Beyond Race and Color in Islam - I K Sundiata

I. K. SUNDIATA is in the Department of History at Northwestern 'Uni-versity,

The Journal of Ethnic Studies 6:1

BEYOND RACE AND COLOR IN ISLAM

by I. K. Sundiata

Analyses of the nature of race relations in the Islamic context diverge widely. On the one hand, it is said that Islam, because of its value system, has created societies in which color- and race are largely irrelevant or of secondary importance. We are reminded that the Koran specifically states;

0 people I We have created you from a male and a fe-male and we have made you into confederacies and tribes so that you may come to Imow one another. The noblest among you in the eyes of God is the most pious, for God is omniscient and well-informed (Chapter XLIX, verse 13).

In this view, Islam divides "mankind into Believers and Unbelievers who are all potentially Believers; and this division cuts across every difference of Physical Race. "1 It has been claimed that, "Negroes were treated very kindly by the Muslims; in fact most Arabs considered their Negroes as members of their farntly."2 Often this supposed harmony of race relations is contrasted with their supposed abrasiveness in Europe and North America, During the Second World War, Walter White of the National Association for the Advance-ment of Colored People maintained that "since before the days of the Saracens, North Africa has been a melting pot in which the blood of all races has mingled. But now attempts were being made by the Americans to teach the natives that skin color made a difference in human relations. "3 A Muslim writer has chided the United States' failure to achieve a racially integrated society ("millions of citizens denied admittance to hotels, restaurants and coffeehouses, so that they may not pollute the atmosphere in which the others exist") and compared this failure with the paradigm provided by the Islamic state: "If, in observing the greatest of the-so-called democratic states perpetrating such sinister crimes, we lose hope and break our hearts, nonetheless the memories of a distant past stir within us and bring forth great, shining pictures of the incomparable golden age of the state founded by mankind's great leader, Muhammad ibn-Abdullah. only that state has succeeded in stamping out all differentiations of race and color."4

Those who differ with this roseate picture produce instances from Islamic traditions (hadiths) and traditional literature which seemingly illustrate the salience of race and racism. In this decade Bernard Lewis has argued that, beneath a mantle of theological egalitarianism, there has flourished "a familiar pattern of sexual fantasy, social and occupational discrimination, and an un-thinking identification of tighter with better and darker with worse." Pre-Islamic poetry, Persian and Arabic literature, and selections from hadiths are all cited as evidence of "Islamic" color prejudice. Some of the evidence cited

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by Lewis is quite striking; an Egyptian poem declaims;

More stupid than a slave or his mate is he who makes the slave his master.

One who holds you by his word is unlike one who holds you in his gaol.

The morality of the black slave is bounded by his stinking pudenda and his teeth.

He does not keep his engagements of today, nor remember what he said yesterday,"

Even when strictures against color discrimination exist, some have cited these as prima facie evidence of the presence of racial bias. One tradition con-cerns a Believer who came to the Prophet and said: "0 Prophet does my black-ness, and the ugliness of my face ban me from entry into paradise ?....Now in my tribe I am noble, but in my case the dark complexion of my mother's family has predominated. "6 A negative response supposedly does not negate the ques-lion as evidence of color as a prominent social concern.

Neither a utopian image of color-blind Islam, not its opposite, drawn from the piling of source upon source, really says a great deal about the nature of race relations in the Islamic context. An attempt to describe a society's functioning solely from extant classical literature may be nothing more than an exercise In antiquarianism, In discussing race and color in Islam it is, as Lewis states, important to disentangle Islam as ideology from Islam-as civiliza-tion. Islamic ideology, as embodied in the Koran and, by extension in the Shade (Muslim law) and hadiths can differ-greatly from actual social practice. However it is not enough to perceive this difference, for Islamic "civilization" itself is Influenced by a multiplicity of factors. Out of them emerge not one pattern of race relations over a wide area--an area characterized by different patterns and proportions of ethnic contact, Discussion must be specific in terms of time and place, In spite of the frequent positing of a monolithic Islam which casts all institutions and relationships in its own mold, it is quite obvious that economic and social realities greatly determine racial interaction in a par-ticular context. Race relations vary widely in contiguous areas and even among groups within areas. Within Islam (as a civilization) we must allow for the pos-sibility of a range of relations and attitudes as great as that in Christendom be-tween Washington, Johannesburg, and Beide

The linkage between racial stereotyping and "social and occupational dis-crimination" is not always self-evident. To establish the existence of racism in Islam we must establish the extent to which social relations were molded by racial criteria. To argue that Islam is color-blind is to miss the point. Physi-cal differences are incorporated in visual reality. As Barth and Noel note: "Numerous physical traits are highly visible, but in any given society few are associated with institutionalized discrimination. "7 Definitions of racism have, in the past, explicitly or implicitly assumed transition from attitude to behavior. Racism has been "the philosophy or doctrine which teeAts to stress the real, or

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alleged features of race and supports the use of them as grounds for group or intergroup actions. "8 More recently, P. Van den Berghe has defined racism as "any set of beliefs that organic genetically transmitted differences (whether real or imagined) between human groups are intrinsically associated with the presence or the absence of certain socially relevant abilities or characteristics, hence that such differences area legitimate basis of invidious distinctions be-tween groups socially defined as races. "S It is these distinctions which mist be described if we are to determine the realities of race relations in Muslim contexts.

The core of the debate on race and color in Islam centers on the question of whether or not Islam can check the tendency to discriminate on a racial basis and substitute ideological evaluation. M. G. Smith, comparing slavery in Jamaica with slavery in Northern Nigeria [in the Sahel] has argued in the affirm-ative: "Stated briefly, whereas the Muhammadan Hausa [of Northern Nigeria] having Islamized their slaves, treated them as Mohammedans, the Caribbean colonists, having denied Christianity to theirs, treated them as being outside the pate of Christian or 'human' rights, and duly reaped their reward in thefts, malingering, abscondment, negligence, arson, rebellions, and the like, "la Ideology is thus given the power to mold economic institutions, a proposition explicitly or implicitly agreed to by many of those who view Islam as a racially egalitarian ideology. The great fault of such discussions is that they assume the primacy of religion. Ideology does not mold race relations, although it does in-fluence them. No monistic interpretation derived solely from a religion's tenets can illustrate the reality produced by the conjunction of praxis and precept, Re-ligion is not opaque; on the contrary, it must to some extent reflect the social milieu of which it is part. As C. C. Stewart has urged, we must establish "what racial and/or shades of color distinctions are rooted in...Isiam [and] to what extent have color distinctions in particular social organizations, or be-tween ethnic groups, been translated into Islamic practices or conceptions of

The presence or absence of racial discrimination in Islam can perhaps be best examined in the societies of North Africa. It is in the traditional Aftique blanche, with its long association with Afrique noire, that one might expect to find the question of race and color at its most salient. Morocco, especially, has had long contact with sub-Saharan Africa through trade (including the slave trade) and political expansion. In Morocco, an area in which Islam is by far the piepondetant religion, significant divergencies in patterns of race relations are evident and these are traceable to socio-economic differences among the Muslim population. Stereotyping and forms of social discrimination are found, although it remains to be determined if these represent deviations from contemporaneous religious teaching. Stereotyping and racial discrimination, in and of themselves, may prove very little beyond the presence of "bad" Muslims. It is also difficult to disentangle prejudice from piety and simple ethnocentrism. An instance would be the Muslim saint Sidi al Hajj'Abd al-Salam Shabayni of Tetuan (born 0. 1743) who supposedly commented that "he had made great profit by his traffic at Tlinbuctoo and House; but... says, money gained among the negroes has not the

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I. K. SUNDIATA BEYOND RACE AND COLOR IN ISLAM

blessing of God on it, but vanishes away without benefit to the owner; but ac-quired in a journey to Mecca, proves fortunate, and becomes a permanent no-qiasition."12 This may imply prejudice against "negroes" or simply mean that profit gained in a religious act is far more beneficial to its owner.

As in the Occident, racism can acquire a religious cast. The notion of the curse of Ham ("The negroes are wicked people. They have become black in consequence of the curse which Sidna Noh pronounced upon his son Ham, their ancestor.") is found in Morocco and has had socio-political ramifications. 13 The position of Blacks as freemen was questioned early in the seventeenth cen-tury and Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu (1556-1627), a Black-in Morocco, was forced to argue in defense; "The reason for enslavement is unbelief. The position of unbelieving Negroes Is the same as that of other unbelievers, Christians, Jews, Persians, Turks, etc....Any unbeliever, if he persists in his original unbelief, may be made a slave, whether he is descended from Ham or not. "14 With the curse of Ham, religiously based arguments were used to buttress the notion of discriminatory action. The argument may be quite religiously unsound and un-orthodox, but at the level of practical religion it could be used by men who were hardly beyond the religious pale. To acknowledge this is not to state that Islam itself nurtures racism. It is simply to indicate the malleability of ideology; there are other occasions where religion quite clearly abets racial intermingling and the blurring of caste lines.

Unlike many societies in which African slavery has existed, In most of non-Saharan Morocco "Black" is not synonymous with "peasantry," The lack of synonymity is important. The region did not witness the rise of a latifundiary monoculture resting on Black workers. Doubtless enslaved and semi-free Blacks did exist, but they did not perform the bulk of praeclial labor. • It has been noted that "the slave relationship of the Negro in the modern Western world was always closely linked to the plantation system---the exploitation of large numbers of unskilled slave laborers in vast agricultural projects. There has been nothing comparable to the plantation system of slavery in Northern Africa (excluding the Sahara) since the Islamic period began in the seventeenth cen-tury."15

What was the situation where "Black" and "peasantry" were synonymous ? in the Sahara and on its northern margins (the pre-Sahara) this obtained and it is here that Moroccan race relations are marked by the exploitative symbiosis characteristic of other areas with servile labor. Berber nomads, the "Whites, " engage in highly asymmetrical relations with "Black" agriculturalists. Agricul-tural work in the southern river valleys and oases has traditionally be performed by free, but dependent Black agriculturalists (Arabic, haratin/ Berber, ihar-tane). The haratin, who may be the largest single element among the population of southern Morocco, live in villages along the rivers Dra, Dads and Tudgha, from which they derive their names (Alt Dra, Ait Dads, Ait Tudgha). They live in their own villages or in those also inhabited by Berber overlords, chiefly the Ait Atta or the Alt Murghod. The hartani's (singular of haratin) economic and social role is well delineated; he is a sedentary agriculturalist, date cultivator or well-digger dependent for protection on armed pastoralists. Those haratin

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living among the Alt Atta, for instance, have traditionally had an individual Atta protector. The hartani tends his protector's date gardens and fields, and, as recompense, usually receives one-fifth of the yield. Among the Atta the patron-client relationship was formalized by the sacrifice of a sheep or other animal in front of the patron's home. This act (dabiha) carried with it a conditional curse, since refusal to grant protection would be shame (ar) in the eyes of God. In the central Atlas, forms of female clientship have also been noted; at grain-sorting, most of the subordinate helpers are widows or hartanlyin.16

Of the Ait Atta it is observed; "The Atta-Haratin relationship is based up-on a premise of inequality; and in this sense the Ait Atta are without question the biggest racists in the Moroccan South. They, white triballyborganized transhumant Berbers who traditionally always bore arms, despise the Haratin for being (1) negroid, (2) non-tribal, (3) sedentary and agricultural, and (4) in-experienced in bearing arms. "17 Besides haratin and Berbers the population of pre-Saharan Morocco is further complicated by the presence of Arab nomads, independent religious elements and Black slaves (who are not to he classed with the haratin). In the broadest sense the Berber term amazirh (plural, imazir-hene) applies to all free men, but Berbers and Arabs frequently exclude Blacks, however notable, from the designation.18 The subordinate position of the theoretically free haratin has been reinforced by the Berber monopoly of force. The behavior of the haratin "differs from that of the white Berbers; and al-though they share the same language, the Haratin are not considered equals or brethren." According to the same source, Berbers in the Middle Atlas say "!haratin should marry each other and white people should marry each other," although Berbers do occasionally marry haratin women,19

The situation in pre-Saharan Morocco would seem to justify the assump-tion that race and color can and do play an important role in the Islamic context. The assertion that "the Sahara Itself has been the great arena where white and black have met and fought"20 would, at first glance, seem confirmed. Yet, the situation may not be solely a reflection of an eternal struggle between the two Africas. What appears to be a Black-White bifurcation of Saharan society may be nothing more than a local manifestation of the widely found competition be-tween nomads and sedentaries. Surely the Saharan situation has analogues in other African cases such as Rwanda. Also, in the Sahara and its margins racial endogamy and hypodescent are seldom absolute. The Alt Unir of Bit Male-Dades are described as "Haratinized" Ait Atta, "not only racially, but in customs and Institutions as well. ,,21

Even if emphasis on racial differences is no more than an epiphenomenon of.nornaci/sedentary contact, it does remain that Saharan and pre-Saharan race relations diverge from those of non-Saharan areas. In Morocco a clear differ-ence between race relations in the bled el-maldizan (loosely, the settled area under central government control) and the bled es-siba (the area inhabited by -- — quasi-independent Arab and Berber nomads) emerges. The areas are not anti- podal (i.e. , rampant racism versus its absence). They do present different socio=economic contexts for racial interaction and differ chiefly in their empha-sis on racial endogamy and hypodescent. Differences in racial perceptions and

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policies between the center and the periphery have occasionally been manifest. The crushing of slave praetorianism in the makhzan in the eighteenth century was largely the work of Berber tribes (e.g., the Sanhaja of the Middle Atlas), who enslaved many of the recalcitrant Black troops. The Ait Wariughar of the Rif supposedly rose against the pretender Bu Hamara in 1908 and defeated his forces because the pretender's troops were commanded by a Black. Half a century later, the appointment of a Black Casablancan as one of the first governors of former Spanish Morocco reportedly generated resentment in the Rif. 22

The bled es-siba would fit P. van den Berghe's model of "parternalistlii" race relations, a system characteristic of agricultural and/or pastoral non-manufacturing economies. In the siba the presence of large-scale slave planta-tions does not obtain, but many facets of the type of race relations characteris-tic of such a milieu do: "The dominant group, often a small minority of less than ten per cent of the total population, rationalizes its rule in an ideology of benevolent despotism and regards members of the subordinate groups as child-ish, immature, irresponsible, exuberant, improvident, fim-loving, good hu-mored, and happy-go-lucky; in short as inferior but lovable as long as they stay in 'their place.' Van den Berghe adds: "in the subordinate group there is generally an ostensible accommodation to inferior status and sometimes even internalization of inferiority feelings expressed through self-deprecation. "23 The model conforms in many of its particulars with the picture drawn of Berber-haratin relations in the Middle Atlas:

Strictly speaking, there is no segregation of haratin from other social groups; they are often close friends and confidants of Berbers and Arabs. But especially in rural communities, there is an elaborate protocol which defines them as political inferiors. They tend to serve wherever they happen to be. On ritual occa-sions, when they are nominally guests like anyone else, they tend to take undignified roles--servant, musician, fool. They frequent-ly send their girl-children to be 'fostered' in richer households, where they are in fact maids-of-all-work. People make jokes about their appearance which they are expected to take in good part. 24

In the central Atlas not only are haratin differentiated economically, but they are also viewed as possessing special magico-religious powers. Many spice and potion sellers, the tabub or healers, are haratin, and jinn or spirits are frequently represented as Black. Supposedly, "black objects are called by euphemistic names which distract attention from their color...people always call attention to the colour of a black person, joking 'Isn't he white. "122 In popular religion, haratin pay a disproportionate role; the numbers of both sexes who lake prominent roles in the hedra (ecstatic Sufic dances) is out of propor-tion to their presence in the general population. Folk belief supposed attributes special curative powers to milk from a hartaniya; it is thought especially effec-tive in the cases of eye disease.

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In writing of Islamic Spain, E. Levi-Provencal, perhaps unconsciously, noted a distinction: "In the ninth century [in Spain], just as in present-day Morocco, there was no lack of mulattos [sic] in the Muslim aristocracy and bourgeoisie, among whom--they must be given this credit--color prejudice has never existed, no more in the Middle Ages than today. x,26 Not all strata are equally miscible. It has been pointed out "marriage has a different social sig-nificance in each of these three social settings: The proletarian, the petty bourgeois, and the accumulative elite. "37 In Morocco sedentary and patrilineal groups using non-praedial slaves prove more miscible than matrilineal nomadic (or transhumant) ones commanding agricultural labor. In the former case, con-cubinage, or mere sexual exploitation, often leads to the acceptance of the off-spring in the superordinate group. Elements of the urbanized and settled Ara-bic speaking elite ("surtout clans les grandes families, ou les concubines noires ont introduit de metissages") have intermixed more than the rural Berber popu-lation. 28 Women's role in society may indeed be an important factor in Berber endogamy. Their freedom, as compared to that of females in traditional Arab households, may give them greater voice in the marriage process, a voice which may act to the detriment of "out-group" women.• Lucy Maher, in her study of the Middle Atlas, noted the case of Baba (a woman in her forties):

Baha's mother chose... [a] wife for son [a widower], a hard-working harta,niya from a village near Akhdan.- Baha, who was very conscious of the fact that her father had been a skeikh and who often stressed her white Berber ancestry ("Women in our bled will marry old men rather than marry haratin" she said with great vehemence) was scathing about her mother's choice. Her behaviour towards her sister-in-law verged on the offensive. She insisted...that her mother had damaged the family honour. Both daughter mid son had therefore serious reproaches to make to their mother. 29

Of the central Sahara it has been said: "Race mixture has resulted in a rather unusual distribution of hybridism within the populations of commercial cen-ters...; for it is only members of the economic aristocracy...who are in a poSition to have sharecroppers or household servants, slave or free, and so it is often that the blood of the most aristocratic families that may be the least 'blue' when all is said and done. "30

Miscegenation itself does not guarantee racial mobility. Nor does mis-cegenation among certain socio-economic strata demonstrate the absence of racial stereotyping and the frequency of interbreeding among other segments of society. It does indicate a disjunction in the linkage between race and culture Among segments of the population, there is little evidence that physical traits were perceived as embodying immutable cultural and behavioural attributes. According to one commentator: "The [interracial] concubinage that took place [in Islamic countries] was socially accepted, the children of such unions being fully recognized and free." On the other hand, Lewis argues that "even today, in North Africa, a man with negroid features, even of the highest social status,

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is.described contemptuously as 'ould khademi—the son of a slave-woman." Ob-viously, opinions on the acceptance or rejection of the products of concubinage vary. If Lewis is correct, he raises the even more intriguing question of how the,offspring of such contemptible unions occupy "the highest social status."

-such a statement may be understandable only if we recognize that "contempt" is mt equally present among all segments of the population. In Morocco the off-. spring of concubines had entree to the political elite (in spite of such sayings as "Don't trust the son of a negro wife [legal concubine], even though he is blind.") This must temper any attempt to generalize on prevailing racial attitudes across social strata. The presence of children of slave women in the elite of the bled el-makhzan was neither exiguous nor unimportant and the accession of the sons of concubines to the office of sultan was far from remarkable. In 1599 an Eng-lish merchant in. Marrakech wrote of Sultan Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur's receiv-ing as a gift "15 virgins, the Kinge's daughters of Gago [Gao], which he sendeth th be the kinge's concubines. Yow must note all these be of the tole black heyre, for' the country yeldeth noe other." One of Al-Mansur's black wives, Latta Djuhar, became the mother of Muhammad al-Shaikh (1603) and of Mulay Abdul-lah Abu-Faris (1603-1609) and, through the former, the grandmother of Mulay Abdallah (1609-1624).31

In the 1630's Mulay a-Sharif, the founder of the Alawite dynasty, had two Black concubines who both bore sons. One of these, Mulay Ismail (reigned 1673-1727), encouraged the extension of maklizan authority through use of slave levies, the Abid al-Bukhari. In the eighteenth century the Abid were able to dominate the sultanate and were only suppressed with the aid of Berber groups from the bled es-siba. In the last century the accession of sons of concubines still occurred; e.g., Mulay Hasan (1873-1894) had a black mother.32

The practice of hyperdescent among segments of the makhzan elite has been abetted by a strong religio-cultural emphasis on patrillny. Even in the central Sahara the modifying effect of Islam on kinship structures has been noted among maraboutic Tuareg; these "speak Arabic fluently and trace their descent from the Prophet. They are strongly patrilineal so that mixed blood children belong to the father's group, thus introducing Negroid traits." In the Moroccan makhzan the father's pedigree is of overriding importance. This is especially true of the descendants of the Prophet (who are fairly prevalent in Morocco), The Shurfa (plural of Sharif) are composed of several families di-vided into two major branches, the Idrissi and the Filali (the Alawites are des-cended from the latter).33

Despite the argument that color distinctions are prime determinants of social status in Islam, it is obvious that, for a Sharif, descent is of prime im-portance. In the eighteenth century an English traveller noted the appearance of a Fezzani descendant of the Prophet, who was "a lively old man, short and thin, and dark coloured, almost to blackness; affable, free and entertaining in his conversation, and much respected...." The present Moroccan dynasty bases its legitimacy on Sharifian descent, a legitimacy which is not diminished by the accession of the sons of slave women. Far from being mesailiances, these unions have on occasion receLyed praise—from the pious. In 1700 the ruler

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of the Hijaz, Sharif Said, favorably contrasted the mixed lineage and orthodox religious policy of Mulay Ismail with the European mother and alliances of the Ottoman sultan. Seventy-nine years later the reigning ruler of the Hijaz, Sharif Sasur, married a daughter of the Alawites.34

The overall importance of interracial concubinage in North Africa has. been questioned; "Concubinage at higher and intermarriage at lower social levels seem to have taken place, but must have been on a rather limited scale and, probably for social more than biological reasons, produced few offspring who survived." The American consul in Algiers in the 1820's voiced the opinion: "From the small number of mulattoes in the Algerine population, it would appear that a prejudice exists here, as in the United States, and probably from the same cause, namely its slavish origin." A comparison between North Africa and the United States (where in 1850, after twenty-three decades of interracial contact only 7.7 percent of the slave population was mulatto) may not be quite fair. In one case we can see a plethora of laws and social sanctions designed to discourage miscegenation. In the other we are given sup-position without evidence. Lewis does cite eunuchry as a cause for the apparent lack of a large Black population; however, in Morocco this explanation is not substantiated. The important sources of Black influx in the bled el makhzan, haratin migrants and the Abid, were not intended as harem attendants. The state sponsored entrance of slave troops, perhaps the largest single migration aimed not at producing a caste of castrati, but, on the contrary, "those Negroes brought together in the new town [outside Meknes] had one purpose--to breedi Mulay Ismail pulled into their ranks various haratin and the descendants of cap-tives sent to Morocco after invasion of the Sudan in 1591. Feeling the need for further increments, he later sent his nephew, Abulabbas Ahinad, south to ar-range for a regular supply of troops.35

By the early nineteenth century one traveller estimated that 300,000 such Blacks had been settled in Morocco. These slaves of the state were an impor-tant prop of its authority and, as such, were encouraged to reproduce. Their function was far removed from the stereotypic picture of Oriental harem servi-tude. At puberty they were apprenticed to artisans and, the following year, taught the care and handling of mules. Next they were assigned to building projects and later instructed in the mastery of horses. Saving completed this regimen, the young slaves practiced cavalry technique and, at approximately sixteen, were inducted into the regular army. Each was given "a young Negress who had been trained in the household arts and in music, and then sent out with her to raise more recruits for this never-ending process." The idea of whole-sale castration does not account for the low visibility of Blacks in Moroccan society. A far more realistic hypothesis is that, in the absence of rigidly prescribed racial endogamy, makhzan society has absorbed many Blacks. In the absence of rigid hypodescent rooted in immutable racial taxonomies, this Is the far more likely explanation. It is known that Mulay Ismail, the founder of the Abid al Bukhari, himself fostered racial intermarriage and took "care to mix them...in his tawn nurseries." As in the case of the ruling dynasty, it is obvious that "Black" can become "White" through absorption.36

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The fate of the Black population has been obfuscated by confusion Fur rounding the very notion of race itself. One writer has said of Morocco; "As a result of the connexion with West Africa, and of the former use of Negroes as domestic slaves and as soldiers, there is a small minority who are black or of mixed descent as well as groups of dark-skinned people known as haratin who are cultivators in the oases, probably also of mixed origins. The mass of the population, however, are sunni Muslims of the Maliki rite." The confusion of race and culture in this instance would disregard the fact that Blacks do not constitute a separate religious community. It assumes, for all time, the exis-tence of Blacks as a discrete community--a racial purity which has no basis in social or biological reality. Observers have usually used their societies as points of reference; even where attitudinal differences are noted, morphological similarities are assumed:

A minority of detriablized blacks, almost all of whom were brought in as slaves, occupies the lowest socio-economic rungs in the social ladder [in the United States and North Africa]. Not only are they unable to return to their native lands, but they are also in no position to demand consideration or respect. They lack both sufficient cohesion within the domestic society and physical proxim-ity to native black societies that might champion their cause 37

While some writers hypostatize an exiguous and marginal Black presence, the tacit assumption of a self-conscious and closed "White" majority is not substantiated (in the makhzan). Observers from racially bifurcated societies may find such dichotomization natural, although it is not proven that it agrees with North African self-perception. The racial taxonomy chosen may reflect neither the schema of the society under analysis, nor that of the observer's own society. For the British or American investigator who habitually employs a system of classification based on hypodescent, it requires an alteration of the usual basis of racial taxonomy and a shift to hyperdescent. Society is still di-vided into dichotomous "White" and "Black" segments, but the former is made to include the products of interbreeding. Obviously, in a sense, interbreeding ceases to be an option in classificatory terms; we thus become confronted with the problem of rather mysteriously disappearing populations. Although well recognized terms may be used ("White" and "Black, "White" and "Negro"), classification becomes essentially abstract; it describes neither the internal racial ordering of the society under observation, nor that of the Anglophone obs exver's . 38

Moving away from the idea of immutable and non-interbreeding popula-tions we hypothesize that the makhzan bears comparison with an area such as Brazil which has experienced extensive interbreeding and which historically possessed a manifold racial classification. Furthermore, we hypothesize that, since at least 1600, there have emerged similarities with certain Latin Ameri-can racial hierarchies: "(a) the upper social stratum, or at least its physical ideal, is white, although it continuously absorbs a number of light coloureds;

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BEYOND RACE AND COLOR IN ISLAM I. K. SUNDIATA

(b) the lowest social stratum does not consist solely of Negroes, although the Negro group (as distinct from the coloureds) generally occupies the lowest pos tion; (c) the intermediate social stratum consists mainly of people with mixed racial features. X39 The makhzan differs from this model in that the religiously sanctioned polygyny of the makhzan permitted legal unions with slave women and recognition of the offspring as members of the superordinate group.

From analyzing the Caribbean, H. Hoetink has evolved concepts which appear to have general applicability. Operating in all "segmented" societies, Hoetink would argue, is that "complex of physical (somatic) characteristics which are accepted by a group as its norm and ideal." The concept of the seg-mented society is related to that of the somatic norm. A segmented society is one "which at its moment of origin consisted of at least two groups of people o different races and culture, each having its own social institutions and social structure; each of these groups, which I shall call segments having its own ran in the social structure; and society as a whole being governed by one of the segments. "40 With relation to the somatic norm image, a segmented society (a society with a "race problem") is further defined as "one in which two or more groups occur which had originally, apart from their cultural differences, clearly different somatic norm images of which that of the dominant segment has, in the process of intersegmentary acculturation, been adopted and accepted by the lower segment or segments." For the makhzan this, in simplest terms, would mean that incoming Blacks would not fit the aesthetic ideal of the recipi-ent society. This deviation, along with ethnocentrism, may be responsible for certain negative stereotypes. On the other hand, many Europeanists have em-phasized the Africanness of the northern quarter of the continent and argued that biological and cultural elements have been extended to areas of southern Europe. We should remember that there are degrees of "Whiteness" and that in both North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula the norm may be "wheaty" (in North Africa - amid, in Spain - trigueno) rather than blanched.

The importance of the norm image may vary with the sexes, being less socially significant for men. At the other end of North Africa, in Egypt, it has been observed of women:

Four degrees of skin pigmentation are distinguished...which, although they do not determine social status, do constitute an area of invidious distinction for women. Of highest status, but least com-mon statistically, are the bayda (white), ranging from Nordic to Mediterranean coloring. Most of the population falls in the next two groups, either amhi (wheaty), or samra (lighter than black), a some-what deeper brownish tone. The last group, concentrated in but not confined to Upper Egypt bordering on Nubia, is souda (black).

While practically all Egyptians are dark-tressed and dark-eyed, some small percentage have blue-grey-green eyes and an even smaller number, fair hair. Higher status is accorded to persons of this rare type, other things being equal.41

12

In the Moroccan bled es-siba the same phenomenon has been noted: Paleness is highly valued on the marriage-market. The prejudice of women

can be traced in the play-ditties which girls sing.... '42 The acceptance of persons of mixed parentage into the father's group says

very little about the social condition of Blacks qua. Blacks. However, the rela-tive lack of attention paid to race relations in the bled el-makhzan can perhaps be explained by the demographic position of the Blacks. It can be argued that

ey constituted an exotic group. Such a group would be created in a situation where the:

lowest segment forms a numerically very small minority.... a mechanism operates, by which the dominant segments may ac-quire feelings of sympathy towards the 'others.' It could be said that the differences, in so far as they affect 'us' emotionally, arouse one of two reactions; dislike and tendency to be repelled by, or liking and a positive tendency to acceptance of (though not necessar-ily amalgamation with), what is different. If what is different is regarded as a threat to what is 'ours,' dislike will predominate. If what is different is experienced subjectively as fascinatingly strange not threatening 'our' own position, it may he observed favourably. it43

Furthermore, "one group conceives of another as exotic when the latter arouses the interest of members of the former by its observable differences, physical and/or cultural, without being felt subjectively as a threat in any way:, At various times groups of Blacks have been felt to be threats by other groups in Moroccan society. On the whole, however, Blacks appear to be the objects of (if anything) condescension rather than aversion. Moroccan slaves did not exist in a slave society--they were not, in the makhzan, part of an order dependent upon a preponderance of slave labor. This is, again, the most salient difference between Morocco and those former slave societies with which It is so frequently compared (i.e. , American plantation societies).

The miscibility of makhzan society has not historically, rested on the mobility of Blacks, but on the absorption of individuals whose physical type is not greatly divergent from the prevailing norm. The somatic distance between the scions of upper class concubinage and the rest of the population is not great (or even significant). The color variations among the population (ramhi, samra, etc.) and endemic tawniness ensure that, at least on a physical plane, there could be no absolute physical delineation between the offspring of metissage and the rest of the population. This fact, which is far from obscure, has been gnored by many analysts of Afrique blanche. Many have created confusion by

.viewing Africa above the Sahara as a racial appendage of Europe, a cordon sanitaire impervious to influence from the south.

In the future it will be interesting to see if rural ethnic biases are eroded by the urban milieu or, if, conversely, urban competition between former cli-ents and patrons exacerbates existing prejudices. One thing is certain;

13

I. K. SUNDIATA

Moroccan urbanization is burgeoning; Casablanca proper has over 1.5 million people. As a total metropolitan area it may have a population of 1.7 million (and cover 113 sq. kilometers). In 1970 over half of the population was under 15 and 60% were under 20. Continued immigration from the countryside and a high birthrate combine to produce an annual growth rate of 7%. This rapid ur-banization is symptomatic of the crisis of Moroccan agriculture; out of an esti-mated population of 14 million, over 30% live in urban areas. The country's annual growth rate is over 3% a year and it is estimated that one-fourth or ap-proximately 600,000, rural migrants enter the cities each year. Morocco's population has doubled in the last twenty-eight years, but the urban population has done the same thing in sixteen. In Casablanca in 1952, 11% of the entire Muslim population was of southern origin. Southern migrants made up 13% of the population of rural origin and 40% of the Berber-speakers. Of the 473,000 Muslim Casablancans in 1952, 52,000 were from the south. In 1960 it is esti-mated that there were approximately 85,000 Saharans in a population of around 778,000 inhabitants. In 1960, 10% of the 24.7% of the rural tachelfit-speaking (Berber) migrants from the pre-Sahara were 'blacks' (called Drawa in the city). Most of the Drawa are former haratin who originally migrated to the City as a temporary expedient. Their influx antedates this century and probably got its impetus from periods of scarcity in the south: 1850, 1867-8, 1878. Most of the newcomers at first concentrated in bidonvilles composed of nwala-s, conical cabins made of branches. Later they centered in certain quarters of the city (notably the Old Medina and Ben Msik). In 1952 the greatest concentration of Drawa was in Ben Msik, where they formed 20% of the inhabitants. (Since then conditions have somewhat improved with the construction of a new area, Sidi Othman.) In the early fifties Drawa were also concentrated in the Old Medina near the Bab Jedid and the Bab Marrakech, where the population was 16% southern in origin (the majority being Drawn). Certain sections beyond the walls of the Bab Jedid (in the darb el-Hammam) also have had concentrations of former haratin from Tamegrout, Nesrat, and Tagounit in the Valley of the Drat4

Besides being residentially congregated, the Drawa were concentrated in unskilled or semi-skilled employment. Unlike some of their neighbors, they have not had great success in commerce. In the early 1950's in Ben Msik, 10% of the population was Chleuh ("white" Berber) and 20% Drawa. In terms of business ownership the proportions were quite different: 8.5% Drawa and 29% Chleuh. The Black migrants were largely unskilled workers in several fields: public works (6.2%); sanitation (14. 6%); parks and gardens (18.3%); cement and lime (12.3%); mills (22.6%); naval construction (9%); dockyards (5%). In small businesses with less than 100 workers the percentages of Drawa were: iron industry 6%; canneries 7%; knackers 4%; teaching institutions (domestic person-nel) 6.5%. They were concentrated in unskilled employment (e.g. , in the early 1950's, 95% of those employed in the cement industry were unskilled).49

The breakdown of the older douars in "terms of tribal origin, education - t and economic status," has been accompanied by the rapid growth of bidonvilles. 11 Casablanca has the highest number of bidonville residents of any Moroccan city over 400,000. Ben.Msik, the largest and second oldest is spread over two

14


In such a dynamic industrial society, with its great geographi-cal mobility and its stress on impersonal market mechanisms and universalistic and achieved criteria of occupational selection race relations are quite different from what they are under agrarian condi-tions. The master-servant model with its elaborate caste etiquette and its mechanisms of subservience and social distance breaks down to be replaced by acute competition between the subordinate caste and the working class within the dominant group. To the extent that social distance diminishes, physical segregation is introduced as a second line of defense for the preservation of the dominant group's position. The amount of contact between castes declines as the society becomes increasingly compartmentalized into racially homo-genous ghettos with their nearly self-sufficient institutional structure. Miscegenation decreases in frequency and becomes more clandestine and stigmatized in both dominant and subordinate groups.48

Should we conclude from this that they are less gifted than other Moroccans for the demands of modern industry? That would be unlikely: the workers at the top levels of the hierarchy are not men who came from one specific race or from one specific region, but those who were born in Casablanca, that is those from any ethnic background who are most integrated in the city. In order, then, to justify [a) ... conclusion we would have to be able to prove that the Drawas born in Casablanca are proportionally less numerous

15

different arrondissements, and has a population estimated at over 270,000. Its prevailing poverty is evident when the 75% unemployment rate is compared with the 87% employment rate of a working-class neighborhood such as Derb Bouchentouf. 47

In his dualistic model of race relations ("paternalistic" versus "competi-tive") Van den Berghe has emphasized the tendency of urbanization and/or in-dustrialization to increase ethnic tension:

For Casablanca this hypothesis has yet to be substantiated. The very heterogeneity of Moroccan society itself militates against the racial struggle predicted by Van den Berghe for the urban context: "Conflict is endemic and frequently erupts in both dominant and subordinate groups in the form of lynch-ing, pogroms, race riots, and terrorism as well as in disciplined mass move-ments of political opposition ranging from ordinary demonstrations to passive resistance. "49 The class and caste cleavages in Moroccan society sabotage any such hypothesis or prognosis. The Drawa do not confront the "Others" are multifarious and, in the metropolis, far from a unified social front. The poverty of most of the Drawa may be reinforced by ethnicity and ethnic discrim-ination, yet, in a situation where poverty is endemic its absence would be an anomaly.

A European commentator has asked:

I. K. SUNDIATA

than others in rising out of the status of laborer. Available statis-tics do not allow us to reach this conclusion.50

The data are scanty. A study of one Ben Msik family (alias Bedawi) indi-cates that residents perceive their plight as economic rather than ethnic. Their grievances are stated with major emphasis on governmental neglect of the mar-ginal workers and lumpenproletariat of the quarter. Mention of specifically ethnic problems was nil. In fact the physical appearance of the family was only briefly touched upon ("Negroid skin color and facial features are dominant among all members of the family [except members by marriage] and reflect their origin in the Draa Valley in the south of Morocco. ")51. Although the Drawa may lack a concept of a separate and definable "black" grievance, this does not mean that such a grievance does not exist;

A creditable amount of scholarly material on the several socio-economic aspects of life in Northern Africa does exist, but there ap-pears to be none that deals directly, or even primarily, with the role of the non-Saharan black man. Even the casual observer can soon detect a certain pattern, although he will not be able to buttress his impressions with statistics and detailed monographs. A dispropor-tionately large number of black men are likely to be found, for exam-ple, working as unskilled laborers at a construction site or on a work-gang building a highway. 52

As the Brazilian case demonstrates, the presence of racial discrimina-tion may not call forth concerted group action or even a well-defined racial con-sciousness; thus, "although Brazilians are very conscious of phenotypical dif-ferences, there are no clear-cut corporate racial groups; one can speak only of ill-defined and not mutually exclusive categories of like-looking people rather than of corporate groups with rather sharply drawn boundaries as in the United States or South Africa." Although it is said that haratin migrants to Casablanca are largely endogamous ("lesiblancs' que plaisantent volontiers le h' artani disent (BBB serait bien en peine de faire autrement, mais que ce n'est pas Denvie qui lui en manque...."), it is essential to remember that the Drawa are part of a larger group which is not delimited by color. In Morocco today the urban poor are too numerous to be confined within any ethnic group, and, as in the South Africa of the 1920's poverty and the scarcity of living room have juxta-posed groups accustomed to asymmetrical rural relationships. The position of the Drawa in Casablanca is part of the social and class malaise which affects the entire country. The problems of the lumpenproletariat and the marginally employed do not express themselves in chromatic terms simply because their dimensions are too great. At present "equity and unification of the tripartite cities which Morocco now contains (the three parts being the medinas, the vines nouvelles, and the peripheral bidonvilles) are pressing needs which occupy high priority on the agenda of yet-unsolved problems inherited from colonialism." In Casablanca the urbanization of former haratin has produced no striking

16


evidence of the rise of Van den Berghe's "competitive" model. if anything, the city is producing a deracine lumpenproletariat in which ethnicity is not the key to membership. 53

Foster has noted that urban migrants sometimes express nostalia for the well-known ways of the bled. When asked to compare power relationships in the urban and rural contexts, one resident of Ben Msik commented:

Do you mean is there a difference between being emasculated by a rich or powerful person in the countryside and being emascu-lated by a similar person in Ben Msik? Actually (he continued) ixl the countryside you are known. Everyone knows your value....A rich person or someone who owns land, if he knows you work well, he doesn't bother you because it is not worth his while...in general, in the bled since you are known, you have some assurance that you'll be treated according to your reputation.... [in Ben Msik] each person has his own interest and is looking out for himself. 54

This nostalgia for the countryside may appear paradoxical, since it is the search for a better life which draws the migrant to the city. In looking at simi-lar attitudes among urban migrants in Algeria, Pierre Boudieu has concluded that the transition from urban to rural existence may involve a genuine deterior-ation of security:

As a matter of fact, like an ambiguous form, each behavior can be analyzed twice, since each is naturally related to a dual logic; just as capitalistic ways of behavior imposed by necessity differ from those integrated into a capitalistic way of living, so traditionalist behavior by the abyss caused by awareness of the transformations of the context. So it is, for example, that the hand-to-mouth existence of the subproletarian or the proletarian-ized fellah is totally different from the secure life the fellah used to enjoy. In one case, the search for subsistence is a unique and generally accepted aim, guaranteed by customary rules; in the other, the acquisition of just enough to survive is the aim imposed on an exploited class by economic necessity. 55

In Morocco nostalgia for the more "paternal" and personal relations of the coun-tryside may be partially wishful projection on a rapidly changing reality. Some dwellers of the bidonvilles are not aware of changes in consumption patterns among sharecroppers who now shop daily at a rural grocery store rather than weekly or monthly at a local souk and whose demands for consumer goods are changing and growing. At the same time, in the country old social patterns have adapted themselves to small-scale urbanization. In the town and environs of Akhdar In the Middle Atlas, Maher has found that:

People tend to operate with the prejudices derived from the

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I UNIVERSITY telt LlUIC-1-111

15:

I. K. SUNDIATA

[rural] estate system. Thus a sherif would find a clerical or high status job more readily than a haratin. More important is the fact that political activities perpetuated by shurfa are legitimated by the ritual status of the agent. Thus a high proportion of civil servants are shurfa. Moreover, those traders who are shurfa have more 'good-will' because contact with them is associated with 'increase' and blessing. The most prosperous traders in Akhdar are shurfa. Many of them therefore retain their roles as patrons. On the other hand low status and poorly rewarded jobs were often held by haratin who are often clients and rarely patrons. 5°

In the Akhdar region the haratin in the towns tend to be poorer than other groups. They have few possessions (carpets, gold, land, or houses) and their social contacts have usually been with other haratin. An important development is that the haratin are diversifying occupationally as younger ones enter new and non-traditional vocations. Also, "another factor in this improvement is that haratin women are more ready than those of other estates to undertake paid work as domestic servants or as carpet weavers. "57

In the countryside, the haratin are accustomed to a pattern of subservi-ence. In the larger cities, they, like other rural migrants, are objects of stig-ma of poverty. The pervasiveness of this condition has produced a generalized malaise among the lumpenproletariat (sometimes referred to as "fatalism") and a lack of solidarity. Not only is there little evidence of a movement towards "Drawa Power," but there is, in general, little evidence of great solidarity among the urban poor: "Because any individual or collective project is forbid-den them, the subproletarians tend to see themselves in the same way that they are seen by the ruling estate. 'We are made for that,' they say more or less explicitly (and the others: 'They are used to it'). Like racism, povertism is an essentialism. "58 Indeed, "povertism"--the lumpenproletarlat's acceptance of its position afflicts those who occupy the position of the urban unemployed or marginally employed, regardless of color. In this situation, racism, pure and simple, is unable to define and maintain the proper relation between social classes.

The development of "Drawa consciousness" does not appear to be the answer to the problem of Morocco's lumenproletariat. As in neighboring Algeria, the problem of the economic exploitation of ethnic minorities (e.g., French tolerated slavery among the Tuareg) awaits a radical restructuring of the present political and social structure. The problem of race in Morocco is subsumed by the large problem of exploitative class structure and its solution awaits the reordering of that structure.

NOTES

'Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (1939), Vol. 1, 226, quoted in Bernard Lewis, "Race and Color in Islam," Encounter, xxxv, 2 (August 1970), 18.


2Norman Bennett, "Christian and Negro Slavery in Eighteenth Century North Africa," Journal of African History, I (1960), 74-75.

3Walter White, A Rising Wind (Garden City, N.Y. 1945), 77. 4Muhammad al-Ghazzali, Our Beginning in Wisdom, trans. Ismaili R.

al-Faruqi (Washington, D. C., 1953), 61-63.

5Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, 30, citing the poet al-Mutanabbi, from the Diwan, ed. 'Abd al-Wahbab 'Azzam (Cairo, 1363/1944), 460. Lewis' arti-cle has also been published in book form, Race and Color in Islam (New York, 1971).

6L. P. Harvey, "On Bernard Lewis' Article," Encounter XXXVI, 2 (February, 1971), 91, quoting Tanbih al-Ghafilin (Cairo A.H. 1306), 205.

7Ernest A. Barth and Donald L. Noel, "Conceptual Frameworks for the Analysis of Race Relations: An Evaluation," Social Forces, L (March, 1972), 338.

8H. P. Fairchild, ed. , Dictionary of Sociology (New York, 1944), 246. 9Pierre van den Berghe, Race and Racism (New York, 1967, 11.

10M. G. Smith, "Slavery and Emancipation in Two Societies," Social and Economic Studies, III, 324 (December 1954), 271.

11C. C. Stewart, "Race and Color in Islam; some Mauritanian notes," paper delivered at the Conference on 'The Maintenance and Transmission of Islamic Culture in Tropical Africa, " April 27-28, 1973, Boston University African Studies Center.

12Ivor Wilks and Phyllis Ferguson, "In Vindication of Sidi al-Hajj 'Abd al Salam Shabaynl,'" African Perspectives (London, 1970), 40.

13Edward Westermarck, Wit and Wisdom in Morocco (London, 1930), 131. 143. O. Hunwick, "A New Source for the Biography of Ahmad Baba al Tim-

bukti (1556-1627)," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (1964) 558n. Also Hunwick, "Ahmad Baba and the Moroccan Invasion of the Sudan," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, II, 3 (December, 1966), 311-328.

15 Leon Carl Brown, "Color in Northern Africa," Daedalus, XCVI (Spring 1967), 469. An exception would be nineteenth century Egypt where extensive agricultural slavery was not uncommon. This seems to have been an Innovation and the result of cotton exploitation for the international market. See Gabriel Baer, "Slavery in Nineteenth Century Egypt" Journal of African History, VIII

(1967), 417-441. 16Among the Tuareg of the central Sahara there are a number of subordin-

ate Black groups (izeggaren - Black serfs, iklan - slaves, ineden - blacksmiths) with whom intermarriage is frowned upon and against whom the ideal of racial purity is maintained. J. Nicolaisen, Ecology and Culture of the Pastoral Tuareg (Copenhagen, 1963), 15. Ross E. Dunn, "Berber Imperialism: the Ait

19

BEYOND RACE AND COLOR IN ISLAM I. K. SUNDIATA

Atta Expansion in Southeast Morocco, " in Ernest Gellner and Charles Micaud, eds. , Arabs and Berbers (London, 1973), 96. Vanessa Maher, Women and Property in Morocco (New York, 1974), 49.

17David Hart, "The Tribe in Modern Morocco: Two Case Studies" in Gainer and Micaud, eds. Arabs and Berbers, 53.

18D. Jacques-Meunie, "Hierarchie sociale au Maroc presaharien," liesperis, Vol. XLV (1958), 244.

19Maher, Women and Property, 16. 20Brown, "Color in Northern Africa," 466. 21Hart, "The Tribe in Modern Morocco," 53. 22Ibid., 46. 23Van den Berghe, Race and Racism, 27. 24Maher, Women and Property, 25. 25Ibid. 26E. Levi-Provencal, Histoire de l'Espagne musulmane, Vol. III (Paris,

1953), 178, quoted by Brown, "Color in North Africa," 178n. 27Maher, Women and Property, 3. 28 Andre Adam, 'Les Sahariens a Casablanca,' in Le Sahara, Rapports et

contacts humains, Colloque organise par la Faculte des Lettres (Aix-en-Provence, Publication des Annales de La Familia' des Lettres (Aix-en-Provence, 1967), 189.

29Maher, Women and Property, 125. 30L. Cabot Briggs, The Living Races of the Sahara Desert (Cambridge,

1958), 74. 31Brown, "Color in Northern Africa, " 469. Lewis, "Race and Color in

Islam, " 32. Lewis says, "even now members of the comparatively small num-ber of recognizably negroid families in the Middle East tend to intermarry among their own kind, though this is not a firm rule, nor would intermarriage with others be regarded in quite the same way as in Western countries." Wes-termarck, Wit and Wisdom in Morocco, 132. In E. W. Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors (2nd ed., N. Y., 1970), 190.

32Bovill, 193. The recruitment of this force was begun in a previous reign. Ali ibn Haidar a competitor and enemy of the third Alawite sultan, Mulay al-Rashid, was forced to flee the country with a small following. He was given asylum by the Bambara king of Sega (the master of Timbuktu). While in the Sudan Ibn Haidar recruited a Black force with which he hoped to avenge him-self on Al-Rashid. By the time he returned to Morocco his adversary was dead and Ibn Haidar arranged a modus vivendi with the new Alawite, Mulay Ismail. The former rebel retired from politics and his Black army was assumed by the

state. Brown, "Color in North Africa," 469.

33Horace Miner, The Primitive City of Timbuctoo (New York, 1965), 21. Badi Foster, "The Moroccan Power Structure as Seen From Below: Political Participation Ina Casablancan Shantytown" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1974), 31.

34The Sharif, "Imhammed, " was from a noble Fezzani family and had travelled widely in the Sahel. He was interviewed in 1788 by Simon Lucas, Oriental Interpreter of the Court of St. James. Lucas visited Tripoli in the service of the African Association in hopes of gaining information about trans-Saharan trade. Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, Proceedings (1790), 7. J. Comhalre, "Africans in Muslim History," Muslim World XLVI, 4 (October 1956), 343.

35Lewis, "Race and Color in Islam," 31. Lewis has compared aspects of Arab negrophobia with the anti-Semitic European parallel. An important dis-tinction, which he overlooks, is that "blacks" in Morocco were part of the religious community (Umma) and Jews were not. See B. A. Mojuetan, "Myth and Legend as Functional Instruments in Politics: The Establishment of the 'Alawi Dynasty in Morocco," Journal of African History, XVI, 1 (1975), 17-27. Brown, "Color in Northern Africa," citing William Shaler, Sketches of Algiers (Boston, 1826), 69. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross, I (Boston, 1974), 469. For eunuchry, see Otto Meinardus, "The Upper Egyptian Practice of the Making of Eunuchs in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," Zeitschrift fUr Ethnologie [Braunschweig] 941 (1969), 47-58. Bennett, "Chris-tian and Negro Slavery, " 70. The "disappearance" of Blacks through inter-breeding rather than through castration or infertility is mentioned by Briggs as occurring in the Mzab region of southern Algeria and has parallels elsewhere. In 1882 there were 327 slaves and 961 free Blacks out of a total population of approximately 30,000 in an area where Blacks are seldom encountered today. L. Cabot Briggs, The Living Races of the Sahara Desert, 74, citing M. Robin LeMzab (Algiers, 1884), 42. Briggs has a rather ingenious and unsubstantiated theory of how miscegenation proceeded: "We can only suppose that the usual process is for a Negro serving woman to bear a male child whose father is her white master, after which the half-breed son grows up around the house and one day has secret relations with his master's wife who, in due course, pro-duces a hybrid child which all the family assume to be the masters." Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors, 193.

36Bennett, "Christian and Negro Slavery," 70, citing John Buffa, Travels through the Empire of Morocco (London, 1810), 135. It is estimated that during "the European Middle Ages at least twenty thousand blacks were sent yearly to North Africa from West Africa. This would yield a figure of at least two million per century." See Raymond Manny, "Tableau geographique de l'Ouest africain au Moyen Age," Memoire IFAN, 61 (Dakar, 1961).

In the past century the abolitionist Thomas Buxton, perhaps inflatedly, estimated that twenty thousand sub-Saharan slaves were taken to North Africa.

Thomas Fowell Buxton, The African Slave Trade (London, 1839), 44 ff. Aboul-qasem Ben Ahmed Ezziani, Le Maroc de 1631 1 1812 (Paris, 1886), 29ff, cited

21

20

1. N. SUNDIATA

by Bennett, "Christian and Negro Slavery," 70. Also see M. Delafosse, "Les Delafosse, "Les Debuts des Troupes Noire au Maroc, Hesperia (1923), ILL 1-10. John Windhus, "A Journey to Mequinez," A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World (London, 1814), XV, 474-475.

37Nevin Barbour, Morocco (New York, 1966), 17. Brown, "Color in Northern Africa," 467.

381n the latter's own society the resulting confusion may be immense--those who would be internal Blacks become "White" in the external context. An interesting reaction to this phenomenon appeared in a photo caption in an Afro-American paper:

Is this Chicago Negro Judge Edith Sampson? No, Although they definitely look alike, this is actually the highest ranking woman in the Arab World, the first lady to hold the position of governmental minister in Egypt. Madam Hilcmet's apparent black African ancestry was obviously no obstacle to her attainment of this post despite Gov. Barnett's [of Mississippi] amazing theory that Egypt was 'a white race.'

"Egyptian Ambassador Answers Governor Ross Barnett," Muhammad Speaks, January 31, 1963, 3.

39H. Hoetink, Caribbean Race Relations (New York, 1967), 40. Hoetink is speaking specifically of Puerto Rico.

40Ibid., 97.

41Janet Abu-Lughod and Lucy Amin, "Egyptian Marriage Advertisements: Microcosm of a Changing Society," Marriage and Family Living, XXIII, 2 (May, 1961), 135n.

42Maher, Women and Property, 25. We should not assume that the soma-tic norm image is a constant. Indeed, one of the fruits of colonialism has been the internationalization of canons of "beauty," (witness the emergence of the blond Lebanese film star as a type). Before the impact of Europe, especially in urban areas, bronzed rather than blanched may have been the ideal (cf. tradi-tional Brazil).

43Hoetink, Carrihean Race Relations, 29.

44Janet Abu-Lughod, "Moroccan Cities: Apartheid and the Serendipity of Conservation," paper delivered at the Third International Congress of African-ists, Addis Ababa, December, 1973, citing preliminary results presented by the Division des Statistiques,. "Population Legate du Maroc d' apres le Recensement General de la Population et de l'Habita.t de 1971," issued. October, 1971 by the Service de Statistiques et Etudes Demographiques, Rabat. Foster, "The Moroc-can Power Structure," 33. Adam, "Les Sahariens '6. Casablanca," 182-6 and "Berber Migration in Casablanca," in GelLner and Micaud, eds. Arabs and

22


Berbers, 327. Tachelfit is a Berber dialect spoken among groups who inhabit the western High Atlas, the Anti-Atlas, and the plains and valleys of south-western Morocco.

45Adam, "Les Sahariens a Casablanca," 185-6. 46Foster, "The Moroccan Power Structure," 38.

47Ibid.,207 . Also see Andre Adam, "Le Bidonville de Ben Msik 'a Casa-blanca," Extrait des Annales de l'Institut d'Etudes Orientates, tome VIII, 1949-50.

48Van den Berghe, Race and Racism, 29.

49Ibid., 30-32. 50Adam, "Les Sahariens," 186. 51Foster, "The Moroccan Power Structure," 52. 52Brown, "Color in North Africa," 480n. 53Van den Berghe, Race and Racism, 128. Adam, Les Sahariens, 186.

Abu-Lughod, "Moroccan Cities," 30. 54Foster, "The Moroccan Power Structure," 87-88. 55Pierre Bourdieu, "The Algerian Subproletariat," in I. William Zart-

man, ed., Man State and Society in the Contemporary Maghrih (New York, 1973) 86.

56Maher, Women and Property, 37. 57Ibid., 25-26. 58Bourdieu, "The Algerian Subproletariat," 91.

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Beyond Race and Color in Islam - I K Sundiata