Did Arabs Conquer West And central Africa

[djehuti]

Oct 17, 2024 4:31:03 GMT -5 Brandon S. Pilcher said:

Also, David Goldenberg in his The Curse of Ham book cites Bernard Lewis as saying that Arabs called themselves "black" relative to Persians but also "red" or "white" relative to Africans. Has Dana taken this into account when quoting Arab writers who describe themselves as black-skinned?

Bernard Lewis has shown that in early Arabic literature, color terms used to describe people generally have a personal rather than an ethnic sense (like our "sallow" or "ruddy"), and even when they are used ethnically, the terms are relative---for example, the Arabs might describe themselves as black compared with the red Persians but as red or white as compared to the black Africans.

It's funny you cite this considering that Dana was the first to point this out back in ES, that is Arabs (of Arabia) called themselves 'black' and lighter-skinned peoples 'red' which is strikingly the same as many Africans in regards to their color labeling. This is in striking contrast to the Hadiths which describe 'the messenger of Allah' as white and his tribe as white people. This is another clue that the Arabs of Arabia a.k.a. Saracens were different from the northern people called 'Arabs' who lived around Syria and Iraq. All the descriptions of Saracens were of tall black people who were scantily clad and wore head bands while the later Arabs were medium height, fair-skinned/white peoples who wore longer robes that covered most of their bodies and turbans.

[thelioness]

If ancient Arab quotes are to be used
then they should be quoted with date and source
"Dana said" is not enough

sites.google.com/site/historyofeastafrica/al-jahiz-al-fakhar-al-sudan



Al-Jahiz (776-869)
born in Basra

Al-Fakhar al-Sudan
min al-Abyadh (the prides of blacks over the whites)



The Zanj say: The Prophet (p.b.u.h.) said: I was sent to the red and the black.
And everybody knows that the Zanj, Abyssinians and Nubians or surely not white or red but definitely black.
We know that Allah, the Most Powerful and Exalted, sent His Prophet (to the people), all of them: Arabs and non-Arabs (ajam) alike. And if he (Muhammad) said: I was sent to the ruddy (Al-ahmar) and the dark-skinned (al-aswad), then in his view we are neither ruddy nor light-skinned (bid); so he was sent to us. Indeed, his use of the dark-skinned refers to us, as the people (of our community) are in one of these categories (i.e. either ruddy or dark-skinned).

Therefore, if the Arabs are ruddy, then they belong to the Byzantines (Rum), Slaves (Saqaliba), Persians and Khurasanis.
But if they belong to the dark-skinned peoples, then they are a sub-category of our stock. So they are called medium-complexioned and brownish-black (sumr sud) when they are classified with us, as the Arabs use the masculine gender to refer to a group consisting of females and males.


And if the Prophet – may Allah be pleased with him – knew that the Zanj, Ethiopians and Nubians were not ruddy or light-skinned, rather dark-skinned, and that Allah Most High sent him to the dark-skinned and the ruddy, then surely he made us and the Arabs equals. Hence, we are the only dark-skinned people. If the appellation dark-skinned applies to us, then we are the pure Sudan, and the Arabs only resemble us. Therefore we are the first people to whom he was missioned....

They say; The Arabs belong with us and not with the whites, because their color is nearer to ours. The Indians are more bronzed than the Arabs, and they belong to the blacks. For the Prophet, God bless and save him, said; I was sent to the red and the black, and everyone knows that the Arabs are not red, as we already have stated above....


He said; This advantage belongs to us and to the Arabs, as against the whites, if the Arabs want it. If they do not want it, then the advantage is ours alone against all the rest.


The Zanj say to the Arabs: You are so ignorant that during the jahiliyya (the times of ignorance ) you regarded us as your equals when it came to marrying Arab women, but with the advent of the justice of Islam you decided this practice was bad. Yet the desert is full of Zanj married to Arab wives, and they have been princes and kings and have safeguarded your rights and sheltered you against your enemies.....

The natives in the Bilad Zanj are in both Qambalu (Pemba) and Lunjuya (Unguja), just as Arabs are the descendants of Adnan and Qahtan in the Middle East....

The best evidence of this is that there are black tribes among the Arabs, such as the Banu Sulaim bin Mansur, and that all the peoples settled in the Harra, besides the Banu Sulaim are black. These tribes take slaves from among the Ashban to mend their flocks and for irrigation work, manual labor, and domestic service, and they take their wives from among the Byzantines; and yet it takes less than three generations for the Harra region to give them all the complexion of the Banu Sulaim. This region is such that the gazelles, ostriches, insects, wolves, foxes, sheep, asses, horses and birds that live there are all black. White and black are the results of environment, the natural properties of water and soil, distance from the sun, and intensity of heat. There is no question of metamorphosis, or of punishment, disfigurement or favor meted out by Allah. Besides, the land of the Banu Sulaim has much in common with the land of the Turks, where the camels, beasts of burden, and everything belonging to these people is similar in appearance: everything of theirs has a Turkish look.

This is pretty old, 8 or 9th century 

The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696 AD, we learn of slave revolts of the Zanj in Iraq.

M. A. Shaban explains that the Zanj Rebellion was not a slave rebellion but rather an Arab rebellion supported by East African immigrants in Iraq:



It was not a slave revolt. It was a "zanj", i.e. a Negro, revolt. To equate Negro with slave is a reflection of nineteenth-century racial theories; it could only apply to the American South before the Civil War...On the contrary, some of the people who were working in the salt marshes were among the first to fight against the revolt. Of course there were a few runaway slaves who joined the rebels, but this still does not make it a slave revolt. The vast majority of the rebels were Arabs of the Persian Gulf supported by free East Africans who had made their homes in the region.

-Shaban, M. A.  Islamic History: Volume 2, AD 750-1055 (AH 132-448): A New Interpretation. Cambridge University Press.

Every historical quote of Islamic writing is the opinion of a particular writer,

Al Jahiz here describes the Arabs here not as white or black but "ruddy",  


Muhammad was born in approximately 570 CE in Mecca and belonged to the Quraysh tribe of the 'Adnanites'.

According to the Arab tradition, The Adnanites are the Northern Arabs, unlike the Qahtanite Arabs of southern Arabia, who are descended from Qahtan, son of the Islamic prophet Hūdʿ
The Quraysh's progenitor was Fihr ibn Malik who Fihr belonged to the Kinana tribe and his descent is traced to Adnan the Ishmaelite, the semi-legendary father of the "northern Arabs".
 230–240 CE), is counted among the direct ancestors of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. In the lineage of Muhammad from Adnan, he precedes Muhammad by eleven generations
The Adnanites (Arabic: عدنانيون) were a tribal confederation of the Ishmaelite Arabs. They trace their lineage back to Ishmael and Abraham, his wife Hagar through Adnan, who originate from the Hejaz. 

[djehuti]

^ The standard Islamic narrative is that 'Muhammad' and 'the Prophet' are the same person among many other presumptions. Also according to the Hadith there were other prophets or individuals calling themselves prophets. The description of Muhammad being fair-skinned or white differs from the accounts of black Saracens who held banners of the prophet as a black man with a headband which contradicts the later Islamic practice of forbidding images, especially images of 'the Prophet'. There is a whole lot of things about historical Islam that don't get discussed as well as what seems to be contradictory information. One of the confusions is the very term 'arab' which simply means one who lives in the wilderness or desert. That term came to mean an ethnic group after the Saracen invasions.

[thelioness]

Oct 26, 2024 14:12:15 GMT -5 djehuti said:

^ The standard Islamic narrative is that 'Muhammad' and 'the Prophet' are the same person among many other presumptions. Also according to the Hadith there were other prophets or individuals calling themselves prophets. The description of Muhammad being fair-skinned or white differs from the accounts of black Saracens who held banners of the prophet as a black man with a headband which contradicts the later Islamic practice of forbidding images, especially images of 'the Prophet'. There is a whole lot of things about historical Islam that don't get discussed as well as what seems to be contradictory information. One of the confusions is the very term 'arab' which simply means one who lives in the wilderness or desert. That term came to mean an ethnic group after the Saracen invasions.  also tell us

Name a Saracen please

[Brandon S. Pilcher]

If these Black Saracens who spearheaded the so-called Islamic expansions in the 600s onward were South Semitic speakers, might they not left inscriptions or written documents behind? It seems a bit weird that a large proportion of the evidence for their existence comes from medieval European sources.