FEAR OF BLACKNESS PART II DANA MARNICHE

EARLY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE CENTRAL ARABIAN TRIBESMEN WHO

COMPRISED THE MOORS OF SPAIN
The Moors of the host wore silks and colourful clothes which they had taken as booty
their horses reins were like fire, their faces as black as pitch, the handsomest among
them was black as a cooking pot and their eyes blazed like fire; their horses as swift as
leopards, their horsemen more cruel than the wolf that comes to a sheepfold in the
nightOh luckless Spain! description of the Moors written in the 1200s A.D. and cited
in, An Introduction to African Civilizations, by Willis N. Huggins and John J. Jackson,
New York, 1937, and in Colin Smiths, Christians and Moors in Spain vol. 1 2nd edition
p. 97.
all the peoples settled in the Harra besides the Banu Sulaym are black. These tribes
take slaves from among the Eshban to mind their flocks and for irrigation work, manual
labor, and domestic service, and their wives from among the Byzantines Al Jahiz of
Iraq born 776 A.D. on the tribes of the region of Northwestern Arabia found in AlFakhar al-Sudan min al-Abyadh.
Though men of Nubia be Christian, they be as the Moors from the great heat of the sun,
written by English Knight, Sir John Mandeville, (died 1372), cited in J. A. Rogers,
Nature Knows No Color Line.
Red, in the speech of the people from the Hijaz, 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. The speaker meant that his color is like that of the slaves who were
captured from the Christians of Syria, Rome and Persia. From Al Dhahabi of Damascus
Syria, in Seyar Alam al-Nubalaa, (Biography of Eminent Nobles) cited on p. 55, The
Unknown Arabs, 2002, by Tariq Berry.
As for the black sheep, they are the Arabs. They will accept Islam and become many.
The white sheep are the non-Arab Persians and the like. They will accept Islam and
become so many that the Arabs will not be noticed amongst them. From the 15th c.
writer, El-Suyuti of Egypt, in Taarikh in El Khulafaa quoting Abu Bakr a companion of
the Prophets interpreting his dream. Cited on p. 80, in The Unknown Arabs, 2002.
Terms to know
Al Harrah large region of black volcanic rock or basalt covering 15,000 square
kilometers in northwestern Saudi Arabia.
Hejaz The Hejaz stretches along the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aqaba south to Asir and
is the site of the holy cities of Mecca and Medinah.

INTRODUCTION
Today, to repeat the old dictionary descriptions (those up until the 19th and early 20th
century from Italy to England) about the Moors being black has become controversial
in some circles. By the mid 20th century (after the development of the Mediterranean
race, hamitic and Eurafrican concepts in physical anthropology), as many African
countries won their independence many encyclopedias in the U.S. had begun to describe
the Moors as simply Berbers and Arabs, defining them as Caucasoids.
There can be little argument, however, about what the Moors looked like for several
centuries in Muslim Spain and Portugal because the bulk of the them were derived from
the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula who in that time are described by other
Arabicized people, whether Syrian, Iraqi or Central Asian as of a black or dark
brown complexion. Ibn Mandhuri a 13th c. Tunisian born linguist said, The Arabs call
themselves blacks and the fair- skinned people red. (see Part I) This terminology
apparently dated from the time of early Pharaonic peoples in Egypt who used the word
red in the same way.
Both the original Arabians and Berbers who were called Mauri or Maurusioi in
Europe were responsible for the word coming to mean black. Isidore of Seville (5th-6th
c.) in Spain wrote that the term meant blacks, as did earlier Latin and Greek writers.
Today the term Mavri is still used by Greeks to describe black people.
The irony of history is that early Arab-speaking historians and linguists made a
distinction between the Arabs in Arabia and the fair-skinned peoples to the north, and
contrary to what may be fact in our day, in the days of early Islam, those called Arabs
looked down condescendingly on fair-skinned populations and commonly used the
phrase fair-skinned as a slave when describing individuals in tribes in the peninsula
that were pale in complexion. According to the text Iqd el Farid or the Precious Necklace
of Ibn Rabbu or Rabbih of Cordoba (born 860 A.D.), there were very few things as rare
and unthinkable as a fair-skinned Arab. Of course, today due mainly to slavery and
conversion of peoples to the Arab nationality, the opposite is thought to be true by
many in the West.
As have others before them, the author of The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North
Africa and Spain, Abdul Wahid Taha, used original sources to detail the settlement of
early Arabian Muslims, as well as the later-comers from Syria and elsewhere. Arabians
were well into the 14th century usually described as jet black to dark brown and woolly
or kinky haired in texts, whether the authors were early Romans, Midieval Europeans ,
Syrians, Turks, Iranians or indigenous Arabians. Those Arabs in the peninsula who were
no longer dark were considered to have slave origins or had settled among Syrian and
other non-Arab populations of fair or red complexion. Thus, in the time of Mohammed,
a section of the Yashkur clan of the Bakr bin Wail (see below) are described in a text
and said to have been so fair in color as if they were slaves. (See Berry, 2002, p. 61,
quoting el-Esfahani in Kitaab el Aghani, vol. 16)

Apparently one can read such a statement in the Kitab al Aiman or Book of Oaths,
which in Book 015, Number 4046 says 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 Taim visited him. His complexion was red having the resemblance of a
slave. The Arabs in fact were so black that like the Africans they used the term
white as in the other dark continent or Africa, referred to people of plainly brown
color with clear skins who were of a very dark tone such as Tuareg and some of the
Fulani population in the Sahara (which is why many brown skinned African Americans
still are referred to as white when traveling to African countries.) Meanwhile the color of
fair-skinned Syrians, Persians, etc. and Europeans was called red, while the color of
many sub-Saharan Africans were either referred to as brown or green and only those
literally black were called black or jet black.
The memory of the blackness of the Moors as they appeared for over 1,000 years in
Europe was so persistent that most dictionaries in.Europe from the British Isles to
Germany and Italy continued to describe the word as meaning the black man until the
early 20th century. (See J.A. Rogers book, Nature Knows No Color Line for these
references.) The phrase woolly haired like a Moor as used by the Roman satirist
Martial, and descriptions of Moors as black as jet, blacker than ink (Chanson de
Rolande), black as Satan(Cantiga 185 of Spain 13th, c.), black as a Moor, black as
melted pitch (Corippus 6th c. and Chanson de Rolande), black as burnt brands
black as a cooking pot (Corippus),etc. continued to appear throughout European
literature until the medieval period and became associated with things evil and diabolical
or malevolent.(Cohen & Le Sueur, 2003, pp. 13-16) As if the world has been turned
upside down, blackness in the early Arab culture as in pre-Ptolemaic Egypt and early
Dravidian India (according to Marco Polo), was revered as representative of what was
archetypically good, holy and powerful, while in European culture even in early times it
appears to have been the exact opposite.
Shakespeare, a thousand years after Isidore of Seville in Spain spoke of the word Maure
as meaning black, uses the word Negro and Moor for the same person in his, Titus
Andronicus. The Christian Isidore underlines the fact that Moors are so named because
they are black, and their blackness comes from the heat of the sun (9.2.121-23) (Ramey,
L., 2008). The word Moor thus came to be used for many populations and individuals
who resembled early Arabians and Berbers or Beriberi and thus it is found a surname of
certain Saints in Euorpe depicted as black Africans. In modern times, Peter, the Moorish
assistant of Santa Claus in some European countries is often depicted as black as ink. As
the Muslim Moors in the Iberian peninsula and North Africa began to assimilate with
other people in the later centuries of the Moorish civilization the terms Tannimoor
(tawny Moor) and white Moor came to be utilized in some texts in England and Moro
came to refer to any relatively dark Muslim in Spain. Thus, the term blackamoor is used
in later times for Europeans themselves that resembled Africans, or Africans who
resembled Moors.
The term blackamoor was used for Haydn and other Europeans not because they were
black Moors, but because they were black as Moors. Beethoven who appears in some

early paintings dark brown color and frizzled hair, was called the black Spaniard of
Bonn and the Moor. (A certain Frau Fischer, an intimate acquaintance of Beethoven,
describes him thus, Short, stocky, broad shoulders, short neck, round nose, blackishbrown complexion. From R. H. Schauffler, The Man Who Freed Music, Vol. I, p. 18,
1929). Another European mentioned by Rogers had commented that if he was to come
back today he would never have recognized himself from most of his portrayals.)
How the term Moor came to refer to Arabians in Europe
The Mauri of the Roman and Byzantine (Greco-Roman) eras were mainly the Berbers
lining the coasts of North Africa and Iberia. Guiseppe Sergi stated in 1901, Diodorus
Siculus speaks in reference to the expedition of Agathocles , of three Libyan tribes on the
coast of Tunisia, the Micatani and Zufoni (see Zafan) who were nomads and the
Asfodelodi, who by the color of their skin resembled the Ethiopians p. 50 The
Mediterranean Race. Micatani (also called Uakutameni, Ketama, Mucutateni, Micatani or
Maketae in the days of the Byzantine, Roman and Greek colonial settlements) became
known as the Kutama or Ketama in later Islamic times. Their remnants are the dark
brown people now include the modern Imakitan or eastern Tuareg. The Tuareg appear in
African and other documents as people who mixed with Turks and Tartars, Syrians and
Khorasani merchants from Iran who had settled in North Africa before they moved and
settled southward in the Sahel (Niger, Mali, Chad, etc). (See The Bornu Sahara and
Sudan by Sir Richmond Palmer).
While the Zenata remnants comprise the modern Iforas or Ifuraces Tuareg of Mali who
came from Tripolitania and Libya (called Beni Ifren or Yafren in Muslim texts and
Pharusii and Afren in early Latin and Greek texts), Maghrawa and Nafusa or Nafusawa
and other dark-skinned Berbers of the Sus and Darawa or Draa. Thus Sergi stated, the
oases if Nafzawa and Wed Suef and Wed Regh and other Berbers of the Sus were of
very dark complexion . They were claimed as descendants of Canaan by Wah ibn
Munabbih. Ibn Khaldun (a 14th c. Tunisian) considered the Zenata the largest
confederation of Berbers in North Africa in his day. (Taha, p. 25)
In the western coast (in the area of the Byzantines) between Tunisia and Morocco were
tribes of Mauri named in the appendix to the List of Provinces of Diocletian dated to
approx. the 4th c. A.D. The Mauri Mazaces or Mazikes and Mauri Bavares or
Babors whose name was frequently amended to Berbers, and Mauri Gentiani of the
Kabyle area are listed in the Roman text living in the same region of Mauritania (the
region spanning the coast of Western Tunisia, coastal Algeria and Morocco) with such
people as the Phrygians, Armeni, Vandali and Isauri (Sauromatians?). (See Mommsen,
T., Memoires sur les Provinces Romaines, Paris 1867.)
The Gentiani or Quinquegentiani meaning 5 tribes were so-called because they
divided themselves into 5 clans as do modern Tuareg and certain nomadic east Africans
like the Beja, Somali and ancient Arabians.

According to Taha and others, by early Islamic times, The coastal areas in what is now
Algeria were mainly controlled by two powers: Kutama in the east and Zanata in the
west (Taha, p. 29). The Kutama were the Berbers of the Little Kabylia (Hrbek and Al
Fasi, p. 164). These two clans, the Ketama and Zenetes or Zenata, were notoriously
black and Canaanites in early accounts. Interestingly while Ibn Butlan 11th c.
Christian physician refers to Berber women of the Ketama, Sanhaja and Masmuda as
black, with only a few pale ones among them, the Buja (Beja) women south of Egypt
in Nubia and Sudan he classfied as golden in complexion. *
Several Arabic writers claimed the sons of Berr were from ibn Mazigh ibn Canaan Ibn
Ham Ibn Nuh (Noah) according to Nafousa: Berber Community in Western Libya, by
Omar Sahli citing Dabbuz. ( Retrieved on-line from
http://www.tawalt.com/monthly/fessato_1.pdf , July. 12, 2008.) The Mazikes or
Amazekzek or Mazazeces are classified as an Ethiopian population in Roman texts. (See
Gsell, 1926, p. 17, who quotes Expositio Totius Mundi), while the Canaani in traditions
of between the 4th to 9th century are referred to as blacks. (See early physical
descriptions of the tribe of Kenaaniyya or Banu Kinaanah of Hejaz in Part I.)
Bernard Lewis quotes a Saint named Ephrem of Nisibis, Turkey, saying that Noah said,
Accursed be Canaan and may God make his face black, whereupon the face of
Canaan and Ham became black Lewis on the same page also mentioned Ibn Qutayba
of Iraq who between 828 89AD asserted, Wah ibn Munabbih said the sons of Ham
were changed into blacks some of his children went to the WestFut settled in India
and Sind, Kush and Kanans descendants are the various races of blacks: Nubians, Zanj,
Qaran, Zaghawa, Ethiopians, Copts, and Berbers. (Kitab al-Maarif, ed. Tharwat Ukasha,
2nd ed. (Cairo, 1969) p. 26) found on page 124 in Race and Slavery in the Middle
East. an Historical Enquiry, Oxford University Press, 1992.
More famously, a version of the 6th century Talmud of Babylon (Iraq) is said to say
about Ham, because you have abused me in the darkness of the night, your children
shall be born black and ugly; because you have twisted your head to cause me
embarrassment, they shall have kinky hair and red eyes; because your lips jested at my
expense, theirs shall swell; and because you neglected my nakedness, they shall go
naked.
The sedentary Berbers controlling much of the Atlas were Masmuda who were the
blacks of the writings of Abu Shama of the 1200s, black Africans of Nusrau
Chosroes ruler from the 11th c. Iran and Ibn Butlan, Christian physician of Iraq.**
Masmuda descendants are today also known as Shluh, Chleuh or Shilha (ancient Sylli or
Psylli) and they had branches on the Mediterranean coast including the Haskura,
Barghwata and Ghamara. Masmuda along with the various Tuareg and Fulani tribes of
Sanhaja and Zenata settled in Seville, Crdoba, Badajoz, and Almera in the Iberian
Peninsula. The word Berber referred originally to these peoples thought traditionally to
have come in waves from pre-Islamic Arabia and Palestine.***

The main Berber dynasties in Spain included the Al- Murabiddun or Almoravides
composed mainly of two veil-wearing Tuareg tribesof the western Sahara- the Massufa
and the Lamtuna (now the Aulamidden Tuareg of Niger) and the Goddala (anciently
Gaitules used in later times for Fulani of the Sahara or Beni Warith or Waritan
Sanhaja and the Daraa or Draa) and the Al- Muwahhidun or Almohades, of Masmuda
and Mande (Malinke or Mandinke) origin, between the 11th and 13th centuries.
CENTRAL ARABIAN TRIBES OF THE NEJD IN SPAIN: DESCRIPTIONS AND
SETTLEMENT
The Central Arabian region called the Nejd extended as far as the Euphrates in early
Islamic times. The Arabians that came from this region in early Islamic times are well
known and the descriptions of the tribes quite telling. The inhabitants of the Nejd
included the clans of Wail and Rabia or Kab ibn Rabia of the Beni Amir bin Zazaah
clans of the Qays. Included in the tribes of Beni Amir or Kaab were the Jadaa, Numayr,
Muntafiq, Uqayl, Qushayr, al Harith, Khafaja, Kilab and Kulaib bin Kab.
Genealogy of the Rabia Clans (Rabiyah, Rebia)
Rabia tribes included the Wail (the ibex) ibn Qasit, whose sons were Anaeza (the she
goat) bin Wail (or Ans bin Wail) and Maaza (the he goat), Bakr or Baghira (the
camel) bin Wail and Taghlib or Taghluh bin Wail. Bakr, Taghlib and Ans were son s of
Wail ibn Qasit. By 1400 A.D., al Maqrizi speaks of the Rabia as the most numerous of
the Arab tribes in southern Egypt.
The Bakr bin Wail and Taghlib bin Wail Origins and Descriptions
The tribes of Banu Bakr included the Shayban or Sayban mentioned in early texts of
Yemen as a batn or clan of the Mahra, a people of Oman and Hadramaut. The Mahra as
mentioned in previous articles are described in Arabia as a people tall and dark
brown and fuzzy- haired who claim to have come from remote times from Africa. Other
Mahra related clans of the Bakr known as Hanifah (now Khanafir of the Yemamah area)
and Yashkur (represented recently by the Mahra clan of Bait Ishkaron) were also settled
in the Yemamah region of Nejd. In the this region was the town of Al Falaj (Peleg)
controlled by the Kab subdivision of Beni Amir ibn Sasaah, which in the 6th century
extended toward the southern part of Aliyat Nejd.
A 1993 reprint of E.J. Brills First Encyclopedia of Islam,1913-1936, Volume IX notes
that Dawasir (Banu Daws or Dushariya) claimed Taghlib as one of their branches.
Dawasir were descendants of the Ad-Daus or Daws of the early Azd and had lived in the
Yemamah in the southern part of Nejd in early times. In the same area was the town of Al
Falaj (Peleg) controlled by the Kab subdivision of Beni Amir ibn Sasaah who in the 6th
century extended toward the southern part of Aliyat Nejd. Jadah, a division of the Kab
were defeated north of al Falaj by the Hanifah of the Bakr bin Wail. (from Najd Before
the Salafi Reform Movement).

Descriptions of the appearance of the Dawasir in the writings of 19th c. Europeans are
similar to the descriptions of the other inhabitants of the Nejd. One source from 1829
reads, The Dowaser are said to be very tall men, and almost black. In former times they
used to sell at Mekka ostrich feathers to the northern pilgrims, and many pedlars of
Mekka came here in winter to exchange cotton stuffs for those feathers. See John Lewis
Burkhardt, Travels in Arabia. Vol. 1.
Dawasir
The British came to know the Dowaser (Dawasir) through their piracy in the Persian
Gulf.
According to, The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa and Spain, (Taha &
Taha, 1989), the tribes of Bakr bin Wail settled in the whole of Elvira and Calatrava in
Spain. While the Taghlib bin Wail inhabited Priego. The clan of Matruh also of the Bakr
settled 100 kilometers northwest of Granada.
The movement of the tribe of Namir ibn Qasit was the last major movement of the Bakr
bin Wail ibn Qasit (or Casit) from Yemamah into Iraq. Numayr ibn Casit settled in
Barajila in Spain. Other sub-groups of Bakr settled in Iraq were the Ijl and Dil or Dhuhl.
According to tradition the Namir or Numayr ibn Casit had actually occupied Babylon in
ancient times. The name of Kassit probably corresponds to the Biblical Khasdim or
Kushites of Chaldea. As other Arab genealogists say Numayr was son of Arfakshad (or
Aur Khasdim which Kamal Salibi identifies with the name of Wariyah Maqsud in the
southern Hejaz near Yemen. (See The Bible Came from Arabia, 1982)
Kab Bin Rabia bin Amir bin Sasaah: Settlements in Arabia
Having left the Hejaz of Western Arabia before the Christian era, many of the tribes of of
the Hawazin were domiciled in Central Arabia (the Nejd) with a stronghold in Yemamah
at the time of the Prophet. After taking up the banner of Islam the tribe of Kaab bin
Rabia, a son of Beni Amir bin Zazaah, and Kaabs descendants, Uqayl bin Kaab,
Muntafiq bin Uqayl bin Kaab (to whom belonged the tribe Khuzail), Jadaah bin Kaab,
Kilab and Kulaib bin Kab, Al Harish bin Kab and their sub-clans left the southwest of
Yemamah (north of the Rub al Khali) around the 8th-9th century and headed for Iraq and
Syria in support of other Arabian followers of Mohammed who had settled those
countries.
During the Abbasid era which began in the 8th c., most of the Hawazin clans of the Banu
Amir bin Zazaa moved from southern Najd into Iraq and Syria.
The Uqayl bin Kab were among the last to leave, settling on the banks of the Euphrates
controlling Mosul (Mawsil)and other regions of Mesopotamia. They first came to power
in Diyarbakr where they served as a buffer against the Kurds. According to Iraq After the
Muslim Conquest, already in the area of the southwestern Euphrates were offshoots of
the Namir ibn Casit, Banu Taghlib bin Wail and Bakr bin Wail ibn Casit who had
settled in the region in the pre-Islamic Christian era coming from the Yemamah region.

(see Morony, p. 218) (Also, many early pre-Islamic tribes of Central Arabia were
Christian before being converted to Islam.0
By the 16th century, the clans of Kaab son of Rabia of the Banu Amir bin Zazaa began
immigrating to Iran from Iraq settling in the Khuzestan region of Iran. By the late 19th
century, they were comprised of a group of tribes still near black in color living in the
region of Khuzestan, Iran and around the Persian Gulf and the Shott al Arab where the
Tigris meets the Euphrates in southern Mesopotamia. They were the Kaab, (Chaab or
Chub), Kuleib, Kilab, Al Muntafik (or Afek), Khuzail, Khafajah, Uqayl or Aqil, and
Jada or Iyad, all documented descendants of Beni Amir bin Sasaa of the Hawazin bin
Mansour who in turn descended from the Qays bin Ailan.
19th Century Physical Descriptions of the Banu Rabia bin Amir bin Zazaah
The Iranians called the Kaab or Chaab, the Tsiab. While it has also been written
Chub. In 1881 G. Rawlinson wrote, The Chaab Arabs, the present possessors of the
more southern parts of Babylonia are nearly black and the black Syrians of whom
Strabo speaks seem to represent the Babylonians. From The Five Great Monarchies of
the Ancient Eastern World: Or, The History, Geography, and Antiquites of Chalda,
Assyria, Babylon, Media, and Persia, Vol. II
Elsewhere, Rawlinson refers to the Kab of the Banu Amir and their sub-tribe of
Montefik (or the al-Muntafiq bin Uqayl bin Kab) as having the complexion similar to
that of Abyssinians and Galla Ethiopians. from Vol. 1 of The Seven Great
Monarchies of the Ancient World: Or, The History, Geography, and Antiquities of
Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Perisa parthia and Sassanian aor new Persian Empire.
, Vol. 1 (07) p.35.
In 1885, the British Surgeon General Edward Balfour put out The Encyclopedia of India
and of Eastern and Southern Asia, which in copying Rawlinson speaks of them as a tall,
martial race, strong limbed and muscular well known for their pirate exploits in the
Persian Gulf. They still occupy at this time the lower part of Mesopotamia.
1894 Another adventurer describes the Banu Amir bin SaSaah Arabs domiciled in
Iran (Khuzestan) in the 19th century. The faces and limbs of these Arabs were almost
black from constant exposure to the sun. They were nearly naked and their hair was
plaited in long tresses shining with grease p. 85 of Henry Layards, Early Adventures
in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia, published 2003 first publishing 1894. (Muntafiq, Afiq
or Afej bin Uqayl a subdivision of the Khazail were called the most powerful tribe in
southern Babylonia see in E.J. Brills First Encyclopaedia of Islam 1913 1936 ) by M.
Th. Houtsma. The Khafaja, a branch of the Muntafik commanded the road from Basra to
Kufa in Mesopotamia (Iraq) as late as the the 19th century.
The Khazail inhabitants of the town of Lamlun are also described both as resembling the
Bishariin who live in Nubia and Sudan and as Melanian by Lenormant. (See also
Richard Francis Burton The Book of the Sword republication in 2006, fn. on p. 143.

According to Henri Lenormant in, Magie Chez les Chaldaeans, Part of the marshy
region around the Persian Gulf was inhabited by people who were nearly black. A
remnant of these are yet extant in the Lamlun whom the French traveler, Texier has
described and who are allied to the Bisharis p. 518-519. The Bishari are located in
Sudan.
Kaab bin Rabia, of the Banu Amir: Their Settlements of Moorish Spain
In the early Islamic era on of the leader of the Kab bin Amir bin Sasaa (Zazaa) tribe
was Sulayman bin Shihab. Some of his kinsmen settled in a village called Tighnar,
Tignar, northwest of Granada. (Taha & Taha, p. 136).
The clan of Uqayl bin Kab bin Amir lived in Jaen, Guadix and Manisha, Mentesa in
Spain. (Taha & Taha, p. 144). Two clans of the al Muntafiq bin Uqayl bin Kab settled
Spain in Guadix. They were known as Banu Sami and Banu Hajib. (Taha, p. 144), while
Qushayr or Qusayr from the Kaab bin Amer bin Sasaa colonized Jaen and Elvira.
A 10th or 11th century compilation called, Akhbar Majmua fiy Fath al Andalus
mentions the Kab bin Amir clans of Uqayl, Qusayr, al Harish, Kilab fighting the Banu
Muharib clans and the Hawazin bin Mansur and Sulaym bin Mansur over the leadership
of Andalusia. (see Taha & Taha, p. 228) The physical descriptions of these clans of the
Muharib and Mansur Moorish Arabs have each been recounted in both Part I and Part
II of this article, as well as other articles on this blog.
To be continued Part III Fear of Blackness: Descriptions of the Yemenite or South
Arabian Tribes and their Settlements in Spain
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Gsell , S. (1926). La Tripolitaine et Le Sahara au IIIe Siecle de Notre Ere. Memoires de
LAcademie dInscriptiones et Belle Lettres, 1926, 43.
Hrbek, I & El Fasi, M. (1992). General History of Africa Africa from the 7th to the 11th
Century by Ivan Hrbek, M. El Fasi, Unesco International Scientific Committee for the
Drafting of a General History of Africa, Volume III University of California Press, p.
164.
Juhany, Uwaidah M. (2002). The Najd Before the Salafy Reform Movement: Social
Political and Religious Conditions During the Centuries Preceeding the Rise of the Saudi
State.Garnet and Ithaca Press.
Morony, M. (2005). Iraq After the Muslim Conquest. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
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Ramey, L. (2008). Monstrous Alterity in Early Modern Travel Accounts:

Lessons from the Ambiguous Medieval Discourse on Humanness in Esprit Createur,
(48)1.
Sergi, G. (1901). The Mediterranean Race: The Study of the origin of European peoples
The Walter Scott Publishing Company.
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Routledge.
*Eleventh century Mesopotamian Iraqi physician Ibn Butlan, quoted by historian Bernard
Lewis, said of the Berber women brought into Iraq as concubines, Their color is mostly
black though some pale ones can be found among them. If you can find one whose
mother is of Kutama, whose father is of Sanhaja, and whose origin is Masmuda, then you
will find her naturally inclined to obedience and loyalty in all matters, active in service,
suited both to motherhood and to pleasure, for they are the most solicitous in caring for
their children.
**Nasr i Khusrau, an Iranian ruler described the Masmuda soldiers of the Fatimid
dynasty as black Africans. See Yaacov Lev, Army, Regime and Society in Fatimid
Egypt, 358-487/968-1094?, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19.3 (1987)
p. 342.
***Tradition has it that Canaani from Hejaz who took over Syria and then Egypt from
the Hejaz known as Amalekites or Amlukh and,Ad. Under their leaders Teras or Dharis
(Diodorus of Josephus) and Shadad or Hadad they ruled in Egypt for a few hundred years
and then spread to the Maghreb. Later came other Canaani pushed out from their origin
homelands in the southern Hejaz by Joshua son of Nun who settled first along the Nile
and in the rift region of Abyssinia before colonized north Africa and the troglodyte area
of Africa. Among the earliest references to Berbers was in the troglodyte area of
Ethiopia and Somalia south of Berenice by the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean
Sea, written between the 1st and 3rd centuries A.D.
http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/fear-ofblackness-part-ii-dana-marniche/