Free Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry by Bernard Lewis

most extreme and therefore absurd form. The Arabic rhetorical device
to which I refer has the opposite purpose-not to disprove but to emphasize
and reaffirm; it is thus not a reductio ad absurdum, but rather a trajectio ad
absurdum (if I may coin a rhetorical term). A principle is asserted and an
extreme, even an absurd, example is given-but the purpose is to show that
the principle still applies even in this extreme and absurd formulation.
    One cannot but be struck by the number of times the black-as also the
Jew and the woman-is used to point this type of argument in both classical
and modern times. Thus, in asserting the duty of obedience, of submission to legitimate authority, however unlikely the form in which it appears, Muslim
jurists cite a dictum attributed to the Prophet: "Obey whoever is put in
authority over you, even if he be a crop-nosed Ethiopian slave."30 This combination of qualities is clearly intended to indicate the ultimate improbability at
once in physical, social, and racial terms.

    A different point is made in the same way in a late anecdote, the purpose
of which is to emphasize the importance of humane treatment for slaves. An
Arab had a black slave woman, who tended his sheep. Angered when she
allowed a wolf to take one of them, he slapped her face. She complained; and
the Prophet, hearing of the matter, ruled that the compensation due for the
slap was her freedom. The owner objected that she was "black and barbarous" and understood nothing of the faith. "The Prophet asked her: `Where is
God?' She replied: 'In heaven.' The Prophet said: 'She is a believer; free
her.' X31
    Some traditions use the same rhetorical device in relation to the choice of
a wife:
    Do not marry women for their beauty, which may destroy them, or for their
money, which may corrupt them, but for religion. A slit-nosed black slavewoman, if pious, is preferable. 32
    Piety must overcome inclination, though it cannot redirect it.
    This theme also occurs in stories about Abu Dharr, an early Muslim hero
who is often cited as a model of piety and humility. As examples of his
humility it is mentioned that he married a black woman, "for he wanted a wife
who would lower him and not exalt him," and that he was willing to pray
behind an Ethiopian.33 The point is most forcibly made by the famous Ibn
Hazm (994-1064), who observes that
    God has decreed that the most devout is the noblest 34 even if he be a Negress's
bastard, and that the sinner and unbeliever is at the lowest level even if he be
the son of prophets.35
    The sentiment is impeccably pious and egalitarian-yet somehow the formulation does not entirely carry conviction. Significantly, Ibn Hazm makes
this remark in the introduction to a treatise on Arab genealogy, in which he
tries to demonstrate the importance and dignity of this science. In another
somewhat equivocal tradition, an Ethiopian says to the Prophet, "You Arabs
excel us in all, in build, color, and in the possession of the Prophet. If I
believe, will I be with you in Paradise?" The Prophet answers, "Yes, and in
Paradise the whiteness of the Ethiopian will be seen over a stretch of a
thousand years. ,31
    The moral of this and of countless other anecdotes and sayings of the same
kind is that piety outweighs blackness and impiety outweighs whiteness. This
is not the same as saying that whiteness and blackness do not matter. Indeed,
the contrary is implied in such tales as that of the pious black who turns white, and the parallel stories of white evildoers who turn black." A vivid example
occurs in the Risalat al-Ghufran, a vision of heaven and hell by the Syrian poet
Abu'l-`Ala' al-Ma'arri (973-1057). In paradise the narrator meets an exceedingly beautiful houri, who tells him that in life she was Tawfiq the Negress,
who used to fetch books for copyists in the Academy of Baghdad.

    "But you were black," he exclaims, "and now you have become whiter
than camphor!"-to which she replies by