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“Whosoever says that the Prophet is Black is a Disbeliever”: The Diversification of the Islamic Empire and the Developing Portrayal of Muhammad

Dr Wesley Williams

Lecture given February 7, 2011 at Michigan State University

The academic field of Islamic Studies is of late experiencing a ‘Muhammad

Problem.’ While at one time it was confidently believed that the Arabian prophet was the one founder of a religion that was “born in the full light of history,” more recent historical- , textual- and source-critical study of the Islamic sources upon which this confidence was based has generated significant skepticism. Few specialists today approach the Arabic primary sources for the life of Muhammad and the rise of Islam as straight-forward and reliable historical documents. Not only does the chronological gap between the events and the extant documentary records of these events make credulity difficult, there is also the even more frustrating problematic of divergent material within our sources. Did Muhammad believe that his prophetic call involved an angelophany, a nocturnal appearance of the angel Gabriel to him while in a mountain cave in Mecca? Or did he believe that it began rather with a theophany, a diurnal visual encounter with God himself while he was in a wadi? Was the pre-prophetic Muhammad already a strict monotheist who rejected the worship of the prominent idols in Mecca, or was he, as he is given to confess in one text, “a believer in the religion of his people” and thus an idol venerator? Such divergence of major and minor import can be greatly multiplied and a number of prominent specialists in the field thus dismiss the Islamic historiographic tradition as hopelessly confused and unreliable as sources from which to reconstruct the events and personalities of early Islam. While many researchers, myself included, are less pessimistic, Prof Tilman Nagel, the doyen of Islamic Studies in Germany, is certainly correct in distinguishing a historical Muhammad, whose characteristics we specialists seek to uncover, from the many imagined Muhammads found throughout the pre-Modern Islamic literary corpus, Muhammads whose creation served the needs of various groups, ideologies and trends, political, theological, and cultural. Due to the persistent belief among Western scholars that the religion of Islam can be understood through its origins, Muhammad becomes the lens through which to view the origin of Islam. Without an adequate knowledge of Muhammad – both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars assume – one cannot understand the religion he founded. So the ‘Muhammad Problem’ compels researchers to innovate methodologies enabling us to discern the historical Muhammad from the imagined Muhammads that confront us in the literature.

Despite the presence of and diversity among the imagined Muhammads, there are in fact a number of biographic details of which Western scholars feel pretty certain: Muhammad existed, for example, a few claims to the contrary notwithstanding, and he

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was Arab. The Islamic sources unanimously describe him as a noble or pure Arab from the Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe in Mecca. And let not the popular though mistaken belief in a chronologically and geographically universal Islamic proscription against visually depicting Muhammad mislead us into thinking that the physical appearance of the Prophet was of secondary importance to the early Muslim biographers. On the contrary, there is a wealth of physiognomic detail provided in the sources, such that scholars today feel relatively certain of what Muhammad probably looked liked: slightly above medium height with a broad chest and well-built body, Muhammad, we are told, did not have a pot-belly; that belonged to his famous cousin and son-in-law Ali b. Abi Talib. He had a large head, with only a slightly rounded face. Jet-black, not-quite-curly hair fell over his ears, and he had a long and bushy beard with a clipped moustache. He had a broad brow that did not connect, and when he got angry a vein filled the space between. He had piercing black eyes and long, dark eyelashes. His nose was hooked (aqnā al-irnīn) and he was ruddy-white in complexion. Such detail convinces some Western scholars – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – that an accurate portrait of Muhammad could be confidently produced. Yet it is precisely here where I believe my research finds its most obvious relevance, for it suggests that two of these three certainties might in fact be mutually exclusive.

My latest research involves exploring the impact that the diversification of the pre-modern Muslim community and empire had on the developing Islamic tradition, in particular the literary and visual portrayal of the prophet Muhammad. The ummah Muhammadiyya or community of Muhammad was primarily ethnically Arab. But this Arab empire spread outside of Arabia, integrating and eventually converting to Islam non-Arabs. Both the non-Muslims within the empire as well as the non-Arab converts had a profound impact on the hagiography of Muhammad. My research suggests that non-Arab converts made a distinctive contribution to the Prophet’s physiognomic portrait, both literary and visual. See e.g. these pictorial depictions of the Prophet and some of his companions, among the earliest extant depictions, found in Rashīd al-Din’s 14th century Jāmi‘ al-tawārīkh (“Compendium of Chronicles”). Rashid al-Din was vizier to two successive Mongol rulers of the Ilkhānid dynasty founded by Hulaqu (1256-65), a descendent of Chingiz Khan, and which ruled Persia, Iraq, the Caucasus and Anatolia. It was Hulagu’s great grandson, Ghazan Khan, who would become in 1295 the first Mongol ruler to convert to Islam. After terminating Islam’s second ruling dynasty, the Abbasid caliphate, in 1258, and wanting to establish their legitimacy as successors to great historical dynasties and as heirs to a religious tradition that goes back to the Prophet and beyond him to the biblical prophets, the Ilkhanid Khans created or patronized the creation of manuscripts that would act as a form of state propaganda, bestowing both political and religious legitimacy on the dynasty. One such work is the “Compendium of Chronicles” of Rashid al-Din. In this manuscript are illustrated cycles of the prophet Muhammad’s life based on accounts drawn from the standard Islamic biographical sources.

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Jami' al-Tawarikh, Rashid al-Din (d. 1318)

The Angel Jibril (left) instructing the Prophet Muhammad

The Prophet (center) and some of his Companions at the Ka’ba

Characteristic of all of these depictions is the rather Central Asian look of the Prophet and his companions. In the light of the propagandistic value of this work, this is not hard to comprehend. In this manner the dynasty is legitimized and the former nomads of Central Asia acquire an important place within Islam’s Sacred History.

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Assuming that Muhammad was indeed an Arab from the Hijaz in Western Arabia, the ethnocentrism of these depictions is fairly obvious. Not so much here, at least not at first sight.

Contemporary Iranian Devotional Poster-Portrait of Prophet Muhammad

Here we have an example of modern Iranian Shi’ite popular devotional art.

While it is true that most of the Muslim world has been aniconic with respect to visual depictions of humans, particularly the prophet Muhammad, there has been in India, Afghanistan, Persia and Turkey a courtly tradition of visually depicting the Prophet. Since the time of the Qajar shah Nāṣira’d-Dīn who ruled Persia from (r. 1848-1896), portraits of Muhammad, Ali b. Abi Talib and the Shi’it Imams have been popular in Iran and India as part of a visual culture of devotion. Here we have a devotional portrait poster of Muhammad. Interesting about this devotional art is that the devotees readily admit that the images are not authentic representations. These are rather, as a number of scholars use the term, pseudo-portraits: though they are not authentic

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depictions and are entirely the product of the devotee’s imagination, they depict traits that people are prepared to accept for the represented individual and may even have reason to assume actually characterized that individual. In this case, Muhammad is depicted as a handsome, mature Iranian male. The irony is that this distinctly modern Iranian Muhammad actually has precedents in the Classical Arabic Tradition – in fact it conforms well to the canonical and most popular portrait of Muhammad found in the Arabic literature, and my research suggests that the early canonical Arabic portrait and the modern Iranian devotional one share common sources – among them Persian converts to Islam. Recent research has demonstrated that, while Arabized Persians from Kufa in Iraq and Persianized Arabs in Khurasan were involved in the revolution that toppled Islam’s first caliphal dynasty, the Umayyad Dynasty, in 750 CE, the preponderant element was in fact the Iranian masses. Though it can no longer be said that the Revolution put an end to the distinctly ethnically Arab empire – that will come a little later – the success of the revolution did catalyze a redistribution of ethnic weights within the empire. The group that benefitted the most from this sea change were the Persians, who would come to wield significant political, intellectual, cultural and religious influence. In the process ethnic Arabs became less and less observable in administration and in the various intellectual fields, including the religious sciences, and under the new caliphs these Arabs would even become persona non grata. Though they adopted the faith and language of their conquerors, some Persians were openly contemptuous of the customs and traditions of the Arabs, and this anti-Arab sentiment greatly impacted the Abbasid caliphs who, being mainly sons of non-Arab mothers, were notorious for their infatuation with Persian sedentary, urban culture and their disdain, if you will, for ethnically Arab, nomadic culture. This new philopersian and anti-Arab sentiment, I argue, coupled with the eventual conversion to Islam of the masses of non-Arabs within the empire and the gradually declining visibility of ethnic Arabs, contributed to a general de-arabization of Islamic culture and tradition and more particularly a de-Arabiation of Muhammad in popular and official imagination and representation. Profs Oleg Grabar and Mika Natif suggest that pre-modern portrayals of Muhammad were affected by popular tastes. It thus seems that by the third Islamic century there was little taste for an ethnically Arab prophet who, many references in the literature suggests, may have looked quite different from the imagined Muhammad that we moderns have inherited.

In that regard let us turn to another quite suggestive image. In the 14th century illuminated manuscript, the Luttrell Psalter, there is a rather fascinating image of a joust between the Crusader Richard the Lionheart and the Muslim sultan Saladin.

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Luttrell Psalter, Diocese of Lincoln, c. 1325-35. British Library, London

Conforming to Christian polemical convention of the Middle Ages, the Muslim sultan is depicted dark-blue with a grotesque physiognomy, characteristics that associate him and the Muslims, in European Christian imagination, with the demonic realm. Particularly arresting about this depiction is the shield carried by Saladin: engraved on it is the image of the head of a black man. His features are likewise distorted, yet his realistic African-like features are conspicuous (e.g. while Saladin’s complexion is an unrealistic blue, the head on the shield is a realistic dark brown with what appears to be curly hair).

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Who is this black man on Saladin’s shield supposed to be? Prof. Debra Higgs Strickland, who has studied the depiction of Muslims in this Christian literature and iconography, suggests that it is the image of the prophet Muhammad. It is the case that, at least in Christian literary depictions of the Muslims, it was the latter’s practice to carry into battle images of Muhammad on their shield or as a standard. This identification is also consistent with the fact that in this Christian literature and iconography the Muslims are routinely depicted as black-skinned, as in this miniature from Charles V’s Grandes chroniques de France depicting Sir Roland and his knights charging against black-skinned though handsome Saracens at the famous Battle of Roncesvalles (Ronses – veils) in 778.

Sir Roland and Saracens. Miniature from Charles V’s, Grandes chroniques de France (ca. 1370s)

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While these pro-Crusader accounts went out of their way to misrepresent their Muslim enemy, it is not impossible that some Christians encountered such images of the prophet of Islam among some Muslims. The question here is not ‘How could Muslims have violated the Islamic proscription against depicting the Prophet?’ – we have seen that at this time some Muslims were depicting him visually and some continued to do so till this very day. Rather, in the light of the physiognomic portrait canonized in both Islamic tradition and Western scholarship, the question that imposes itself is: “How could Muslims have possibly depicted the Prophet as black”.

While our inclination is to dismiss this imagery as a pro-Crusader polemical representation, and imbued with Christian polemical symbolism it certainly is! – my research indicates that there was in fact a genuinely Muslim tradition of depicting Muhammad as a black-skinned Arab. One is alerted to the possibility that such might be the case while reading through a profoundly important text in regards the development of the hagiography of Muhammad: this is the famous biography of Muhammad, ash-Shifā of the great Andalusian scholar al-Qā∙ī ‘Iyā∙ (d. 1149). The full title of his biography translates: “The Remedy Concerning the Determination of the Just Merits of the Chosen,” i.e. Muhammad. Al-Qā∙ī ‘Iyā∙ address the controversies of his day regarding the Prophet and remedies them. Along with clarifying Muhammad’s perfect internal and external qualities as he imagined these to be, al-Qadi enumerates the judgments against those – Muslim and non-Muslim – who affirm imperfections for God’s chosen Prophet. For example, twice al-Qadi reports the judgment that, “Whoever says that the Prophet is black should be killed. The Prophet was not black”. Other versions of this fatwa announce that such a one who makes this claim is disbeliever. This declaration of course raises its own set of questions, like: Why would such a fatwa even be necessary except there was in circulation among Muslims the claim that the Prophet was black? On what was such a claim based? And why would describing Muhammad as black, whatever its historical merits, be so offensive as to warrant death or cancel one’s Islam?

What I discovered was that al-Qadi was not speaking in the abstract or purely hypothetically, but rather he was speaking to a genuine Arabic tradition, clearly still alive in his day, according to which Muhammad was not ruddy-white but had a dark-brown complexion that was yet iridescent. This was in no way a marginal tradition but was supported by reports found in the canonical collection of hadith (hadith being reports about the Prophet on the authority of his companions) as well as in the biographical literature that go back to some of the most revered companions of Muhammad. This particular tradition is consistent with the claim frequently met in pre-modern Islamic literature – examples of which can be found in Section A in our handout: that an ethnically pure Arab is by definition a black-skinned Arab, such that the very term ‘black-skinned’ – aswadul-jilda – idiomatically meant khālißul ‘arab, “pure Arab”. This claim was frequently joined by the further claim that a ruddy-white complexion in Arab society was the mark of a non-Arab, usually a non-Arab slave from among Persian, Syrian and Byzantine Christians. A fair-skinned Arab, said to be a rare

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occurrence in 7th century Hijazi society, was considered to be of ignoble birth. We are not to think, as both Prof Benard Lewis and Moustafa Akkad’s 1976 film on Islam, The Message, would have us think, that these Arab self-descriptions as ‘black’ are relative and really mean ‘swarthy’ or olive-complexioned: rather, several sources – some of which are provided in the handout - claim that the blackness of the complexion that characterized ethnically pure Arabs was a dark drown or even a deep blackness, differing from the African complexion only in that the latter’s was not blemish-free, as was the Arab’s, and it lacked the iridescence that characterized the Arabs’ complexion. In other words, these references in the literature suggest that the difference between the Arab and African complexion was not one of chromaticity, but one of luminosity and quality of skin.

There are two early Arabs that I would like to briefly mention before I close who I believe clarify this Arab self-description and who no doubt can help us understand this early Muslim tradition that assumed that Muhammad, as a pure Arab, was a black-skinned Arab. The first is the linguist and genealogist al-Hasan b. Ahmad (d. 436/1044-1045). Al-Hasan was better known as al-Aswad al-Ghandajānī, “The Black-skinned one from (the Iranian city) Ghandajān.” He was also known as al-A’rābī, the Arab, because he took great pride in Arab heritage, and he was particularly excessively proud of the Arabs dark complexion. He was so proud of this, the reports say, that he would not only apply tar to his skin in order to justify being called ‘The Arab’, but he would also throw his son in oil and have him sit in the very hot sun of Ghandajan to blacken his own skin, like that of the Arabs. The poor boy died of this, we are told. Clearly ‘black’ here does not mean an olive-toned tan.

The second Arab is even more relevant to our discussion: he is Muhammad b. Abd Allah (d. 145/762), the great grandson of the Prophet through his daughter Fatima and his cousin Ali. Muhammad b. Abd Allah, also called ‘The Pure Soul’ was famous for being a pure Arab from the Hashim clan and a pure descendent of the Prophet. He rebelled against the second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur claiming that his pure Arab ancestry and pure descent from the prophet made him better qualified to lead the community than al-Mansur, who lacked both of those credentials. Here is how this pure Arab descendent of the Prophet is described in the literature: At-Tabari, the famous 10th century historian and exegete, who himself was of Persian background, reports:

“Muhammad (Al-Nafs al-Zakiyya) was black, exceedingly black, jet black (ādam shadīd al-udma adlam) and huge. He was nicknamed ‘Tar Face’ (al-qārī) because of his dark complexion (udmatihi), such that Abu Ja’far used to call him ‘Charcoal Face’ (al-muhammam).”

This Arab from the Quraysh tribe, great grandson of the prophet Muhammad,

whose pure lineage on both his paternal and maternal sides is said to put him at the center of the genealogical lines of the Hashim clan was so black-skinned that he was called ‘Tar face’ and ‘Charcoal face’. If Muhammad the Prophet too was a pure Arab of

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the Hashim clan one must really wonder how he could have been the ruddy-white Arab that the canonical hagiography presents to us.

Be that as it may, the point of my brief talk today is certainly not the color of the Islamic prophet. Rather, it is the Muhammad Problem and the ways researches are going about solving this problem. There is a lacuna in Muhammad research. A number of recent works purport to present the many divergent and contested images and understandings of Muhammad, yet none evince any knowledge of this particular contested image, an image which I personally find quite fascinating and pregnant, if you will, with implications for further, broader research. For example, taking seriously this tradition of Black-skinned Arabs invites us to reconsider what we thought we knew about the development of the racial ethic in Islam. Our picture of a profound anti-black racism among the pre-Islamic Arabs, curtailed by the universal message of Muhammad, only to subsequently reemerge later among the Arabs, a situation that accounts for the many anti-black stereotypes and incidents of racism found in the literature, may well be turned on its head upon closer scrutiny with this tradition in mind.

My research suggests that the developing portrayal of Muhammad in Islamic tradition was greatly impacted by the diversification of the empire and the redistribution of ethnic weights that followed the Abbasid revolution in 750. It may be the case that one of the imagined and contested Muhammads that confront us in the literature is a reasonably accurate reflection of the historical Muhammad; and it may be that this latter helps solve what Prof Patricia Crone calls the biggest problem facing scholars of the rise of Islam, i.e. the identification of the context in which Muhammad worked. But a solution to this Muhammad Problem, I suggest, will likely not be achieved without first considering all of the imagined Muhammads that present themselves to us in the literature and extract from these Muhammads all of the information we can about the contexts in which they each emerged. This no doubt will give us an even broader perspective on the origin and evolution of Islam and Islamic tradition.

End

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“Whoever Says that the Prophet is black is a Disbeliever”:

The Diversification of the Islamic Empire and the Developing Portrayal of MuÈammad Handout

Dr Wesley Williams February 7, 2011

A. 1.] “The Children of Sam (Shem) settled al-Majdal, the center of the Earth, which is between Satidim§ and the sea and between Yemen and Syria. Allah made the prophets from them, revealed the Books to them, made them beautiful, gave them a dark complexion, luminous and free of blemish (al-udma wa l-bay§∙). The children of Ham settled in the south, along the course of the south and west wind-this region is called al-D§råm. Allah gave them a dark complexion, a few of whom were also luminous and free of blemish…The children of Japheth settled in al-‘afån, along the course of the north and east wind. They are ruddy-complexioned and very fair-skinned (al-Èumra wa l-shaqra).” [Al-•abarÊ, Ta"rÊkh al-rusul wa"l-mulåk (edd. Michael Jan de Goeje and Lawrence Conrad) I: 220-221] 2.] “The Arabs used to take pride in their (dark) brown and black complexion (al-sumra wa al-saw§d) and they had a distaste for a white and fair complexion (al-Èumra wa al-shaqra), and they used to say that such was the complexion of the non-Arabs.” [Words of al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), the leading figure in the Basran grammatical tradition, apud Ibn AbÊ al-\adÊd, SharÈ nahj al-bal§ghah, V:56] 3.] “MuÈammad (Al-Nafs al-Zakiyya) was black-skinned, exceedingly black, jet black (§dam shadÊd al-udma adlam) and huge. He was nicknamed “Tar Face” (al-q§rÊ) because of his black complexion (udmatihi), such that Abå Ja#far used to call him “Charcoal Face” (al-muÈammam).” [ Al-•abarÊ, Ta"rÊkh al-rusul wa"l-mulåk, X:203] 4.] “You (Abbasids) insulted (the family of the Prophet) because of their blackness (bi-l-saw§d), while there are still deep black, pure-blooded Arabs (al-#arab al-amȧ∙ akh∙ar ad#aj). However, you are white-skinned - the Romans (Byzantines) have embellished your faces with their color. The color of the family of H§shim was not a bodily defect (#§ha).[From poem of Abå al-\asan AlÊ b. al-#Abb§s b. Jurayj (Ibn al-RåmÊ) (d. 896), apud Abå al-Faraj al-Ißbah§nÊ, Maq§til al-ãalibÊyyÊn, 759] 5.] [The Messenger of God said:] “I dreamed that I drove before me some black sheep, then I drove after them some white sheep, so that the black could not be seen among them.” And Abå Bakr said: “O apostle of God, as for the black sheep, they signified the Arabs who shall embrace the faith and increase in numbers, and the white sheep are the non-Arabs (#ajam) who shall be converted until the Arabs shall not be seen among them by reason of their numbers.” The apostle of God replied, “likewise did the angel interpret it this morning.” [Al-Suyåãī, Tārikh al-khulafā, 86] B. 1.] “Red (al-Èamr§#), in the speech of the people of the Hejaz, means white-complexioned (al-bay∙§# bi-shuqra), and this is rare among them. Thus the meaning of the hadith ‘a red man as if one of the slaves.’ The speaker is saying that this is the complexion of the Christian slaves captured from Syria, Rome, and Persia.” [Al-DhahabÊ, Siyar a#l§m al-nubal§",II:168]

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2.] “Red (al-Èamr§#) refers to non-Arabs due to their fair complexion which predominates among them. And the Arabs used to say about the non-Arabs with whom white skin was characteristic, such as the Romans, Persians, and their neighbors: ‘They are red-skinned (al-Èamr§#)…” al-Èamr§# means the Persians and Romans…And the Arabs attribute white skin to the slaves. [Ibn Maníår, Lis§n al-#arab, s.v. حمر IV: 210] C. 1.] “The Messenger of Allah was of medium stature, neither tall nor short, [with] a beautiful, dark brown-complexioned body (Èasan al-jism asmar al-lawn). His hair was neither curly nor completely straight and when he walked he leant forward.” [Al-TirmidhÊ, Jāmi# al-‘aÈīÈ, no. 1754] 2.] “Al-Zubayr reported on the authority of Ibr§hÊm: The Messenger of Allah (s) stretched his left foot, such that the blackness of its exposed part (í§hiruh§ aswad) was visible.” [Ibn Sa#d, Kit§b al-ãabaq§t al-kabÊr, I/i,127] 3.] “Anas b. Mālik reported: While we were sitting with the Prophet in the mosque, a man came riding on a camel. He made his camel kneel down in the mosque, tied its foreleg and then said: “Who amongst you is MuÈammad?” At that time the Prophet was sitting amongst us (his companions) leaning on his arm. We replied, “This white man (hadh§ l-rajul l-abya∙) reclining on his arm.” [al-Bukh§rÊ, ‘aÈÊÈ, kit§b #alim, b§b fa∙l #alim, # 63] 4.] “When Arabs say, ‘so-and-so is white (abya∙),’ they mean a golden brown complexion with a black appearance (al-hinãÊ al-lawn bi-Èilya sud§"). Like the complexion of the people of India, brown and black (asmar wa §dam), i.e. a clear, refined blackness (sawad al-takrår).”[ Al-DhahabÊ, Siyar a#l§m al-nubal§", II:168] 5.] “The Arabs don’t say a man is white [or: “white man,” rajul abya∙] due to a white complexion. Rather, whiteness [al-abya∙] with them means an external appearance that is free from blemish [al-í§hir al-naqÊ min al-#uqåb]; when they mean a white complexion they say ‘red’ (aÈmar)… when the Arabs say, ‘so-and-so is white (abya∙ - bay∙§#), they [only] mean a noble character (al-karam fÊ l-akhl§q), not skin color. It is when they say ‘so-and-so is red’ (aÈmar - Èamr§#) that they mean white skin. And the Arabs attribute white skin to the slaves.[Ibn Maníår, Lis§n al-#arab, s.v. حمر IV: 209, 210] 6.] “The Arabs boast of (their) black color. If it is said, ‘How can this be so, seeing that the Arabs speak of someone as luminous (azhar), white (abya∙), and blazing white (agharr)?’ we would answer: ‘They are not referring in this context to whiteness of skin (bay§∙ al-jilda), but rather to nobility and purity of character.”[Al-JaÈií, Fakhr al-såd§n #al§ al-bidan, 207]