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

quoting a verse: "If there were a
mustard-seed of God's light among all.the blacks, the blacks would become
white .,,3" The same association of light with good is shown in the Muslim
hagiographic literature, which depicts the Prophet himself as of white or
ruddy color. Similar descriptions are given of his wife `A'isha, his son-in-law
`Ali and his descendants, and even his predecessors, the prophets Abraham,
Moses, and Jesus.39
    From both the expressions and the denunciations of racial prejudice, in
both general and religious literature, it is clear that a major transformation
had taken place. In ancient Arabia, as elsewhere in antiquity, racism-in the
modern sense of that word-was unknown. The Islamic dispensation, far
from encouraging it, condemns even the universal tendency to ethnic and
social arrogance and proclaims the equality of all Muslims before God. Yet,
from the literature, it is clear that a new and sometimes vicious pattern of
racial hostility and discrimination had emerged within the Islamic world.

     



This great change of attitude, within a few generations, can be attributed in
the main to three major developments.
    The first of these is the fact of conquest-the creation by the advancing
Arabs of a vast empire in which the normal distinctions inevitably appeared
between the conquerors and the conquered. At first, Arab and Muslim were
virtually the same thing and the distinction could be perceived as religious. But
as conversions to Islam proceeded very rapidly among the different conquered
peoples, a new class came into existence-the non-Arab converts to Islam,
whose position in some ways resembled that of the native Christians in the
latter-day European empires. According to the doctrines of Islam-repeatedly
reaffirmed by the pious exponents of the Faith-the non-Arab converts were
the equals of the Arabs and could even outrank them by superior piety. But
the Arabs, like all other conquerors before and since, were reluctant to concede equality to the conquered; and for as long as they could, they maintained
their privileged position. Non-Arab Muslims were regarded as inferior and
subjected to a whole series of fiscal, social, political, military, and other disabilities. They were known collectively as the mawali (sing. mawla), a term the
primary meaning of which was "freedman." Many indeed were brought to
Islam by way of capture, enslavement, and manumission-a process reflected
in a famous if spurious hadith, according to which the Prophet said:
    Will you not ask me why I laugh? I have seen people of my community who are
dragged to Paradise against their will. They asked, "0 Prophet of God, who
are they?" He said, "They are non-Arab people whom the warriors in the Holy
War have captured and made to enter Islam."'
    Already in antiquity, some Greek philosophers had argued that slavery
was beneficial to the barbarian slave, in that it initiated him to a better and more civilized way of life. The religious version of this- of slavery as a road to
the blessings of Islam-later became a commonplace.` But the earliest converts who came by this road encountered difficulties.

    A Spanish-Arab author, Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi (860-940), describes the attitude of the early Arabs to the non-Arab mawalf:
    N5fi' ibn Jubayr ibn Mut'im gave precedence to a maw/a to lead him in prayer.
People spoke to him about this, and he said: "I wished to be humble before
God in praying behind him."
    The same Nafi' ibn Jubayr, when a funeral passed by, used to ask who it was.
If they said: "A Qurashi," he would say: "Alas for his kinsfolk!" If they said:
"A mawla," he would say: "He is the property of God, Who takes what He
pleases and leaves what He pleases."
    They used to say that only three things interrupt prayer-a donkey, a dog,
and a maw/a. The mawla did not use the kunya [part of an Arab name,
consisting of Abu-father of-followed by another personal noun, usually but
not always that of his son]