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The Original Black African Arabs of Arabia

(Part 1)
November 26, 2006 Don Jaide 86 Comments

The Original Black African Arabs of Arabia (Part 1)

By:

Ogu Eji-Ofo Annu

“If one understood Arab Culture it is immediately apparent that Blackness is highly cherished
conceptually and in reality. In Arab culture the best camel is the black one the best Fig is the
blackest, the best eyes are black, the best olives are black, the most beautiful rock is the Black
Kaaba. Any Bedouin Arab that is asked his color, would undoubtedly respond Asmar or Aswad
which means Black/Brown. No Arab ever describes himself as Bidan which means White. ”

Who are the Arabs:

In today’s world, one is seducively led by the racist western media to believe that the Arabs of
Arabia and Africa represent a peculiar phenotype with all other non-conforming types being
somewhat alien to that concept. In this way they impose a certain central Asian phenotype as
the “racial Arab” and the almost ubiquitous Black Arabs of the modern times as either
descendants of slaves or immigrants.
In this way, they attempt to disconnect the linkage between the ancient Kushitic Black Arabs
globally celebrated in antiquity (now reclassified as some “caucasoid” “semitics”) and their
Kushitic African roots. This article is therefore another blow against the citadel of falsehood
erected by the western intelligensia used to discourage, dis-empower dissipate and diffuse the
energy of the Black nation. Again one notes and deplores the unrelenting effort by non-
continental peoples to appropriate the history and the achievements of brilliant Black African
luminaries as their own.

Much confusion attends the word “Arabs”, because it has not always been used with rigourous
consistency. Moreover, in the wake of the global dominance of the Arab culture and Islamic
political power in the between 7AD and 14 AD, the number of Arabs increased exponentially by
the addition of many non Arab Arabized people, because acculturation and assimilation were
delibrately fostered by state policy.

Today, the word Arabs does not strictly imply or designate any known racial category of people.
It is an ethnic identification that has several aspect including liguistics, politics and genealogy.
Its meaning is nuanced depending on the particular context.

As an ethnic identity, an Arab is someone who considers himself to be an Arab regardless of

racial or ethnic origin. This definition encompasses many Africans, Indians, Indonesians and
Chinese who describe themselves as Arabs.

Usually the first language of persons who claim to be Arab is Arabic. There are over 200 million
people worldwide whose first language is Arabic. Again these peoples spread over a large
portion of the globe spanning from central Africa to central Asia. More than 70% of the so-called
Arabs in the world live physically in Africa.

Given that the Arabic language is a Semitic language, which forms part of the Afro-Asia
language family, which originated in Africa, one can rightly view Arabic as an African language.
Of the official languages of the African Union that include English, French, Spanish, Portugese,
and Arabic, Arabic language is the only Afro-Asiatic language spoken. The rest are Euro-Aryan
English, French, Spanish and Portugese. See Uwechia Jide; Hamito-Semitic Africa:
http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/2006/04/10/hamito-semitic-africa-semites-of-africa-ii/. See
also Peter T. Daniels, Origin of Semitic: https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-
January/011842.html.

Viewed from a political perspective, someone who is a resident or citizen of a country where
Arabic is an official or national language, or is a member of the Arab League or is part of the
wider Arab world is an Arab. This definition would cover more than 300 million people. Under
this definition, there are more Arabs in Africa than anywhere else in the universe. Most of those
Arabs that live in Africa are Black Africans, from Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia,
Eriteria, Kenya Tanzannia, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. Many of them trace their ancestry to
Yemen.

On its formation in 1946, the Arab League defined an “Arab” as: “… a person whose language is
Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the
Arabic speaking peoples.” The Arab League’s definition of an Arab leaves no room for any
racialist twist on the meaning of Arab and Arabic. These words simply denote ethnicity. Yet
again, based upon this definition, there are more Black Africans who have a legitimate claim to
the Arabic ethnicity than anywhere else in the world.

According to Habib Hassan Touma (1996, p.xviii), “An ‘Arab’, in the modern sense of the word,
is one who is a national of an Arab state, has command of the Arabic language, and possesses a
fundamental knowledge of Arabian tradition, that is, of the manners, customs, and political and
social systems of the culture.” Here again, one finds that there more Black African Arabs based
on this definiton than any other regional phenotype that lays claim to that heritage.

A hadith related by Ibn Asakir in Tarak Dimashq and attributed to Islam’s prophet Muhammad
states that :”Being an Arab is not because of your father or mother, but being an Arab is on
account of your tongue. Whoever learns Arabic is an Arab.” Islam Today.

Genealogically, an Arab is someone who can trace his or her ancestry back to the original
inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. Different groups estimate the relative importance of these
factors differently. Most people who consider themselves Arabs do so on the basis of the overlap
of the political and linguistic definitions.

Since there are so many different phenotypes all considered as Arabs, the query posed and
answered by this paper then is: who are the original Arabs? Were they Black or White or Black
and White? It is posited here that the original Arabs were Black African Kushites from the Nile
valley who had settled in southwest Asia in the Arabian Peninsula in ancient times.

They were Kushitic-Ethiopians, speakers of an African prototypical Semitic language who had
left from an area falling between the regions bordered by modern day Dafur in Sudan and
Asmara in Eriteria. They took their African genes, their African intelligence, their African
culture, their African language and their African love and built the ancient and the modern
civilization known as Arabic civilization. In the paragraphs that follow, one is gradually
introduced to the original Black Kushitic Arabs. See Uwechia Jide; Hamito-Semitic Africa:
http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/2006/04/10/hamito-semitic-africa-semites-of-africa-ii/. See
also Peter T. Daniels, Origin of Semitic: https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-
January/011842.html.

Black Arabs and Classical Literature

Up to a century and a half ago our information concerning Arabia was based mainly on Greek
and Latin writers, such as Herodotus (Histories), Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca Historica),
Strabo (Geography, Book XVI), Pliny, Ptolemy, and others. All those writers reported without
any equivocation that Arabia was part of the ancient Kingdom of Ethiopia Kush, extending from
Africa into Solomon Islands.

Later Arabic writers and geographers, such as Hamadani’s “Arabian Peninsula,” Bekri and
Yaqut’s geographical and historical dictionaries, and similar works also provide extremely
valuable. However, those works are to be treated with caution because they contain fabulous and
legendary traditions, partly based on native popular legends and partly on Jewish and rabbinical
fancies.

From the available literature and authorities, historians have broadly divided Arabs into three
classes according to their different great ancestors. They are:

The original Black Arabs who were supposedly punished by destruction and deluge because, as
legend has it in the book of Quran, they disobeyed their Prophets and flouted God’s instructions;
they were: Ad, Thamud, Tasam, Jadeis, Imru.

The classical Black Arabs, who are believed to have descended from Yaarub ibn Yashjub ibn
Ghatan and thus called Ghataniyun. They had lived in the Yemen; they included a number of
tribes and sub-tribes, two of which became historically prominent viz., Himyar and Kahlan
(al’arab al’ariba).

The Arabized Arabs: These tribes immigrated into Arabia from different sections of central Asia.
Many of them intermarried with the desert dwelling nomadic blemmyes – the Bejas (original
Bedouin Arabs) and the Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian tribes of Africa. Their mix -blood
children who adopted a mingled form of their parents cultures are known as the Arabized Arabs
(al ‘arab al musta ‘riba).

Today, upon the dictates of the western intelligensia, this banch is the so-called prototypical
Arabs. They are the picture boys of the white-semitic• theories which seek to claim that some
white or at the very least some off-white people were and remain the original and only Arabians.
By employing vague and non-categorical semantics with words like “Semites,” ‘Hamites,”
Ishmaelites,” “caucasiods,” the western negro-phobic intelligensia and educational establishment
seek to erase every trace of black Africa from Arabia.

Nonetheless, if one understood Arab culture it is immediately apparent that Blackness is highly
cherished conceptually and in reality. In Arab culture the best camel is the black one the best fig
is the blackest, the best eyes are black, the best olives are black, the most beautiful rock is the
Black Kaaba. Any Bedouin Arab that is asked his color, would undoubtedly respond Asmar or
Aswad which means Black/Brown. No Arab ever describes himself as Bidan which means White
because they all understand instinctively if not consciously that Africa is their root.

The Black Arabs as described in “Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews”:

Josephus was a soldier, priest and scholar who was born in 37 AD. His written works are seminal
in western history and for many centuries were some of the most widely read and influential
books of the western civilization. In the paragraphs that immediately follow, excerpts of
Josephus’ commentary on the Arabs and near easterners who were contemporary to his period
are reproduced. See The Catholich Encyclopadia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08522a.htm.

According to Josephus:
“The children of Ham (note: Ham is the archetypal ancestor Black people according to Hebrew,
Arabic and Jewish legends) possessed the land from Syria and Amanus (modern Jordan), and the
mountains of Libanus (modern Lebanon); seizing upon all that was on its sea-coasts, and as far
as the ocean, and keeping it as their own.

Some indeed of its names are utterly vanished away; others of them being changed, and another
sound given them, are hardly to be discovered; yet a few there are which have kept their
denominations entire. For of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name of Chus; for
the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at this day, both by themselves and by all men in
Asia, called Chusites. The memory also of the Mesraites is preserved in their name; for all we
who inhabit this country [of Judea] called Egypt Mestre, and the Egyptians Mestreans.

Phut also was the founder of Libya, and called the inhabitants Phutites, from himself: there is
also a river in the country of Moors which bears that name; whence it is that we may see the
greatest part of the Grecian historiographers mention that river and the adjoining country by the
apellation of Phut: but the name it has now has been by change given it from one of the sons of
Mesraim, who was called Lybyos. We will inform you presently what has been the occasion why
it has been called Africa also.

Canaan, the fourth son of Ham, inhabited the country now called Judea, and called it from his
own name Canaan. The children of these [four] were these: Sabas, who founded the Sabeans
(Editor’s note: the Black Arabs, the Yemenites,); Evilas, who founded the Evileans, who are
called Getuli; Sabathes founded the Sabathens (Editors note: the Black Hadramutians, Sabatha
was the ancient capital of Hadramut), they are now called by the Greeks Astaborans; Sabactas
settled the Sabactens (note: the Black Southern Arabians also called Omanites); and Ragmus the
Ragmeans (note: a Black Arab section of south western Arabia mentioned frequently in Sabean
inscriptions); and he had two sons, the one of whom, Judadas, settled the Judadeans, a nation of
the western Ethiopians, and left them his name; as did Sabas to the Sabeans: but Nimrod, the son
of Chus (the Black ancient Iraqi Arabs), staid and tyrannized at Babylon, as we have already
informed you.

Now all the children of Mesraim, being eight in number, possessed the country from Gaza to
Egypt, though it retained the name of one only, the Philistim; for the Greeks call part of that
country Palestine. As for the rest, Ludieim, and Enemim, and Labim, who alone inhabited in
Libya, and called the country from himself, Nedim, and Phethrosim, and Chesloim, and
Cephthorim, we know nothing of them besides their names; for the Ethiopic war which we shall
describe hereafter, was the cause that those cities were overthrown. The sons of Canaan were
these: Sidonius, who also built a city of the same name; it is called by the Greeks Sidon.”

November 26, 2006

To Be Continued in Part 2.

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