FEAR OF BLACKNESS: DESCRIPTIONS AND ETHNOGENESIS OF THE

ORIGINAL AFRO-ARABIAN TRIBES OF MOORISH SPAIN BY DANA

MARNICHE
PART I
a fair-skinned Arab is something inconceivable Ibn Abd Rabbu of Cordoba born
9thc. in El Iqd el Farid (The Precious Necklace), quoting Shuraik el-Qadi a 7th century
Arab of the clan of Nakhal of the Maddhij in the Yemen.
the Arabs describe their color as black and they describe the color of the non-Arab
Persians as red. Assertion of the 13th c. grammarian Ibn Manzur or Mandhur in Lisaan
al Arab, Vol. 4 (born in Tunis or Northern Egypt.)
Red, in the speech of the people from Hejaz means fair-complexioned, and this color is
rare amongst the Arabs. This is the meaning of the saying a red man as if he is one of
the slaves. From Seyar Alaam al-Nubalaa, vol. 2, by the Syrian Al-Dhahabi (Thahabi),
of the century 14th c. A.D.

The Book of Oaths (Kitab al Aiman)

Book 015, Number 4046:
Ayyub said: We were sitting in the company of Abu Musa that he called for food and it
consisted of flesh of fowl. It was then that a person from Banu Tamim visited him. His
complexion was red having the resemblance of a slave.
most Arabs are dark brown in color. 13th c. Ibn Mandhur,
Lisaan al Vol. 4.
Yemeni Arab
Lank hair is the kind of hair that most non-Arab Persians and Romans have while kinky
hair is the kind of hair that most Arabs have. Lisaan al Arab, vol 3. Ibn Mandhur.
All the lands became inhabited by Arabs completely mixed with non-Arabs. Ahmed
Amin in Fajr el Islam, 1975, p. 91.
The above quotes cited in The Unknown Arabs, Tariq Berry, published, 2002.
TERMS TO KNOW
Batn clan; literally meaning from the belly of
Ibn, bin, banu, beni meaning son of

Harrah or el Harra the northwestern volcanic region of Arabia stretching from border of
Jordan southward through region of Medina
Hejaz western coastal region of Arabia stretching towards Yemen
Nejd central Arabian land including Riyadh and Yemamah
Totemism veneration of ancestral consciousness represented by animal names with
cosmological significance and associations.
The Yemen the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula
The following treatise documents the tribes of Afro-Arabians descended from the original
Arab-speaking occupants of the Arabian Peninsula. In the early centuries after the birth of
the Muslim Prophet Mohammed early European documents describe the Moors in such
descriptive phrases as black as melted pitch or black as burnt brands as in the epic of
Morien. It is more than likely the original Arab populations of Spain that gave rise to
such exclamations as they are also often described as black or jet black by authors of
Near Eastern derivation.
Although the Arabians were not the first to be called Moors, it was the color
of the people leaving the peninsula of Arabia that was mainly due the use of
the term Moor for black and woolly haired people in Spain, France, Italy and
other parts of Europe in Islamic times. When the Chanson de Roland which speaks
of the time of the Moorish battles in Gallic France speaks of those hordes
and hordes blacker than the blackest ink no shred of white on them except
their teeth it is no mere exaggeration. Anyone familiar with the Arabic writings
of the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian historians up until the 14th century
knows that this is also their description of the early pure Arab clans of
the Arabian peninsula.
Therefore, the use of the term Moor in this article refers to the inhabitants of the
Arabian peninsula who long after the time of Mohammed shared the appearance of
Ethiopians and other sub-Saharan Africans, as well as customs of present day Africans
stretching from the present country of Sudan to Somalia in the East to Mauritania, Mali
and Nigeria in the West.
Arabian dialects, totemism, ancestral veneration, including knowing the genealogy of
cattle and sheep back many generations (almost all early Arabian tribal names are also
the names of their animals and have an astronomical reference), matrifocal societies
(including worship of Goddesses), the wearing of cowry shells, nose rings, plaited and
totemic hair-styles, ululations, hennaed limbs and scarred faces are all African-associated
traits and customs most of which date back several thousand years into the Neolithic.

These are the facts of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia, which is why the Greeks
and Romans considered Arabia an extension of Ethiopia and for Syrians much of
Arabia part of the Sudan long after the time of the prophet Muhammed. (See
Richmond Palmers, Bornu, Sahara and Sudan with regard to the Syrian Al Omari). It
was from this colony of blacks (as the original Arabs invariably called themselves),
that the numerous tribes of the men Europeans once called Moors left after the time of
the Muslim prophet to also spread over parts of the Middle East, North Africa and the
Iberian peninsula.
Although Iranians had settled the Yemen or south of the peninsula in the centuries
immediately preceding the Prophet Mohammed; though Turks, Circassians, mercenaries,
concubines and slaves from all parts of he world had come to settle the land of the true
Arabs later in Islamic times, large numbers of inidigenous peoples of African appearance
still occupy the peninsula Arabia preserving their indigenous and original Afro-Arab
customs.
Descriptions and Ethnogenesis of the Original Arabs:
The tribes leaving the north and central parts of Arabia occupying the Hejaz and Nejd can
be divided into major branches. They include those traditional genealogy called
Ishmaelites or descendants of Kedar, like the tribes of Qays ibn Ailan or El Nas and El
Yas, and the Rabiah and Wail all based in the central regions of the peninsula. Many of
these were the Saracens whom Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman general of the 4th c.
A.D. claimed had originated from the cataracts of the Nile in Sudan.
It is the north and central group of Arabians inhabiting the Jordan, the Harra and the Nejd
whose ancestors came to be called Ishmaelites, descendants of Thamud (the second Ad),
Kedar and Nabait (all traditionally children of Ismail). (The Nabataeans were among
those known also as Amurru or Amorites in late Assyrian texts.)
In the tradition of Syria and in the later European Jewish or Rabbinic tradition the term
Kushi signified black peoples, and in fact, became a derogatory term. A European
Jewish Targum text Song 1:5 employ the phrase as black as the Kushi who live in the
tents of Kedar.
Because many of the indigenous Arabian people of Jordan and Hejaz were near black in
color and claim descent from the Kedar, Kinanniyya (Kanaani or Canaan), and
Nabataeans (such as the modern Haweitat), the Syrians and others who had come to
adopt Arabic nationality (or who had been colonized by the Arabs), came to presume
names such as Nabit, Kedar, Kanaan meant black people.
David Goldbergs author of The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism,
Christianity and Islam wrote Dimashqi, who lists the Nabataeans (Nbt) among the
descendants of Ham together with the Copts, the BrBr (Berbers) and the Sudan and
the Akkbar al Zaman, which lists the Nabit , among the children of Canaan also said
the word, Nabit signifies black see p. 313 The 10th c. Al Masudi of Baghdad , is

thought to have written the text, Akbar al Zaman. Al Dimashqi of Syria belonged to the
13th century.
In the southern part of Arabia the modern Qahtan Arabs are descendants of the peoples
known mainly as Sabaeans, Himyarites, Main and Azd (also called Asad, Zayyed or Sid)
in Arab genealogy. These came to spread north and became the progenitors of many
Ismailites . Thus, many groups have genealogies which make them both north Arabian
descendants of Ismail and descendants of Qahtan through the Azdites (Zayyed) or
Maddhij of Yemen, two descendants of Himyar and Kahlan sons of Saba. Most of the
living Qahtan tribes told the European colonial ethnographers that they came in remote
times from Africa. Thus, Bertram Thomas in 1929 said that the Shahara (Banu Shahr),
Mahra or Maheyra, and Bautahara and Qarra or Kara had a tradition of African origin
in The Southeastern Borderlands of the Rub-al Khali,in Geography Journal, Vol. 73, 3.
These clans are also described as having a dark pigmentation and fuzzy hair as
recently as 2001 (see David Philips, Peoples on the Move, pp. 250-251).
In 1872, a European named von Maltzan commenting on the inhabitants of southwest
Arabia in Yemen said, The inhabitants of this part of Arabia nearly all belong to the race
of Himyar. Their complexion is almost as black as the Abyssinians, see p. 121 in
Geography of Southern Arabia by Baron von Maltzan, in Proceedings of the Royal
Geographical Society of London, Vol. 16, No. 2 , pp. 115-123.
On the Qara of Hadramaut and Oman
who are said to descend from the Yemen, it was recently written, European observers
have made much of their physical resemblance to Somalis and Ethiopians P. 261 J. E.
Peterson Omans Diverse Society: Southern Oman, Middle East Journal Vol. 38, No. 2
Spring 2004.
THE QAYS AILAN BIN MUDAR DESCRIPTIONS AND SETTLEMENT IN
SPAIN: The descriptions of the Qays clans families and individuals are many. To the
Qays Ailan groups belonged the famous northern Arabian tribes of the Harra and Hejaz
including the well-described children of Mansur (Mansour or Manasir) Sulaym bin
Mansur, Mazin bin Mansur and Hawazin bin Mansour whose sub clans are in the dozens.
The descendants Mansur bin Ikrima bin Khasafa bin Qays bin Ailan in Arabia, like most
early Arabs in Arabia are referred to as black and dark brown in texts. Although they
were famous for their slave raiding and use of Greco- Romans (Rum) concubines in
ancient times, many clans, in fact, remain near black in color in the peninsula today.

The Iraqi Al Jahiz (9th c.) and Ibn Athir, the Kurd (12th -13th c.) both refer to the
Sulaym bin Mansour in particular as pure Arabs and black in color, not simply dark
brown which was also common in the Hejaz. Al Jahiz said that all the tribes of the Harra
an area south of Jordan and extending into Hejaz were black like the lava and animals in
the region.

Some Sulaym (Sulaym ibn Mansour bin Ikrima bin Khasafa) had settled in North Africa
and entered Spain with the first governor of Andalusia, Abd el Azziz ibn Musa, and
others also settled in Tudmir. But most of the clans of early settlers from the Qays tribes
of Sulaym, Ghatafan, Fahm, Abs, and Dhubyan (Zubyan) of the Ghatafan or Ghutayf
came later from Jazira in Mesopotamia where they had been settled for some time.
Ghatafan bin Saad bin Qays Ailan, settled the plain of Granada in a village called Ibra
in Spain, while the Abs of the Ghatafan (Abs bin Baghid bin Raith bin Ghatafan) settled
in Jaen. (See bib. Taha, below) The closely related Banu Fezara (Fezara bin Dhubyan bin
Raith) settled in Elvira where there was a section named for them. An early eyewitness
upon seeing the Abs tribe in Arabia describes them as black-skinned men shaking their
spears and digging in the earth with their feet. (From Ibn Abd Rabbu of Andalusia, El
Iqd El Fareed, vol. 6, cited in The Unknown Arabs, p. 78). Both Ghutayf and Abs are
originally known as batn or clans of the dark-skinned Murad of the Maddhij in Yemen
according to original sources mentioned in, The Yemen in Early Islam, 1988.
The clans of Hawazin bin Mansour, like those of his brothers Sulaym and Mazin bin
Mansour were also described in early Arabia. Among their modern remnants are the
black and tall Dawasir of Yemamah and the dark brown Utayba (Oteiba or Ateibeh)
and the lithe short chocolate colored Hamida of the Harb.
A great number of Hawazin settled in Seville and Valencia others settled in Elvira and
Grenada. (see below, Taha, p. 135 The Muslim Conquest)
Circa 1879, the famed British adventurer Sir Richard Burton describing the Hamida as a
large clan of the Banu Salim bin Auf of Hejaz, Sir Richard Francis Burton describes the
men as, small chocolate colored beings, stunted and thin with mops of bushy hair
straggling beards , vicious eyes, frowning brows armed with scabbards slung over the
shoulder and Janbiyyah daggers a people of the great Hejazi tribe that has kept his
blood pure for the last 13 centuries ( Burton in Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to
el Medina and Mecca .p. 173 3rd edition William Mullen and Son.)
Concerning the Otaiba (also written Ateyba, Utaiba, Ateibe, etc.) a century ago, James
Hamilton wrote , they wore their hair in long curly plaits and their skin was a dark
brown. See pp. 129-130, Wanderings Around the Birthplace of Mohammed, published
by R. Bentley, 1857.

Mazin bin Mansours descendants:

Clans of Khazraj and Aus based in Medina and the surrounding area are two tribes whose
individuals are often described in Arabic texts because of their being the companions
of the Prophet. When individuals of these tribes are described by non-Arabian writers,
they are usually called black- skinned and huge or massive in stature making it likely

this group originally from the Yemen belong to the remnants of the old Ubaid or Obeid
stock of neolithic Arabia and Syria, whom are described as having unusually large
bodies and negroid aspect by early anthropologists like Archibald Sayce. The Ubaid
crania show they were a people that with long, wide and platyrrhine noses according to
early physical anthropologists A. Sayce and others.
The Khazraj (Jazar or Gezer) and Aus (Uz) are the tribes from which came most of the
Ansar or companions of Mohammed, the Prophet. One famous leader of the Ansar
visiting the Byzantine ruled Egypt, Obadah bin Samit an aristocrat and chief of the
Khazras or Khazaraj is described as black and by tradition was at least 8 ft tall, which
may be an exaggeration of course, but then again may not have been. The famous
Mohammed ibn Maslama of the Aus clan of al Ansar is also tall, black-skinned, and
huge. By Ibn Saad (9th century Baghdad, Iraqi) in El-Tabaqat El Kubra vol. 3. (See
Berry). While El Baladhuri (a 9th century Iranian ) also calls Nabtali ibn Harith from the
Aus Ansar as tall, jet black and huge, with nappy hair. See Tariq Berrys book, The
Unknown Arabs for more description of members of Aus and Khazraj.
Most of the Medina al Ansar settled in the region of Saragossa in Spain. (See below,
Taha, p. 118) The Khazraj clan of Sad bin Abada settled in Qarabalan near Saragossa in
Spain, while the Aramramma clan settled Sidonia and Cordoba and later moved to
Elvira, Grenada, Toledo, Tortua and Jerica in the province of Castellon.
ELYAS (ELIAS BIN MUZAR, MUZIR OR MUDAR)
Muzars other descendants were the clans of Elyas of the southern Hejaz. When the tribes
and individuals of the clans of Elyas are described, they are described in writings as dark
brown or black. They were centered in Hejaz or western Arabia stretching southward
toward the Yemen. The El Yas or Elias bin Muzir or Mudar was exemplified by the
Kinaniyya or Kinana bin Khuzaima bin Mudrika bin Elyas (who became famously
known as the Canaanites) from which came Mohammeds tribe of the Qureish, and the
tribes of Tamim bin Murra, Hudhail, Nadir, Mustaliq, Makhzumi and Zahra.
Elyasa or Elias included the famous Kinana who were described in European Talmudic
texts as black, thieving people with large male members. Wah ibn Munabbih a 7th
century descendant of Iranian mercenaries who had settled in the Yemen just before the
period of Islam also made Canaan black, being quite familiar with the Kinaaniyya
tribe of Hejaz. The Banu Umayya who founded the Umayyad dynasty of Islam among
the clans descended from tribes of Qureish founded the Umayyad dynasty.
Some Kinana or Kinaniyya who now live in Jericho today, the modern state of Israel are
black, and many with the keenest features are jet black. (Some have tried to say they
descend from Nubian slaves, which may be the case, but certainly not for the blacker
ones.) The Quraish clan of the Kinaniyya were with Musas army (the first Arab
governor in of Al-Andalus in Spain). Kinana also came to live in Jaen in Spain.

When individuals of the Qureish clan of the Kinana in Arabia especially relatives of the
Prophet are mentioned in texts they described as black. Ali, the son of the prophets
cousin described as black skinned by the Turkish and Iranian writer el Suyuti and by
Ibn Saad, a Baghdad, Iraqi of the 8th c. in El Tabaqat ael Kabra vol. 8. (cited in Berry).
Alis great grandson according to Kitab el Aghani by Esfahani of Central Asia was
black skinned and huge.
The black nationalistic views and horrifying racism of the original Arabs towards fair
skinned peoples settling in Arabia is aptly illustrated by early writings and expressions
from individuals of Mohammeds own tribe in Arabia. Yazid ibn Muawia of the Omayya
ibn Shams bin Abd Manaf of the Qureish tribe was black skinned and hairy and
kinky haired according to Ibn Abd Rabbu 9th c. of Cordoba and el Dhahabi the Syrian
of the 14th c. It was apparently Yazids father, Muawia, who said I see these white folks
have become very numerous and are saying bad things about those who have passed. I
can envision a daring enterprise from them against the Arabs and authority. I am thinking
of killing half of them and leaving half of them to set up markets and to build roads.
Whats your opinion? (This statement reported by Ibn Abd Rabbu, in El Iqd al Farid, vol
3. cited in The Unknown Arabs. P. 81)
The Zuhra clan of Qureish also settled Saragossa. (see Taha) A member of the Banu
Zuhra in Arabia named Saad ibn Waqqas is called very dark, tall and flat-nosed by El
Dhahabi, of Syria. While Jahiz of Iraq (9th.c.) calls him black-skinned and huge.
The tribe of Hudhail bin Mudrika bin El Yas settled Murcia and Saragossa. El Baladhuri,
the 9th century Iranian, describing Abdella ibn Masud, a famous member of the Hudhail
clan of Arabians says he was short, thin and black. (p. 17, Tariq Berry). Tabikha was
brother of Mudrika in the genealogy. When the Central Asian or Iranian writer Al
Esfahan (from Esfahan in Iran) described an Arab of the clan of Tabikha and Banu Asad
he described him as black- skinned with black eyes. According to Taha (p. 137, The
Muslim Conquest), Banu Asad bin Khuzaima bin Mudrika settled in al Bushra near the
Sierra Nevada mountains and Barajila. The Unknown Arabs Tariq Berry, 2002. Available
at Amazon.com
The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa and Spain, by Abdul Wahid
Dhunan Taha, 1989.
CENTRAL ARABIAN TRIBES OF THE NEJD IN SPAIN PART II To Be Continued
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