written by men of diverse originsreveals two significant developments: on the Arab side, a dawning awareness
that they had lost their exclusive primacy and a tendency to seek compensation for that loss in a kind of social and cultural snobbery unrelated to the
realities of power; among the non-Arabs, a growing assertiveness of their own
distinctive ethnic, even national traditions and accomplishments, often accompanied by the denigration of the Arabs as primitives and nomads, in all but
religion inferior to the peoples they had fortuitously conquered. These sentiments are expressed in the writings of a school of thought known as the
Shu`ubiyya.4 This tendency was stronger at the extremities of the Islamic
world, in Persia in the East and Spain in the West,' weaker in the Fertile
Crescent and North Africa, where Arabic finally replaced the previous languages and where the various peoples eventually adopted an Arab identity.'

It was inevitable, in a society of such acute ethnic awareness, that attention should be given, by scholars and others, to ethnic relationships, characteristics, differences, and presumed aptitudes. The numerous writings dealing
with these matters may be considered under three headings, which we may
call literary, practical, and scientific.

The earliest attempts at a classification of ethnic groups in Arabic Islamic
literature derive from Genesis 10, dealing with Noah's three sons-Shem,
Ham, and Japhet-and the lines of filiation of the various nations and peoples
whom they engendered. This biblical ethnology is not in the Qur'an, and has
no special place in the Islamic religious tradition. It was transmitted to the
Muslims by Jews and Christians and converts from these religions, and this
origin was generally recognized.7 It appears in early Arabic historical literature in a variety of forms, often with considerable differences.' An interesting
feature of the Arab versions is the attempt to fit the data in Genesis 10 into a
larger framework, including on the one hand the Arabian tribes and their
eponymous ancestors, and on the other such other peoples as the Persians, the
Turks, the Romans, and the Slavs, familiar to the Arabs but not yet visible on
the Pentateuchal horizon. All agree that the Arabs are descendants of Shem, and the blacks-sometimes including the Copts and Berbers-of Ham; most
agree in assigning the Turks and Slavs to Japhet. There is, however, disagreement about the Persians and the Byzantines, the two civilized peoples with
whom the Arabs had the longest and most intimate acquaintance. Some assign them to Japhet, making them kinsmen of the Turks and Slavs. Others,
however, assign them to Shem, thus making them kinsmen of the Arabs.
Some writers of Persian background tried to incorporate such Persian mythological heroes as Feridun and Jamshid in the biblical ethnology. Centuries
later, Turkish genealogists attempted the same for the Turkish tribes of inner
Asia.9

Most of these accounts are concerned only with classification and filiation
and make no attempt at characterization. There are, however, exceptions,
and in some versions characters and even functions are assigned to the various
lines of descent. In an adaptation of the biblical story, the descendants of Ham
are condemned to be slaves and menials. Some also assign specific roles to the
descendants of Shem and of Japhet, the former to be prophets and nobles
(sharff), the latter to be kings and tyrants. These arguments are not pursued,
and neither the literary nor the religious tradition appears to attach much
importance to them.10

The discussion of ethnic characters and aptitudes seems to have begun
with a ninth-century Arabic translation of a pre-Islamic Persian text, the
Letter of Tansar." This includes, naturally enough, an assertion of the superior merit of the Persians. Interestingly, their superiority lies in that they
combine the best features of all the different peoples who are their neighbors:

Our people are the most noble and illustrious of beings. The horsemanship of
the Turk, the intellect of India, and the craftsmanship and art of Greece, God
(blessed be His realm) has endowed our people with all these, more richly than
they are found in the other nations separately. He has withheld from them the
ceremonies of religion and the serving of kings which He gave to us. And He
made our appearance and our colouring and our hair according to a just mean,
without blackness prevailing, or yellowness or ruddiness; and the hair of our
beards and heads neither too curly like the negro's nor quite straight like the
Turk's.I2

An Iraqi Arab author, writing in about 902-3, presents the same idea in a
more elaborate form, in relation to his own people and country:

A man of discernment said: The people of Iraq have sound minds, commendable passions, balanced natures, and high proficiency in every art, together
with well-proportioned limbs, well-compounded humors, and a pale brown
color, which is the most apt and proper color. They are the ones who are done
to a turn in the womb. They do not come out with something between blonde,
buff, blanched, and leprous coloring, such as the infants dropped from the
wombs of the women of the Slavs and others of similar light complexion; nor
are they overdone in the womb until they are burned, so that the child comes
out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the
Zanj, the Ethiopians, and other blacks who resemble them. The Iraqis are
neither half-baked dough nor burned crust but between the two."

Such ideas appear to have been current at the time. Thus Ibn Qutayba
(828-89) remarks of the blacks that

they are ugly and misshapen, because they live in a hot country. The heat
overcooks them in the womb, and curls their hair. The merit of the people of
Babylon is due to their temperate climate. 14

Earlier in the ninth century, Jahiz had observed in passing: "If the country
is cold, they are undercooked in the womb."15

The arguments of the Shu`ubiyya and the Arab response to them gave rise
to an extensive literary discussion of national characteristics, differences, and
aptitudes. Jahiz devoted separate essays to the Turks" and the blacks" and in
a number of places developed something like a set of rules for the classification and description of ethnic groups. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, a
period of Iranian cultural renaissance, these became matters of frequent discussion; and the literature of the time preserves a rich variety of anecdote and
debate.' At the center of the debate are the Arabs and Persians, by now
established as the two major ethnic groups within Islam, more or less on a
footing of equality. Third in line are the Rum, or Romans. In classical Arabic
usage this denotes the Christian Byzantine Empire and also includes the large
and important communities of Orthodox Christians living in the Islamic lands.
The Yunan, the ancient Greeks, are seen as a separate group, but, generally,
as the predecessors of the Rum. The Romans of ancient Rome do not normally make a separate appearance in these discussions. Next in line come
India and China-remoter and less familiar but recognized as areas of relatively advanced, albeit idolatrous, civilization. After them come the barbarous peoples beyond the outer perimeter-in the North, the Turks and the
Slavs; in the far West, the Franks; in the South, the various peoples of black
Africa. These peoples are seen as eventual converts and in the meantime as
being useful as slaves.'

Several authors, from Jahiz onward, attempt to classify various peoples by
their skills and aptitudes and sometimes differentiate carefully between the
two. According to Jahiz, the Chinese excel in the arts, the Greeks in philosophy and science, the Arabs in language and poetry, the Persians in government and statecraft, the Turks in warfare.'" A century later, Abu Sulayman is
quoted as giving a slightly different version:

Wisdom descended upon the heads of the Byzantines, the tongues of the
Arabs, the hearts of the Persians, the hands of the Chinese.'

In time, certain conventional descriptions emerged, which became the
common stereotypes for various national groups. Arabs had generosity and courage; Persians, statecraft and civility; Greeks were philosophers and artists; Indians, magicians and conjurers; while the dexterous Chinese were
makers of furniture and gadgets. Blacks were hardworking and somewhat
simple but gifted with exuberance and a sense of rhythm. Turks were impetuous fighting men.22 With mostly minor changes, these become standard in the
discussion of the various ethnic groups both inside and outside the world of
Islam.

In addition to the characteristics of specific groups, the discussion also
dealt with some broader and more general questions. Are all ethnic groups
equal in their potential, or are some more gifted than others? If one nation
excels all others in a certain field, is it because of an inherited talent (or as
some put it, a divine gift), or is it because, for historical and cultural reasons,
it had chosen to specialize in that area? Some writers argue strongly that socalled national characteristics, even including such racial characteristics as
blackness, are really a response to environment and that any other ethnic
group finding itself in the same situation would respond in the same way.

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), surely the greatest historian and social thinker
of the Middle Ages, devotes a whole chapter to the influence of climate on
human character. Even the merriment which, in common with many other
Arab writers, he attributes to blacks is, in his view, climatic and not genetic in
origin. Joy and mirth, he explains, are induced by heat. Just as the heat given
off by alcohol makes the drinker merry and the warm air of the bath causes
the bather to sing, so too does the heat of his homeland incline the black to
mirth and exuberance.23

At the far end of the Islamic world, Said al-Andalusi (d. 1070), a qadi in
the Muslim city of Toledo, attempted a general classification and characterization of civilized nations. Defining them as those nations that had cultivated
science and learning, he enumerated eight nations: the Indians, Persians,
Chaldees, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Arabs, and Jews. Sa`id's "nations" are
as much religious as national. His Arabs include non-Arab Muslims; his Romans include Arabic-speaking Christians. The others, apart from the Jews,
are all pagan.

For Said, only these eight peoples have contributed to civilization. Some
others, such as the Chinese and the Turks, he allows to have achieved distinction in other respects; the rest of mankind he dismisses contemptuously as the
Northern and the Southern barbarians, "who are more like beasts than like
men." He has a few well-chosen words to say about each.

For those who live furthest to the north between the last of the seven climates
and the limits of the inhabited world, the excessive distance of the sun in
relation to the zenith line makes the air cold and the atmosphere thick. Their
temperaments are therefore frigid, their humors raw, their bellies gross, their
color pale, their hair long and lank. Thus they lack keenness of understanding
and clarity of intelligence, and are overcome by ignorance and dullness, lack of
discernment, and stupidity. Such are the Slavs, the Bulgars, and their neighbors. For those peoples on the other hand who live near and beyond the equinoctial line to the limit of the inhabited world in the south, the long
presence of the sun at the zenith makes the air hot and the atmosphere thin.
Because of this their temperaments become hot and their humors fiery, their
color black and their hair woolly. Thus they lack self-control and steadiness of
mind and are overcome by fickleness, foolishness, and ignorance. Such are the
blacks, who live at the extremity of the land of Ethiopia, the Nubians, the Zanj
and the like.