Arabs

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Arabs (montage).jpg

Arabs originally referred to semitic peoples who populated countries from Mesopotamia to the the Arabian Peninsula for millennia.

History

With the spread of the Arabic language and subsequent Islamization, the term may refer to individuals or peoples who natively speak the Arabic language. The "Arab world" may also refer to the Arabic-speaking countries that make up the members of the Arab League.

"An Arab is a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic country, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic people."

There is debate over whether Islam as a religion constitutes Arab imperialism, or alternatively, to what degree there have been or is a trend or attempts towards making non-Arab Muslims into Arab Muslims, not just regarding language, but also other cultural aspects, sometimes referred to as Arabization. There have frequently been conflicts between Arab and non-Arab Muslims.[1]

Quotes by Arabs on blacks

  • Ibn Khaldun:
The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage. Other persons who accept the status of slave do so as a means of attaining high rank, or power, or wealth, as is the case with the Mameluke Turks in the East and with those Franks and Galicians who enter the service of the state [in Spain].
Beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings.
Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.
  • Nasir al-Din al-Tusi:
If [all types of men] are taken, from the first, and one placed after another, like the Negro from Zanzibar, in the Southernmost countries, the Negro does not differ from an animal in anything except the fact that his hands have been lifted from the earth - in no other peculiarity or property - except for what God wished. Many have seen that the ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro, and more intelligent.
  • Al-Muqaddasi:
Of the neighbours of the Bujja, Maqdisi had heard that "there is no marriage among them; the child does not know his father, and they eat people - but God knows best. As for the Zanj, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence."
  • Al-Masudi:
Galen says that merriment dominates the black man because of his defective brain, whence also the weakness of his intelligence
  • Ibn al-Faqih:
A man of discernment said: "The people of Iraq [...] do not come out with something between blonde, buff, and blanched coloring, such as the infants dropped from the wombs of the women of the Slavs and others of similar light complexion; nor are they overdone in the womb until they are burned, so that the child comes out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the Zanj, the Somali, and other blacks who resemble them. The Iraqis are neither half-baked dough nor burned crust but between the two."
  • Abu Rayhan al-Biruni:
The Zanj are so uncivilized that they have no notion of a natural death. If a man dies a natural death, they think he was poisoned. Every death is suspicious with them, if a man has not been killed by a weapon.
  • Hudud al-'Alam:
Their [Zanj] nature is that of wild animals. They are extremely black. Among themselves [the Sudan] there are people who steal each other's children and sell them to the merchants when the latter arrive.
[Inhabitants of Sub-Saharan African countries] are people distant from the standards of humanity. Their nature is that of wild animals...
As regards southern countries, all their inhabitants are black on account of the heat of their climate... Most of them go naked... In all their lands and provinces, gold is found... They are people distant from the standards of humanity.
  • Al Jahiz:
Like the crow among mankind are the Zanj for they are the worst of men and the most vicious of creatures in character and temperament.
We know that the Zanj are the least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind, and the least capable of understanding the consequences of actions.
They [the Shu'ubiyya] maintain that eloquence is prized by all people at all times - even the Zanj, despite their dimness, their boundless stupidity, their obtuseness, their crude perceptions and their evil dispositions, make long speeches.

See also

External links

Encyclopedias

References

  1. ↑ Islam Arab Imperialism?
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