Black–Arab Encounters in Literature and Film

Touria Khannous

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429871238
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Ciencias sociales
• Categoría: Estudios étnicos

This book investigates how representations of Black Africans have been negotiated over time in Arabic literature and film.

The book offers direct readings of a representative selection of primary texts, shedding light on the divergent ways these authors understood race across different genres, including pre-Islamic classical poetry, polemical essays, travel narratives, novels, and films. Starting with the first recognized Black-Arab poet Antara Ibn Shaddad (580 C.E.) and extending right up to the present day, the works examined illuminate the changes in consciousness that attended Black Africans as they negotiated their position in Arab society. In a twist to Edward Said's Orientalism, the book argues that scholars in the Middle East and North Africa generated a hierarchical representational discourse themselves, one equally predicated on the Self-Other binary. However, it also demonstrates that Arab racial discourse is not a linear rhetoric but changes according to history, political circumstances, and ideologies such as tribal politics, the Shu'ubiyya movement, nationalism, and imperialism. Blacks and Arabs have had tangled relationships that are based not only on race but also on kinship and solidarity due to trade and other types of connections.

Challenging fundamental assumptions of Black Diaspora studies and postcolonial studies, this book will be of interest to scholars of the African diaspora, Arabic literature, Middle East studies, and critical race studies.

1Black poets’ defensive rhetorical acts

The example of Antara Ibn Shaddad

DOI: 10.4324/9780429462979-1

This chapter examines the strategies Black Arab writers have employed against their misrepresentation. It recognizes Blacks’ own literary achievements, against the grain of dominant representations. It also draws a comparison between what mainstream authors have said about Blacks and what Blacks have said about themselves, by examining a representative selection of poems of the first recognized Black poet, Antara Ibn Shaddad (AD 525–608) who lived in the pre-Islamic era. The chapter looks at how exactly Blacks writing about blackness differs from mainstream writings about blackness and how both contribute to racial rhetoric in Arabic literature and culture. A survey of key figures from pre-Islamic to modern times reveals many works in which Black Africans find representation. Dissemination of cultural ideas about blackness correlated with the objectification and gendering representation of African peoples.

The majority of slaves in pre-Islamic Arabia were of Ethiopian origin, though native Arab slaves also existed. William Evans argues that in addition to Ethiopians, a few Black people from Upper Egypt or Nubia may have been part of this system of ancient, pre-Islamic slavery (Evans, 1980). While ancient slavery was non-racial, and enslaved people were of different colour, the poetry of Black poet Antara Ibn Shaddad still shows evidence of anti-Black prejudice in pre-Islamic Arabia.¹ Antara had just cause to draw attention to the issue of blackness and slavery: Blacks had been embattled since the Ethiopian invasion of Arabia in 525 A.D., the year when Antara was presumably born. Prior to the invasion by the Christian state of Ethiopia in 525 A.D., traders had used Ethiopia as their starting point for trade, in both spices and slaves. Caravans moved from Hijaz (modern day Saudi Arabia) to Abyssinia (ancient Ethiopia). Gradually the relationship between Ethiopians and people from Hijaz changed in a way that correlated with the changing relations between Arabia and the Ethiopian kingdom in the South. According to historical sources, Abraha, the Christian King of Ethiopia, invaded Mecca in 525 A.D., using Ethiopian warriors and an African war elephant.² The invasion failed, and in 575 A.D., Arabia fell under Persian control. During the Ethiopian conquest, Black Ethiopians were represented as warriors, and when tensions arose between Arabs and Ethiopians, they were depicted as enemies and after the failed conquest as defeated enemies. In this period, negative representations of Blacks began to emerge. In other words, in Arabia during a period extending from 2000 B.C. to 620 A.D., we witness fluctuating images of Blacks: ranging from images of integration and intermarrying to images of warriors, enemies, and defeated enemies, to images of servants, new converts, and friends under the new Muslim era³.

Antara Ibn Shaddad, who lived in central Arabia in the sixth century between 525 and 608 A.D., was the first known author of African descent to speak of racial internal struggle in pre-Islamic Arabia. Antara was a poet, a warrior, and a hero of Arab chivalry who had an Ethiopian African mother and an Arab father. The attitudes towards blackness in the literature as presented in his poetry yield important insights into Black-Arab relations and illuminate the changes in consciousness that attended Black Africans as they negotiated their marginalization in Arab society. While it is not possible to make such a broad claim based on Antara’s poems alone, we can also problematize the limitations of the claims and how Antara’s poems might be an example rather than a stand in for the entire corpus. Furthermore, emphasizing the Black canon in Arabic literature will show to what extent earliest representations of Black Africans have survived, and what substantive and formal changes have occurred over time under the influence of regional and class factors. Ibn Shaddad was self-deprecating and defensive about his dark skin colour. Because of his lower status, he sought reintegration into the tribal social order, through his poetry and his prowess in battle. His defensiveness about blackness shows the racializing language at the time.

According to Judith Fobis, “Antara exemplified in his life those traits most highly esteemed by the Bedouins. His deeds of valor as well as his love for his cousin Abla became a part of the literary heritage of the Arabic-speaking world” (1976, p. 62). Antara Ibn Shaddad, whose name in Arabic means “courage in war,” is one of the most influential and anthologized Black poets in pre-Islamic Arabia. That Antara is the subject of numerous books touching on his poetry and different aspects of his life suggests that international authors and critics have found him an articulate and interesting figure in Arabic literature. His poetry, in which he demands that his society accept its responsibilities for its narratives on blackness, marked the birth of the Black literary tradition in Arabic. One can easily construct the small Black canon of Arabic literature discussing the racial dilemmas Antara identified in his poetry. Reading Antara’s poetry, as one example of the Black canon in Arabic literature, compels us to ask the questions as to how his poetry can be read, what critical, ideological, and historical factors may have affected his choices, and what critical approaches might shape the way we interpret and understand his poetry in the twenty-first century.

Matrilineal slave status

The Arab scholars Al-Tibrizi (d.1109 A.D.) and Ibn Qutayba (826–889 A.D.) stated that Antara was the son of Zabiba, an African slave of Ethiopian origin, who was captured during a tribal war, and of Shaddad, an Arab from the Arabian tribe of Banu Abs (as cited in Meri, 2006, p. 47). Based on Arab tribal customs, his mother’s status as a slave automatically categorized Antara as a slave and excluded him from birthright membership in tribe and clan. Antara’s mother was an ama, a female slave, who had the lowest standing in a stratified Arab society, and his association with her was a constant designation.⁴ Antara lived in slave-status for much of his life. It was only when his father neared old age that he recognized him as his son, as a reward for his heroism in battle. The following account details the story behind Antara’s freedom:

(as cited in Mawlawi, 1964, p. 16)

[When Arab raiders attacked a tribe from Banu Abs, Shaddad encouraged Antara to fight. Antara replied: “The slave does not know how to fight/He knows only how to milk cows and raise sheep.” Shaddad promised him freedom if he were to fight. When Antara defeated the raiders and took their booty, Shaddad recognized him as his son and freed him from slavery.]

Aghriba is the Arabic plural word of ghurab, which means a crow or raven. Abduh Badawi explains that the name was assigned to these poets because of the blackness that they inherited from their mothers, while their noble fathers did not recognize them as their sons, unless at times forced to do so (2001, p. 21). Badawi further argues that Black Arab poets⁵ were labelled “aghribat al Arab” (the crows of the Arabs), a designation for poets of Black ancestry from their mother’s side. Even though their fathers were noble Arabs, they themselves were, according to tradition, considered slaves by the fact that their mothers were compared to crows and ravens because of their blackness, and that there is a consensus that those of the lowest social standing among Arabs are those who inherited blackness from their mothers (2001, p. 21). Bernard Lewis has indicated another word that was used by Arabs for the children of mixed unions was hajin, “a word which like the English word ‘mongrel’ or half-breed was used both of animals and human beings” (1985, p. 89). For him, the construction of the hybrid other remains the same in Arabic culture and modern Western societies. This seems, however, a sweeping claim given that hybridity itself meant different things at different times in the Western imagination and within Western society itself.

The common supposition among Arabs was that the hajins were destined to be abnormal in human form, and of low social status. The inferior status of Blacks and hajins only attests to the divisions between Arabs and non-Arabs. The fact that Black poets inherited slavery from their mothers shows how an Arab phallocentric culture seems to be matrilineal in assigning slave status. Kenyan-American critic Ali Mazrui differentiates between two types of miscegenation:

Descending miscegenation/under which/any child of racial mixture descends to the less privileged parent. A particular striking illustration of this system is racial classification in the United States. If a black person and a white mate produce a child, the child is black regardless of whether it is the father or the mother who is black. The child descends in status. In contrast, a system of ascending miscegenation decrees that the child of racial mixture could indeed move up to the more privileged parent…. Among the Arabs if the father is Arab the child is Arab, virtually regardless of the nationality of the mother.

(2000 p. 89)

Mazrui’s characterization of Arab miscegenation as an “ascending system” elides the very specificities of slavery in Arab society. It is ascending because the child can be higher than the mother if the father agrees. In the Arab slave system, a child was automatically assigned the slave status of his mother, despite the Arab heritage of his father. Given that critics such as Bernard Lewis and Abduh Badawi present Arab society as phallocentric, it is remarkable that they cite no woman – as though “black” equals “black male” and “white” means “white male.” Discrimination on the basis of gender, skin colour, and class was part of pre-Islamic and early Islamic society. Slavery was widespread and accepted as a norm, although Islam at its inception encouraged the freeing of slaves. Female infanticide was common in what today constitutes Saudi Arabia, as women were considered a source of shame and a threat to the family’s honour. Women were regarded to be possessions to be bought and sold into marriage or chattel slavery and even inherited along with estate property. Polygamy was also widely practiced among men who were allowed to take an unlimited number of female slaves as concubines. Feminist Muslim scholar Fatima Mernissi draws a picture of pre-Islamic and early Islamic society in times of war, in which women prisoners of war were assigned slave status:

In war, women were passive, outside of the conflict. In the case of defeat, they were reduced to the status of Sabaya (prisoners of war), while men were killed. Arabia was a slave society, where individuals belonged to one of two categories. Free persons (Ahrar), or slaves (Abid). However, while the sovereign will of a free man could not easily be suspended—if he were captured, he was usually killed—that of a woman disappeared in the case of inheritance or of military defeat. Free women could be “inherited” or reduced to the status of captives if they were not ransomed. And the status of captive was very similar to that of slave.

(1991, p. 121)

Mernissi refers here to a pre-Islamic tradition where women prisoners of war were subject to slavery, unless ransomed. Slaves were also acquired by purchase, war, or piracy. Female slaves had no rights and were the mere property of their owner. They were used as servants and sexual slaves (Houtsma, 1987, p. 16). It is thus imperative that race analysis take into account the gender dimension of Arab Muslim society. There is no study yet on Black women in Arab society, nor is there any single collection on Black female slaves who probably constitute the majority of those enslaved in the Arab Muslim world over several centuries.⁶

The Muallaqat and the exceptional hero

Antara’s most famous poem is the Muallaqat, one of seven suspended odes written by pre-Islamic poets, and highly representative of their times. Their name derives from the fact that they were suspended on the Kaaba in Mecca. According to classical Arab scholar Ibn Qutayba, Antara wrote his “Mu’allaqa” to respond to criticism of his blackness (as cited in Meri, 2006, p. 47). The poem’s structure is characteristic of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. The introduction, called “Nasib,” describes the poet’s lover Abla, and her nomad camp. The second section, also characterized as Rihla, “the journey,” describes Antara journeying on his horse. The third section is the warrior’s boast, in which the poet itemizes his noble qualities as well as his prowess in battle and heroic deeds (as cited in Meri, 2006, p. 48). Antara’s heroism is a self-asserting defence against the contempt with which he was treated by Arab Bedouins, for his being the son of a Black-slave mother. Although he was discriminated by his tribe because of his blackness, he was able to restore his worth by his courage and heroism. The fact that a slave could not marry a free woman made Antara’s love for his cousin Abla impossible to realize. There is an interesting power reversal regarding gender, as male slavery was considered lower in status than a free woman.

In his poetry, Antara has responded imaginatively from many different positions and roles. He has taken on the persona of a Black slave, a lover, a poet, as well as a hero and a fierce fighter. These personae are rooted in his own real-life experiences. Antara, the poet, the lover, and the warrior subsequently became the subject of professional storytellers in the Middle East who were fascinated by his story.⁷ Throughout his poetry, he strives to reconcile his conflicting loyalties and the forces that surrounded his plural heritage. He gains acceptance from his father and his tribe only because of his courage in battle. But even when he is recognized by his father and granted his freedom, he still suffers from the skin colour complex. In his book Al-Sud wa-al-hadarah al-`Arabiyah, Abduh Badawi argues that the colour complex has signalled a turning point in Arabic literature because of the transition from the plural to the singular pronoun in Antara’s poetry (Badawi, 2001, p. 20). The development of the personal voice in poetic form corresponded with the political shift towards racialized consciousness. In his poems, Antara subverts a long-standing tradition in Arabic literature by framing his anti-racist critique with the assertion “I am.”

I did not cease to climb to the heights/Until I reached the peak of the Jauza/From thence I turn not to one who blames me/In fear of death or loss of life/I am angry with my critics and my enviers/I will be patient with rage and passion/I will strive for a meeting so I may know/What I hope for or when my judgment nears/I will defend the soul against its desires/Until I know loyalty and trust/Whoever denied me, the hidden was revealed/I did not hide it from the watchmen/My color bothers not me nor Zabiba’s name/Since my enemies are short of my ambition/If I survive I will do wonders and I will/Silence the rhetoric of the eloquent.

(Wormhoudt, 1974, p. 29)

Since Antara’s experience with blackness was real and tangible, poetry created a space for liberation and subjectivity. Self-presentation was made possible by the experiences of racism, and Antara would easil...