Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (25 page)

The literature and folklore of the Middle East reveal a sadly normal range of
traditional and stereotypical accusations against people seen as alien and,
more especially, inferior. The most frequent are those commonly directed
against slaves and hence against the races from which slaves are drawn-that
they are stupid; that they are vicious, untruthful, and dishonest; that they are
dirty in their personal habits and emit an evil smell. The black's physical
appearance is described as ugly, distorted, or monstrous.' The point is made
in an anecdote about an Arab poet known as al-Sayyid al-Himyari-the South
Arabian Himyarite Sayyid (723-89):

The Sayyid was my neighbor, and he was very dark. He used to carouse with the
young men of the camp, one of whom was as dark as he was, with a thick nose
and lips, and a Negroid [muzannajj appearance. The Sayyid had the foulest
smelling armpits of anybody. They were jesting together one day, and the Sayyid
said to him: "You are a Zanji in your nose and your lips!" whereat the youth
replied to the Sayyid: "And you are a Zanji in your color and armpits!"

Ibn Butlan notes of the Zanj women that

their bad qualities are many, and the blacker they are the uglier their faces and
the more pointed their teeth. They are of little use and may cause harm and are
dominated by their evil disposition and destructiveness. . . . Dancing and
rhythm are instinctive and ingrained in them. Since their utterance is uncouth,
they are compensated with song and dance. . . . They have the cleanest teeth
of all people because they have much saliva, and they have much saliva because they have bad digestions. They can endure hard work ... but there is no
pleasure to be got from them, because of the smell of their armpits and the
coarseness of their bodies.3

The Egyptian writer al-Abshihi (1388-1446), in a chapter on slaves, tells a
bloodcurdling story of the wickedness of a black slave, and concludes:

Is there anything more vile than black slaves, of less good and more evil than
they'? As for the mulatto, if you show kindness to one of them all your life and
in every way, he will not be grateful; and it will be as if you had done nothing
for him. The better you treat him, the more insolent he will he; the worse you
treat him, the more humble and submissive. I have tried this many times, and
how well the poet says:

It is said that when the [black] slave is sated, he fornicates, when he is hungry,
he steals. My grandfather on my mother's side used to say: The worst use of
money is bringing up slaves, and mulattoes are even worse and wickeder than
Zanj, for the mulatto does not know his father, while the Zanji often knows
both parents. It is said of the mulatto that he is like a mule, because he is a
mongrel. . . . Do not trust a mulatto, for there is rarely any good in him.4

At the turn of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman erotic poet Fazil Bey
(ca. 1757-1810) wrote a "Book of Women," describing the attractions and
other qualities of girls of about forty different races and regions, and a similar
book on beautiful boys. Fazil was a Palestinian Arab, the grandson of the
famous Shaykh Dahir Al-`Umar. Born in Safad, he was brought up in Istanbul
and wrote in Turkish. He speaks well of the Ethiopians of both sexes but has
little good to say of those whom he calls "the blacks." Though they may have
good qualities inside, their darkness makes them unattractive, and their faculties are correspondingly dull. The black boy, says Fazil "is not meet to kiss and
embrace, unless the lover's eye is blind," while the black girl "is not worthy of
the bed but is right for the kitchen." It is foolish, thinks Fazil, to make love to
blacks when whites are available, and it is unwise to raise up those whose
proper place is as servants.5

Despite this and many other similar descriptions, physical rejection, of the
type professed by some Western racists, seems to have been rare. Mas`udi
notes a few examples, as oddities:

Tawus the Yemenite, the disciple of 'Abdallah ibn 'Abbas, would never eat
meat butchered by a Zanji because, he said, the Zanji was a distorted creature.
I have heard that the Caliph al-Radi would accept nothing from the hand of a
black man, because he was a distorted slave. I do not know whether he was
adopting the principles of Tawus in this or following any particular opinion or
doctrine."

Another accusation, which also sometimes appears as praise, is that the
black is frivolous and lighthearted-that is, in other terms, cheerful and of
happy disposition. Other positive stereotypes show the black as brave, generous, musical, and with a strong feeling of rhythm. Thus lbn Butlan remarks that "if a Zanji were to fall from heaven to earth he would heat time as he
goes down."'

One of the commonest positive stereotypes of the black is that of simple
piety. There are many anecdotes of a well-known religious type in which the
black appears as the simple pious man contrasted with the clever but wicked."
And here again one cannot help feeling that this is an example of the trajectio
ad absurdum. The point that the narrator seeks to make is the superiority of
simple piety over clever wickedness, and the black is chosen as the ultimate
example of simplicity.

A close parallel with the more familiar type of prejudice current in our
society may be found in the sexual stereotype attributed to the black. A
common theme is his immense potency and unbridled sexuality. A fairly
restrained example of this, in the framework story of The Thousand and One
Nights, has already been quoted. Others, sometimes in more extreme forms,
occur in folklore, in the literature of light entertainment, in tales of the
strange and marvelous, and in books on the art of love. The superbly endowed and sexually inexhaustible black slave appears in some of these writings, sometimes as the seducer or ravisher of his owner's wives and daughters,
sometimes as the victim, willing or unwilling, of sexual aggression by voracious and frustrated white ladies.9

The stereotypes of sexuality refer not only to the black male. In his defense of the blacks, Jahiz quotes some verses which he ascribes to the Arab
poet Farazdaq (d. ca. 730), "the greatest connoisseur of women"-

There is a good deal of Arabic poetry which shows the same kind of
prurient interest in the Negress as one finds in European anti-Semitic writings
about the Jewess. The interrelated European themes of la belle juive and
l'affreuse juive have close parallels in the simultaneous interest shown by Arab
poets in the repulsive ugliness and incandescent sexuality which they ascribe
to the black woman." That there are resemblances between these stereotypes
of blacks and those common in our own society will be obvious.

There is, however, one aspect of this which deserves deeper exploration:
the emotional content attached to the concepts of blackness and whitenessthe idea that black is somehow connected with sin, evil, deviltry and damnation, while white has the opposite associations. Thus in the Qur'an itself
(III: 102), we find reference to

the day when some faces will become white and some faces will become black.
As for those whose faces have become black-will you disbelieve after having
believed? Then taste the punishment for the unbelief which you have been
showing. But as for those whose faces have become white-in the mercy of
Allah will they be, therein to abide.

It is obvious that no reference to black and white races is intended in this
passage,'` which makes use of the common Arabic idiom-shared with many
other languages, even including those of black Africa-associating whiteness
with joy and goodness, blackness with suffering and evil. Similar associations
underlie a good deal of Muslim legend, folklore, literature, proverb, and even
language.

The portrayal of blacks in Islamic literature begins at an early date, and
soon falls into a few stereotyped categories. They appear-usually though not
always as slaves-in the stories of the Prophet and his Companions; as demons and monsters in Persian mythology; as the remote and exotic inhabitants of the land of the Zanj and other places, as for example the cannibal
islands of South and Southeast Asia. They figure in the mythical adventures of
Alexander, in Arabic called Iskandar. The romance of Alexander was a popular theme of Muslim writers, in both verse and prose. In the Persian legend,
Alexander is the son of the mythical Darab, and the half-brother of King
Darius, from whom he claimed his heritage. In one episode of the romance,
the hero Iskandar goes to Egypt, which he delivers from the menace of the
Zanj. In the course of his struggle against them, Iskandar invades the land of
Zanj, engages and defeats their army, and takes a number of captives. The
adventures in Africa are attributed to both Iskandar and his father, Darab.13
Similar adventures are ascribed, in medieval popular romances in Arabic, to
such figures as the legendary Yemenite hero Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan, who conquers and converts a variety of pagan Africans.''

Most commonly, however, the black portrayed in literature is none of
these but is a familiar household figure, as slave or servant or attendant. The
black slave or attendant is often part of the background depicted in narrative
or belles-lettres.