Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (10 page)

The evidence for the growth of anti-black prejudice comes in the main from two
groups of sources. The first of these is literary, especially poetry and anecdote.
Several Arabic poets, of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods, are described as "black" and are known collectively, to the literary tradition, as
aghribat al-'Arab-"the crows of the Arabs."' Some of them-mostly preIslamic-were Arabs of swarthy complexion; others were of mixed Arab and
African parentage. For the latter, and still more for the pure Africans, blackness was an affliction. In many verses and narratives, they are quoted as suffering from insult and discrimination, as showing resentment at this, and yet in
some way as accepting the inferior status resulting from their African ancestry.

One such was the poet Suhaym (d. 660), born a slave and of African
origin. His name, obviously a nickname, might be translated as "little black
man." In one poem he laments:

In another he defends himself (in striking anticipation of William Blake's
famous line, "But I am black, but 0! my soul is white"):

In the same mood:

These lines are also attributed to Nusayb ibn Rabah (d. 726), probably the
most gifted of these black poets.' He was very conscious of his birth and color,
for which he endured many insults. On one occasion the great Arab poet
Kuthayyir said mockingly:

Challenged by his friends to reply, Nusayb refused with dignity. For one thing,
he said, God had given him the gift of poetry to use for good; he would not
misuse it for satire. For another, "all he has done is call me black-and he
speaks truth." Then Nusayb said, of his own color:

But all the same:

A black contemporary of Nusayb, similarly attacked, responded less
meekly. All that we know of al-Hayqutan is that he was a black slave, who
lived in the Umayyad period. The name denotes a kind of bird, something like
a partridge, and was presumably a slave name or nickname. No less a person
than the famous Arab poet and satirist Jarir (d. ca. 729) chose al-Hayqutan as
the butt of his wit. Jarir, we are told, encountered al-Hayqutan on a festival
day, wearing a white shirt over his black skin. This prompted the poet to
improvise a line of verse, likening him to a donkey's penis wrapped in papyrus. Al-Hayqutan responded with a long ode, beginning:

After proclaiming the greatness and glory of the Ethiopians and taunting the
Arabians with their previous fear of Ethiopian conquest, he ends by returning
Jarir's insult in kind. Alluding to an accusation sometimes brought against the
tribe of Kulayb, to which Jarir belonged, he concluded:

Some of these made careers as court poets. One such was a second Nusayb,
known as Nusayb al-Asghar, the Younger (d. 791). In the course of a panegyric
ode addressed to the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, he remarks of himself: