The sketch of Bartholdi’s proposal for the Suez Canal shows a Muslim woman wearing traditional Arab clothing.Photo: Getty Images
“That might be surprising to people more familiar with the statue’s French roots than its Arab ones. After all, the statue’s structure was designed by Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel), and Lady Liberty was given to the United States by France for its centennial to celebrate the alliance of the two countries formed during the French Revolution. The statue’s designer, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, was also French, but he found inspiration in a very different place: Egypt. In 1855, he visited Nubian monuments at Abu Simbel, which feature tombs guarded by gigantic colossus figures.”
Moorish- Berber/Arab Woman wearing cultural headdress and Statue of Liberty
“Bartholdi envisioned a colossal monument featuring a robe-clad woman representing Egypt to stand at Port Said, the city at the northern terminus of the canal in Egypt. To prep for this undertaking, Barry Moreno, author of multiple books about the statue, writes that Bartholdi studied art like the Colossus, honing the concept for a figure called Libertas who would stand at the canal. “Taking the form of a veiled peasant woman,” writes Moreno, “the statue was to stand 86 feet high, and its pedestal was to rise to a height of 48 feet.” Early models of the statue were called “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia. Edward Berenson, author of Statue of Liberty: A Translatlantic Story, writes that Bartholdi’s concept morphed from “a gigantic female fellah, or Arab peasant” into “a colossal goddess.“
“And that monument was going to be a woman in the southern opening of the canal holding up a torch over her head and that woman was dressed in Arab peasant garb,” Berenson says. But when the ruler of Egypt, Khedewi Ismail Pasha, went bankrupt, the colossal Suez sculpture project was jettisoned. But the artist soon found a way to recycle his design. “A couple of years earlier, Bartholdi and his friends decided they were going to give a gift to the United States that was going to celebrate the centennial of the American Revolution,” Berenson explains. “And then, Bartholdi thought, ‘Ah! I’ve got a great idea! I can reuse this image but change it to fit the American Revolution.’” “Bartholdi changed the woman that was originally dressed in Arab garb into a Greco-Roman goddess of liberty. And the Statue of Liberty, as we know her today, was born.”
This early rendering of “Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia” features a peasant woman and has a strong resemblance to the Statue of Liberty.
“French designer Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s inspiration for the Statue of Liberty has been fairly well documented throughout history. Bartholdi’s first inspiration was a 110-foot statue of the Greek sun god Helios, commonly known as the “Colossus of Rhodes.” Author Barry Moreno writes in his book, “The Statue of Liberty,” that, “The Colossus of Rhodes influenced Bartholdi’s bold plans for the statue of Libertas. Like Helios, Libertas would stand at the entrance to a harbour, would hold aloft a lamp, and would have upon her head a nimbus (in the form of a spiked halo). But Helios stood only 110 feet high, while Libertas was to rise to a height of 151 feet 1 inch.”
Makers: Frederic Auguste Bartholdi designed the Statue of Liberty. Getty Images
But the Colossus of Rhodes was also the inspiration for a previous statue that Bartholdi designed for a lighthouse at the approach of the Suez Canal: the Arab peasant woman. Moreno writes: “Auguste Bartholdi’s first important venture into modeling a great monument in the tradition of the Colossus of Rhodes was called Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia. In 1867, the sculptor proposed building this colossus for the reigning Egyptian khedive, Isma’il Pasha. Taking the form a veiled Egyptian peasant woman, the statue was to stand 86 feet high, and its pedestal was to rise to a height of 48 feet. Fearing it would incur too great an expense, Isma’il Pasha rejected the offer in 1869. “
Gustave Eiffel (the famous builder of the Eiffel tower, right) constructed the monument in New York harbor as a gift from the French people to the United States on the nation’s centennial
“According to the book The Statue of Liberty: A Transatlantic Story (Yale University Press, 2012), by New York University history professor Edward Berenson, the Egyptians rejected Bartholdi’s design, opting for a more cost-effective proposal.”
Ishtar: “Goddess of Liberty and Personal Freedom. Ishtar was introduced to the Greeks as Astarte through the Phoenicians. We can see that the lineage of the Greek and Roman goddess of the planet Venus goes all the way back to ancient Babylon of around 3,000 BC.” “We know of Libertas being referred to as the Mother of Harlots by the famous Roman historian (and senator) Cicero’s writings. Cicero indicates that she was also a very early goddess of the Greeks even before early Roman civilization developed. Upon further investigation, we find that the Greeks had acquired knowledge of this being from previous empires in the Middle East and Egypt. This goddess was called Ashtoreth in Hebrew and in the Old Testament’s Greek version (the Septuagint). Ashtoreth becomes transliterated into the Greek as Astarte, which became the early Greek name for the goddess until it was later changed to Aphrodite. The Hebrew term Ashtoreth was itself a transliteration from the Babylonian dialect (Akkadian) term of Ishtar. Ishtar in the most ancient times was also referred to by the Sumerian dialect as Inanna or Ninanna meaning the Queen of Heaven or Lady of Heaven. In Canaan, this deity was called Ashtaroth. The Hittites called her Shaushka. The Phoenicians on Cypress initially referred to her as Astarte.”
“Isis was the name the Egyptians gave to her. This is how the goddess became introduced to the earliest Greeks. We know this transformation in part due to the written texts found by archaeologists plus from studying the character traits and descriptions. For instance, all these deities were actually just one goddess and she was associated with the planet Venus. Most had phonetic language roots in the transliterating aspects of the name Ishtar and this remained so until the Greeks changed the name to Aphrodite. Later the Romans referred to her in the Latin, initially as Libertas and later as Venus when they accepted more than just the Liberty doctrines.”
The Crown of 7 Spikes:“This symbol was to represent the enlightenment of the Babylonian sun god Shamesh/Utu. The idea was that this sun god’s occultic illumination could be focused by each of the 7 spikes of the crown. Each spike would flash this occultic enlightenment to each of the 7 “horas” or large landmasses of the world. In other words, the each spike would flash occultic enlightenment to a continent on planet earth. Each of the 7 spikes would then be representative of one of the 7 large landmasses or continents of the world.”
The Tablets:“A common misconception is that the tablets represent the 10 Commandments that God gave to Moses. This is not true. The tablets are engraved only with the Roman numerals standing for July 4th, 1776. According to the preeminent Statue Historian, Marvin Trachtenberg in his book “The Statue of Liberty” the tablets represented a generic notion of the concept of law. This should not be confused with the Laws of Moses.”
“Less well-known, however, is the direct ancient Egyptian connection between the colossus and the New York statue. The independence that Rhodes celebrated with the erection of the colossus had been gained only by the critical intervention in 304 bc of ships belonging to Ptolemy I, a former general of Alexander the Great and founder of the Egyptian dynasty that would last until the death of Cleopatra (VII) the Great. Ptolemy’s forces dispersed the siege of Rhodes begun in 305 bc by armies loyal to Antigonus I, a rival, former general of Alexander. Following the withdrawal of the enemy troops, Rhodes seized and sold their abandoned weapons and thus financed the harbor monument. Although it is the torch of liberty that is highlighted in both Greek and English dedication texts, the numerous green foam crowns sold to New York tourists indicate clearly that the most iconic aspect of the Statue of Liberty is her crown of solar rays, a feature typically restored in images of the lost colossus as well. Here again, there is a direct Egyptian connection, as Ptolemaic kings represented themselves as Helios on earth. In antiquity, the crown given to Liberty in New York was worn more prominently by Ptolemy III on his official coinage. Bartholdi’s statue has been intended originally for Port Said beside the Suez Canal (see over). The placement in Egypt would have been quite logical.”
Zaida of Seville (c. 1070 – 1100) Mistress of: King Alfonso VI of Castile. Tenure: c. 1091 – 1100. Royal Bastards: One – Three. Fall From Power: None; she married him.
“In her letters to Al-Mansur, Elizabeth I, over a period of 25 years, continually described the relationship between the two countries as “La buena amistad y confederación que hay entre nuestras coronas” (“The great friendship and cooperation that exists between our Crowns”), and presented herself as “Vuestra hermana y pariente según ley de corona y ceptro” (“Your sister and relative according to the law of the Crown and the Scepter”)”
“Alphonso VI, white Christian king, who was so often beaten by Yusuf, took a Moorish wife, the lovely Zayda, who was the mother of his favorite son, Sancho.”
“Genealogist Harold B. Brooks-Baker, publisher of Burke’s Peerage, Britain’s guide to the nobility. It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen,” Brooks-Baker wrote to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the time. Brooks-Baker connected Queen Elizabeth to Muhammad via Zaida of Seville, a Muslim princess from the 11th century who converted to Christianity and became King Alfonso VI of Castile’s concubine. However, it’s not clear if Zaida was actually related to Muhammad or not. Abdelhamid Al-Aouni, the historian who penned the article for Al-Ousboue, believes there is a connection, too. Using Zaida as his lynchpin, he traced Elizabeth’s genealogy back 43 generations all the way to Muhammad. The purported connection “builds a bridge between our two religions and kingdoms,” he tells The Economist.”
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth meets with Jordan’s King Abdullah, in Buckingham Palace London Tuesday November 15, 2011.(AP Photo/ Lewis Whyld/Pool)
“Zaida, a Muslim princess living in 11th-century Seville, is one of the most extraordinary ancestors of the British royal family. Zaida’s bloodline reached the English shores through her engagement to Alfonso VI, king of León-Castile. From their offspring descended Isabel Pérez of Castile, who in the 14th century was sent to England to marry Edmund Duke of York, son of King Edward III of England. Their grandson, Richard, Duke of York, led a rebellion against King Henry VI which developed into the Wars of the Roses. Richard’s second son Edward took the throne in 1461. Thus the legacy of Islamic Spain – better known as al-Andalus – found its way into the Plantagenet royal court.”
“This lineage has been of recent interest both in the UK and in the Middle East, as it purportedly proves a family relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and the Prophet Muhammad himself. Respected experts and commentators such as Burke’s Peerage and Ali Gomaa, the former Grand Mufti of Egypt, have suggested that Zaida was the offspring of al-Muʿtamid, ruler of Seville and a descendant of the daughter of the Prophet, Fāṭima and her husband ʿĀlī. As a member of the Hashemite family, the descendants of Fāṭima and ʿĀlī, the Queen would count as relatives, among others, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the Aga Khan IV, Prince Shah Karim Al Hussaini, a close friend of the current Royal family.”
“The claim gained little attention in the West over the subsequent decades. But Assahifa Al-Ousbouia, a weekly Arabic-language newspaper in Morocco, called attention to the theory again this week by publishing a family tree that claimed to trace the Queen’s lineage from Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn Abbad, the first independent ruler of Seville in what was then the territory of Al-Andalus in Spain. According to the chart published in Morocco and translated by the British press, Muhammad ibn Abbad is a great-grandchild of the Prophet Muhammad, who died in 632 in what is now Saudi Arabia. The line between the Prophet Mohammad, ibn Abbad and Elizabeth II thus links the current monarch with the founder of one of the three monotheistic religions, according to the newspaper. Historians have suggested that the connection is possible but not entirely irrefutable. Marriages between Spanish and British royals have been common throughout the centuries, and both the British and Spanish royal families descend from Queen Victoria. Brooks-Baker appears to have connected the Queen to the prophet through a princess named Zaida, a grandchild of ibn Abbad who converted to Christianity and became the concubine of King Alfonso VI of Castile.”
“According to reports from Casablanca to Karachi, the British monarch is descended from the Prophet Muhammad, making her a cousin of the kings of Morocco and Jordan, not to mention of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. Her bloodline runs through the Earl of Cambridge, in the 14th century, across medieval Muslim Spain, to Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter. Her link to Muhammad has previously been verified by Ali Gomaa, the former grand mufti of Egypt, and Burke’s Peerage, a British authority on royal pedigrees.”
“According to the family tree, she is descendant from the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima.According to the Economist, much of the purported link revolves around a Muslim princess called Zaida, who fled an attack on Seville in Muslim Spain in the 11th century and found refuge in the court of Alfonso VI of Castille. There, “she changed her name to Isabella, converted to Christianity and bore Alfonso a son, Sancho, one of whose descendants later married the Earl of Cambridge,” the Economist said. However, the report notes that Zaida’s own origins are not without debate. “Some make her the daughter of Muatamid bin Abbad, a wine-drinking caliph descended from the Prophet. Others say she married into his family,” the report said.”
“In December 2017, Princess Michael came under fire for what critics regard as either extreme bigotry or a sign that she’s woefully out of touch: she wore a racist, blackamoor brooch to a luncheon attended by Meghan Markle, Prince Harry’s American fiancé, who is of biracial descent.”
“Princess Michael of Kent, a first cousin to Queen Elizabeth II, caused quite a social media stir last Wednesday (December 20) when she was photographed wearing what many called a “racist brooch” on her coat. The Princess was on her way to a Buckingham Palace lunch attended by Prince Harry’s fiancée, Meghan Markle – a child of a white father and African-American mother. The brooch in question was a blackamoor-style brooch that depicted an African figure. Blackamoor-style brooches are widely considered offensive, and the Princess was accused of being racist and out of touch by many on Twitter and Facebook.”
“To the Cushite race belonged the oldest and purest Arabian blood. They were the original Arabians and the creators of the ancient civilization, evidences of which may be seen in the stupendous ruins to be found in every part of the country. At the time that Ethiopians began to show power as monarchs of Egypt about 3000 to 3500 B. C. the western part of Arabia was divided into two powerful kingdoms.”
“Meleck Yarfrick, king of Arabia Felix, who conducted a people called Sabcei into Libya, made himself master of that country, established his followers there, and gave it the name Africa…”
Arabia Felix (Egypt Nubia East North Africa) 1576 Petri rare woodcut old map. Issued Basel, 1576 by Henri Petri for Pomponii Melae de Orbis Situ.Charming and quite rare 16th century woodblock miniature map. Despite the title, the map includes almost the entire Arabian peninsula as well as the coast of Persia.
“Malik, Melik, Malka, Malek, Malick, or Melekh is the Semitic term translating to “king”, recorded in East Semitic and later Northwest Semitic (e.g. Aramaic, Canaanite, Hebrew) and Arabic. The earliest form of the name Maloka was used to denote a prince or chieftain in the East Semitic Akkadian language of the Mesopotamian states of Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia and Chaldea. The Northwest Semitic mlk was the title of the rulers of the primarily Amorite, Sutean, Canaanite, Phoenician and Aramean city-states of the Levant and Canaan from the Late Bronze Age. Eventual derivatives include the Aramaic, Neo Assyrian, Mandic and Arabic forms: Malik, Malek, Mallick, Malkha, Malka, Malkai and the Hebrew form Melek. Moloch has been traditionally interpreted the epithet of a god, known as “the king” like Baal was an epithet “the master” and Adon an epithet “the lord”, but in the case of Moloch purposely mispronounced as Molek instead of Melek using the vowels of Hebrew bosheth “shame”
“Arabia Felix (literally: Fertile Arabia; also Ancient Greek: Eudaemon Arabia) was the Latin name previously used by geographers to describe South Arabia,[1][2] or what is now Yemen.[3] The term “Fertile Arabia” is a translation of the Latin “Arabia Felix”. Felix means “fecund, fertile” but also “happy, fortunate, blessed.” Arabia Felix was one of three regions into which the Romans divided the Arabian peninsula: Arabia Deserta, Arabia Felix, and Arabia Petraea. The Greeks and the Romans called Yemen Arabia Felix.
“Strabo” and “Diodorus” and other ancient’s who identified everything East of the Nile as “Arabia”, “WHEN we were describing Arabia, we included in the description the gulfs which compress and make it a peninsula, namely the Gulfs of Arabia and of Persis. We described at the same time some parts of Egypt, and those of Ethiopia, inhabited by the Troglodytæ, and by the people situated next to them, extending to the confines of the Cinnamon country.” (Quoting Strabo Book 17.1)
dated means: dated Formerly in common use, and still in occasional use, but now unfashionable;
Portrait of young Abram Hannibal.
“The term aswad was used in Arabic literature to describe any dark-skinned person, not necessarily a black African. The Arabs are depicted as white skinned in the hadith and as dark skinned in the midrash, but the perception of color is relative and in the eye of the perceiver. To the Jew the Arab was dark, as we saw in several other examples, and for our purposes the important point is that in the rabbinic story the dark-skinned Arab is called Kushi.”
“Such usage is echoed in Byzantine sources, in which we find, after the fourth century, that the terms “Indian” and “Indians” refer to three different places and its peoples: the Indian subcontinent, South Arabia, and Ethiopia. Some would date this usage as early as the third century. Note also that the Troglodytes, on the east coast of Africa, were variously classified as Ethiopians, Arabs, or Indians by classical writers.”
“The confusion in antiquity and late antiquity of the terms India and Ethiopia, and the use of “Indian” to refer to South Arabians, thus parallels the rabbinic usage of Kushi for Arab. The rabbinic view of the Arab as dark skinned is, perhaps, echoed in the name of Abgar V Ukkama, the king of Edessa in the first century C.E. Many of the Abgar dynasty were ethnically Arab, and “Abgar” itself is an Arabic name.”
“Tacitus specifically refers to Abgar V as an Arab who led Arab troops. The name Ukkama is Syriac (the language of Edessa) and means “black.” Although there is some dispute as to why Abgar was called “the black,” there is a good possibility that his skin color was the reason. We know of a number of individuals in antiquity and late antiquity who were nicknamed “the black.”
“Josephus, for example, mentions a Niger of Peraea who was general of the Jewish army in the war against Rome, as well as onetime governor of Idumaea. “Niger” and various derivaites were Latin cognomina chose for the color of one’s hair, eyes, or skin.”
“The prophet or teacher at Antioch, “Simeon called Niger” (Acts 13:1), apparently got his cognomen because of his dark complexion. In Syriac we know of Mar Ukkama who was one of the founders of a monastery in the seventh century. Indeed, sch nicknames seem to be a universal phenomenon. It is therefore not unlikely that Abgar Ukkama was so named because of his Arab dark complexion in the eyes of the surrounding population, just as the Jews of Palestine considered the Arabs to be dark skinned. Use of the term kushi to refer to a dark-skinned Arab continued into the Jewish Middle Ages.”
“A Hebrew poem found the Cairo Genizah records the Fatimid campaign against the Banu Jarrah in the early eleventh century. Written by Menahem be-Rabbi Yom Tav [sic] he-Hazzan shortly after the event, it refers to the Banu Jarrah, who were from southern Arabia and had very dark skin, as Kushim.”
“According to Ezra Fleischer, who published the poem, a contemporaneous source, the poem Bekhu ahay vegam sifdu by Joseph ibn Abitur, also refers to the Banu Jarrah in this way, calling them Kushim, while a letter from Sadoq Halevi ben Levi in Israel called them shehorim ‘blacks.'”
“Another example from the Middle Ages is afforded by several medieval exegetes who commented on the biblical identification of Moses’ wife as a “Kushite” (Num 12:1). Following the line that Moses’ wife was Zipporah (Ex. 2:21), they said that since Zipporah was a Midianite/Arab (“Ishmaelite”), she was called a Kushite because she was “very dark like the Kushites.”
“This view of the Arab as dark skinned is also found among other peoples, as is indicated by the term arap (i.e. Arab) meaning “black African” in modern Turkish, Greek, and Russian, as well as in Yiddish.”
“The meaning of kushi as dark skinned occurs also in a tenth century apocalyptic Genizah fragment dealing with the Byzantine emperors from Michael III to Romanus I (842-944 C.E.). According to this text, Emperor Leo VI, “the Wise,” made a close favorite of his, a kushi, co-emperor for twenty-two years of his reign.”
“Arabia [of עָרַב , Heb. Black, or of Harabi, Heh. a Thief or Robber] the one account of their swarthy complexion and the latter on account of their thievish disposition. The Arabians having in all Ages been so addicted to this Vice, that, as Matin del Rio observes, it was as usual with the Jews to call a Thief an Arabian, as it was to call a Merchant a Canaanite, and a Mathematician a Chaldean.”
Source: Dictionary of races or peoples by United States. Immigration Commission (1907-1910); Dillingham, William P. (William Paul), 1843-1923; Folkmar, Daniel, 1861-1932; Folkmar, Elnora (Cuddeback) 1863-1930 The U.S. Immigration Dictionary of Races and Peoples was originally intended to guide the Immigration Commission workers, but when it became clear that it would appear too late for that, it came to be seen as the Commission’s summation of knowledge about each race or people.”
“The Arabians are related to the Hebrews and include Arabs proper and the wandering Bedouin tribes of the desert. (See Semetic-Hamitic). They have long since spread out from the country that bears their name and settled in distant portions of Africa and Asia, as well as penetrated into Europe. They have given their language through the Koran, to the vaster populations of Mohammedan faith. They are not to be confounded with the Turks (see), who are Mongolian, Tatar, in origin and speech rather than Caucasian. Neither are they closely related to the Syrians (see), who are Christians and Aryans, not Semites; nor even to the Berbers and the modern Moors of north Africa, who are Hamitic rather than Semetic in origin. Yet Syrians and Moors alike have long used the Arabic tongue.” Dictionary of races or peoples by United States. Immigration Commission (1907-1910); Dillingham, William P. (William Paul), 1843-1923; Folkmar, Daniel, 1861-1932; Folkmar, Elnora (Cuddeback) 1863-1930
“According to the 13th c. Lisan -al-Arab, Khudr or dark brown “with kinky hair”- like the Iranian girl here, was the predominant color of the Arabs of Muhammad’s time, while others were shadeed al-udmah much darker. The most important question is why up to the 15th century Arabia was still predominantly black or filled with “Khudr” and “sumr” populations, and the history books never mention it.” (Quoting Dana Reynolds Marniche)
“Afro-Turks are often called “Arabs” in Turkey. They also refer to themselves as Arabs, at times. This has led to a situation in which “Arab” means “black.” University professor Ahmet Yurur explains. “For the Turks, Africa was only the northern part of the continent: from Egypt to Morocco. This part was of course under Arab influence. Turks were never really interested in the south of the continent. This is why this community has come to be called ‘Arab,” he says.”
“WHEN we were describing Arabia, we included in the description the gulfs which compress and make it a peninsula, namely the Gulfs of Arabia and of Persis. We described at the same time some parts of Egypt, and those of Ethiopia, inhabited by the Troglodytæ, and by the people situated next to them, extending to the confines of the Cinnamon country.”
“The Moorish “henchmen” and their ruler are said to live in tents and in a white manors or towers by the sea. In another tale, Marco, in order to achieve one of his heroic deeds at one point when he is in the accursed dungeon of “Azak”, takes black dye “and dyed black his white face, he made of himself a black Arab, and let out his good brown steed”. (p. 111).”
“In Bulgaria, as among the Roma, black face is often used for the Arapi, i.e. Arabs, in mumming or mummers parades. In certain villages “entire faces are blackened, and not just with soot but with a dark-black greasepaint or polish” (Creed, Gerald, 2011, p. 190).”
“In studying the history of the Arabian peninsula and use of Arab names in genealogy one becomes aware that certain of them over time had come to signify things other than what they originally meant among the Arabic speaking, but non-Arab historians and their translators. For example, the names that should have been translated as Musri or Muzir or Mizraim came to be translated by writers in our time as Egypt. Meanwhile the name of the Arabian tribe of Banu Faris has been translated as” Persian”, and so on and so on. It is how for example Japhet came to be perceived of as other than an Arabian people.”
“The name Zanj or Zanuj appears to have been another word for dark-skinned populations whether from the continent of Asia or Africa and including the peninsula of Arabia. It came to mean the rust colored people but may have been connected to the name of Azania as suggested by. David Goldenberg. The Iranians for example used the word to refer to the dark-skinned Arabs that had been pushed back from Persia. They were considered descendants of Zohhakk, the Arabian. Earliest rulers of Iran (Medes and Persians) appear to have had such names as Az-Dahakka or (Astyages) and Deioces (translated as Dahakka). “The name is identified by Rawlinson and Niebuhr (Gesch. Assur’s, p. 32) with Deioces = Ashdahak (Arm.), Ajis Dahaka (Pe’s.), the biting snake, the emblem of the Median power.”
“It should be noted that the name was considered connected to that of the Daae or Daasas of Central Asia who were ancestral to the Achaemenids of Persia. These people who built tripura or castles surrounded by three concentric circles were likely those that had first settled in Baluchistan and Central Asia with a culture called Namazgha IV. There was originally some connection with the word daeva and in fact divine. The name Dasa however, later came to have the connotation of dark force, slave or servant as the Scythic (Armenian related) people moved and pushed them southward adopting the Haoma (Soma) practices and according to the Greeks even the name Arya itself, from the early Medes.”
“According to al-Masudi it was Nabataeans (Arabians who had settled and built Babylonia) who first called themselves Arya and that the name meant lion. These people of Faris and the Medes/Maitanni likely introduced the so-called Indo-Iranic script and culture. However, early Orientalists tried to justify an exceedingly early arrival for such people in India based on the idea that the earliest Aryans were proto-Europeans.”
“In Arab tradition the Madhhij tribe of Al-Ash’ar begat Judda (Gad). The nomad tribe of Judda or Jadda (Gadd/”Gad”) founded the town of Jeddah/Jiddah in Hijaz and Judda was often in the company of Ash’ar. Just as Gad is mentioned together with Asher in the Torah. “He is al-Ash’ar … the brother of Madhhij and, it is said, the son of Madhhij in Ibn Kalbi’s account. He begat al—Jumahir, al—Argham, al—Adgham, al-An’am, Judda,..” Al-Iqd al’Farid the Unique Necklace by ibn Abd Rabbih Vol. published 2012 p. 295 Al-Argham is the Arabic for “Jerachme’el”.
“There is a large group of scholars that have been invested in dismissing anything that would connect the early Arabian, and thus Afro-Asiatic, origins of the Jews and Israelites. This, of course, parallels the attempts of other scholars to refute any connection of black Africans with the early Moors and Berbers. Here is an excellent example of someone that is in denial about the early Jews in Arabia and Africa attempts to identify such observations by medieval travelers as Eldad ha-Dani and Benjamin of Tudela as mostly fantasy or fantastical.”
“As in the case of the Central Asian tribes the Yemeni ten tribes story begins with an exorbitant demography – ‘100,000 in Teima’ and ‘300,000 in Tanai,,” the main city in the region. But what concerns Benjamin most is the city of Kheibar (Khaybar), located not in Yemen, but ‘sixteen day’ journey to the north’ in the Hijaz:
‘People say that the men of Kheibar belong to the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh, whom Shalmaneser, king of Assyria led hiter into captivity. They have built strongly fortified cities and make war upon all other kingdoms. … Kheibar is a very large city with 50,000 Jews. In it are learned men and great warriors, who wage war with the men of Shinar and of the land of the north, as well as with the bordering tribes of the land of El-Yemen near them, which latter country is [in] the confines of India.” The Ten Lost Tribes : A World History by Zvi Ben-Dor Benite 2009 p. 106-107
Further down this author states -“It is fascinating how persistent the story of the Hijazi ten tribes was…” “Behind this topos of the Arabian ten tribes is the fact of Jewish tribes in Arabia up to the time of Muhammad; in this regard, Benjamin’s Kheibar” is not wholly fictional. Khaybar was ‘the great Jewish centre in the north of the Hajez’ at the time of the Prophet Muhammad. A rich oasis with a fortified Jewish village, Khaybar provided economic and political sustenance to the rest of the Jewish tribes in the Hijaz. A ‘hotbed of anti-Muslim intrigue,’ it was certainly a Jewish power with which Muhammad had to contend on his way to control of the region and of Arabia…”
Nevertheless, both Eldad ha-Dani (whose name likely derived from the Hadramaut tribe named Daan) and Benjamin of Tudela are claimed by this author to have gathered their information and pronounced their statements based on hearsay. Benjamin is accused of mainly borrowing from Eldad. The author also appears oblivious to the fact that since the period of Byzantium until the late medieval period of Marco Polo – the Yemen was referred to as- India and primarily as Little India or India Minor. He writes -“Here again is an instance of fantastic geography, this time connecting Yemen with India – a testimony to the space –defying powers of the ten tribes’ geography in Arabia borders on India.”
And in fact, the man from the tribe of Dan must have been from the Dan or Da’an of the Hadramaut in Yemen from the Habbani, who claim descent from Dan and Bahila (“Bilha” mother of Dan in the Torah.). According to Arab manuscripts The Habbania are the descendants ” of Habban son of el Kulus son of ‘Amr son of Kays, a sub-tribe of Bahila”. A History of the Arabs in Sudan Harold MacMichael 1922. Bahila according to tradition was originally a woman from the Sabaean tribe of Hamdan, who married Ma’an b. Asur or A’sir b. Saad of the Azd from whom were derived some lineages of Qays b. Ailan including Suhm or Sahm, who are called Suham in the Torah, son of Dan. In addition, as I’ve mentioned many times before Ghunai or Ghani b. Asur another tribe of the Arabian Bahilah is undoubtedly the Ghuni that is in the Torah the grandson of Bilha through her other son “Naphtali”.
“In addition the tribe of Naphtali (now called al-Maftalah in the A’sir), Gadd (called Jadda/Judda) and Ash’ar are Yemenite tribes mentioned by Eldad of the Dan tribe living beyond the river Kush – which may refer to the river of the Kush in the Yemen (where Moses/Muzaikiyya once lived), or else, the Nile which they colonized (and where they were both considered Sabaeans. ) The river Sambathes or Sabbation may thus have been the same or connected to the river in Africa the earlier Greeks called Astaboras named for the city of Sabotha or Sabtah 50 miles north of lake Tana in Ethiopia. The fact that he mentions fire worshippers suggest the Sambation or this land of Israelites was somewhere near the Blemmyes or Beja tribes.”
“The “Makir” coastal inhabitants (Macherten/Majertein of Somalia or the Bin Samaal) who in the Torah are called “Machir” a clan of “Manasse”, and related to the Galadi or (“Gilead”= al-Jadda or Gad) must represent some of the folk that came relatively late to the Horn, from the Rahawiyyn or Rahanweyn located on both sides of the Red Sea but derived from the Yemenite Madh’hij (Madghis?), like Ash’ar (“Asher”), Murad and the Tayyi. People like the Afar (“Apher” and “Ifren” ) or Midianites, Dedan (Udad/Yudadas) must have come in at an earlier time. Meanwhile the people of the Zaghai/Sughai/ Songhai (Zakkai/”Zaccai” or “Kenite” (Kanuri) group from Heber and the Hammathites (Hamadha, or sons of Ham) may have arrived around the same time. Eldad claimed when he arrived in Tunisia that peoples of Israel had settled in Azania as well, which is reference to East Africa, and that he was a citizen of that region.”
“Lisan al-Arab was written between by Ibn Manzur who lived between the 13th and 14th centuries. Thankfully, Tariq Berry was the first in this era to expose in his The Unknown Arabs pointed out that Ibn Manzur wrote in it he wrote that “most Arabs” were “dark brown’ in color and possessed kinky hair. Ibn Manzur also said it was the Arabs that called themselves the blacks. And such Arabs that were ‘dark brown” i.e. near black said it was because they were “pure” Arabs. See p. 60 of The Unknown Arabs and Vol. 4 of Lisaan el-Arab.”
“And Ibn Manzur was not the only medieval writer to state that the blacker Arabs were the purer Arabs. Al-Dhahabi said that any individual in Hijaz fair in color was considered to be derived in part from non-Arab slaves in Siyar al-Nubalaa. But he also says it was rare to sees fair skinned Arabs in Hijaz in any case. Fortunately . it is also known that the tribes of the Hijaz were the populations that extended into Central Arabia or Nejd.”
“This lets us know that at the time of the earlier invasions of North Africa and Spain between the the true Arabs referred to themselves as “the blacks” and looked it – Or like modern black Africans – who as we remember are called Arap (Arab) today in eastern Europe, Yiddish and Russian for this very reason. When we add to this the fact that a century later the Chinese recorded the people of Hijaz as looking very dark purple in complexion a phrase they used for black people of southern India as well then there is very little one can do but assume that those people have been amalgamated with non-Arab populations. This is logical but most people in the West are in denial.”
“However more importantly the same exact diverse tribes and clan names that were found in in pre-Islamic times on both sides of the Red Sea, and this is why Strabo and Diodorus identify everything east of the Nile in Africa as Arabia. It is also why Josephus refers to the Gaitules/Joddala (Berbers) of Numidia as descendants of Havila founders of Zeila or Zawila. the Horn and North Africa. That is to say the African was the Arabian and the Arabian was the African in that day. Same people same culture and same names. Which is why it is silly to complain about Arabs being called African or vice versa.”
“Originally in fact Arab or Yarab was the name of a single tribe of the Qahtan while the name of Africa itself (was undoubtedly derived from name of the leader or name of one of these South Arabian tribes Afren and Afarik. It part of Tunisia and Tripolitania was the name of a Arabia was nothing less than the biological and cultural extension the populations of Africa in the period between the 7th and 3rd millennium BC. Some of these populations appear to have settled northward as far as Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent. After some ancient conflict in the region of Yemen in the second millennium and one early flooding of the Marib (Meribah) dam some of the people came to flee to the north and others across the less than 19 miles of water to Africa. That was one of the early waves that led to settlements of what are today called “Africans”. Of course, in that period there was no such name. The above should help put things like the usage of the term black, Arabian and African on this page into historical context.”
Orientalist James Hamilton wrote of the Ateibah or Otaibah, “they wore their hair in long curly plaits” and their skin was “a dark brown”. See pp. 129-130, Wanderings Around the Birthplace of Mohammed, published by R. Bentley, 1857.
“Al-J ā ḥ i ẓ , Fakhr al- sūdān ‘alā l -bidan , in Risa’il Al-Jahiz , 4 vols. (Cairo, 1964) I:207. See also the English Translation by T. Khalidi, “The Boast of the Blacks Over the Whites,” Islamic Quarterly 25 (1981): 3-26(17). See further Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies (Muhammedanische Studien) 2 vols. (London, Allen & Unwin, 1967-), 1:268 who notes that, in contrast to the Persians who are described as red or light-skinned( ahmar ) the Arabs call themselves black. “
“These Western observations are in complete accord with the confessions found in Classical Arabic/Islamic literature. Ibn Man ẓ ūr (d. 1311), author of the most authoritative classical Arabic lexicon, Lisān al – ‘arab , notes the opinion that the phrase aswad al-jilda , ‘black – skinned,’ idiomatically meant khāli ṣ al- ‘arab , “the pure Arabs,” “because the color of most of the Arabs is dark ( al-udma ).” 3 In other words,blackness of skin among the Arabs indicated purity of Arab ethnicity.”
“Likewise, the famous grammarian from the century prior, Muhammad b. Barrī al – ‘Adawī (d. 1193) noted that an Akh ḍ ar or black-skinned Arab was “a pure Arab ( ‘ arab ī ma ḥḍ )” with a pure genealogy, “because Arabs describe their color as black ( al-aswad )” 4 Al-Ja ḥ i ẓ (d. 869), in his Fakhr al-s ū d ā n ‘ al ā l-bidan , declared: “The Arabs pride themselves in (their) black color, نول د وس رفت برعل ( al- ‘ arab tafkhar bi-saw ā d al-lawn )” 5 Finally Al-Mubarrad (d. 898), the leading figure in the Basran grammatical tradition, took this a step further when he claimed:
“ The Arabs used to take pride in their brown and black complexion ( al-sumra wa al- sawād ) and they had a distaste for a white and fair complexion ( al- ḥ umra wa al-shaqra ), and they used to say that such was the complexion of the non-Arabs. ”
Ezaldeen, Muhammad a.k.a. Lomax Bey Founder Of The Addeynu Allahe Universal Arabic Association. Ex. Founding Member of the Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc.,
“Ezaldeen proceeded with the establishment of the new AAUAA unit, which became a competitor to the program and teachings of the MST. The AAUAA offered courses on the Qur’an, the sunna, the Hametic (Black) Arab heritage, and the Arabic language. Tensions between the Moorish Science Temple of America and the AAUAA were evident but kept to a minimum and did not contain Ezaldeen’s influence. Wahab Arbubakar, a student of Ezaldeen’s, recalled that when he met Ezaldeen, he spoke about the one true Allah, the prophets, the holy books, and the hereafter. Arbubakar had not known much about Islam prior to meeting Ezaldeen; he recalled that the most profound religious teaching he heard from Ezaldeen was the al-fatiha (opening chapter of the Qur’an) and the adhan, or “call to prayer.” Ezaldeen also taught his students that the term Arab was a linguistic term and not a racial one. Although he taught that the original Arabs were black (Hametic), the emphasis in his teachings was placed on language and faith, not race, as the highest form of identification for a person. Malik Arbubakar, son of Wahab Arbubakar, stated that “Professor Ezaldeen was keen to pointing out that we were Hametic Arabs and he taught us that just because our foreign-born brothers and sisters came from Arabia and other Muslim countries, did not give them any greater claim on al-Islam than we had.”
Dana Reynolds-Marniche: “The Arab al -Mutaribah refers to the Ishmaelites not mixed Arabs in the sense you are using it. Arabs were an ethnicity before it was a language or political term.”
Dana Reynolds-Marniche: “There were no “mixed” Arabs in the ancient world. It originally referred to people that were not purely of Qahtan stock and then later some tried to turn even the Qahtan into Musta’ribah. The Kushites means the Qahtan Arab Yokshan or Midianites. And no they aren’t any purer then the Ishmaelites, i. e the Mizraim (Minaeans) or Adnan who colonized Aden.Ishmael camee from the south originally. That is why it is good to read the Arab genealogies on where these Ma’adei Adnan people originated. In any case I explain it in this latest publication coming out soon. Any time now.” “The Ḥabasha are Christians; their complexion is like that of the Arabs, …” black “… (the term used was abyad); they are scattered along the coast as far as opposite Aden. The Nūba are Christians; their country is larger than Ethiopia and has more towns and villages than Ethiopia.” 10th c. AD of Nisibis Of the Beja of Nubia and the Eastern desert “Leaving Qulzum on the western side of this sea [Red Sea], one moves along the edge of a barren desert where nothing grows and only sees off-shore the islands we have mentioned above. This desert is the home of the Buja, who dwell under hair tents. Their skin is darker than that of the Ḥabasha although their features are similar to those of the Arabs. ” Another translation of the last sentence says “their skin is much darker than the Abyssinians, who resemble the Arabs.” Source: The Buja in Medieval Islamic Mappa Mundi ” p. 157 in the book Views from the Edge Essays in Honor of Richard D. Bulliet (2004). Ibn Hawqul of Iraq 10th c. AD born Nisibis”….
“When they say that Islam started with some pale Arabs, you gotta Show them that we can Trace our ISLAM straight to the Nile Valley Civilization on the walls of Nubia (Sudan)and Khemet (Egypt). It was the JET BLACK man who gave the world ISLAM and this Wolof speaking African brother Proves it. He speaks an ancient form of Arabic that’s not Quraishic Arabic that modern Arabs speak, that the Qur’an was revealed in. Knowledge is here for those who REALLY Seek it!”
“Historians speak only very vaguely of North Africa during the period previous to the arrival of the Phonecians. Herodotus gives the names of numerous peoples or nations situated between Egypt and lake Triton; but he says nothing of the inhabitants along the Atlas, and he sums up his information upon Africa thus: “There are only two great native peoples, the Libyans, and the Ethiopians.”
“Leaving aside the Ethiopians, (whether they were really blacks or simply a people of very swarthy complexion,) since authors place them altogether towards the interior, there remain for the general primitive people of North Africa only the Libyans. Sallust, who attempted to trace back the origin of this people in the Numidian books of Hiempsal, written out according to ancient traditions, says that after the death of Hercules in Spain, the Persians, the Medes and the Armenians who had followed him came again into Africa and mixed up with the ancient inhabitants of the country, the Libyans and the Getulians.”
“From the union of the Persians and the Getulians sprang the Numidians, and from the union of the Medes and Armenians with the Libyans sprang the Moors. The Byzantine historian, Procopius, speaks of the Moors as Canaanites expelled from Palestine at the epoch of the invasion by Joshua. Admitting this, let us observe that the Getulians, Numidians, and Moors enter into the unity of the Libyan race vaguely indicated by Herodotus. In fact, Sallust speaks of the Getulians as having the same manners and the same traits of character as the Libyans; and Strabo considers them a branch of that people.”
“Herodotus regards the Numidians as a simple variety of the Libyans, and Strabo regards the Moors in the same light. According to Sallust, Moors and Numidians are, it is true, mixed races, but are attached to a more numerous and predominant primitive population, with which they were necessarily confounded. From that which precedes, we can I think, infer, first, the existence of a single primitive population who origin the Latin and Greek authors scarcely specify, and which they regarded, according to their habits, as purely aboriginal and indigenous; second, successive foreign immigration, which became amalgamated with this native population.”
“And, first, this population itself, like that of the whole world, is of oriental origin; for humanity, like civilization, has followed the light of the rising sun from east to west. The identity or the similiary of civilization, has followed the light of the risin sun from east to west. The identity or the similiarity of the language and of the general characteristics of this population and of the primitive inhabitants of western Arabia, Palenstine and Egypt indicates their common origin.”
“The Libyans, like the ancient Egyptians and the Phonecians, are of a stock slightly mixed, in which predominates the blood of Ham. According to the Bible, Mizraim, Canaan, Cush and Phut were brothers, and modern philolgy has found a striking analogy between the very name of the Lehabim descendants of Mizraim, and the Libyans of antiquity.”
“The Arab historians who speak of Africa agree with ethnographers and modern travellers in affirming the identity of the Libyans or primitive Africans, and of the actual Berber. These Berbers, who are scatted over the whole north of Africa, from the valleys of the Atlas to the desert of Sahara, and from Egypt to the Atlantic ocean, and who are called Amasighs in Morocco; Cabyls in in Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli; Tibboos in Fezzan and in Egypt, and Touaregs in the north of the Sahara;–these Berbers, are regarded today as one of the types of that primitive family which science calls Egypto-Berber, and of which they are the most numerous and the most persistent branch.”
“Islam penetrated several parts of Africa at different times, and its presence in the continent predates Christianity. For instance, the initial spread of Islam in West Africa dates back to 800 CE when the Almoravid warriors (Berber Muslims) pushed the religion southward into the Ghana empire from Morocco. On the east coast of Africa, Arab traders in Mombasa, some of whom had taken part in the trans-Saharan long-distance trade, were able to spread Islam to that part of the continent with ease because of the similarities of the local inhabitants’ culture and those of Arab traders.”“The growth of Arab power did not mean the total collapse of Berber resistance. To the contrary; the processes of Arabization and Islamization were accompanied for several decades by violence and coercion. In fact, so unstable and rebellious were the Berbers that they “apostatized twelve times before Islam gained a firm foothold over them”.
2.5 times bigger than the United States.
“These traders brought Islam with them to places like Zanzibar, Mogadishu, and Mombasa. Evidence suggest that these traders had traveled from as far away as the Middle East and the Orient, and many of them had knowledge of the geography and topography of the continent because of the advanced trans-Saharan trade roots that linked the Arabian Peninsula to several parts of Africa and the middle east. Because of the booming business in spices and ivory with Africans, Arab traders decided to gradually settle down along the east coast of Africa. They married local women and soon began to spread the religion of Islam. The mingling of Arab culture with local African cultures, languages, and dialects eventually gave rise to what is now known as the Kiswahili culture. Thus, one can surmise that the acceptance of Islam in black Africa, especially wester Africa, can be traced to the internaction with Arabs in countries such as Tunisia, Lobya, Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria. In Central Africa, Islam was spread by the Shirazi merchants and Arabs traders, may of whom had also traveled far from their native land. But unlike East and West Africa, it took a while before the new arrivals began to settle down and internmingle with the Africans. However, with political turmoil back in thier homeland, especially in Arabia and Iran, many of these merchants found it convenient to settle in towns along the East Africa coast and eventually Central Africa.”
“The Berbers seemed to have been chosen by history to carry the banner of Islam into West Africa because of their geographical location and their historical role as middlemen between Arabs and black Africans.”
“The first Berber tribe in the Sahara to play a major role in the Islamization process as implemented by the Sanhaja. This ethnic group became Muslims as a result of their interaction with Muslim traders who had settled in thier midst.”
“The historical evidences seems to point out that such politically astute decisions were taken only under circumstances of grave danger; the most interesting example that is directly related to our discussion of early Islam in the Sahara and the west of the Sudan occured in about 1020 CE. This act of unity by the different Berber tribes was motivated by their collective desire to bring down the Ghanaian kingdom. In fact, this much needed unity thatt the Lemtuma, Godala, and Masufa Berbers hoped for was based on the ideas acquired by one of their leaders, Tarsina the Lemtune, whose pilgramage to Makkah inspired him to rationalize his campaigns against black Africans in the name of the Islamic Jihad.”
“The end of the Almoravid dynasty and the collapse of Ghana did not necessarily mean that Islamization ceased with the death of the Almoravid movement. The process of propogation continued and Islam began to penetrate more and more into the West Sudan. This phase in the propogation of Islam in Africa was made possible by the activie involvement of three different groups of Arab-Berber and Sudanese-Muslim cultivators of Islam in West Sudan. These three groups, according to J.R. Willis and his fellow contributors in the volume entitled Studies in West African Islamic History (1979), are the Zawaya clerisy, the Mande-Islamic clerisy, and the Torodbe clerisy. The first group has been traced to a community of Berbers who suffered oppression at the hands of fellow Berbers and Arabs. According to Willis in his comprehensive introduction to the volume cited above, the Zawaya formation began to take shape in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They decided to be pacifist and so laid down their arms and took up the life of Muslim scholars dedicated to the propogation of Islam in the area. The Mande-Islamic clerisy emerged from the numerous trading centers created by Mande Muslims throughout the West Sudan.”
