I am an Arab of Turkish descent so I suppose I am a "white" Arab. I am also a classic Islamic scholar. The Prophet Mohammed was BLACK. All the early Islamic literature described him and his family as Black. Remember, at that time there was no prejudice against being Black, and people who are called "white" today were actually looked down upon and were the slaves. Read the following: In his work, Islam’s Black Legacy: Some Leading Figures (1993), Mohammed Abu-Bakr includes among 62 leading Black figures of Islam the prophet Muhammad himself.1 Abu-Bakr rightly notes: "According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad descended in a straight line from Ishmael’s second son Kedar (Arabic: Qaidar), whose name in Hebrew signifies ‘black’…From the sons of Kedar inhabiting the northern Arabian desert, sprang the noblest tribe in Arabia, the Koreish (Quraysh), the tribe from which Muhammad descended."2 As we have also discussed above, the Arabian Qedar were a black tribe akin to the equally black Nabataeans, and these two were in someway related to the Quraysh, the black tribe par excellence of Mecca. As Robert F. Spencer remarks: “It is said that the Quraysh explained their short stature and dark skin by the fact that they always carefully adhered to endogamy.”3 Al-Jahiz (d. 869), the important Afro-Iraqi scholar of ninth century Baghdad, noted in his Fakhr al-sådan ala al-bidan, “The Boast of the Blacks over the Whites”: The ten lordly sons of Abd al-Muããalib were deep black (dalham) in color and big/tall (Dukhm). When Amir b. al-Tufayl saw them circumambulating (the Ka'ba) like dark camels, he said, “With such men as these is the custody of the Ka'ba preserved.” Abd Allah b. Abbas was very black and tall. Those of Abå Talib’s family, who are the most noble of men, are more or less black (såd).”4 This report is important for our discussion, not only because Abd al-Muããalib and his ten black sons were pure Arabs, but also because they are also the family of the Prophet, Abd al-Muããalib being his paternal grandfather.5 The Syrian scholar and historian al-Dhahabi (d. 1348) too reported that Abd Allah b. Abbas, Muhammad’s first cousin, and his son, Ali b. Abd Allah, were “very dark-skinned.”6 Ali b. Abu Talib, first cousin of the Prophet and future fourth caliph, is described by al-Suyuti and others as “husky, bald…pot-bellied, large-bearded…and jet-black (shadid al-udma).”7 Ali’s son, Abå Jafar Muhammad, according to Ibn Sad (d. 845), described Ali thusly: “He was a black-skinned man with big, heavy eyes, pot-bellied, bald, and kind of short.”8 This convergence of blackness, nobility and Qurayshi ethnicity is further demonstrated in these lines attributed to the seventh century CE Qurayshi poet, al-Fadil b. al-Abbas, called al-Akhdar al-LahabÊ “The Flaming Black”. al-Fadil is the Prophet Muhammad’s first cousin and he said: “I am the blackskinned one (al-Akhdar). I am well-known. My complexion is black. I am from the noble house of the Arabs.”9 Ibn Maníår (d. 1311) notes the opinion that al-Akh·ar here means aswad al-jilda, ‘Blackskinned’, and signifies that al-Fadil is from khaliß al-arab, the pure Arabs, “because the color of most of the Arabs is dark (al-udma).”10 Similarly Ibn BarrÊ (d. 1193) said also: “He (al-Fadil) means by this that his genealogy is pure and that he is a pure Arab (arabÊ mahd) because Arabs describe their color as black (al-aswad).”11 Thus, al-Fadil’s blackness (akhdar) is the visual mark of his pure, Qurayshi background, being born of a pure Arab mother and father. The Quraysh consisted of several sub-clans. Abd al-Muããalib and his descendents, including Muhammad, belonged to the Banå Hashim. Henry Lammens takes notice of “les Hasimites, famille où dominait le sang nègre” (“the Hashimites, the family where Black blood dominated”).12 Lammens remarks that they are “généralement qualifies de ??? = couleur foncée” (“generally described as adam = dark colored”). But the Banå Hashim were not the only sub-clans noted for their blackness. The Banå Zuhra, the tribe from which the prophet’s mother, Amia bt. Wahb, hailed, was likewise noted for its blackness. See for example the famous Saad ibn Abi Waqqas (d.ca. 646), cousin of Amia and uncle of Muhammad. He is described as very dark, tall and flat-nosed.13 Muhammad, it should be noted, was quite proud of his uncle Saad whose military contributions we shall discuss below. We are told that once Muhammad was sitting with some of his companions and Saad walked by. The prophet stopped and taunted: “That’s my uncle. Let any man show me his uncle.”14 This blackness of the Quraysh tribe is not insignificant to the religious history of Islam. The Quraysh were the custodians of the cult of the Ka'ba in pre-Qur?anic Mecca and at religious ceremonies they would declare naÈnu ahlu ÏÏahi (“We are the People of AÏÏah”) and throughout Arabia they were known as ahlu ÏÏah, the People of AÏÏah.15 In other words, the black tribe par excellence was also the AÏÏah-tribe par excellence and custodians of the cult of the Black God. Nevertheless, or rather as a consequence, Muhammad’s greatest struggle was with his own kinsmen, this black, AÏÏah-venerating Quraysh tribe. In the end, however, it would be the black Quraysh that became the rulers of Islam, at least in the short term. Not only were the Sunni caliphs drawn from them, but the Shiite Imams, descendents of the black Ali b. Abå Talib, were likewise black QurayshÊ Arabs.16 One would thus expect the Qurayshi prophet Muhammad to be black too, especially since he reportedly claimed to be a pure Arab for the house of Hashim17: this would make him very black-skinned like the pure Arabs from that tribe. Muhammad’s pedigree actually demands this as his whole immediate family tree were pure, black-skinned Qurayshi Arabs. I quote again Al-JaÈií’s important note in his Fakhr al-sådan ala al-bidan: The ten lordly sons of Abd al Muããalib were deep black (dalham) in color and big/tall (dukhm). When Amir b. al-Tufayl saw them circumambulating (the Ka'ba) like dark camels, he said, “With such men as these is the custody of the Ka'ba preserved.” Abd Allah b. Abbas was very black and tall. Those of Abå Talib’s family, who are the most noble of men, are more or less black (såd).”18 Abd al Muããalib (d. 578) was the prophet’s grandfather and Abd Allah, one of his ten ‘deep black’ sons, was Muhammad’s father. Another deep black son, al-Abbas, was father to the above mentioned Abd Allah b. Abbas, described as black, and al-Fa·l b. al-Abbas, whose blackness was legendary. These were the uncle and first cousins of Muhammad. Abå Talib, another deep black uncle, was father to Ali b. Abd Allah, another first cousin of the prophet who was described as jet-black. All of these father-son pairs shared this deep blackness, what about the Abd Allah - Muhammad pair? We would expect the same, unless Muhammad’s mother made a mitigating contribution. But this is not likely. Amina, the prophet’s mother, was an Arab from the Qurayshi sub-clan Banå Zuhra, which was a black clan. Amina’s cousin and Muhammad’s maternal uncle, Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, also from Banå Zuhra, was very dark, tall and flat-nosed.19 But Muhammad had more than just Qurayshi blackness running through his veins. His great, great grandfather was Abd Manaf who bore with $tika bt. Murra al-SulaymÊ the prophet’s great grandfather \ashim. That is to say that the prophet’s great, great grandmother was from the jet-black Banå Sulaym. \ashim, the great grandfather, bore with Salma bt. Amrå ’l-KhazrajÊ the prophet’s grandfather, Abd al Muããalib. This means that his paternal great grandmother was from the black Medinese tribe Banå Khazraj. Abd al Muããalib stayed within the Quraysh, but he bore the prophet’s father Abd Allah with Faãima bt. Amrå al-MakhzåmÊ, from the exceptionally black Makhzåm clan.20 Muhammad’s maternal lineage is also mixed with non-QurayshÊ black Arab blood. His mother, Amina, is the daughter of Wahb b. Abd Manaf b. Zuhra whose mother (Amina’s grandmother) is said to be a SulaymÊ, another $tika bt. Al-Awqaß.21 The black Sulaym are thus considered the maternal uncles of the prophet and he is therefore reported to have said: “I am the son of the many $tikas of Sulaym.”22 This all indicates that Muhammad’s lineage is a mix of QurayshÊ, SulaymÊ, and KhazrajÊ blackness. We thus have every reason to expect Muhammad to be black-skinned, and no reason to believe anything else was possible. We in fact find him described as such in TirmidhÊ’s Shama?il al- Muhammadiyyah. The following is reported on the authority of the famous Companion of the prophet, Anas b. Malik: The Messenger of Allah… was of medium stature, neither tall nor short, of a goodly build. His hair was neither curly nor completely straight. He had a dark brown (asmar) complexion and when he walked he leant forward [walking briskly].23 ???? asmar is a dark brown as evidenced from other formations from the same root24: samar “darkness, night”; al-garra al-samra? “the black continent (Africa)”.25 With the pedigree that he had, any other complexion for Muhammad would be incomprehensible. Yet, the same Anas b. Malik who informed us of the dark brown complexion of the prophet, also informs us thusly: While we were sitting with the Prophet in the mosque, a man came riding on a camel. He made his camel kneel down in the mosque, tied its foreleg and then said: “Who amongst you is Muhammad?” At that time the Prophet was sitting amongst us (his companions) leaning on his arm. We replied, “This white man reclining on his arm.”26 There are several other reports that describe Muhammad as ???? abya· white. How can the same man (Anas b. Malik) describe another (Muhammad) as both of dark brown complexion and as white? The problem, it turns out, is not in these texts but in our modern, Western inability to appreciate the premodern Arabic color classification system. We assume that terms such as white, green, blue, and red meant the same to the early Arabs that they do to us today. But as Moroccan scholar Tariq Berry explains in his book, The Unknown Arabs, this is simply not the case: The term white can be very confusing to those reading about the description of people of the past because, in the past, when Arabs described someone as white, they meant something entirely different from what is meant today. In the past, when the Arabs described someone as white, they meant either that he had a pure, noble, essence or that he had a nice, smooth complexion without any blemishes. They meant he had a black complexion with a light-brownish undertone.27 Berry’s point is confirmed by the appropriate Classical Arabic/Islamic sources. Ibn Maníår affirmed that “When the Arabs say that a person is white, they mean that he has a pure, clean, fautless integrity…They don’t mean that he has white skin…”28 Similarly, al-Dhahabi informs us that “When the Arabs say a person is white, they mean he is black with a light-brownish undertone.”29 Particularly important was the observation of the 9th century CE Arabic scholar Thalab, who tells us that : “The Arabs don’t say that a man is white because of a white complexion. White to the Arabs means that a person is pure, without any faults. If they meant his complexion was white, they said ‘red’ (aÈmar).”30 Indeed, as David Goldenberg notes, ‘white ???? ’ in pre-modern Arabic was about “luminosity, not chromaticity.”31 That is to say, ???? connoted brilliance, not paleness of skin. The latter was described as ‘red’ ? ??? aÈmar, which is how non- Arab whites such as Persians and Byzantines were described.32 In other words, what we call white today the early Arabs called red, and what they called white often was what we would today call black! It is certain that Muhammad could not have been what we consider white today; he could not have been fair or pale-skinned at all, for a pale-skinned Arab was such an oddity that the prophet could not have claimed be a pure QurayshÊ Arab. The seventh century Arab from the tribe of Nakha?i, Shurayk al- Qa·i, could claim that, because it was such a rare occurrence “a fair-skinned Arab is something inconceivable and unthinkable.”33 So too did al-Dhahabi report that: “Red, in the language of the people from the Hijaz, means fair-complexioned and this color is rare amongst the Arabs.”34 On the other hand, the Arabs prided themselves on being black, is conscious contrast to the pale-skinned non-Arabs. Al-JaÈií could still claim in the 9th century: ????? ???? ????? ????? al-arab tafkhar bi-sawad al-lawn “The Arabs pride themselves in (their) black color”35 These noble Black Arabs even detested pale skin. Al-Mubarrad (d. 898), the leading figure in the Basran grammatical tradition, is quoted as saying: “The Arabs used to take pride in their darkness and blackness and they had a distaste for a light complexion and they used to say that a light complexion was the complexion of the non-Arabs”. Part of the reason for this distaste is that the slaves at the time were largely from pale-skinned peoples, such that aÈmar “red” came to mean “slave” back then, just as abid “servant/slave” means black today in the now white Muslim world. As Dana Marniche observes: Anyone familiar with the Arabic writings of the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian historians up until the 14th century knows that this is also their description of the early ‘pure’ Arab clans of the Arabian peninsula… [i.e. “blacker than the blackest ink – no shred of white on them except their teeth.”]…The irony of history is that early Arabic-speaking historians and linguists made a distinction between the Arabs in Arabia and the fair-skinned peoples to the north; and contrary to what may be fact in our day, in the days of early Islam, those called ‘Arabs’ looked down condescendingly on fair-skinned populations and commonly used the phrase ‘fairskinned as a slave’ when describing individuals in tribes in the peninsula that were pale in complexion…Of course, today due mainly to slavery and conversion of peoples to the ‘Arab’ nationality, the opposite is thought to be true by many in the West. A red or pale-skinned Muhammad would thus have been a profound oddity in 7th century Arabia and would have had little chance of success amongst the proud, black Meccans and Medinese. The Meccan objectors to his message accused of some of everything, but never of being a non-Arab! There is absolutely no reason to believe he was pale-skinned other than much later representations that coincide with a major demographic change it the Muslim world, a change that brought with it a strong anti-black ideology.36 We thus have every reason to accept the truth of Anas b. Malik’s description of the prophet as dark brown (asmar) and to conclude that, as his black cousins Ali and al-Fa·l resembled their black fathers (his black uncles), he resembled his black father, especially since his mother’s side was black as well.37 FOOTNOTES 1 Abu-Bakr, Islam’s Black Legacy, Chapter 1. See also Rogers, Sex and Race, I: 95 who states that “Mohamet, himself, was to all accounts a Negro.” Ben-Jochannon too accepted that Muhammad was “in the family of the Black Race”. African Origins, 237. 2 Abu-Bakr, Islam’s Black Legacy, 1. 3 Robert F. Spencer, “The Arabian Matriarchate: An Old Controversy,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 8 (Winter, 1952) 488. 4 Al-JaÈií, Fakhr al-sådan ala al-bidan, in Risa"il Al-JaÈií, 4 vols. (1964/1384) I:209. 5 See below. 6 al-Dhahabi, Siyar, V:253 7 Al-Suyåãi, Tarikh al-khulafa (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-Arabi, 1975) 186. On shadid al-udma as ‘jet-black’ see Berry, Unknown, 54. 8 Ibn Sad, al-Tabaqat al-kubra (Beirut: Dar Sadir) 8:25. On Ali as short and dark brown see Henry Stubbe, An Account of the Rise and Progress of Muhammadanism (1911) XX; I.M.N. al-Jubouri, History of Islamic Philosophy – With View of Greek Philosophy and Early History of Islam (2004), 155; Philip K Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th edition (London: Macmillan Education Ltd, 1970) 183. 9 Ibn Maníår, Lisan al-arab, s.v. ???? IV:245f. 10 Ibn Maníår, Lisan al-arab, s.v. ???? IV:245; E.W. Lane, Arabic-English, I: 756 s.v. . ??? 11 Ibn Maníår, Lisan al-arab, s.v. ???? IV:245. 12 Études sur le siècle des Omayyades (Beirut: Imprimerie Calholique, 1930) 44. 13 al-Dhahabi, Siyar, 1:97. 14 Abd al-RaÈman Rafat al-Basha, ‘uwar min Èayat al-‘aÈabah (Beirut: Mu?assasat al-Risalah, 1974-75) 287. 15 Uri Rubin, “The Ilaf of Quraysh: A Study of såra CVI,” Arabica 31 (1984): 165-188; Margoliouth, Mohammed, 19. 16 Berry, Unknown Arabs, 62-65. 17 He is supposed to have described himself as “Arab of the Arabs, of the purest blood of your land, of the family of the Hashim and of the tribe of Quraysh.”Quoted in Chandler, “Ebony and Bronze,” 285. 18 Al-JaÈií, Fakhr al-sådan ala al-bidan, in Risa"il Al-JaÈií, 4 vols. (1964/1384) I:209. 19 al-Dhahabi, Siyar, 1:97. 20 On the significance of these matrilateral listings in Muhammad’s genealogy see Daniel Martin Varisco, “Metaphors and Sacred History: The Genealogy of Muhammad and the Arab ‘Tribe’,” Anthropological Quarterly 68 (1995): 139-156, esp. 148-150. 21 Ibn Athir, al-Nihaya fÊ gharÊb al-ÈadÊth (Cairo, 1385/1965) III:180 s.v. -t-k; Lecker, Banå sulaym, 114. 22 Muhammad b. Yåsuf al-‘aliÈÊ al-ShamÊ, Subul al-huda wa-‘l-rashad fÊ sÊrat khayr al-bad (Cairo, 1392/1972) I:384-85; Lecker, Banå sulaym, 114-115. 23 Al-TirmidhÊ, Shama?il al-Muhammadiyyah, 2. 24 J M. Cowan (ed.), Hans Wehr Arabic-English Dictionary 4th edition (Ithica: Spoken Language Services, Inc., 1994) 500 s.v. .??? 25 Berry, Unknown Arabs, 49 notes: “When the Arabs of the past said that a person was brown, they meant that he was dark-skinned; close to black, which is actually a dark shade of brown.” 26 Sahih al-Bukhari vol. 1 no. 63: 27 Berry, Unknown Arabs, 49. 28 Ibn Maníår, Lisan al-Arab 7:124. 29 Al-Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala (Beirut: Risala Establishment, 1992) 2:168. 30 Ibn Maníår, Lisan al-Arab. 4:210. 31 Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 93. 32 Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 1:268. 33 Ibn Abd Rabbih, al-Iqd al-farid (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiya, 1983) 8:140. 34 Al-Dhahabi, Siyar, 2:168. 35 Al-JaÈií, Fakhr al-sådan ala al-bidan, 207. See also Goldziher, Muslim Studies, 1:268 who notes that in contrast to the Persians who are described as red or light-skinned (aÈmar) the Arabs call themselves black. 36 See below. 37 Chandler, “Ebony and Bronze,” 280: “All of the chronicles that survive intact agree that Ismael and Muhammad were of the Black Race…A careful examination of history reveals that the Prophet Muhammad…was of the Black Race and was black in complexion.”