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Did the aghribat al-'arab ("crows of the Arabs") write on their blackness? A short thread... https://twitter.com/AntarIbnShadad/status/1011510642656923648
Lists of the aghribat al-'arab, or "crows of the Arabs," a moniker for male poets of African maternal ancestry (who were often therefore known by their mothers' names, not their fathers') and Arab paternity fluctuate: most early ones list three pre-Islamic poets...
...'Antarah b. Shaddad, Sulayk b. al-Sulaka, & Khufaf b. Nadba, but later lists add more poets who are either later or who, like Shanfara, are jahiliyya-era poets of questionable Afro-Arab ancestry. They were grouped on raced grounds, but their diwans don't always reflect this...
...Among the "core" 3 poets, only 'Antarah discusses his mixed heritage/status as a "hajīn" (derogatory term meaning, roughly, half-breed) in his orig. diwan. In a study of broader lists of aghribat al-'arab, Xavier Luffin finds that the add-ons discuss blackness more...
...Given that many of these add-ons, like Hayqutan al-Habashi, are derived from al-Jahiz's treatise on blackness, we may even venture that the additions are made *because* they discuss black identity in their poems-- the litmus of ancestry becomes secondary to poetic content...
...But another thing that is remarkable about 'Antarah as a "crow of the Arabs" is that his diwan grows over time, and comes to include many more lines about his blackness and that of his family, like the infamous description of his mother at the top of the thread...
...or like this short poem, attributed to 'Antar but not--according to James Montgomery--verifiable against his earliest collected works:
لَئِن أَكُ أَسوَداً فَالمِسكُ لَوني
وَما لِسَوادِ جِلدي مِن دَواءِ
وَلَكِن تَبعُدُ الفَحشاءُ عَنّي
كَبُعدِ الأَرضِ عَن جَوِّ السَماءِ
So why?
لَئِن أَكُ أَسوَداً فَالمِسكُ لَوني
وَما لِسَوادِ جِلدي مِن دَواءِ
وَلَكِن تَبعُدُ الفَحشاءُ عَنّي
كَبُعدِ الأَرضِ عَن جَوِّ السَماءِ
So why?
Why take 'Antarah--already a prominent symbol of "making it" despite racial adversity--and add extra sauce? Part of it may be unintentional: a feedback loop created between the pseudo-'Antarahs of his epic tradition and eager udabā'...
...and part of it is almost assuredly historical: blackness and its significations change in the Arab-Muslim world. The moniker "hajīn" and discussions of maternity come increasingly into tension with a stabilizing idea of patrilineal ethnicity, and pseudo-'Antaras reflect this..
...but I think it also shows something about cultural icons and how we use them. For good or ill, some made 'Antarah's blackness less incidental and more a part of his poetic persona, and this does important cultural work in the context of Arab heroic traditions...
Extra reading:
Xavier Luffin, "PEAUX NOIRES, ÂMES BLANCHES LES POÈTES ARABES D'ORIGINE AFRICAINE FACE À LEUR NÉGRITUDE" Quaderni di Studi Arabi 5/6 (2010-2011): 199-215...
Xavier Luffin, "PEAUX NOIRES, ÂMES BLANCHES LES POÈTES ARABES D'ORIGINE AFRICAINE FACE À LEUR NÉGRITUDE" Quaderni di Studi Arabi 5/6 (2010-2011): 199-215...
...And on "hajīn" identity:
Elizabeth Urban, Conquered Populations in Early Islam: Non-Arabs, Slaves, and the Sons of Slave Mothers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019)
Elizabeth Urban, Conquered Populations in Early Islam: Non-Arabs, Slaves, and the Sons of Slave Mothers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019)
BTW this thread could probably be an essay, and Luffin's work is the only significant update that I know of to Bernard Lewis' piece on the aghribat al-'arab in that famed Critical Inquiry special issue. Maybe someday...
