The African Presence

"The Ethiopians, the Berbers, the Copts, the Nubians, the Zaghawa, the Moors, the people of Sind, the Hindus, the Qamar, the Dabila, the Chinese, and those beyond them...the islands in the seas...are full of blacks...up to Hindustan and China."
--Al-Jahiz, Book of the Glory of the Blacks Over the Whites

Abu `Uthman' Amr Ibn Bahr al-Kinani al-Fuqaimi al-Basri, an outstanding African scholar known to posterity as al-Jahiz (ca. 776-869), has been described by Bernard Lewis as "one of the greatest prose writers in classical Arabic literature." On this issue all of the major authorities agree. According to Christopher Dawson, "Al-Jahiz was the greatest scholar and stylist of the ninth century." Philip K. Hitti wrote that al-Jahiz "was one of the most productive and frequently quoted scholars in Arabic literature. His originality, wit, satire, and learning, made him widely known."

Born in Basra, in southern Iraq, al-Jahiz "studied philology, philosophy, and science there," and became a brilliant scholar, prolific writer and chronicler of the deeds of African people. Al-Jahiz lived during an era marked by a visible increase in overt racial hostility directed by Arabs against Africans in the Islamic world. One of the most extreme reactions to this was the massive slave insurrection in 868 (around the time of Al-Jahiz's death), known in Arab histories as the "Revolt of the Blacks."

Al-Jahiz was the author of the Book of the Glory of the Blacks Over the Whites--a special essay in which the global history of African people and the subject of Blackness itself was discussed. During the 1980s, through the efforts of Mr. William Preston, the work was finally translated and published in English. It was long overdue. The Book of the Glory of the Blacks Over the Whites is a remarkable document. It includes penetrating commentaries on great African heroes such as Antarah the Lion, Lokman--the celebrated sage of the East--and the African ancestry of the Prophet Muhammad himself. According to Al-Jahiz, Abd al-Muttalib, the guardian of the sacred Kaaba, "fathered ten Lords, Black as the night and magnificent." One of these men was Abdallah, the father of the Prophet Muhammad.