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The Negative Images of Blacks In Some Medieval Iranian Writings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Minoo Southgate
Minoo Southgate*
Affiliation:
Baruch College, City University of New York
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Extract

In 1961, in my last year of high school in Tehran, I wrote two emotional poems inspired by current black liberation movements in Africa and America. Like most Iranians, I did not suspect that the Middle East was as guilty of racism against blacks as Europe and America were. Ironically, it was in New York, in the late ‘60s, that I came across medieval Iranian sources showing racism against blacks. I decided then to do a paper on the subject, but resisted the project for a decade. In November 1979, when Khomeini ordered the release of all blacks among the American hostages “because [blacks] are oppressed by American society” (The New York Times, November 19, 1979, A:12), I was finally prompted to undertake the present study, to set the record straight.

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Articles
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Iranian Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , Winter 1984 , pp. 3 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1984

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Footnotes

Complete publication data are footnoted the first time each source is cited. When the source is mentioned again, whenever possible only author or title and page numbers are cited in the text of the paper.

References

Notes

1. See Ali Akbar Dihkhuda, Lughatnamah, ed. Muhammad Mu'in and Ja'far Shahidi (Tehran: 1325/1946-1357/1979), under terms listed in this paragraph.

2. Cahen, Claude, “Tribes, Cities, and Social Organization,” Cambridge History of Iran, ed. Frye, R. N., IV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 328.Google Scholar

3. Herodotus, trans. Cary, Henry (Freeport, N.Y.: New World Books, 1972), III, 17–27.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., IV, 43.

5. Iqtidari, Ahmad, Asar-i shahrha-yi bastani-yi savahil va jazayir-i Khalij-i Fars va Darya-yi ‘Umman, Intisharat-i Anjuman-i Asar-i Milli, No. 65 (Tehran, 1348/1970), p. 895.Google Scholar

6. Mathew, Gervase, “The East African Coast until the Coming of the Portugese,” History of East Africa, ed. Oliver, Roland and Mathew, Gervase (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 99.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 101.

8. The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, trans. and ed. Huntingfort, G. W. B. (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1980), p. 28.Google Scholar See also Gervase Mathew, pp. 94-95, and Reusch, Richard, History of East Africa (New York: Ungar, 1961), pp. 44–49.Google Scholar

9. Richard Reusch, pp. 49. and 33. According to Gervase Mathew (p. 97), “the group of coins now in the Beit al-Amani Museum at Zanzibar…. [includes] five Parthian and Sassanian pieces from the mint at Ctesiphon, of which the latest is one of Ardashir I (A.D. 212-41)….”

10. See Richard Reusch, pp. 91-215. Gervase Mathew (pp. 102-106) doubts the validity of the evidence cited by Reusch.

11. Richard Reusch, p. 107.

12. Lughatnamah, s.v. asir, especially pp. 2603-04. Dihkhuda's sources are Ibn Athir, Maqrizi, and al-Mas'udi. See also Lughatnamah, s.v. ghulam, especially pp. 270-75.

13. According to al-Rawandi's Rahat al-sudur (1202/3), 2,000 ghulams stood before Alp Arslan when he was stabbed by an enemy he had taken captive. See Rahat al-sudur wa ayat al-surur (Tehran: Iqbal, 1921), p. 121.Google Scholar

14. Mottahedeh, Roy, “The Abbasid Caliphate in Iran,” Cambridge History of Iran, IV, p. 75.Google Scholar For slaves in the courts and armies of the caliphs see also Dihkhuda, Lughatnamah, s.v. ghulam, especially p. 272.

15. Frye, R. N., “The Samanids,” Cambridge History of Iran, IV, p. 150.Google Scholar See also Lughatnamah, s.v. ghulam, pp. 273-74, on the training of palace slaves. Some palace slaves conspired or rebelled against their masters. Many palace ghulams were handsome boys or youths used in homosexual relations.

16. R. N. Frye, pp. 143-44.

17. Siyasatnamah, ed. Mudarrisi Chahardihi, M. (Tehran: Haydari, 1343/1957)Google Scholar; trans. Drake, Hubert, The Book of Government or Rules for Kings: The Siyasat-nama or Siyar al-Maluk (London: Routledge, 1960).Google Scholar See chapters 12, 27, 30, 36.

18. R. N. Frye, p. 150.

19. Bosworth, C. B., “The Early Ghaznavids,” Cambridge History of Iran, IV, 179–80.Google Scholar

20. For slave prices, see Mez, Adam, The Renaissance of Islam, trans. Bukhsh, Salahuddin Khuda and Margoliouth, D. S. (Beirut: United Publishers, 1937), pp. 157–58.Google Scholar

21. Kai Ka'us b. Iskandar, The Nasihat-Nama Known as Qabus-Nama, ed. Badwi, Amin Abdulmagid (Tehran: Ibn-i Sina, 1963), pp. 94–102Google Scholar; trans. Levy, Reuben, A Mirror for Princes: The Qabus Nama (London: Cresset, 1951), pp. 99–108.Google Scholar All quotations are from the translation.

22. Qabusnamah, p. 94; trans, p. 99. See also Butlan's, Ibn Risala fi sira al-raqiq wa taqlib al-'abiq, ed. Harun, Abdal Salam in Nawadir al-makhtutat (Cairo, 1373/1954).Google Scholar A partial translation of this treatise is provided by Adam Mez, The Renaissance of Islam, pp. 160-62. Ibn Butlan's eleventh-century treatise, says Mez, “combines with theory a great deal of ancient practical experiences in the traffic of slaves.”

23. A slave who makes sea voyages for his master and reaps him great profit is the hero of “Dastan-i ghulam-i bazargan” in Marzuban b. Rustam b. Sharwin, Marzubannamah, ed. Qazwini, M. (Leiden: Brill, n.d.), pp. 37–45.Google Scholar Translation, The Tales of Marzuban, Levy, Reuben (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), pp. 37–45.Google Scholar

24. For the training of musician slaves see Adam Mez, pp. 157-58.

25. The author contradicts himself in his chapter “On Marrying a Wife,” where he says, “You must realize that a woman cannot steadfastly resist a man, however old and ugly he may be; so admit no male slave into the women's apartment even though he is black, old and ugly” (p. 111; trans, p. 118.

26. The Quran encourages the humane treatment of slaves and makes the emancipation of slaves a meritorious act. See R. Brunschevig's article s.v. ‘Abd in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960).Google Scholar For slavery in Islam see Levy, Reuben, The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 60–90Google Scholar; and Adam Mez, The Renaissance of Islam, pp. 156-69. For racism against blacks among Muslims see Lewis, Bernard, Race and Color in Islam (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).Google Scholar

27. See chapter entitled “Concerning the Government of Servants and Slaves,” in Akhlaq-i Nasiri (Punjab: University Press, 1952), pp. 233–37.Google Scholar Translation, The Nasirean Ethics, Wickens, G. M. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), pp. 181–84.Google Scholar All quotations are from the translation.

28. Lambton, A. S. K., “The Internal Structure of the Saljuq Empire,” Cambridge History of Iran, ed. Boyle, J. A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), V, 225.Google Scholar

29. The African Presence in Asia (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971), pp. 118–19.Google Scholar

30. Race and Color in Islam, pp. 96 ff.

31. Ali Akbar Dihkhuda, Lughatnamah, s.v. Zangi, p. 511, col. 2. The word zanj is “of undetermined origin,” according to Bernard Lewis, p. 30. Various scholars, however, have thought it to be of Persian, Arabic, Ethiopian, Malayan, or Swahili origin. For a summary of scholarly opinions regarding the origin of Zanj see Richard Reusch, pp. 115-19.

32. Lughatnamah, s.v. Zangi, p. 512, cols. 2 and 3.

33. Ali Akbar Dihkhuda, Amsal va hikam (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1339/1960), p. 1468, 1. 23. See also p. 1435, 11. 9-10. (This book is in four volumes, but pages are numbered consecutively from one volume to the next. In the references, therefore, volume numbers have been omitted.)

34. See Snowden, Frank M., Before Color Prejudice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 82.Google Scholar Snowden observes that “people in general…according to research on color symbolism, have a basic tendency to equate blackness with evil and white with goodness.”

35. For play on rusiyah see Nizam al-Din Ilyas Nizami, Sharafnamah, ed. Dastgirdi, Vahid (Tehran: Armaghan, 1316/1937), p. 115.Google Scholar

36. See, for example, Shahnamah-yi Firdawsi, ed. Bertels, E. (Moscow, 1962), II, p. 99Google Scholar, 1. 927.

37. Kulliyat-i Sa'di, ed. Muhammad ‘Ali Furughi (Tehran: Javidan, n.d.), pp. 354-55; trans. Wickens, G. M., Morals Pointed and Tales Adorned: The Bustan of Sa'di (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), p. 182Google Scholar, 11. 3045-46.

38. Divan-i Ash'ar, ed. Taqavi, N. (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1348/1970), pp. 38Google Scholar and 483.

39. Jalal al-Din Rumi, Masnavi-yi ma'navi, based on the Leiden 1925-33 edition of Reynold A. Nicolson (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1350/1972). Trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (London: Luzac and Company, 1977), V, 11. 817-19. Book and line numbers in the Persian text and the translation correspond. Words in parentheses in the quotations are Nicholson's.

40. Virtuous blacks also turn white in The Arabian Nights, e.g., Night 467 and Night 468. For white evil-doers punished by blackness see Bernard Lewis, p. 22, n. 39.

41. This version is by twelfth-century poet Sana'i, quoted in Amsal va hikam, p. 2032, 11. 16-19. The anecdote is alluded to in the Masnavi, IV, 11. 2490-99. See also the Masnavi, VI, 1. 4535.

42. For castration of slaves see Bernard Lewis, pp. 84-87, and The Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Abd, p. 33.

43. al-Tarsusi, Abu Tahir Muhammad, Darabnamah-yi Tarsusi, 2 vols., ed. Zafa, Z., Persian Texts Series, Nos. 23, 36 (Tehran: 1344/1965, 1346/1968), II, 125–26.Google Scholar

44. Other unflattering descriptions of blacks in Darabnamah are found in I, 72, 96, 125, 355 and II, 129, 256, 257.

45. “Gulistan,” Kulliyat-i Sa'di, p. 106. Trans. Rahetsak, Edward, The Gulistan or Rose Garden of Sa'di (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), p. 111.Google Scholar For a similar description see “Bustan,” Kulliyat-i sa'di, p. 182.

46. Ed. Iraj Afshar, Persian Texts Series, No. 17 (Tehran, 1343/1964), pp. 485-86. Abridged trans. Southgate, Minoo S., Iskandarnamah: A Persian Medieval Alexander Romance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).Google Scholar All references are to the original.

47. In Before Color Prejudice, pp. 44-46, Frank M. Snowden argues that the Old Testament shows no color prejudice against blacks.

48. al-Qazwini, Zakariya Muhammad, Athar al-bilad wa akhbar al-'ibad (Beiruth, 1960), p. 22.Google Scholar

49. Richard Reusch, History of East Africa, pp. 54-56.

50. Muruj al-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawhar, ed. de Meynard, Barbier and de Courteille, Pavet (Beiruth: Lebanese University Press, 1966), II, 110.Google Scholar Trans. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille, Les Prairies D'or, Societe asiatique, no. 19 (Paris, 1965), II, 321. These sources, as well as al-Mas'udi's Annales and Al-Tanbih wa-al-ishraf (Beiruth: Maktibat al-Muthanna, 1938) were drawn upon by most subsequent Islamic geographers.

51. In Muslim sources, Ethiopians are treated better than other blacks “for the protection which their king had given the first followers of the Prophet.” See Goldziher, Ignaz, Muslim Studies, ed. Stern, S. M. (Chicago: Aldine, 1967), I, 74–75Google Scholar; Dihkhuda, Lughatnamah, s.v. Bilal; Qabusnamah, p. 99, trans., p. 105; and Marzubannamah, text and trans., p. 166.

52. A Treatise on the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna, trans. Cameron Gruner, O. (London: Luzac and Company, 1930), p. 187.Google Scholar For a similar environment theory in classical Greek and Roman sources see Frank M. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice, pp. 7-9; 50-51; 85-87.

53. Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, p. 29.

54. Hudud al-'alam min al-mashriq ila al-maghrib, ed. Sutudah, Manuchihr (Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1340/1967), p. 195.Google Scholar Trans. Minorsky, V., The Regions of the World (London: Luzac and Company, 1937), p. 163.Google Scholar

55. Quoted in the Muqaddimah, trans. Rosenthal, Franz, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), I, 171.Google Scholar

56. Galen's ten attributes of the Zanj are “black skin, frizzy hair, a flat nose, thick lips, furrowed hands and feet, smelly skin, great merriment, weakness of intelligence, pointed teeth, and a long penis.” Al-Qazwini omits the last two. In Muruj al-dhahab, al-Mas'udi quotes Galen's list, adding that “Galen says… merriment dominates the black man because of his defective brain, whence also the weakness of his intelligence.” The last quotation is from Bernard Lewis, p. 34.

57. Safarnamah, ed. Nadir Vazinpur (Tehran: Kitabha-yi Jibi, 1350/1972), p. 58. See also Reuben Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, p. 252.

58. Alberuni's India, ed. and trans. Sachau, Edward C. (Dehli: S. Chand and Company, 1964), p. 252.Google Scholar

59. Persian text and translation The Rawdat't-Taslim Commonly Called Tasawwurat, ed. Ivanow, W. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1950), p. 52Google Scholar; trans, pp. 57-58. On occasion the Muslims’ feeling of superiority blinded them to the various aspects of African civilization. Fourteenthcentury traveler Ibn Battuta, for example, missed the significance of the ritual meal of pounded millet, honey, and milk he was offered in Awaltan. “Was it for this that the black invited us?” he says contemptuously. “Yes,” he is told, “and it is in their opinion the highest form of hospitality.” Elsewhere, ignorant of protocol, Ibn Battuta thinks a black deputy is contemptuous of whites because the deputy speaks to white merchants through an interpreter, even though he understands the merchants’ language. See Ibn Battuta's Travels in Asia and Africa: 1325-54, selected and translated Gibb, H. A. R. (London: Routledge, 1929), p. 320Google Scholar, n. 2.

60. For Firdawsi's story of Alexander see the Shahnamah-yi Firdawsi, ed. M. N. ‘Usmanuf (Moscow, 1967-68), VI, 381-406; VII, 6-112. The Habash episode occurs in VII, 70-71. Trans. Warner, Arthur George and Warner, Edmond, The Shahnama of Firdausi (London, 1905-25), VI, 29–190Google Scholar; Habash episode: p. 149.

61. Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies, I, 54.

62. Ptolemaei geographia, ed. C. Muller, iv, section 8, 2. Cf. section 17, cited in Roland Oliver and Gervase Mathew, eds., History of East Africa, p. 96. Only some African tribes practiced cannibalism. See Richard Reusch, p. 135.

63. See Adam Mez, pp. 510-11.

64. Annales, ed. M. J. De Goeje, 3rd series, vol. 7, p. 2053, under the year 269 of the hijra.

65. Ibn Battuta's Travels in Asia and Africa, p. 332.

66. Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Qazwini, ‘Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa ghara'ib al-mawjudat (Gottingen, 1849), I, 109.Google Scholar

67. Here Darab's ship is driven to the island, and he is invited to a feast with a merchant and a number of white slaves. The cannibals grab two of these slaves, roast and bring them to the feast, where they are eaten with great relish (I, 123 ff.). Another episode of cannibalism occurs in the course of Alexander's adventures among the Zanj (II, 416-19). Darahnamah attributes the origin of cannibalism to Adam's third son, who was in love with his own sister and killed and ate her when she was given in marriage to another man (II, 258).

68. See Southgate, Minoo S., “Portrait of Alexander in Persian Alexander-Romances of the Islamic Era,” JAOS, Vol. 97, No. 3 (July-September 1977), pp. 78–81.Google Scholar

69. Cf. Ibn Battuta's account of Abu al-Mawahib (The Father of Gifts), the Muslim Sultan of Kilwa, who “was given to razzias upon the land of the Zunuj; he raided them and captured booty. He used to set aside one fifth of it, which he spent in the ways indicated in the book of God the Exalted,” Ibn Battuta in Black Africa, trans. Hamdun, Said and King, Noel (London: Rex Collings, 1975), p. 20.Google Scholar

70. For the mid-eighth-century slave hunting expeditions of Arabian Shaykh Sulaiman and Shaykh Sa'id, see Richard Reusch, p. 76. In her title short story in Shahri chun bihisht, contemporary Iranian writer Simin Danishvar poignantly depicts the story of an African girl kidnapped by an Arab slave merchant and shipped to Shiraz, where she and her descendants become house slaves. Trans. Southgate, Minoo, “A Land Like Paradise,” Modern Persian Short Stories (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1980).Google Scholar

71. It is possible that the Zanj rebellion (869-83) contributed to this warlike image. It should be noted, however, that the Zanj rebellion was led by a Persian and was intended to slacken the Caliph's hold on Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf area, a goal shared by Iranian movements against Arab colonization. See Ahmad Iqtidari, Asar-i Shahrha…, pp. 898-99, and Noldeke, Theodore, Sketches from Eastern History, trans. Black, John Sutherland (Beirut: Khayats, 1963), pp. 146–75.Google Scholar

72. For allusions to the gaiety of the Zanj in Persian literature see Dihkhuda, Lughatnamah, s.v. Zangi-mizaj.

73. Modern scholar B. Krumm uses the notion of the Zanj's gaiety to explain that the origin of the word zanj is the Persian word zang (a bell), used as a “name for an always gay person. Since the Negroes are always cheerful, have a real passion for dancing, have small bells on their feet during the dancing for the purpose of marking the time better….this name of Zanj was used to designate their country as a country of the always gay and dancing population.” From “Worter und Wortformen orientalischen Ursprungs im Suaheli,” quoted in Richard Reusch, p. 117.

74. From Khusraw va Shirin, quoted in sharafnamah, p. 95, n. 5.

75. Iqbalnamah ya khiradnamah, ed. V. Dastgirdi (Tehran: Ibn-i Sina, 1335/1956), pp. 76-78. According to Arab Christian physician Ibn Butlan “If a Zanj were to fall from heaven to earth he would beat time as he goes (sic) down,” Risala fi shira al-raqiq, p. 374, quoted by Bernard Lewis, p. 99.

76. Lughatnamah, s.v. Zangi, p. 512, col. 2.

77. This anxiety is most clearly revealed in the Arabian Nights, where in the opening episode King Shahryar discovers “the Queen, his wife, asleep in his own carpetbed, embracing with both arms a black cook of loathsome aspect and foul with kitchen grease and grime.” (The Book of Thousands Nights and a Night, trans. Richard F. Burton, 13 vols. [Printed by the Burton Club in the U.S.A., n.d.], I, 4.) Thereafter, each night Shahryar admits a virgin to his bed and bars her from possible infidelity by delivering her to the executioner in the morning. One girl, Shahrazad, saves her life by telling the king stories which she leaves unfinished at daybreak and must continue in the evening. Under the circumstances it is perhaps indiscreet of Shahrazad to tell Shahryar several stories in which white husbands are rejected in favor of black slaves. In “The Third Shaykh's Story” (the Second Night), a woman who becomes “enamoured of a black slave” is discovered by her husband, who enchants her into a mule. In the Seventh Night, a queen deserts her husband to visit “a hideous negro slave with his upper lip like the cover of a pot and his lower lip like an open pot….He was to boot a leper and a paralytic…” See also the 39th Night, the “Tale of the First Eunuch, Bukhayt,” II, 49-50.

Burton's note to the opening episode suggests that he himself shared the sexual anxieties reflected in the Nights:

Debauched women prefer negroes on account of the size of their parts. I measured one man in Somali-land who, when quiescent, numbered nearly six inches. This is a characteristic of the negro race…whereas the pure Arab… is below the average of Europe….Moreover, the imposing parts do not increase proportionally during erection; consequently, the deed of kind takes a much longer time and adds greatly to the woman's enjoyment. In my time no honest Hindi Moslem would take his womanfolk to Zanzibar on account of the huge attractions there and thereby offered to them. (I, p. 6, n. 1)

78. See “The Twenty-Second Night,” in Ziya'u'd-din Nakhshabi, Tales of a Parrot, trans, and ed. Simsar, Muhammad A. (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1978), p. 150.Google Scholar This translation is based on a manuscript of Tutinamah at the Cleveland Museum. For an analogue of the tale see “The Twenty-First Night, Thirty-Eighth Tale,” in the fourteenth-century version of ‘Imad ibn Muhammad al-Na'ri, Tutinamah: jawahar al-asmar, Intisharat-i Farhang-i Iran (Tehran, 1352/1974).Google Scholar

79. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. ‘Abd, p. 26.