1. Mishneh Torah, 'Issure bi'ah, chapter 12, especially 12:17–25; in Torah, Mishnehʿal pi kitve yad Teman ‘im perush makif, ed. Kafaḥ, Yosef (Kiryat Ono: Mekhon mishnat ha-Rambam, 1983), 14–21Google Scholar. No variant to kushi is recorded in Frankel's edition (New York: Ḳehilat Bnei Yosef, 1988). Nor does a check of nine early manuscripts, dated between 1242 and 1419, indicate any variant. My thanks to Mordechai Glatzer who provided me the identification of these earliest dated manuscripts of Sefer Kedushah.

2. Karelitz, Abraham I., Ḥazon Ish: ’Even ha-‘ezer (Bnei Brak: ha-Teḥiya, 1958)Google Scholar, Nashim 5:8 (I owe this reference to N. Danzig).

3. Wolpo, Shalom D., Yedabber Shalom (Kiryat Gat, Israel: Sh. D. B. ha-Leṿi Volpo, 1987), 1:109–112Google Scholar.

4. See Goldenberg, David, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 117–118Google Scholar.

5. Kafaḥ, ed., Mishneh Torah, ad loc.

6. Asher, Jacob b., Tur, 'Even ha-ʿ ezer (New York: A. Y. Friedman, 1980)Google Scholar, 4; Pardo, David, Ḥasdei David to T. Yadayim 2:17, ed. Lieberman, S. (Jerusalem: Yad ha-Rav Herẓog, 1977)Google Scholar, 3:241a. It is also not mentioned in Maimonides' Commentary to the Mishnah on M. Yadayim 4:4, the basis for the statement in Mishneh Torah, excepting the inclusion of Kushite.

7. Sefer Halakhot Pesukot, ed. Sasoon, S. (Jerusalem: Makor, 1951, 1971)Google Scholar, 46, and 65 in the manuscript reproduced in this edition; Halakhot Pesukot le-Rav Yehudai Gaon, ed. Shalom, Makhon Ahavat (Jerusalem: Ahavat Shalom, 1999), cols. 157–158Google Scholar. The genizah fragments published by Ginzberg, Louis, Geonica (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1909)Google Scholar, 2:397, and Epstein, J. N., “Two Gaonic Fragments,” JQR 4 (1913/14): 439Google Scholar, show no variation. Interestingly, Hilkhot Reʾ u, ed. Schlossberg, A. L. (Versailles: Cerf, 1886)Google Scholar, a circa 10th-century (place unknown) Hebrew translation of Halakhot Pesukot, omits the sentence regarding the Zanj (36). On the authorship of Halakhot Pesukot, see Danzig, Neil (Naḥman), Mavo’ le-sefer halakhot pesukot (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993), 17–37Google Scholar. The most recent discussion of authorship is that of Brody, Robert, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 217–221Google Scholar, who concludes that the evidence for Yehudai Gaon as the author of Halakhot Pesukot is “untenable” although “its contents undoubtedly reflect, on the whole, … the Geonic academies of the late eighth or early ninth centuries” (220–221). Some years earlier, Brody wrote that “there is considerable evidence to support a dating of Halakhot Pesukot as much as a century after Yehudai Gaon” (Le-Toledot nusaḥ ha-She'iltot [New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1991]Google Scholar, xvi, n. 38).

8. Halakhot Gedolot, ed. Hildesheimer, Azriel (Berlin: [s.n.], 1888–92), 442–443Google Scholar; ed. Ezriel Hildesheimer (Jerusalem: Mekiẓe Nirdamim, 1980), 2:520–521; ed. Venice, 1548 (= Warsaw, repr. Tel Aviv: Leon, 1942), 215b. These three editions represent different recensions but they all agree on the text quoted. In regard to its date of composition, Danzig, Mavo', 185, favors the last quarter of the 9th century, while the generally accepted opinion places its composition not later than 825 (on authorship, see 175–180). Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia, 228–229, concludes that “the most we can say with confidence is that Halakhot Gedolot is a ninth-century work, although it does seem likely … that it should be assigned approximately to mid-century;” see also 227, n. 51.

9. See references in The Periplus Maris Erythraei, text, translation and commentary by L. Casson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 136. According to Chami, Felix, “People and Contacts in the Ancient Western Indian Ocean Seaboard or Azania,” Man and Environment 27 no.1 (2002): 33Google Scholar, “Zanj” replaced “Azania.” On the etymology of the name Zanj, see Popovic, Alexandre, The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9th Century, trans. King, Léon (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1999), 14–15Google Scholar; trans. of La révolte des esclaves en Iraq au IIIe, IXe siècle (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1976), 54–56Google Scholar. See also the discussion in Reusch, Richard, History of East Africa (Stuttgart: Evang. Missionsverlag, 1954), 115–119Google Scholar, and Tolmacheva, Marina, “Toward a Definition of the Term Zanj,” Azania 21 (1986): 105–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cyril Hromnik, however, thinks that the name derives from the Indian name Ajan-bār (Indo-Africa: Towards a New Understanding of the History of Sub-Saharan Africa [Cape Town: Juta, 1981], 44)Google Scholar. For bibliography on the various explanations of the name, see Talhami, Ghada Hashem, “The Zanj Rebellion Reconsidered,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 10 (1977): 454–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Renault, François, La Traite des noirs au proche-orient médiéval: vii^e–xiv^e siècles (Paris: Librarie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1989), 60Google Scholar. On the Zanj and other black African slaves in Iraq, see Trimingham, J. Spencer, “The Arab Geographers and the East African Coast,” in East Africa and the Orient: Cultural Synthesis in Pre-colonial Times, eds. Chittick, H. Neville and Rotberg, Robert I. (New York: Africana, 1975), 116–129Google Scholar. Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias argued that the more general meaning of Zanj is “barbarian, savage” and in this he is followed by Renault; see Farias, de Moraes, “Models of the World and Categorical Models: The ‘Enslavable Barbarian’ as a Mobile Classificatory Label,” Slavery and Abolition 1 (1980): 120–123Google Scholar and in Willis, J. R., ed., Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa (London; Totowa, NJ: F. Cass, 1985), 1:32–36Google Scholar, and Renault, La traite des noirs, 60. See further on the meaning of “Zanj,” Wansbrough, J., “Africa and the Arab Geographers,” in Language and History in Africa, ed. Dalby, D. (London: Cass, 1970), 97–99Google Scholar, who tentatively proposes that those who joined the Zanj revolt of 869–883, even if neither Black nor slave, became “Zanj.”

11. For the later, more general meaning of ‘Zanj,’ see Lewis, Bernard, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 50Google Scholar; François Renault, ibid.; Alexandre Popovic, The Revolt of African Slaves, 14–15. As for the transference from an ethnic to a color term, cf. Al-Biruni's reference to zanjī, the mineral hematite found in Egypt, which is “extremely black” (al-mutanāhī 'l-sawād), quoted by Marina Tolmacheva, “Definition,” 111. Similarly, the pharmacological writer Ibn al-Bayṭar (13th cent.) says that black rhubarb is called zanj from its color and not from its provenance (Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed. [Leiden: Brill] 11:445a). In rabbinic sources we find the same linguistic transference with the word kushi, referring to dark wine and citrons (etrog); see Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 116–117.

12. An anonymous reader for this article has rightly noted that ‘black African’ and kushi are culturally constructed terms that do not admit to clear-cut, timeless definitions. A related Arabic term, al-sūdān ‘the blacks,’ has similarly received a wide range of meanings (See Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 106–107). A precise geographic and ethnic determination of these English, Hebrew and Arabic terms is beyond the scope of this essay. Nevertheless, “by the medieval period,” as Jonathan Schorsch has shown, “‘Kushite’ was being wielded as a synonym for ‘black people’” (Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 116Google Scholar). Note also that the term kushi in Samuel ibn Tibbon's (d. ca. 1230) Hebrew translation of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, 3:51 translates an original sūdān, ‘Blacks’ in Maimonides' Judeo-Arabic text. In his Hebrew translation (Ramat Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2002), Michael Schwartz has sūdānim and notes “or blacks [sheḥorim].” The Latin translation of 1520 (110b) has Aethiopes. Shlomo Pines renders “Negroes” in his English translation. Maimonides' source for his statement in the Guide is the Arab philosopher Miskawayh (d. 1030), who uses the term zanj which Steven Harvey translates as “Negroes,” as he does also for Maimonides' al-sūdān. For sources, see Goldenberg, David, “The Development of the Idea of Race: Classical Paradigms and Medieval Elaborations” (Review Essay), International Journal of the Classical Tradition 5 (1999)Google Scholar, n. 15 (also at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dmg2/), and see below, nn. 54 and 69. Given this interchange of terms, and with the qualification noted, in this essay I shall use the terms kushi and ‘black African’ or ‘Black’ as synonymous.

13. “Divrey ha-yamim shel Mosheh rabbenu,” ed. Shinan, Avigdor, Ha-Sifrut 24 (1977): 100–116Google Scholar, see secs. 8–12; Sefer ha-yashar, ed. Dan, Joseph (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1986), 293–298;Google ScholarSefer ha-zikhronot, ed. Yassif, Eli (Ramat Aviv: Tel Aviv University), 162–166Google Scholar; English translation by M. Gaster with Prolegomenon by Schwarzbaum, Haim, Chronicles of Jerahmeel (New York, 1972), 113–122Google Scholar. Yalkut shim‘oni, eds. Hyman, Dov et al. (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1999)Google Scholar, Exodus sec. 166, 38). For discussion of these texts, see Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 162–163 and 346–347 n. 49.

14. Sifrei Bemidbar, Be-ha‘alotkha, pis. 99 and 100, to Numbers 12:1–2 (ed. Horovitz, 98–99); Sifrei zuta, Be-ha‘alotkha 12:1–3 (ed. Horovitz, 274). See also B. Yevamot 62a [= B. Shabbat 87a], Perush Rabbenu Ephraim b. Shimshon u-gedolei Ashkenaz ha-kadmonim, eds. Korach, E. and Leitner, Z. (Jerusalem: Y. Klugmann, 1992Google Scholar; published primarily from MS British Museum, or. 10855), 2:86, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Numbers 12:1. Moses’ abstention from sex, incidentally, is also mentioned by Philo, De vita Mosis 2:68–69, and several Christian writers: Jerome, Against Jovinian, 1:20; Ephrem, Commentary on Exodus 4:4; and Ephrem, Hymns 9; Aphrahat, Demonstrations 18:5.

15. So Sasoon in his edition of Halakhot Pesukot, ad loc. and Abraham Traub (Troib) in his notes to the Warsaw, 1875 edition, ad loc. The decision by the authors of Halakhot Pesukot and Halakhot Gedolot that marriage with Canaanite converts is permitted is based (presumably) on a statement by Rava in B. Yevamot 76a.

16. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishma'el, Pisḥa 18 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, 69–70); T. Shabbat 7:25; B. Sanhedrin 91a; the scholion to Megillat Ta‘anit, Siwan 25 according to MS Parma; Yalkut Shim‘oni, Genesis 25, sec.110; and Midrash ha-gadol, 1:415. Megillat Ta‘anit and Yalkut Shim‘oni are here dependent on B. Sanhedrin according to Ido Hampel, Megillat Ta‘anit (Phd diss., Tel Aviv University, 1976), ad loc. In the new critical edition by Vered Noam, Megillat Ta‘anit (Jerusalem, 2003) the text is on p. 70. On the argument for the land, see also David Luria's commentary to Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (Warsaw, 1852), 56a n. 4. In his edition of the Mekhilta, Jacob Lauterbach says that the original country of the Canaanites was Africa (1:158); however, there does not appear to be a rabbinic tradition regarding an origin for the Canaanites before they were in Israel. It would seem that Lauterbach came to his interpretation by reading, with MS Munich, be-’arẓekha and be-'arẓekhem, i.e., God said to the Canaanites, “I will give you a good land in your own country.” Since according to the midrash the Canaanites left Israel for Africa, “I will give you a good land in your own country” must mean that Africa had been their country. Lauterbach's decision to accept the reading in MS Munich may have been influenced by the postbiblical tradition in Jubilees 10:29–34, according to which Canaan was given Africa when the world was divided among Noah's descendants. Whether Jubilees influenced Lauterbach or not, it did not influence the rabbinic text, for the Venice and Constantinople editions of Mekhilta read, as Lauterbach notes, ke-'arẓekha/khem “as your own country” i.e., God will give the Canaanites a land (Africa) as good as their own country (Canaan), which they had just left. Undoubtedly, the editions represent the correct reading (adopted also by Horovitz-Rabin in their edition of Mekhilta, although they show no variant reading, and M. Margulies in his edition of Vayikra Rabba, 386, s.v. me-'arẓo), since the midrash is based on an exegesis of Isaiah 36:17 which has ke-'arẓekhem (no variants shown in The Hebrew University Bible: Isaiah, ed. Goshen-Gottstein, Moshe [Jerusalem: Magnes, 1981], 54Google Scholar). Confusion of bet and kaf is, of course, common; cf. the parallel in Y. Shevi‘it 6:1, 36c.

17. For sources on the Canaanite (or Girgashite or Amorite) emigration to Africa and on the identification of ‘afrikiyim here with the Carthaginian descendants of Canaan, see Solomon Y. Rapoport, ʿErekh milin (Prague, 1852/Warsaw 1914; repr. Jerusalem: Makor, 1970), 184–185, s.v. “‘Afrika”; Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1925), 6:177Google Scholar, n. 34; idem in Krauss, Samuel, Tosafot he-ʿ arukh ha-shalem (Vienna: Keren le-zikhron Aleksander Kohut, 1937)Google Scholar, 432a; Lieberman, Saul, Tosefta ki-fshutah: shabbat (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America), 105Google Scholar. For a discussion of the extra-rabbinic sources referring to this tradition, see Levy, Johanan Hans, ‘Olamot nifgashim (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1960), 60–78Google Scholar, and Mieses, M., “Aḥrei ḥurban qartago” Ha-Tekufah 18 (1923): 228–233Google Scholar; see also Rosenthal, Judah, “The Slavery Controversy and Judaism,” Conservative Judaism 31 (1977): 74Google Scholar; Rappaport, Salomo, Agada und Exegese bei Flavius Josephus (Vienna: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1930), 99–100Google Scholar; Alexander, Philip S., “Notes on the ‘Imago Mundi’ of the Book of Jubilees, Journal of Jewish Studies 33 (1982): 200 n. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brüll, Adolf, Fremdsprachliche Redensarten (Leipzig: A. Fritsch, 1869), 55Google Scholar; Hirschberg, Haim Z., A History of the Jews in North Africa, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1974), l:40–48Google Scholar; Chouraqui, André N., Between East and West: A History of the Jews of North Africa, trans. Bernet, Michael M. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 3–5Google Scholar. The variant “Canaanites” for “Africans” appears in Megillat Ta‘anit, ed. pr. and MS Oxford, and in Bereshit Rabba 61:7 (666–669). Aron Dotan draws my attention to the identification of “Berber” with “Canaanite” found in a genizah fragment of an anonymous Hebrew dictionary contemporaneous with Saadia Gaon (10th century). See Dotan, Aron, “Mi-re'eshit ha-milona'ut ha-‘ivrit: ket'a mimilon kadum,” Te‘uda 6 (1988): 121.Google Scholar

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19. Maqrīzī, Ibn Faḍl Allah al-ʿ Omarī: Masālik el Abṣār fi Mamālik el Amṣār, ed. Gaudefroy-Demombynes (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1927)Google Scholar, Appendix I, 85; excerpted in translation in Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus, 353. Maqrīzī's reference to Qūṭ b. Ḥām is probably only the result of a scribal error for Fūṭ b. Ḥām, i. e., the biblical genealogy. In Arabic q and f are represented by the same letter and are distinguished only by dots over the letters. For Ṭabarī, see Brinner, History of al-Ṭabarī, 2:50, 105, 109, etc. For Ibn Saʿd, see Kitāb al-ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr, vol. 1/i, ed. Mittwoch, E. (Leiden: Brill, 1905), 19Google Scholar; trans. S. Moinul Haq and H. K. Ghanzafar (Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1967), 1:33. For Qazwīnī, see Kosmographie, ed. Wüstenfeld, F. (Göttingen: Verlag der Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1848–49)Google Scholar, according to Ernst Dammann, Beiträge aus arabischen Quellen zur Kenntnis des negerischen Afrika. (PhD. diss., Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel , 1929), 9–10. For Masʿūdī, see Murūj al-dhahab, ed. Pellat, Charles, Praires d'or (Beirut: al-Jāmiʿah al-Lubnānīyah, 1965–74)Google Scholar, 2:321, 418, n. 1; English translation in Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus, 31 (quoted by Ibn Khaldun; see Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus, 332). On Masʿūdī, see Adang, Muslim Writers, 44ff, 122ff. For Kaʿb al-Aḥbar, as quoted by Kisāʾī, see W. M. Thackston, The Tales of the Prophets, 129. For Dimashqī, see Kitāb nukhbat al-dahr fi ʿajāʾib al-barr waʾl-baḥr, ed. and trans. A. F. Mehren (St. Petersburg: Maṭbaʿat al-Akādimīyah al-Imbaraṭurīyah, 1866; repr. Leipzig, 1923), text on 266; translation on 385. For Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣurat al-arḍ, ed. Kramers, J. H. (Leiden: Brill, 1938–39)Google Scholar, 245; trans. Kramers, J. H. and Wiet, G., Configuration de la terre (Kitab surat al-ard) (Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 1964)Google Scholar, 237.

20. de Paiva, Mosseh Pereyra, Notisias dos Judeos de Cochim (Amsterdam, 1687; reprint Lisbon: [Oficinas gráficas do Museu comercial], 1923)Google Scholar, 7, is quoted in Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks, 210. Note the evocation of Genesis 9:25 in “slaves of slaves.” Al-Ḍahri is in Bar-Giora, Naftali, “Source Material for the History of the Relations between the White Jews and the Black Jews of Cochin,” Sefunot 1 (1956): 246Google Scholar. Yehudah Ratzaby, who published al-Ḍahri's work, remarked that kushim here “almost certainly” means Cochinis (Sefer ha-musar, ed. Ratzaby, Y. [Jerusalem: Mekhon Ben-Ẓevi, 1965], 130Google Scholar), and in this he was followed by Segal, , A History of the Jews of Cochin (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1993)Google Scholar, 23. Support for the possibility of this meaning comes from Benjamin of Tudela's reference to “Kushites” (bnei kush) who live in Khulam (Quilon) on the Malabar coast of India to the south of Cochin. Here too kush should probably be translated “Cochin.” See The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (New York: Feldheim, 1964)Google Scholar, ed. Marcus Nathan Adler, English section, 63–64, Hebrew section, 58, and Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 209. Note too the title of Mosseh Pereyra's Notisias dos Judeos de Cochim reporting on the Jews of Cochin.

21. See, e.g., Titus, Murray, Islam in India and Pakistan (Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Pub. House, 1959), 37–40Google Scholar.

22. See the various articles in Indian Church History Classics, ed. Menachery, George (Ollur, Thrissur, India: South Asia Research Assistance Services, 1998)Google Scholar. See also Baumer, Christoph, The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 235–237Google Scholar; Moraes, G. M., A History of Christianity in India, vol. 1 (Bombay: Manaktalas, 1964)Google Scholar; Mundalan, A. Mathias, History of Christianity in India, vol. 1: From the Beginning up to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century (to 1542) (Bangalore: Theological Publications in India for Church History Association of India, 1984)Google Scholar; and Mingana, Alphonse, “The Early Spread of Christianity in India” in the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 10 no. 2 (1926): 435–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. See Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 99–100, 171–173, for these sources. The Cave of Treasures has been thought to go back probably to the 4th, and perhaps the 3rd, century but a recent study argues for a 5th- or even 6th-century date of composition; see Clemens Leonhard, “Observations on the Date of the Syriac Cave of Treasures,” in The World of the Aramaeans, ed. Daviau, P.M. Michèle et al. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 1:255–93Google Scholar, and most recently Toepel, Alexander, Die Adam- und Seth-legenden im syrischen Buch der Schatzhöhle, CSCO 618, subsidia 119 (Louvain: Peeters, 2006)Google Scholar, chap. 1 ‘Einleitung’, who argues for a late 6th- or early 7th-century date.

24. Moses Arragel's 15th-century Castilian commentary to the Bible (on Genesis 9:25): “And Canaan was a slave from slaves: Some say that these are the black Moors who, wherever they go, are captives.” The Jewish-Yemini scholars Nathaniel ibn Yeshaya and Zachariah b. Solomon ha-Rofe (14th and 15th centuries) also say in their commentaries to the verse that Canaan turned black. The quotation in the 16th-century Sefer re'ishit ḥokhma of Elijah de Vidas, which has Canaan cursed with blackness (sec. Ahava 6:8, ed. Waldman, Ḥ. Y., Re'ishit ḥokhma ha-shalem [Jerusalem: Or ha-musar, 1984]Google Scholar, 1:456) would appear to be an error, probably influenced by the Muslim traditions (Elijah lived in Safed). In Sefer ha-zikhronot (120) = Chronicles of Jerahmeel (27:4, 58), “Kushim” are listed as descendants of Canaan but this text derives from Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 4:6, that has rather “Kusin,” which is clearly not an error for “Kushim.” In this essay I am dealing with sources that explicitly refer to Canaan as Black, although authors who mention the blackening of Ham, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish, may implicitly include Ham's son Canaan. For the sources mentioned in this note, see Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 291 n. 63, 355 n. 47, 356 n. 50.

25. E.g. M. Kiddushin 1.3 and several times in midrash halakhah. Of course, the term itself derives from Genesis 9:25.

26. The talmudic source for the Cordyenians and Tadmorites is at B. Yevamot 16a–b (printed editions have Tarmodites but the manuscripts read Tadmorites), Y. Yevamot 3b; Amram's responsum is in Lewin, Benjamin M., Oẓar ha-ge'onim, (Haifa: [s.n.], 1928–43)Google Scholar, 7:113, ad loc. = Teshuvot ha-ge'onim: sha‘are ẓedek, ed. Nissim Moda‘i, Thessaloniki, 1792), 24b, 3.6.10, and She'elot u-teshuvot ha-Ram mi-Trani (Venice, 1629), 5b, # 19; the responsum can be dated to ca. 720 (I owe this reference to Mordechai Friedman). Discussion of the prohibition regarding the Cordyenians and Tadmorites can be found in Bamberger, B. J., Proselytism in the Talmudic Period, 2nd ed (New York: Ktav, 1968), 34–36Google Scholar and Büchler, “Familienreinheit und Familienmakel in Jerusalem vor dem Jahre 70,” in Festschrift Adolf Schwarz, ed. Krauss, Samuel (Berlin: R. Löwit, 1917), 150–153Google Scholar. Of course, it is possible that R. Amram Gaon had a tradition independent of the Talmud that the Cordyenians and Tadmorites were descendants of the seven Canaanite nations. On the identification and location of Tadmor (Syrian Desert) and Cordyene (in present-day Kurdistan), see Eshel, B. Z., Yishuvei ha-Yehudim be-Bavel bi-tekufat ha-talmud: onomastikon talmudi (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1979), 227–228, 244–245Google Scholar; Oppenheimer, Aharon, Babylonia Judaica in the Talmudic Period (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1983), 373–375, 443–445Google Scholar; and Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 4:639a. Al-Rauḍ al-miʿṭār is quoted by Oppenheimer, 444 n. 9.

27. J. B. Segal, A History of the Jews of Cochin, 24–25; Asaf, Simḥa, “‘Avadim u-sḥar ‘avadim ’eẓel ha-Yehudim bi-yme ha-beinayim,” Be-'Oholei Ya‘akov (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1943), 254–255Google Scholar. The article originally appeared in Zion 4 (1939).

28. Quoted in Naftali Bar-Giora, “Source Material,” 251. The same reason is given in a letter from the leaders of the white community in 1844 (599) and in the report written by Even-Sappir when he visited the community in 1860 (260). Ibn Zimra's response, incidentally, was that the “black Jews” are to be considered as Jews and “it is forbidden to call them slaves.” On the situation in Cochin, see also Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks, 204–213.

29. See Segal, A History of the Jews of Cochin, 72 and 77. Segal quotes Ezekiel Rahabi, of the “white Jews” of Cochin, who wrote in 1767: “The Jews whom they call Black were created in Malabar from proselytization and manumission, but their law and regulations and prayer are all like ours. But we do not take their daughters and do not give [ours] to them” (53).

30. See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, ’Issure biʾah 12:11,17; 13:11–12; 14:18 (ed. Kapaḥ, 12:9,14; 13:7–9; 14:19); see also Milah 1:3 (4), 'Ishut 4:16 (17), Gerushin 3:17 (16); Zekhiyah u-matanah 9:11 (7); Joseph Caro, Shulḥan ʿArukh, ’even ha-‘Ezer 4:11–12. See also Büchler, Adolph in Occident and Orient: Being Studies in … Honour of Haham Dr. M. Gaster's 80th Birthday, ed. Schindler, Bruno (London: Taylor's Foreign Press, 1936), 549–570Google Scholar; Finkelstein, Menachem, ha-Giyur: halakhah u-ma‘aseh (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 1994), chap. 5, especially 64–70Google Scholar, and index, s.v. ‘eved; Flesher, Paul V. M., Oxen, Women, or Citizens? Slaves in the System of the Mishnah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 96–97Google Scholar; Urbach, Ephraim, “The Laws regarding Slavery as a Source for Social History of the Period of the Second Temple, the Mishnah and Talmud,” in Papers of the Institute of Jewish Studies, London, ed. Weiss, J. G. (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1964), 40–67Google Scholar; originally published in Hebrew in Zion 25 (1960) and now in Me-‘olamam shel ḥakhamim: koveẓ meḥkarim (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1988)Google Scholar. Urbach, 57, shows that the second immersion came into being not earlier than the second half of the 2nd century C.E.

31. Asaf, “‘Avadim u-sḥar ‘avadim,” 250–251.

32. Ibid. See also Wacholder, Ben Zion, “The Halakhah and the Proselytizing of Slaves during the Gaonic Era,” Historia Judaica 18 (1956): 99–100Google Scholar and literature cited. But Goitein, S. D., “Slaves and Slave girls in the Cairo Genizah Records,” Arabica 9 (1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 19 n. 3 says that such cases were “extremely rare” in the Geniza records. For rabbinic statements against sexual relations with slaves, see also Baer, Yitzhak, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain, trans. Schoffman, L. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961–66), 1:255–259Google Scholar. Cf. al-Maqdisī’s (10th century) comments about the Jews in this regard: “They do not allow free [sexual] enjoyment of slave-girls, except after they have set them free and married them. He who has intercourse with his slave-girl shall set her free on account of this” (quoted in Adang, , Muslim WritersGoogle Scholar, 262).

33. Sefer ha-shetarot [The Book of Shetaroth (Formulary) of R. Hai Gaon], ed. Asaf, Simḥa, Supplement to Tarbiẓ (Jerusalem, 1930)Google Scholar, 43, # 21; see also Mishneh Torah, Ḥovel u-mazik 4:11 (ed. Kafaḥ, 8), ‘Edut 9:6 (ed. Kafaḥ, 4); Shulḥan ‘Arukh, Yoreh de‘ah 267:41, and Urbach, “Laws regarding Slavery,” 58: “We are in possession of a whole series of halakhic rulings and lengthy discussion, dating from the end of the tannaitic and beginning of the amoraic age, which treat of various methods of manumission and rules of evidence for it. In all of them the dominating motive is the linking of manumission with a formal legal document to substantiate it.”

34. Responsum of Yiẓḥak Ẓemaḥ Gaon quoted by Gil, Moshe, Be-Malkhut Yishma'el bi-tekufat ha-Ge'onim (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1997), 1:608Google Scholar, sec. 340; Aptowitzer, Avigdor (Victor), Meḥkarim be-sifrut ha-Geʾ onim (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1941)Google Scholar, 127, #7.

35. Goitein records a case, in which a slave-girl presented herself to the Jewish community and claimed that she had been Jewish in her native country (Goitein, S. D., A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967], 1:136Google Scholar). In 1702 a manumitted female slave, who lost her manumission papers, came before a rabbinic court in Salonika to remove any doubts about her status (Amarillo, Solomon, Kerem Shlomo [Salonika, 1719]Google Scholar, responsum 16); see also the concerns of Solomon de Medina of Salonika (d. 1589) about former male and female slaves who may not have been properly manumitted but converted and married Jews (cited in Asaf, “‘Avadim u-sḥar ‘avadim,” 242, and Schorsch, Jews and Blacks, 78).

36. Kaplan, Yosef, “Yaḥasam shel ha-Yehudim ha-Portugalim la-Yehudim ha-Ashkenazim be-Amsterdam ba-me'ah ha-17,” in Temurot ba-hisṭoryah ha-Yehudit ha-ḥadashah, ed. Almog, S. et al. (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1987), 404–405Google Scholar; idem, “Political Concepts in the World of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam during the Seventeenth Century: The Problem of Exclusion and the Boundaries of Self-Identity” in Menasseh Ben Israel and His World, eds. Kaplan, Yosef, Méchoulan, Henry, and Popkin, Richard (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 58–59Google Scholar. See Schorsch, Jews and Blacks, 192–198. The practice of separate burial has “precedent in the non-Jewish world” (Schorsch, ibid.). Black African slaves in Portugal were often denied Christian burial, and in 1515 a royal decree ordered their bodies to be buried separately in a common grave. It is possible that even freed Black slaves were denied burial with white Christians, for in Barcelona and Valencia free Blacks founded their own welfare associations that provided for burials. See Verlinden, Charles, L'Esclavage dans l'Europe médiévale (Brugge, Belgium: De Tempel, 1955), 1:529–530Google Scholar and 631; Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966)Google Scholar, 53. The practice was carried over to the New World, where Blacks were segregated in some American (white) Protestant cemeteries from colonial times until the Civil War; see Reimers, David, White Protestantism and the Negro (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, 16.

37. Sefer ha-shetarot, ed. Simḥa Asaf, 27–28, # 7; Gulak, Asher, Oẓar ha-sheṭarot ha-nehugim be-Yisra'el (Jerusalem: Defus ha-poʿalim, 1926)Google Scholar, 356; Wertheimer, Solomon A. and Wertheimer, Abraham J., Kitvei yad ha-genizah: ginze Yerushalayim (Jerusalem, 1981)Google Scholar, 88 and see Introduction, 48. The peoples mentioned in the formulary as those commonly sold as slaves generally correspond to Arabic slave classification. See, for example, Ibn Buṭlān cited in Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, 56. In the formulas for slave-sale contracts recorded in Sefer ha-ʾitur (sec. Mekhirat ʿavadim) and Maḥzor vitry (sec. 599, ed. Horowitz [Nurenberg: Y. Bulka, 1923], 792–793) the ethnic identification of the slave is not mentioned.

38. Popovic's book, The Revolt of African Slaves, is devoted to a description and social-historical analysis of the third revolt. See also Nöldeke, Theodor, Sketches from Eastern History (London: A. and C. Black, 1892), 174–175Google Scholar; especially the chapter on the rebellion, 146–175, based on the accounts of Ṭabarī and Masʿūdī. A more recent discussion of the Zanj revolts is found in Ashtor, Eliyahu, A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 115–121Google Scholar.

39. Nöldeke, Sketches,155–160. See also Talhami, “The Zanj Rebellion,” 456–457 on the devastation of Basra (“the most brutal uprising in the history of the ʿAbbasid Empire”).

40. Popovic, The Revolt, 23.

41. Y. Talib based on a contribution by Samir, F., “The African Diaspora in Asia,” in General History of Africa, eds. Fasi, Muḥammad El and Hrbek, Ivan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 3:729Google Scholar.

42. See n. 7 above.

43. Popovic, The Revolt, 58; Ashtor, A Social and Economic History, 119. Not that the Zanj didn't practice slavery themselves, for after conquering a city they would take spoils including women and children (Popovic, The Revolt, 58, 94, 95, 97, 115, 119), and they also took free Arab women and auctioned them off among themselves as slaves and concubines (Talhami, “The Zanj Rebellion,” 456; Popovic, The Revolt, 131).

44. Lewis, Bernard, The Arabs in History (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 105. Popovic, The Revolt, 51–53, 138Google Scholar. Also Black deserters from the Caliph's army joined the rebels, as some poor peasants and Bedouin probably did (Popovic, 137). But cf. Ashtor, A Social and Economic History, 119–121. According to several scholars the rebellion was a class revolt, not a race revolt; see Popovic, 152–153 and 141 n. 12. For a discussion of the revolt and its causes (economic, not racial), see Shaban, Muhammad A., Islamic History: A New Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 2:99–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, ‘Avadim 8:12 (ed. Kafaḥ, 15) mentions the phenomenon of slaves who fled their masters and joined armies (hipil ‘aẓmo la-geyasot).

45. Wansbrough, John, “Africa and Arab Geographers,” in Language and History in Africa, ed. Dalby, David (London: Africana, 1970)Google Scholar, 98; see also Lewis, The Arabs in History, 103–106. According to Talhami, “The Zanj Rebellion,” 455–457, the revolt included semi-liberated slaves, some white slaves, some peasants, and some Bedouin.

46. Beachey, The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa (New York: Barnes & Noble Books), 264 n. 20Google Scholar.

47. Nöldeke, Sketches, 174; Popovic, The Revolt, 103–104, 115.

48. Oseni, Zakariyah I., “The Revolt of Black Slaves in Iraq under the ʿAbbāsid Administration in 869–883 C.E.,” Hamdard Islamicus 12 no. 2 (1989): 61Google Scholar. See also Popovic, The Revolt, 152.

49. Asaf, “‘Avadim u-sḥar ‘avadim,” 244.

50. Urbach, “Laws regarding Slavery,” 56–59, quote on 59.

51. Ibid., 91, with reference to B. Kiddushin 70b.

52. Patterson, Orlando, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar, 58. See also Davis, David Brion, Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 8Google Scholar.

53. ūdī, Masʿ, Murūj al-dhahab, ed. Pellat, Charles (Beirut: al-Jāmi‘ah al-Lubnānīyah, 1966)Google Scholar, 1:92, quoted in Lewis, Race and Slavery, 93.

54. Al-Shifāʾ : al-Ilāhiyyāt, eds. Anawati, G. C. et al. (Cairo: Organisation Générale des Imprimeries Gouvernementales, 1960)Google Scholar, 2:453; “Healing: Metaphysics,” trans. Marmura, Michael E., in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, eds. Lerner, Ralph and Mahdi, Muhsin (Glencoe IL: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963)Google Scholar, 108. In translating “Zinjis” (Zanj) here as black Africans in general, rather than in its more restricted meaning of the people from eastern Africa, I follow Harvey, Steven, “A New Islamic Source of the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Maimonidean Studies 2, ed. Hyman, Arthur (New York: The Michael Scharf Publication Trust of Yeshiva University Press, 1991)Google ScholarPubMed, 41; Rosenthal, Erwin I. J. (“negroes”), Political Thought in Medieval Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 155; and Horten, Max, Die Metaphysik Avicennas (Halle: R. Haupt, 1907)Google Scholar, 680. See also above at nn. 11 and 12.

55. Prolégomènes d'Ebn Khaldoun, Muqaddimat Ibn Khaldūn, ed. Quatremère, Etienne (Paris: Didot)Google Scholar, 1:269; translation of Issawi, Charles, An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections from the Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (London: John Murray, 1950)Google Scholar, 98. Rosenthal, Franz, The Muqaddimah (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958)Google Scholar, 1:301, translates: “[T]he Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery….” See Lewis, Race and Color in Islam (New York: Harper & Row, 1970)Google Scholar, 38, and for further bibliographic information, Race and Slavery, 122 n. 15. Rotter, Gernot, Die Stellung des Negers in der islamisch-arabischen Gesellschaft bis zum XVI. Jahrhundert (Bonn: [s.n.], 1967)Google Scholar, 159, mentions Samawʾal al-Israʾīlī, a 12th-century Jewish convert to Islam, (and similarly Amshāṭī) as claiming that the Nubians are slaves by nature.

56. Lewis, Race and Slavery, 95, 98.

57. Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery, 56, 125–126 n. 10; Lewis, “The Crows of the Arabs,” in “Race,” Writing, and Difference, eds. Gates, Henry L. and Appiah, Kwame A. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986)Google Scholar, 112; Goitein, S. D., “Slaves and Slavegirls in the Cairo Geniza Records,” Arabica 9 (1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 2 n. 3, 8; Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 1:131.

58. A. J. Wensinck, Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. khādim.

59. Thomas, Bertram, The Kumzari Dialect of The Shihuh Tribe, Arabia (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1980)Google Scholar, 48. My thanks to Sol Cohen for this reference.

60. Yūsuf F. Hasan, The Arabs and the Sudan: From the Seventh to the Early Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967), 8.

61. Mishneh Torah, Matenot ʿaniyim 10:17 (ed. Kafaḥ, 15). On “the descendants of Ham” (zera‘ ḥam, bnei ḥam, and Arabic banū ḥām), meaning ‘black African,’ see Goldenberg, Curse of Ham, 136. According to Goitein, the most common slave-girls mentioned in the Geniza documents are Nubians (Mediterranean Society, 1:137–138).

62. Segal, A History of the Jews of Cochin, 25–26.

63. Cohen, Robert, Jews in Another Environment: Surinam in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 156–163Google Scholar.

64. In general, on attitudes toward Blacks in the Muslim world, see Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East and Gernot Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers. One example will serve as an illustration. Ibn al-Faqīh al-Hamadānī, writing around 902/3 in Iraq, said that Blacks are “overdone in the womb until they are burned, so that the child comes out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the Zanj, the Ethiopians, and other blacks who resemble them,” to which Lewis remarks, “Such ideas appear to have been current at the time” (46). By the 9th century in the Muslim Near East “there existed prejudices and stereotypes, in which the African was seen as relatively inferior to the non-African” (Bacharach, Jere L., “African Military Slaves in the Medieval Middle East: The Cases of Iraq (869–955) and Egypt (868–1171),” International Journal of Middle East Studies 13 [1981]Google Scholar: 492 n. 4). See also al-Azmeh, Aziz, “Barbarians in Arab Eyes,” Past and Present: Studies in the History of Civilization 134 (1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 8, 9, 11, 13, and several studies by Hunwick, John: “Black Africans in the Islamic World: An Understudied Dimension of the Black Diaspora,” Tarikh 5 no. 4 (1978)Google Scholar: 35; West Africa and the Arab World (Accra: Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1991)Google Scholar, 11, 13; “Black Slaves in the Mediterranean World: Introduction to a Neglected Aspect of the African Diaspora,” Slavery and Abolition 13 (1992)Google Scholar: 6, 31; “Islamic Law and Politics over Race and Slavery in North and West Africa (16th-19th Century),” in Slavery in the Islamic Middle East, ed. Marmon, Shaun E. (Princeton: M. Wiener, 1999)Google Scholar, 57. The collection by Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, contains a number of relevant quotations; see especially 83, 132–133, 130, 149, 186, 200, 205–206, 211, 213–214, 321–322. For anti-Black sentiment in Iranian literature, see Southgate, Minoo, “The Negative Images of Blacks in Some Medieval Iranian Writings,” Iranian Studies 17 (1984): 3–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “Blacks are frequently pictured as ugly and distorted, intellectually inferior, remote from civilization, excessively merry, sexually unbridled, and easily affected by music and wine. In addition, some sources depict blacks as evil cannibals and heathens who defy God and Islam” (4).

65. Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, 88.

66. Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, 31.

67. [1] The names 'Ασουάδα (feminine) and אסוד (Aswad), both meaning ‘Black’, are recorded on Jewish tombstones of the late 1st century BCE to early 1st century C.E.; see Horbury, William and Noy, David, Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 154–55Google Scholar, # 83. If not nicknames, Asouda and Aswad may indicate black African origins. Also an ossuary from Jerusalem is possibly inscribed [N]iger; see Rahmani, L.Y., A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994)Google Scholar, 199, # 565. [2] If David Rosenthal's reconstruction of Y. Berakhot 2:6, 5b (Tarbiẓ 60 [1991] 439–441) is correct, a Zanj by the name of Benjamin not only was a convert (or a descendant of converts) to Judaism, but he figured as a participant in talmudic discussions, transmitting a rabbinic tradition. Rosenthal reconstructs “Benjamin Zangai” from “Benjamin gnzkyyh” by metathesis. Another mention of Zanj in rabbinic texts is found in a variant reading to B. Kiddishin 70b; see B. M. Lewin Oẓar ha-Geonim, 9:174–175, ad loc. Note also the inclusion of the Zanj in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and Neofiti margin to Gen. 10:7. Krauss, Samuel, “Die biblische Völkertafel im Talmud, Midrasch und Targum,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 3 (1895)Google Scholar: 57 emended dngʾy in the Targum to 1 Chron. 1:9 to zngʾy, i.e. Zanj, but could dngʾy be Dinka? [3] The Jewish liturgical poet Yannai mentions converts from among the descendants of Ham, which may refer to black Africans. The piyyut is in Rabinowitz, Zvi M., Maḥzor piyyutei Rabi Yannai (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1985), 1:105–106Google Scholar, which see for further literature, and see now Lieber, Laura, Yannai on Genesis: An Invitation to Piyyut (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2010), 362–363Google Scholar, 367. Zulay, Menahem, “Meḥkere Yannai,” Yedi‘ot ha-Makhon le-ḥeḳer ha-shirah ha-‘ivrit (Berlin, 1936), 2:268–269Google Scholar, thinks that the reference is to contemporary converts who may have been Egyptians, and Saul Lieberman cites the case of the known conversion of a monk from Mt. Sinai, who, he thinks, might have been Egyptian: Lieberman, Saul, “Ḥazanut Yannai,” Sinai 2 (1939)Google Scholar: 244, reproduced in Lieberman, S., Meḥkarim be-torat Ereẓ Yisrael, ed. Rosenthal, David (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991)Google Scholar, 146, but see Rabinowitz, Zvi Meyer, Halakhah ve-agadah be-fiyutei Yannai (Tel Aviv: Ḳeren Aleksander Kohuṭ, 1965), 79–80Google Scholar n. 7. It is not impossible, nevertheless, that descendants of Ham may have included black Africans. Yannai's provenance is the Land of Israel; his dates are uncertain, some putting him in the 4–5th centuries, others in the 6–7th centuries. [4] A 12th-century will from Cairo records the manumission of two slave-girls, one of whom was apparently a black African. In the will, the owner stipulated that upon her death the slaves were to be manumitted, given ownership to a quarter of the house (i.e. their income would be provided from such ownership), and allowed to live in the half of the house that their mistress had owned on condition that they remain Jewish: Moshe Gil, Be-malkhut yishma'el, 1:607, sec. 339. [5] A 16th-century genizah document mentions a “Rabbi Isaac the Ethiopian (al-ḥabashi)” who was the beadle (shamash) in a synagogue: MS Jewish Theological Seminary, ENA ns 54.17. (I am indebted to Sol Cohen for bringing this document to my attention.) Part of the date is missing, but based on what remains, as well as the paleography, Moshe Gil (oral communication) dates it to 1544. [6] The Qadi's court archives of Ottoman Jerusalem dated 1559 record a Jew married to a Black woman (al-ḥabashiya), for which see Cohen, Amnon, A World Within: Jewish Life as Reflected in Muslim Court Documents from the Sijill of Jerusalem (XVIth Century) (Philadelphia: Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1994)Google Scholar, 1:119, 2:211. [7] Blacks and mulattos born of a couple married according to Jewish law were not excluded from the Jewish cemetery or from community functions in Amsterdam (Kaplan, “Political Concepts in the World of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam,” 59), and three graves of Blacks were found in the Jewish cemetery at Montjuich (Barcelona) dated between 1091–1391, when the cemetery was used (Antoniao Prevosti, “Estudio tipológico de los restos humanos hallados en la necrópolis judaica de Montjuich (Barcelon),” Sefarad 11 [1951] 82). [8] Lastly, note that David Kimḥi (d. 1235) had no problem assuming that the “Kushite” in David's army (2 Samuel 18:21) might have been a Nubian convert to Judaism, for which see his Commentary to 2 Samuel 18:21.

68. See Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East. To acknowledge the existence of racist sentiment is not to deny the halakhic basis of the concerns regarding former slaves. To say, therefore, that “it must have been pure racial prejudice which connected Negro slaves with the Canaanite tribes” (Wacholder, Historia Judaica 18 [1956]Google Scholar: 102): is a gross simplification that overlooks the evidence presented in this essay.

69. Miskawayh, Tahdhīb al-Akhlāq, ed. Zurayk, C. K. (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1966)Google Scholar, 69; the quotation is from Zurayk's English translation of Miskawayh, The Refinement of Character (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1968)Google Scholar, 61; similarly at p. 47 (Arabic) and p. 42 (English). For Miskawayh as Maimonides' source, see Harvey, Steven, “A New Islamic Source of the Guide of the Perplexed,” Maimonidean Studies 2 (1991): 31–47Google Scholar. For the translation of al-sūdān in Maimonides and zanj in Miskawayh, see above, n. 12. For a discussion of this Maimonidean passage within the context of Muslim thought, see David Goldenberg, “The Development of the Idea of Race” (above, n. 12), 566–568.