#the social marginalisation of the black poets cited by mcleod is already explained by their being (former/)slaves

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ok i need to process things i read

race, rebellion, and arab muslim slavery (mcleod, 2016) argues for the existence of antiblackness in pre-islamic arabia based largely on the authority of jahili poets, who were also slaves, who wrote about their skin colour in relation to their social position

from these poets theres a gap of 200-odd years, when it skips to al jahiz, a prolific scholar known for among other things his “book of animals” which predates darwin by like a thousand years in describing natural selection

but the reason he’s in this paper is because of his On The Superiority of Blacks over Whites, in which McLeod accuses him of intentionally distancing himself from his blackness while at the same time al jahiz asserts that the arabs are in fact black, and so was the prophet, and he names several members of the prophets family who were also black

modern scholars have interpreted Superiority in a way that is all things considered pretty patronising, as a series of potentially satirical and extraordinary claims not unlike some of the more vulnerable claims of modern black nationalists, who themselves claim the text as an ideological forebear

otoh in Anyone Who Says the Prophet is Black Should Be Killed by Wesley Williams (WIP), a far more thoroughly-sourced piece it must be said, argues that the Arabs at the time of the Prophet regarded their own black skin as a sign of pure lineage, and that while they did recognise other racial types the skin differences were in luminosity rather than hue (the arabs were regarded as having smoother, more luminous skin)

willians describes all the words used in arabic to refer to different skin colours at incredible length, with citations from classical scholars fwiw, noting that some terms are used differently in describing humans than their general usage, a fact about which mcleod agrees but does not analyse in as much depth

the short version of williams’ conclusions is that he brings up a shitload of examples of descriptiions which all end up corroborating al jahiz’s

even going so far down the timeline as rumi who accuses the persians of persecuting the sayids due to their dark skin

mcleod does not provide the original terms used by the jahili poets in describing their own skin that could provide some guidance on the hue vs luminosity debate

this is markedly less scrutiny than mcleod pays to terms like “red” “green” and “blue” used to refer to lighter skinned people

williams does offer an explanation of some of the (few, as I understand it) cited examples of jahili antiblackness, noting that the man who mocked a peer for his black skin was himself also known to be dark skinned

it is a commonly known fact that the abbasid revolution was caused by the fact that the umayyads were giant arab chauvanists who never really got their minds wrapped around multiculturalism, and considered themselves a superiour racial group

mcleod doesnt talk about al jahiz much but it must be said that he was born 25 years after the abbasid revolution. as williams tells the story, the abbasids slowly but very clearly changed the ethnic dynamics of the empire over the course of a century or so, changing it to a comparatively lightly persian-dominant empire rather than an arab supremacist one

al jahiz would have been like at least 30 before he wrote anything of consequence and that’s lowballin it. meaning that he would have been around and watched this gradual de-arabisation, while also the lines between ethnic groups blended and persians became more araby and arabs became more persiany

so in this version of the story al jahiz is actually a super racist arab chauvanist especially considering he maintains the superiority of the arab blacks over the southeast african ones (zanj) which mcleod handles as internalised antiblackness but this is fallacious because it obviously presumes that all black people are the same which is not true and was not considered to be true in arabia at this time (for example ethiopians were well-respected and had had long relations with the arabs since forever (al jahiz was half ethiopian))

also mcleod agrees that white skin was also taken as a marker of low status during al jahiz’s time, although he claims not as much so as (non-arab) black skin (although again mcleod does not make this distinction assuming arabs to have been light skinned)

but regardless he was writing at a time when “pure” black arabs were being persecuted and de-statused as a matter of state policy

then williams traces the gradual de-arabisation of the prophet by the persians, then the peoples of the lands acquired from the byzantines in early centuries, then the lkhanids, then the ottomans, all of which were pretty light skinned

#the stuff about antiblackness in the abassid calliphate does not seem to be otherwise inaccurate #but the claim that it originated in jahiliyya does seem to be pretty effectively debunked by willians #the zanj rebellion was a little after al jahiz died. like 2 years #or something like #the social marginalisation of the black poets cited by mcleod is already explained by their being (former/)slaves #and no skin colour based explanation for it is necessary