Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (36 page)

15. Louis Frank, Tunis, description de cette regence, p. 119, edited and annotated
by J. J. Marcel, in L'Unii'ers pittoresque (Paris, 1850).

16. Bowring, cited by Buxton, African Slave Trade, p. 193, cf. 108ff.

17. The position of these black communities in Arab and Turkish cities still awaits
scholarly investigation. One of the few black ghettoes in Arab cities to be studied is
that of the old city of Jerusalem, which, owing to special circumstances, has been
opened to scholarly research. See Adriana Destro, "Habs el 'Abid: 11 Quartiere Afri-
cano di Gerusalemme," Africa (Rome) 29, no. 2 (1974), pp. 193-212.

Chapter 12

1. EI2 s.v. "Kafa'a" (by Y. Linant de Bellefonds); Y. Linant de Bellefonds. Traite
de droit musulman compare, vol. 2 (Paris, 1965), pp. 171 81; F. J. Ziadeh, "Equality
(Kafa'ah) in the Muslim law of marriage," American Journal of Comparative Law 6 (1957), pp. 503-17; cf. G. Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers (Bonn, 1967), pp. 131ff.,
and the standard treatises on Muslim law, esp. those by Hanafi and Shati i jurists, e.g..
Shams al-Din al-Sarakhsi, Kitab al-Mabsut (Cairo, 1324/19(16), pp. 22ff. The Malikis
interpret Kafa'a in religious, not social, terms, while the Shia do not recognize the
doctrine at all. The quotation from Malik is from Al-Mudasvwrana al-Ktrbra, vol. 4
(Cairo 1323/1905), pp. 13-14. For a Shiite view, see Shaykh Muhammad Hadi al-
Yusufi, "Mafhum al-Kafa'a." Al-Hadi 4, pt. 6 (Qumm, 1396). pp. 59-64.

2. On the Mawali, see above, pp. 37ff. and 44ff.

3. G. Levi Della Vida. "Un'antica opera sconosciuta di controversia Si `ita,"
Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, n.s., vol. 14 (1964), p. 236.

4. Summarized by L. P. Harvey, "Arabs and Negroes," in Encounter (London).
February 1971, pp. 91-94. The text of this story may be found in Abu]-Layth Nasr al-
Samargandi, Tanbih al-Ghafdin (Cairo, 1306/1888-89), pp. 226-27.

5. Muttagi, Kunz al-`Ummal, vol. 8 (Haydarabad, 1313/1895-96). p. 248.

6. Ibn 'Abd al-Ra'uf, "Risala," in Thalath Rasa'il Andalusiyya, ed. E. LeviProvencal (Cairo, 1955), p. 80; French translation by R. Arie, Hesperis-Tatnuda, vol. 1
(Morocco, 1960), p. 27.

7. Mas`udi, Muruj al-dhahah, ed. C. Pellat, vol. 4 (Beirut, 1973), p. 126. Ibn
Akwa` was a Companion of the Prophet.

8. Ibn Habib, Wadiha, as cited by Ibn 'Abd al-Ra'uf, "Risala," p. 81 (Arie,
Hesperis-Tamuda, p. 29).

9. Abu'l-Faraj al-Isfahani, Kitab al-Aghani, 20 vols. (Bulaq. 1285/1868-69);
ibid. (Cairo, 1927-)-hereafter Aghani (1868) and Aghani (1927); Ignaz Goldziher,
Muhammedanische Studien, vol. 1 (Halle, 1888), p. 128 (Muslim Studies, vol. I [London, 1967] p. 121); U. Rizzitano, "Abu Mihgan Nusayb b. Rabah," Rivista degli studi
orientali 20 (1943), pp. 428-29. On Nusayb's daughters, see Aghani (1868), vol. 1, p.
138, Aghani (1927), vol. 1, p. 347; cf. Ibn Qutayba, `Uyun al-akhbar, vol. 3 (Cairo,
n.d.), p. 126; Rizzitano, "Abu Mingan," p. 456; Khayr al-Din al-Zirikli, Al-A`lam, 2d
ed., vol. 7 ([Beirut?], 1376/1956), p. 355, where further sources are cited.

10. Abu'l-'Ala', The Letters of Abu'l-'Ala' of Ma arrat al-Nu man, in Anecdota
Oxoniensia, ed. and trans. D. S. Margoliouth (Oxford, 1898), text p. 55, trans. p. 61.
Zubayr ibn Bakkar (d. 870), a qadi of Mecca, is quoted as telling a relevant anecdote:
"A woman came to Ibn al-Zubayr to complain about her husband, who, she claimed,
was sleeping with her maidservant. Ibn al-Zubayr summoned the man and questioned
him about his wife's complaint. He replied: 'She is black and her maidservant is black
and my eyesight is weak. When night falls I grab whichever is nearest to me' " (Ibn
'Abd Rabbihi, Al-7qd al-Farid, vol. 8 [Cairo, 1953], p. 132).

11. See H. Lammens, Le Berceau de !'Islam, vol. 1 (Rome, 1914).

12. Ibn Durayd, AI-lshtigaq, ed. F. Wiistenfeld (Gottingen. 1854), p. 183; ibid.,
ed. 'Abd al-Salim Harun (Cairo, 1387/1959), p. 302; cf. Goldziher, Muhammedanische
Studien, vol. 1, p. 118 (Muslim Studies, vol. 1, pp. 112-13).

13. See the biography of Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi in Ibn Khallikan. Wafayat al-a`van,
vol. 1 (Bulaq, 1299), pp. 9-10; English translation by MacGuckin de Slane, Ihn
Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, vol. 1 (Paris, 1843), p. 18. Astonishingly. this
episode is quoted by Arnold as evidence that "the converted Negro at once takes an
equal place in the brotherhood of believers, neither his colour nor his race nor any
association of the past standing in the way" (T. W. Arnold, The Preaching of Islam, 3d
ed. [London, 19351, pp. 358-59).

14. See, further, Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, vol. 1, pp. 121ff. (Muslim
Studies, vol. 1, pp. 115ff.); Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers, pp. 75ff., 132ff.

15. Hassan ibn Thabit, Diwan (Cairo 1347/1929), p. 61; ibid. (Beirut, 1381/1961),
p. 36; ibid., ed. Walid N. `Arafat, vol. 1 (London, 1971), p. 364 (cf. vol. 2, p. 266). In
the Cairo edition the word mawduna, "short-necked," is replaced by Nuhiyya,
"Nubian." See, further, Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers, p. 133, n. 4.

16. Ibn Rashiq, cited in Ibn Naji, Ma'alim al-Ayman fz ma`rifat ahl al-Qayrawan
(Tunis, 1320/1902), p. 15.

17. Ibn Sahl al-Andalusi, Diwan, vol. 10 (Cairo, 1344/1926), p. 108.

18. For a striking example of this attitude, from contemporary Egypt, see Mohamed Heikal, Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat (New York, 1984), pp. 89, 11-12, 25, 181. According to Heikal's extremely hostile account, Sadat's mother
was the daughter of a black slave imported from Africa, from whom both she and her
son inherited Negroid features. Heikal comments repeatedly on these features, and on
the problems-and anxieties-which they allegedly brought.

19. John Lewis Burekhardt, Travels in Arabia: Comprehending an Account of
Those Territories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans Regard as Sacred (1829; reprint,
Beirut, 1972), pp. 182-87.

20. W. G. Palgrave, Personal Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and
Eastern Arabia (London, 1883), pp. 270-72; Charles M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia
Deserta, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1888), pp. 553-55; C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka, vol. 2
(The Hague, 1889), pp. 10-24.

21. Alois Musil, Arabia petraea, vol. 3, Ethnologischer Reisebericht (Vienna,
1908), pp. 224-25; R. P. Antonin Jaussen, Coutumes des Arahes an pays de Moab
(Paris, 1948), pp. 60-61, cited in Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial, and Islamic Law
(Cambridge, 1987), p. 137.

22. J. O. Hunwick, "Black Africans in the Islamic world: An understudied dimension of the black diaspora," Tarikh 5, no. 5 (1978), p. 35.

23. EI`, s.v. "Hutaym" (by G. Rentz). But cf. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta,
vol. 1, p. 553.

24. Several of the travelers attest the higher price of white slaves, which they
attribute to scarcity and, for women, to sexual preference. One observer, in an extensive treatment of slavery in late-nineteenth-century Egypt, offers another reason for
preferring and marrying white women; that they wear better: "white girls ... wear
much longer than either native Egyptian ladies or Abyssinians, retaining their fine
physique to thirty-five or even forty years of age, while the latter are generally withered and passees before five-and-twenty" (J. C. McCoan, Egypt as It Is [London,
1877], p. 319).

Chapter 13

1. In an earlier treatment of this topic I tried to suggest how some of these
stereotypes might have arisen and referred in particular to the overwork and undernourishment to which the slave was often subject. A reviewer in a French journal
(Genevieve Bedoucha, review of B. Lewis, Race et couleur en pays d'Islam [Paris,
1982], Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 22, nos. 3, 4 [1987-88], pp. 534-35) found these
suggestions "sociologically naive" and also potentially dangerous, in that they could
open the way to believing in "the real foundation of the stereotype." The more usual
view among sociologists is that stereotypes always contain a modicum of truth, without
which they would be neither viable nor usable. In the words of the anthropologist
Clyde Kluckhohn: "There is almost always a grain of truth in the vicious stereotypes that are created, and this helps us swallow the major portion of untruth" (Mirror for
Matz: The Relation of Anthropology to Modern Life [New York, 1949], p. 138).

2. Abuul-Faraj al-Isfahani, Kitab al-Aghani, 20 vols. (Bulaq, 1285/1868-69), vol.
7, p. 20; ibid. (Cairo, 1927-), vol. 7, p. 269.

3. Ibn Butlan, Risala fi Shira' al-Ragiq, ed. `Abd al-Salim Harun (Cairo, 1373/
1954), pp. 374-75, where there are similar or even worse comments on other African
groups. Among whites, Ibn Butlan most dislikes the Armenians.

4. Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Abshihi, Kitab al-Mustatraf ft kull shay' mustazraf
vol. 2 (Cairo, 1352/1933), pp. 75-77; French translation by G. Rat, al-Mostatraf, vol. 2
(Paris, 1902), pp. 151-57.

5. Fazil Bey, Huban-name and Zenan-name (Istanbul, 1255/1839), pp. 11-12,
62-64. On Fazil Bey and his works, see J. Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte der Os-
manischen Dichtkunst, vol. 4 (Pest, 1838), pp. 428-53, esp. 435; E. J. W. Gibb, A
History of Ottoman Poetry, vol. 4 (London, 1905), pp. 220-42: Ell, s.v. " Fadil bey"
(by J. H. Mordtmann). A somewhat inaccurate French translation of the Zenan-name
was published by J. A. Decourdemanche, Le Livre des femmes (Paris, 1879).

6. Mas'udi, Muruj al-dhahah, vol. 1, pp. 166-67: Charles Pellat, Les Prairies
d'or, vol. 1 (Paris, 1962), p. 70.

7. Ibn Butlan, Risala, p. 374.

8. For examples, see Muhammad ibn Sasra, A Chronicle of Damascus 13891397, ed. and trans. W. M. Brinner (Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1963), pp. 211ff.
278ff.; G. Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers (Bonn, 1967), pp. 179-81.

9. See Fatna A. Sabbah, Women in the Muslim Unconscious (New York. 1984),
pp. 37-43; Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers, pp. 178-79.

10. Jahiz, Rasa'il al-Jahiz, vol. 1 (Cairo, 1385/1965), p. 214 (0. Rescher, Beitrage
zur arabische Poesie, sec. 6 [Istanbul, 1956-58], p. 175); variants in Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi, Al-7qd al (arid, vol. 7 (Cairo, 1953) p. 89, and Ibn Abi 'Awn, Kitah al-
Tashhihat, ed. M. Abdul Mu'id Khan (Cambridge, 1950), p. 235; cf. Rotter, Die
Stellung des Negers, p. 173. Ibn Abi `Awn gives other examples of erotic verse about
black women (Kitab al-Tashhihat, pp. 235ff.). A short collection of Arabic verses on
the merits of whites, blacks, and browns is mainly concerned with the attractions of
black women (Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, Nuzhat al-`Umr fi'1-tafdil bayna'l-Bid wa'I-Sad
wa'1-Sumr [Damascus, 1349/1930-31]). For a discussion of this work and a translation
of Suyuti's somewhat equivocal preface, see Akbar Muhammad, "The image of
Africans in Arabic literature: Some unpublished manuscripts," in Slaves and Slavery
in Muslim Africa, vol. 1, Islam and the Ideology of Slavery, ed. J. R. Willis (London,
1985), pp. 59-60.

11. Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers, pp. 165, 173-74. For some modern parallels on
Jewesses, see E. Kedourie, The Chatham House Version (London, 1970), pp. 334-35.

12. But, it may he noted, a fourteenth-century Egyptian author (Qalgashandi,
Subh al-a`sha, vol. 2 [Cairo, 1331/1913]. pp. 8-9) cites it, in the course of a discussion
of colors, to prove his point that white is good and black is had. He goes on to remark
that many people, nevertheless, have begun to find beauty in the blacks and "incline
toward them." For an earlier assertion of the presumed superiority of whiteness over
blackness, see Sharaf al-Zaman Tahir Marvazi (ca. 1120 A.D.), Sharaf al-Zaman Tahir
Marvazi on China, the Turks, and India, ed. and trans. V. Minorsky (London. 1942),
pp. 54-55. Marvazi, however, allows that "blackness, though a defect, has its use in
some instances: (such as) its physical utility, through its usefulness for sight, for it
collects light and narrows the opening of the eye, and consequently does not allow light to spread: (such as) its political and moral utility, as when the government agents dress
in black in order to inspire the subjects with awe and fear."

13. For a discussion of these, see Minoo Southgate, "The negative images of blacks
in some medieval Iranian writings," Iranian Studies 17, no. 1 (1984), pp. 3-36.

14. See Rudi Paret, "Sirat Saif ibn Dhi Jazan," ein Arabischer Volksroman (Hanover, 1924).

15. Examples in R. W. Hamilton, Khirbat al Mafjar, an Arabian Mansion in the
Jordan Valley (Oxford, 1959), pls. 44, nos. 2, 4, 5; 53, no. 2; R. Ettinghausen, Arab
Painting (Cleveland, OH, 1962), pp. 82, 93, 108, 121, 151; B. Gray, Persian Painting
(Cleveland, OH, 1961), pp. 119, 131; E. J. Grube, The Classical Style in Islamic
Painting (Venice, 1968), pls. 31, nos. 1, 6; 32; 36, nos. 1, 3; 37; 59; 66; 73; idem,
Muslim Miniature Painting (Venice, 1962), pl. 58; Ivan Stchoukine, Les Peintures des
manuscrits Timurides (Paris, 1954), pl. 76; A. U. Pope, Survey of Persian Art, pis. 889,
891, 912; B. W. Robinson, Persian Miniature Painting (London, 1967), pl. 28; Rachel
Arie, Miniatures hispano-musulmanes (Leiden, 1969), pl. 41, fol. 71, verso of Ibn
Zafar al-Sigilli, Kitab al-Sulwanat fi musamarat al-khulafa' wa'I-sadat (Ms. Monastery
St. Lawrence of Escurial, no. 528); O. Lofgren, Ambrosian Fragments of an Illuminated Manuscript Containing the Zoology of Al-Gahiz (Uppsala, 1946), pls. 3, 6, 9, 10.

Chapter 14

1. Alfred von Kremer, Aegypten: Forschungen uber Land and Volk wahrend
eines zehnjahrigen Aufenthalts (Leipzig, 1863), pp. 82-110.

2. C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century
(Leiden and London, 1931), p. 14 (German original, Mekka [The Hague, 1889], pp-
15-16). The Soviet scholar I. P. Petrushevsky (Islam in Iran, trans. Hubert Evans
[Albany, NY, 1985], p. 155) observes with obvious disapproval that "not a few Western
orientalists, scholars and travellers-Edward Lane, Snouck Hurgronje and J. L. Burck-
hardt among them-have been prone to expatiate on the mildness and humanity of
Muslim slavery" and then goes on to paint a somewhat somber picture of reality.

3. Report from the British Consulate, Baghdad. April 28th 1847. Published in
Charles Issawi, The Fertile Crescent 1800-1914: A Documentary Economic History
(New York and Oxford. 1988), pp. 192-93.