Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Race and Tribe: Difference between revisions

al-Mutannabi

{{Quote|{{citation|title=Race and Slavery in the Middle East: A Historical Enquiry|author=Bernard Lewis|ISBN=978-0-19-506283-0|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1990|pages=54-62|chapter=In Black and White}}|‎The slave is no brother to the godly freeman. / even though he be born in the clothes of ‎the free. // Do not buy a slave without buying a stick with him, / for slaves are filthy and ‎scant of good. // I never thought I should live to see the day when a / dog would do me ‎evil and be praised in the bargain, // nor did I imagin that true men would have ceased to ‎exist, / and that the like of the father of bounty, / would still be here, // and that that ‎negro with his pierced camel’s lip / would be obeyed by those cowardly hirelings . . . // . . . ‎Who ever taught the eunuch negro nobility? His / “white” people, or his royal ancestors? ‎‎// or his ear bleeding in the hand of the slave-broker? / or his worth, seeing that for two ‎farthings / he would be rejected? // wretched Kafur is the most deserving of the base / to ‎be excused in regard to every baseness – / and sometimes excusing is a reproach – / and ‎that is because white stallions are incapable / of gentility, so how about black eunuchs?}}{{Quote|{{citation|title=Race and Slavery in the Middle East: A Historical Enquiry|author=Bernard Lewis|ISBN=978-0-19-506283-0|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1990|pages=54-62|chapter=In Black and White}}|‎More stupid than a slave or his mate is he who makes / the slave his master . . . // . . . One ‎who holds you by his word is unlike one who holds / you in his jail – // The morality of the ‎‎[black] slave is bounded by his / stinking pudenda and his teeth. // He does not keep his ‎engagements of today, nor remember / what he said yesterday . . . // . . . Hope for no good ‎from a man over whose head the / slaver’s hand has passed, // And, if you are in doubt ‎about his person or / condition, look to his race. // One who is vile in his coat, was usually ‎vile / in his caul. // He who makes his way beyond his merits, still cannot / get away from ‎his root.}}Qadi Iyad

{{Quote|{{citation|title=Race and Slavery in the Middle East: A Historical Enquiry|author=Bernard Lewis|ISBN=978-0-19-506283-0|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1990|pages=92-99|chapter=Image and Stereotype}}|[Retelling an anecdote about "an Arab poet known as al-Sayyid al-Himyari (723-89)":] The Sayyid was my neighbor, and he was very dark. He used to carouse with the young men of the camp, one of whom was as dark as he was, with a thick nose and lips, and a Negroid [''muzannajj''] appearance. The Sayyid had the foulest smelling armpits of anybody. They were jesting together one day, and the Sayyid said to him: "You are a Zanji in your nose and your lips!" whereat the youth replied to the Sayyid: "And you are a Zanji in your color and armpits!"}}