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The Crows of The Arabs
The Crows of The Arabs
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The Crows of the Arabs
Bernard Lewis
Aghribat al-Arab, "crows or ravens of the Arabs," was the name given to
a group of early Arabic poets who were of African or partly African
parentage. Of very early origin, the term was commonly used by classical
Arabic writers on poetics and literary history. Its use is well attested in
the ninth century and was probably current in the eighth century, if not
earlier. The term was used with some variation. Originally, it apparently
designated a small group of poets in pre-Islamic Arabia whose fathers
were free and sometimes noble Arabs and whose mothers were African,
probably Ethiopian, slaves. As the sons of slave women, they were, by
Arab customary law, themselves slaves unless and until their fathers chose
to recognize and liberate them. As the sons of African women, their
complexions were darker than was normal among the Arabs of the pen-
insula.
Both themes servitude and blackness occur in some of the verses
ascribed to these poets and, in a sense, define their identity as a group.
Professor 'Abduh Badawi of Khartoum begins his book on the black
Arab poets -the first serious and extensive study devoted to the topic-
with this definition:
This name [the crows of the Arabs] was applied to those [Arabic]
poets to whom blackness was transmitted by their slave mothers,
and whom at the same time their Arab fathers did not recognize,
or recognized only under constraint from them.'
88
Critical Inquiry Autumn 1985 89
The term commonly used by the ancient Arabs for the offspring of
mixed unions was hajmn,a word which, like the English "mongrel" and
"half-breed,"was used both of animals and of human beings. For example,
hajin would indicate a horse whose sire was a thoroughbred Arab and
whose dam was not. It had much the same meaning when applied to
human beings, denoting a person whose father was Arab and free and
whose mother was a slave. The term hajin in itself is social rather than
racial in content, expressing the contempt of the highborn for the baseborn,
without attributing any specific racial identity to the latter. Non-Arabs,
of whatever racial origin, were of course baseborn but so too were many
Arabs who, for one reason or another, were not full and free members
of a tribe. Full Arabs-those born of two free Arab parents-ranked
above half-Arabs, the children of Arab fathers and non-Arab mothers
(the opposite case was inadmissible). In turn, half-Arabs ranked above
non-Arabs, who were, so to speak, outside the system.
Among the ancient Arabs there was an elaborate system of social
gradations. A man's status was determined by his parentage, family, clan,
sept, and tribe, and the rank assigned to them in the Arab social order.
All this is richly documented in poetry, tradition, and a vast genealogical
literature. A more difficult question is how far the ancient Arabs recognized
and observed social distinctions among the various non-Arab peoples
and races who supplied much, though not all, of the slave population
of Arabia. According to Badawi, "there was a consensus that the most
unfortunate of the hajzns and the lowest in social status were those to
whom blackness had passed from their mothers" (S, p. 21).
At his discretion, the free father of a slave child could recognize and
liberate him and thus confer membership of the tribe. Under the Islamic
dispensation such recognition became mandatory. In pre-Islamic custom,
however, the father retained the option; according to Badawi and the
sources cited by him, Arab fathers at that time were reluctant to recognize
the sons of black mothers. The alleged reason for this reluctance was
their color, since
the Arabs despised the black color as much as they loved the white
color; they described everything that they admired, material or
moral, as white. A theme in both eulogy and boasting was the
whiteness of a man, just as one of the signs of beauty in a woman
was also whiteness. It was also a proof of her nobility. In the same
way a man could be eulogized as 'the son of a white woman'. Similarly
they would boast that they had taken white women as captives. [S,
p. 21]
This may mean no more than that his mother was a slave, without reference
to race or color. Other verses ascribed to 'Antara, however, indicate that
his African blood and dark skin marked him as socially inferior and
exposed him to insult and abuse. In one poem he is even quoted as
insulting his own mother:
I am the son of a black-browed woman
like the hyena that thrives on an abandoned camping ground
Her leg is like the leg of an ostrich, and her
hair like peppercorns
Her front teeth gleam behind her veil like lightning
in curtained darkness.4
Otherwise, local sources of supply provided for local needs. Islam created
a new situation by prohibiting the enslavement not only of freeborn
Muslims but even of freeborn non-Muslims living under the protection
of the Muslim state. The children of slaves were born slaves, but, for a
number of reasons, this source of recruitment was not adequate. The
growing need for slaves had to be met, therefore, by importation from
beyond the Islamic frontier. This gave rise to a vast expansion of slave
raiding and slave trading in the Eurasian steppe to the north and in
tropical Africa to the south of the Islamic lands. It is for this reason, no
doubt, that the massive development of the slave trade in black Africa
and the large scale importation of black Africans for use in the Medi-
terranean and Middle Eastern countries date from the Arab period. In
one of the sad paradoxes of history, this resulted from one of the most
important of the liberalizing and humanizing changes that the Islamic
dispensation brought to the ancient world.
At first, there seems to have been no particular discrimination among
the various nations and races of non-Arabs who made up the vast majority
of the subject as well as the servile population. But in time, differences
of color began to matter, and this is clearly indicated by the literary,
pictorial, and even lexical evidence. One of the commonest Arabic words
for slave, 'abd (from a verb meaning "to serve"), mirrors these changes.
In early classical usage, it means "slave,"irrespective of race or color; by
the High Middle Ages, its use is restricted to black slaves only; in later
colloquial Arabic, it is used to mean blacks, whether slave or free. One
reason for the change is surely that those who were of black or partly
black origin were more visible. As Islam spread by conversion, the races
of the Middle East and North Africa intermingled rapidly through po-
lygamy and concubinage. As a result, the difference between the Arab
conquerors and the kindred peoples of the region became less and less
important. Only those of African origin showed visible and unmistakable
evidence of their non-Arab ancestry. Slaves of white origin, from the
Eurasian steppe and from Europe, could mingle into the population;
this was much more difficult for Africans.
These changes are clearly reflected in the poetry ascribed to some
of the poets of the seventh and eighth centuries, whom later Arab an-
thologists and literary historians of the classical period do not normally
include among the "crows of the Arabs." Some of them are not the sons
of Arab fathers and black mothers but are of purely African origin.
One of these latter was Suhaym (who died in 660). His name is the
diminutive form of a word meaning "black"and might be rendered as
"little blackie." He was born and lived a slave and, indeed, was commonly
known in literary histories as "the slave of the Banf'l-Hashas," after the
family to which he belonged later in his life.
Suhaym was of course a nickname; his real name is said to have
been Habba. According to one story, his owner offered him to the caliph
'Uthman saying, "I can sell you an Ethiopian slave poet." The caliph, in
94 Bernard Lewis The Crowsof the Arabs
this version, refused, remarking that he did not need a slave who treated
his owners as did Suhaym: "When he is sated he directs love-verses at
their women, and when he is hungry he directs satires at them." Later
Suhaym passed into the hands of the Banf'l-Hashas, a clan of the tribe
of Asad. He is variously described as an Ethiopian and as a Nubian.
According to an early source he was branded on his face, a detail which
suggests a Nubian rather than an Ethiopian origin. He is said to have
angered the men of the tribe by flirting with their women, a practice for
which he was eventually killed and burned by his owners.
In some of his poems, Suhaym speaks of his love affairs and of the
troubles they caused him:
But Suhaym's amours did not always go well. In one poem he laments:
My blackness does not harm my habit, for I am like musk; who tastes
it does not forget.
I am covered with a black garment, but under it there is a lustrous
garment with white tails.
[D, p. 69]
Perhaps the most gifted of these black poets was Nusayb ibn Rabah,
who died in 726. The Arab literary historians have preserved some frag-
ments of biographical information about him. From these and from his
surviving poems, it is clear that he was very conscious of his slave birth
and black color and that he endured many insults because of them. In
one story, Nusayb was asked by his friends to reply in kind to an Arab
poet who had composed some insulting verses alluding to his blackness.
Nusayb refused. God, he said, had given him the gift of poetry to use
for good; he would not abuse it by turning it into satire. And in any case,
Nusayb responded, "all he has done is call me black-and he speaks
truth." In a striking poem, Nusayb says of his own color:
But in spite of this note of pride, Nusayb had his moments of desperation.
Like other early black poets writing in Arabic, he cites the example of
musk as something which is black but rare, precious and highly esteemed:
Nusayb was able to make a career as a court poet, with the Umayyad
caliph 'Abd al-Malik. He is sometimes confused with another poet of the
same name, known as Nusayb the Younger, who died in 791. By this
time, the worsening condition of blacks in Islamic society brought a
change of tone to this poetry-dignified self-respect turned to desperate
self-deprecation. In a panegyric ode addressed to the caliph Harun al-
Rashid, Nusayb the Younger says of himself:
2. Abu'l Faraj al-Isfahani, Kitdb al-Aghlni, 20 vols. (Bflaq, 1868-69), 7:149. See also
R. A. Nicholson, A LiteraryHistory of the Arabs (Cambridge, 1941), p. 115.
3. Wilhelm Ahlwardt, ed., The Divans of the Six Ancient Arabic Poets Ennibiga, CAntara,
Tharafa, Zuhair, 'Alqama, and Imruulqais (London, 1870), p. 42. See Encyclopaediaof Islam,
2d ed., s.v. "'Antara."
4. 'Antara, Diwan (Cairo, 1911), p. 196.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibn Qutayba, Kitdb al-Shi'r wa'l-shu'ard',ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1904), p. 196.
7. On Suhaym, often named by Arab authors as "the slave of the Banf'l-Hashas," see
al-Isfahani, Kitdb al-Aghdni, new ed. (Cairo, 1928-29), 20:2-9; Blachere, Histoire de la
litteraturearabe 1:318-19; and Beitrdge zur arabischenPoesie 6, pt. 2:30-50.
8. Cf. Franz Rosenthal, The Muslim Conceptof Freedom(Leiden, 1960), p. 91.
9. Aghani, 1:140-41 (new ed. 1:352-54); and see Rizzitano, "Abf Mihgan Nusayb B.
Rabah," Rivista 20:453, 456 and "Alcuni frammenti," Rivista 22:24, 26.
10. Aghani, 20:25; and see Badawi, Al-Shu'ara', p. 158.