An “Arap (Arab)” According to Vladimir Dal’s 1863 Dictionary, meant a “Black-skinned Person”

Painting of Emperor's palace with an arap serving there. Mihály Zichy/Hermitage Museum

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.”

Source: Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire by Drusilla Dunjee Houston [1926, no renewal]

“arab: to become evening, grow dark

Source: Strong’s Concordance 6150. arab

“An Arap [Arab], according to Vladimir Dal’s 1863 dictionary, meant “a black-skinned person from the hot countries, mainly Africa.”

Painting of Emperor's palace with an arap serving there. Mihály Zichy/Hermitage Museum
Painting of Emperor’s palace with an arap [arab] serving there. Mihály Zichy/Hermitage Museum

Source: How did Africans prosper in Tsarist Russia?

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…”

Source: History of the Moors of Spain By M. Florian

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”

Source: Moloch ANCIENT DEITY

“Arabia Felix (literally: Fertile Arabia; also Ancient GreekEudaemon 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.

Source: Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa: A … edited by Bernard Reich

“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)

Source: Original Arabs and Strabo’s Geography of Ancient Arabia

From Ottoman Turkish عرب‎ (Arap), from Arabic عَرَب‎ (ʿarab).

Noun arap m (feminine equivalent arapsã)

(1) black person

(2) Arab

Source: Arap

Àrap m (Cyrillic spelling А̀рап) (colloquial) Arab (person of Arab origin.)

From Arabic عَرَب‎ (ʿarab).

Proper noun[edit] “Arap”

(1) A Semitic person, whose antecedents were from Arabia and/or speak Arabic

(2) (dated) A black person

dated means: dated Formerly in common use, and still in occasional use, but now unfashionable;

Portrait of young Abram Hannibal.
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.” 

Source: The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam By David M. Goldenberg

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: Dictionarium Britannicum, or, A more compleat universal etymological … Bailey, N. (Nathan), d. 1742.

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

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

“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.”

Source: Mixed Marriage edited by Margaret Haerens

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.”

Source: Dana Reynolds-Marniche Quoting Strabo Geography Book 17.1

Source: Original Arabs and Strabo’s Geography of Ancient Arabia

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 dyeand 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).”

Source: FEAR OF BLACKNESS SERIES: Guide to the Ethnic Origins of the “Infernal” and “Black Saracen”

“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.”

Source: Dana Reynolds Marniche Facebook Comment

“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”.

Source: Dana Reynolds Marnich Facebook Comment

“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.”

Source: CANAANITES IN THEIR LANDS Part 2 Afro-Asiatic Israel and Aram CANAANITES IN THEIR LANDS Part II Afro-Asiatic Israel and Aram by Dana W. Reynolds

“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.

Source: Dana Reynolds-Marniche Facebook Post

“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, نول د وس رفت برعل ( 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.

Source: “His Daddy was Black. His Momma was Black. So…” A Look at Prophet Muhammad’s Lineage by Wesley Muhammad

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.”

Source: Ezaldeen, Muhammad a.k.a. Lomax Bey Founder Of The Addeynu Allahe Universal Arabic Association

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.”

Source: I’lâmên-nâs: Historical tales and anecdotes of the time of the early Khalifahs. Translated from the Arabic and annotated by Mrs. Godfrey Clerk Unknown Binding – 1873 by Muhammad Diyâb al-Itlîdi (Author)

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”….

Quoting Nathaniel Muhammad

“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!”

Three principal tribes of Aethiopians, the Hesperi, Garamantes, and Indians

Dana Reynolds Marniche article published an article titled: AFRO-ASIAN DISPERSALS: How Scholarship has Come Around to the Truth about the Roots of Semitic Speech and Culture  which provides the following commentary: “The name Berber was thus known not only in Africa but throughout “the Orient” as a name that applied to certain populations of Africans of the Horn, Sudan, and the Sahel from an ancient period. It is also a fact that Berbers and other Africans, in fact, stretching to the Atlantic in the ancient world were often indiscriminately referred to as Indi, Arabians, Ethiopians and thus “according to Isidore in the ninth book, there are three principal tribes of Aethiopians, the Hesperi, Garamantes, and Indi (Burke, 2002, p. C-331).”

“In consideration of the Greek and Roman acquaintance with the Negroid type as revealed by the literary evidence, and in view of the use of the word Ethiopian, it is reasonable to assume that a given passage refers to a Negroid type in the following instances: (2) whenever a consideration of the evidence indicates that Afer, Indus, or Maurus is the equivalent of Aethiops; (4) whenever an individual is designated as belonging to one of the several Ethiopian tribes such as Blemmyes, Megabari, Troglodytes, Nubae, et cetera.”

Source: Afer, Indian, and Aethiops are Equivalents of Maurus

Philostratus claimed that “The Indians are the wisest of mankind. The Ethiopians are a colony of them”. Source: Philostratus Vit. Apol. II:33f.  

Source: Edmund Dene Morel, pages 141–142

 

“Black” in the study titled Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677 is thus “Negro,” “Ethiopian,” “Egyptian,” “moor”/“blackamoor,” “barbaree”/“barbaryen,” and “Indian” (including orthographic variations thereof for all of them). The study’s use of the word also includes geographic names by themselves, such as Guyana or Guinea, where for the early modern English they function openly or implicitly as regional identifers of people of color. Anthony Gerard Barthelemy in Black Face, Maligned Race (pp. 1–17), Michael Neill in “‘Mulattoes,’ ‘Blacks,’ and ‘Indian Moors’” (pp. 273–77), and Margo Hendricks in “Surveying Race” (pp. 15–20) all offer useful demonstrations of the propriety of adhering to a taxonomic looseness in tracing sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English constructions of colored people. At the same time, hidden in the vast archives of parish churches within London and without, all through the Tudor and Stuart reigns, are voluminous cryptic citations of “nigro,” “neger,” “neygar,” “blackamore,” “blackamoor,” “moor,” “barbaree,” “barbaryen,” “Ethiopian,” and “Indian.” The discussions of the records are organized in five chapters dealing with records of black people in early sixteenth-century Britain, in Elizabethan London, in seventeenth-century London, and elsewhere in England, with the last two chapters examining records of black people in the English provinces, and East Indians and other people of color in London and in the countryside.”

Source: Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677 Imprints of the Invisible IMTIAZ HABIB

Odyssey 1.21-25: But now Poseidon had gone to visit the Ethiopians worlds away, Ethiopians off at the farthest limits of mankind, A PEOPLE SPLIT IN TWO , one part where the Sungod sets and part where the Sungod rises.  Source: Homer on the Ethiopians
Etymology: late 14c., from Latin Æthiops “Ethiopian, negro,” from Greek Aithiops, long supposed in popular etymology to be from aithein “to burn” + ōps “face” (compare aithops “fiery-looking,” later “sunburned”). late 14c., from Latin Æthiops “Ethiopian, negro,” from Greek Aithiops, long supposed in popular etymology to be from aithein “to burn” + ōps “face” (compare aithops “fiery-looking,” later “sunburned“).  Who the Homeric Æthiopians were is a matter of doubt. The poet elsewhere speaks of two divisions of them, one dwelling near the rising, the other near the setting of the sun, both having imbrowned visages from their proximity to that luminary, and both leading a blissful existence, because living amid a flood of light;  and, as a natural concomitant of a blissful existence, blameless, and pure, and free from every kind of moral defilement. [Charles Anthon, note to “The First Six Books of Homer’s Iliad,” 1878
Qouting Dr. Aisha Khan author of Islam and the Americas (New World Diasporas) :
“The Spanish conquistador Hernon Cortez arrived in Mexico in 1519 and referred to the Aztecs he encountered as Moors, and one priest in Cortez part said that the indigenous peoples of northern Mexico reminded him of al Arabes or Arabs, Spaniards called Aztec and Inca temples mosques and drew parallels between some Indian and Islamic rituals that involved animal sacrifice.”  

The color of the Indians of the California missions seen by La Peyrouse (Voyage, ii. 197, 212,) “Very nearly approaches that of the Negroes whose hair is not woolly; and in another place, the “colour of these Indians which is that of negroes.”  Langsdorf, who visited San Francisco on the coast of California, confirms the observations of La Peyrouse; for he says, (Voyage, 440,) The Indians there, “are of a very dark complexion, approaching to Black; they have large projecting lips, and broad flat, Negro like noses indeed many of their features, as well as their physiognomy, and almost their colour, bear a strong resemblance to the negroes: their hair, however, is long and strait.” 


“In another part of America, if reliance can be placed upon the correctness of the relation, a race of blacks were seen at so early a period of our history, that it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that they were aboriginal. Peter Martyr, {2>d Decade, ^j«^e 97,) in describing the journey of Balboa across the Isthmus of Darien, A. D. 1511, gives the following history: “There is a region not above two days’ journey from Quarequa, in which they found only blackamoors; and those exceeding fierce and cruel. “^ The circumstance of finding them there, he attempted to explain, by the conjecture that they were Ethiopians, who had crossed the Atlantic to I’ob the country, and that after having been shipwrecked, they had been compelled by the natives to take refuge in the mountains. But all this is pure guesswork, which we shall not attempt to disprove, for it is not more plausible than the supposition that they were aboriginal.”

“If I am not much mistaken, however, we shall be able to shew, that the relation of Peter Martyr, concerning the blackamoors, as he calls them, seen by Balboa, was substan- tially correct: for we learn from Stevenson, [Travels in South America, ii. 387,) the following singular facts, which we shall quote at length. “The natives of Esmeral- das, Rio Verde, and Atacames,” (Republic of Columbia,) “

Source: Researches, philosophical and antiquarian, concerning the aboriginal history of America

PORTRAIT OF A MAN FROM STANISLAUS COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

The words Moor*, blackamoor, in the same sense, are much older in E.] I. n. ; pi. negroes (-groz). A black man: specifically, one of a race of men characterized by a black skin and hair of a woolly or crisp nature. Negroes are distinguished from the other races by various other peculiarities — such as the projection of the visage in advance of the forehead ; the prolongation of the upper and lower jaws ; the small facial angle ; the flatness of the forehead and of the hinder part of the head ; the short, broad, and flat nose ; and the thick projecting lips. The negro race is generally regarded as comprehending the native inhabitants of Sudan, Senegambia, and the region southward to the vicinity of the equator and the great lakes, and their descendants in America and elsewhere ; in a wider sense it is used to comprise also many other tribes further south, as the Zulus and Kafirs. The word negro is often loosely applied to other dark or black-skinned races, and to mixed breeds.As designating a “race,” it is sometimes written with a capital. Toward the south of this region Is the kingdom of Guinea, with Senegal, Iaiofo, Gambra, and many other regions of the blacke Moores called Ethiopians or Negros, all which are watered with the river Negro, called in olde tyme Niger R. Eden. See First Three English Books on America [(ed. ArberX p. 374. H. a. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of black men or negroes: as, negro blood; negro dances. It is often asked what Races are Negro, as the meaning of the term is not well defined. . . .The word is not a National appellation, but denotes a physical type, of which the tribes In North Guinea are the representatives. When these characteristics are not all present, the Race is not Negro, though black and woolly-haired. R. N. Oust, Mod. Langs, of Africa, p. 53.

“These translations( More, vide Moro, a blacke Moore; Morisca, a women Moore that is become a Christian; Morisco, a blacke Moore made or become a Christian; Morado color, murrey or iron colour, dark colour; Morel, brown duskish colour; a Moore, v. Moro; a Blacke moore, vide Arabe, Negro; Negrillo, a little blacke Moore, somewhat blacke; Negrito, idem; Negro, blacke Also, a blackMooreofEthiopia; Prieto, or negro, blacke, browne) reveal a great deal of flexibility, in that both moro and negro are equated with “blackmoore” while “blackmoore” is equated with “Arab” as well as morisco and negro, and prieto and negro are equated with “browne” as well as black. In 1617 Minsheu equated Latin maurus with “Niger, black” and in another place stated: “Moore or Neger = a Moore, or one of Mauritanie, a black Moore, ore Neger…vid. a Neger and Black Moore and Ethiopian”.

Source: Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red …By Jack D. Forbes

“Maurus” was synonymous with “Moor,” “negro,” and “Aethiops”. See  John Etick’s A new English-Latin dictionary (1783). 

“In 1878, his attention as directed to its former presence at the Belvidere Museum by a notice in Baron von Sacken’s descriptive catalog of the Imperial Ambras collection printed in Vienna in 1855, wherein, among rare objects from various parts of the world, it is mentioned as follows: “No. 3—A Mexican head-dress about 3 ft. in height composed of magnificent green feathers studded with small plates of gold. This specimen was termed in the inventory of 1596 ‘a Moorish hat.” Guided by this note, Herr von Hochstetter with the assistance of Dr. Ilg, the custodian of the Ambras collection, found the precious relic and rescued it from an obscure corner of a show-case where it hung, folded together, next to a medieval bishop’s mitre and surrounded by sundry curiosities from North America, China and Sunda Islands. On folio 472 of the ancient document, it is cataloged with other objects in feather-work contained in a chest (No. 9) and is described as a Moorish hat of beautiful, long, lustrous green and gold-hued feathers, bedecked above with white, red and blue feathers and gold rosettes and ornaments. In front, on the forehead, it has a beak of pure gold. The term Moorish, as here applied can scarcely be regarded as a deceptive one inasmuch as “Montezuma, the king of Temistitan and Mexico,” is subsequently designated as “a Moorish king” in this same inventory of 1596. (See p.9) It is interesting to note the gradual changes that occur in the wording of the subsequent periodical official registrations of this “Moorish hat.” In 1613 its description was faithfully reproduced. In 1621 the word “Indian” was substituted for “Moorish:” with this single alteration, the original text was transcribed in 1730. In 1788, however, a remarkable transformation was effected, the hat became “an apron” and the official record reads An Indian apron of long green feathers. It is garnished above with a narrow band of white feathers, followed by a broad one of green, then there is a narrow stripe of red and broad one of blue. The bands are studded with crescents or horseshoes, small circular plates and other than gold pieces. The old inventory designates this object as an Indian hat.” The Inventory of 1596 affords the corrobative proof of a previously existing method of labelling the articles in the Archducal Musuem by the reference (after its brief entry) to ” a slip of paper attached to it,” for further details concerning the history of an Indian axe ” that had belonged to a Moorish king. This weapon belonged to Montezuma II, king of Temistitan and Mexico. It was sent by the Spanish Captain Ferdinand Cortes to the Pope whence it came as a present to Archdule Ferdinand.”

“Thus, also certain peoples of Nubia and Abyssinia were at times known as Indians such as the Blemmyes of Nonnus text, Dionysiaca. Meanwhile Abyssinia was referred to as “the third Indiawell into the medieval period (Pankhurst, 2003, p. 8; also seep. 87 of the “Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society”) and southern and northern Arabia called “India Minor”, and Kus or Kush or Ethiopia by Greeks, Syrians, and others.”
“In fact, the original eponyms Hind and Sind in Arabian lore were peoples of Kush from Kuth or Phut son of Ham, while for earlier writers such as Strabo the region of Abyssinia and everything east of the Nile in Africa is referred to as “Arabia”. These same Berbers or Berberia of Cusha-Dwipa were identified as Kushites in Arabic texts from Kush who is either said to be “son of Canaan”, or else son of Ham. But more of this subject of the Berber Kushites as Canaanites and the “Indians” as “Ethiopians”, and vice versa, will be discussed in future postings – as the Canaan spoken of in recent Western legend is not the early Canaan of early Berber or Afro-Asiatic tradition.”

“The strongest evidence of African presence in America before Columbus comes from the pen of Columbus himself. In 1920, a renowned American historian and linguist, Leo Weiner of Harvard University, in his book, Africa and the discovery of America, explained how Columbus noted in his journal that Native Americans had confirmed that “black skinned people had come from the south-east in boats, trading in gold-tipped spears.”

“One of the first documented instances of Africans sailing and settling in the Americas were black Egyptians led by King Ramses III, during the 19th dynasty in 1292 BC. In fact, in 445 BC, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of the Ancient Egyptian pharaohs’ great seafaring and navigational skills. Further concrete evidence, noted by Dr. Imhotep and largely ignored by Euro-centric archaeologists, includes “Egyptian artifacts found across North America from the Algonquin writings on the East Coast to the artifacts and Egyptian place names in the Grand Canyon.”

“In 1311 AD, another major wave of African exploration to the New World was led by King Abubakari II, the ruler of the fourteenth century Mali Empire, which was larger than the Holy Roman Empire. The king sent out 200 ships of men, and 200 ships of trade material, crops, animals, cloth and crucially African knowledge of astronomy, religion and the arts.”

Source: Before Columbus: How Africans Brought Civilization to America

Source: Full text of “The journal of Christopher Columbus (during his first voyage, 1492-93) and documents relating to the voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real [microform]”

“On 1he 3d of February 1845, he introduced his resolutions, and spoke in explanation of them; and, on the subject of the boundary, said: “The stupendous deserts between the Nueces and the Bravo rivers are the natural boundaries between the Anglo Saxon and the Mauritanian races. There ends of the valley of the west. There Mexico begins. Thence, beyond the Bravo, begins the Moorish people, and their Indian associates, to whom Mexico properly belongs; who should not cross that vast desert if they could, as we, on our side, too ought to stop there, because interminable conflicts must ensure our going south, or their coming north, of that gigantic boundary.

Source: Speech of Mr. Geo. Ashmun on the Mexican War By George Ashmun

“Armond de Quartrefages, an anthropologist at the Museum of National History in Paris, in his book The Human Species, wrote that black inhabitants were found in small numbers and isolated areas in America. Some examples were the Jamassi (Yamassee) of Florida, the Harruas of Brazil (Uruguay), the black Caribs of Saint Vincent on the Gulf of Mexico and the black Zuni of present Arizona and Mexico. In Columbus Journal of the Third Voyage, he said he wanted to find out about the black people the Indians told him about. Indians were found farming yams and taro, an African food, while the Portuguese explorers in Africa saw natives cultivating maize, an Indian product. The Pima Indian tribe, Arizona members of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages of the Southwestern area of the United States, now living in Southern Arizona, have been identified as speaking a Semitic language. Analysis of the language of the Pima Indians revealed that it may be derived from Phonecian Iberian Punic colonist who settled in America from the Basque area of Spain between 800 and 600 B.C. Inscriptions in the Zuni language of Mimbres pottery as well as certain mystic symbols have been discovered to bear a close resemblance to the North African group of languages used in the ancient kingdom of Libya.” Source: Are Moors Indigenous To South Carolina?
“They go completely naked except that around their loins they wear skins of small animals like martens, with a narrow belt of grass around the body, to which they tie various tails of other animals which hang down to the knees; the rest of the body is bare, and so is the head. Some of them wear garlands of birds’ feathers. They are dark in color, not unlike the Ethiopians, with thick black hair, not very long, tied back behind the head like a small tail. As for the physique of these men, they are well proportioned, of medium height, a little taller than we are. They have broad chests, strong arms, and the legs and other parts of the body are well composed. There is nothing else, except that they tend to be rather broad in the face: but not all, for we saw many with angular faces. They have big black eyes, and an attentive and open look. They are not very strong, but they have a sharp cunning, and are agile and swift runners. From what we could tell from observation, in the last two respects they resemble the Orientals, particularly those from the farthest Sinarian regions.”
“Compare English cot, cote, and cottage: also Gaelic cot, cota, a cottage; cota, a coat, a petitcoat. The radical meaning of this word would seem to be “something that covers or encloses.” In its Gaelic sense of a covering for the body, it is found among the “Moors” of North America, as, for example, in the matchecota or principal female garment [referred to by Longfellow in a note to “the principal garment” and the under garment.” (There are other so-called “Indian” words, which are still to be found in English dictionaries, and where the resemblance increases to absolute identity.”
  1. “We reached a very large island called Sumatra, where pepper grows in considerable quantities. . . . The Chief is a Moor but speaking a different language.”-<-> Santo Stefano, in India in the X Vth Cent.

 

  1. “Adì 28 zugno vene in Venetia insieme co Sier Alvixe de Boni un sclav moro el qual portorono i spagnoli da la insula spagniola.” —  in Museo Civicoat Venice. Here the term Moor is applied to a native of Hispaniola!Source: Moor Also Applied To Natives of Hispaniola [Haiti and Dominican Republic]

“The several Nations that now offers Brazile, besides its native inhabitants, are Portuguese, English, Hollanders, Germans, and French, which the Brazilians by a general Name call Ajuru-juba; otherwise they call all Strangers Caraiba or Pero. But the commixing of several Nations proceeds the fifth fort, for one that is born of European Parents in Brazile is called Mozombo; of an European Father and Brazilian Mother, Mameluc; of an European Father and a Moor, Mulatto; of a Brasilian and Moor, Curiboca, or Cabocles, of two Negro’s, Criolo.”

 

Source: AMERICA: LATEST, MOST ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORIGINALS

“This usage outlasted Shakespeare by at least two generations. In a brief narrative of the encounters between the early colonist of New England and the nativeIndians,” I find it stated that “…..these unfortunate gentlemen were intercepted by 700 Moors, with whom they fought for the space of four hours, till not only they two, but Capt. Sharp and fifty-one Christians more lay dead upon the place.” And again that “at Woodcock[s[, ten miles from Seconch, on the 16th May, was a little skrimage betwixt the Moors and Christians, wherein there was of the later three slain and two wounded, and only twoIndians kild.” (“News from New-England, 1676, reprinted at Boston and Albany, U.S., 1850 and 1865.)”

 

Source: Moors Have Always Asserted Their Rights As A Distinct Nationality

“Lempriere gives several nations bearing names beginning with Mor: the Morei or Morienses in India, and the Moruni in that country also, and the Morini, a people of Belgic Gaul, on the shores of the British Ocean, are examples. The Mauri* of Mauritania are perhaps the most notable examples of a nation bearing this name, though in a slightly altered shape. The consideration of this word, and of the localization of races thus named, is not irrelevant at this point. For although it may not be easy to trace their route hither, and the date of their arrival, a branch of this family did inhabit Britain, and are not only known as Mauri and Moors, but also as Moravienses, Morienses (identical with the name of those in India), Murray0men, and people of Moray or Moravia. This name Moravia was given to two districts in Scotland, one of the most important in the north-central, and the other in the southern portion of the country. That the Picts, known to the Romans as Mauri, were finally divided into two sections inhabiting these localities, is a speaking fact which it is well to remember at this juncture. The smaller district in the south has been the name-father of a family distinguished in Scottish history, the Murrays of Philiphaugh in Selkirkshire, whose ancestor, Archibald de Moravia, was among those who subscribed fealty to Edward I. of England, in 1296. One of the estates of this clan bore the significant name of the Black Barony. Of course, the race of Archibald de Moravia many have been that of an intruding army, and not necessarily that of the Moravienses, as he was simply Archibald [lord] of Moravia. “Sir Charles a Murre” who fought at Chevy Chase, of the same clan, shows the name in its modern form or approximately.”

 

Source: Ancient and Modern Britons: A Retrospect, Volume 1 By David MacRitchie Page 50 

“Though America possesses some dark brown men, approaching to black, yet it has been almost universally believed that there were no aboriginal blacks or negroes found on this continent. But from considering the peculiar circumstances under which a black race was found in North America, I hold it more than probable that the common opinion is erroneous. Torquemada says, the Californians shewed no manner of surprize at the sight of some negroes that accompanied Viscanio on a voyage to this coast, A. D. 1602. As I have never seen Torquemada’s Monarquia Indiana, I can only quote from Vcnega (California.) ii. 239,) who says from Torquemada, that when a negro was ordered to distribute some biscuit to the Californians at the bay of St. Barnabas, ‘The natives seemed greatly pleased at the sight of the negro, and signified to him, that they lived in friendship and correspondence with a people of his color, and that not far from thence was a negro village.”
“In another part of America a race of blacks were seen at so early a period of our history, that it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that they were aboriginal.”
“The colour of the Indians of the Californian missions, seen by La Peyrouse, {Voyage, ii. 197, 212,)”very nearly approaches that of the negroes whose hair is not woolly; and in another place, the “colour of these Indians which is that of negroes.”
“Langsdorf, who visited St. Francisco on the coast of California, confirms the observations of La Peyrouse; for he says,[Voyage, 440,) the Indians there, “are of a very dark complexion, approaching to black; they have large projecting lips, and broad flat negro like noses; indeed many of their features, as well as their physiognomy, and almost their color, bear a strong resemblance to the negroes: their hair, however, is long and straight.”
“You promise, in your letter of October the 23rd, 1787, to give me in your next, at large, the conjectures of your philosopher on the descent of the Creek Indians from the Carthaginians, supposed to have been separated from Hanno’s fleet, during his periplus. I shall be very glad to receive them and see nothing impossible in his conjecture. I am glad he means to appeal to the similarity of language, which I consider as the strongest kind of proof it is possible to adduce. I have somewhere read, that the language of the ancient Carthaginians is still spoken by their descendants, inhabiting the mountains interior parts of Barbary, to which they were obliged to retire by the conquering Arabs. If so, a vocabulary of their tongue can still be got, and if your friend will get on of the Creek languages, the comparison will decide. He probably may have made on this side the Atlantic, I offer him my services cheerfully; may wish being, like his, ascertain the history of the American aborigines.”

Source: Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of …, Volume 2 By Thomas Jefferson

“1. Professor Barry Fell, retired lecturer from Harvard University and also a member of the American Academy of Science and Arts, the Royal Society, the Epigraphy Society and the Society of Scientific and Archeological Discoveries, is adamant about the arrival of Islam in America in the 650s,2 predicating this argument upon the Cufic calligraphy belonging to that era found in various diggings across America. If the words of Professor Fell have truth-value, then the Muslims had arrived in America during the era of Uthman, or at least that of Ali, the fourth caliph.” “Professor Fell again uses the results of various archeological diggings undertaken across many regions in the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Indiana to assert the construction of Muslim schools during 700-800 CE. Writings, drawings, and charts inscribed on rocks discovered in the most remote and untainted terrains of Western America are relics bestowed by the elementary and intermediate systems of Muslim education at the time. These documents were written in the old Cufic letters of North African Arabic, covering subjects such as reading, writing, arithmetic, religion, history, geography, mathematics, astronomy, and navigation. The descendants of these settlers are thought to be the current native tribes of Iroquois, Algonquin, Anasazi, Hohokam, and Olmec.”

“2. The second evidence offered by Professor Fell is that the inscription of “In the Name of God” (picture 1), found on a rock during archeological work in Nevada, belongs to the seventh century, when the haraka sign system had not yet been developed. Likewise, the stone bearing the inscription “Muhammad is the Prophet of God” (picture 2) is pertinent to the same era. As seen by comparison of the two pictures, the inscriptions are not in the style of Modern Arabic; conversely they are in a Cufic style relevant to the seventh century.3”
“The Arabs, according to the findings of Professor Fell, settled in Nevada during the seventh and eighth centuries. The earlier existence of a school, which taught Islam and science, particularly navigation, has come to light following the archeological investigation undertaken by Professors Heizer and Baumhoff of California University around site WA 25 in Nevada.
The excavations in Nevada have uncovered writings in Naskhi Arabic and Cufic style that are inscribed on rocks which carry information about this school (picture 3). The application of the mathematical formula “five diamonds equal an alif” (alif is the first letter of Arabic alphabet) may be seen in this picture (pictures 3b and 3c). The Arabic letters in pictures 3b and 3c, found amid excavations in Nevada, are in exactly the same style as North African Arabic. Again similarly, another rock was found in Nevada bearing the name “God”, the style of which is yet again reminiscent of the prevalent technique of seventh and eighth-century North Africa. The calligraphical similarities between various writing styles of the Prophet’s name over diverse periods, particularly those relating to Africa and America, found during archeological investigations are striking indeed.
Figure A of picture 4 was found in al-Ain Lahag, Morocco and figure B in East Walker River; both are currently at the University of California. Figure C was discovered in Nevada and figures C and D were located in Churchill County and are also currently preserved at the University of California; likewise figure F was discovered in al-Haji Minoun, Morocco, while figure G, inscribed on ceramic, was revealed in al-Suk, Tripoli, Libya and figure H, at the University of California, was discovered at Cottonwood Canyon, while finally figure I was located on the border of Morocco and Libya. All these inscriptions belong to the eighth and ninth centuries, clearly illustrating the resemblance in style between North America and North Africa, as well as overtly suggesting a migration that occurred from Africa to America.”
“3. In the twelfth century the Athapcan Tribe, comprised of native Apaches and Navajos, raided the area inhabited by the Arabs, who either ended up fleeing or were exiled toward the South. These illiterate natives were spellbound by the schools founded by the Arabs, and, perhaps with the assistance of captives, attempted to imitate the same subjects, transforming the geometrical shapes into mythical beasts, which carried on for centuries.”
“4. Picture 5 is the Cufic writing found in 1951 in the White Mountains, close to the town of Benton on the border of Nevada. The words Shaytan maha mayan, i.e. the Devil is the source of all lies, have been written in a Cufic style peculiar to the seventh century.”
“5. Once more, a rock inscription belonging to post-650 CE, bearing the Cufic letters H-M-I-D of the word Hamid (picture 6), is another Arabic script discovered on the Atlata rocks in the Valley of Fire in Nevada.”
“6. While traveling from Malden to Cambridge in the state of Massachusetts in 1787 (on what is now RT. 16), the Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris noticed some coins discovered by workers during road construction. The workers, not putting much value on these coins, presented him with a handful. Consequently, Harris decided to send these coins to the library of Harvard College for examination (picture 7). The study yielded that these were in fact Samarqand dirhams from the eighth and ninth centuries. As can be seen in the picture, the coins manifestly display the inscriptions La ilaha ill-Allah Muhammadun Rasulullah (There is no deity but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger) and Bismillah (in the name of God).”

“7. Picture 8 shows a piece of rock discovered in a cave in the region of Corinto in El Salvador, bearing the inscription Malaka Haji mi Malaya; this has been identified as belonging to the thirteenth century, suggesting a possible arrival of Muslims in South America, perhaps coming from somewhere near Indonesia.”

“8. During his second voyage, Columbus was told by the natives of Espanola (Haiti) of black men who had appeared on the island before him and they showed him the lances that had been left there by these Africans to support their assertions. The tips of the lances were of a metal, an alloy of gold, which they called guanin, a word which is semantically remarkably similar to the Arabic word ghina, meaning richness. Columbus had in fact brought some of this guanin back to Spain, recording that it was composed of 56.25% gold, 18.75% silver and 25% copper, ratios that were prevalent in African Guinea as standards for the processing of metals.”

“9. On his third voyage to the New World, Columbus visited Trinidad, where the sailors noticed the symmetrically patterned cotton and colorful handkerchiefs of the natives. Afterward, Columbus realized that the handkerchiefs, which the natives called almayzar, were all much the same in color, style, and use as the headscarves and waist bands used in Guinea. The word almayzar is Arabic, and denotes a cover, tie, apron, or skirt, and is a component of the regional costumes of the Moors, Arabs and, Berbers of North Africa, who had conquered Spain in the eighth century. Columbus observed that the local women wore cotton garments and wrote in astonishment that they had learned of the concept namus, i.e. chastity. In much the same vein, Hernan Cortes, another Spanish explorer, later recorded that the clothing of local women consisted of long veils and skirts decorated with ornaments that were similar to those of the Moors. Ferdinand, Columbus’ son, was also quick to notice the resemblance between the cotton dresses of the natives and the ornamented shawls fashioned by Moorish women in Granada. The cradles used by the natives, furthermore, very closely resembled those of North Africa.”

“10. Columbus recorded on 21 October 1492 that he had noticed a mosque on top of a mountain while sailing around Cibara on the northeast coast of Cuba. Relics of mosques carrying Qur’anic inscriptions on their minarets have been found in Cuba, Mexico, Texas, and Nevada since these times.”

“11. Leo Weiner, a well-known Harvard historian and linguist, stated in his book The Discovery of Africa and America, written in 1920, that Columbus was aware of the existence of Mandinka, an ethnic group of West Africa, in the New World. The same book also affirms that Columbus was aware that West African Muslims were living across North America, including the south, middle regions and Canada, as well as in the Caribbean, and that they had marital and commercial ties with the native tribes of Iroque and Algonquin.”

“12. A preponderance of the voyages embarked upon by Columbus and other Spanish and Portuguese explorers toward the other side of the Atlantic were undertaken only in the light of the geographical and navigational knowledge prepared by Muslims. Al-Masudi’s (871-957 CE) work Muruj’uz-Zahab, for instance, was written with this sort of data compiled by Muslim traders from across Africa and Asia. Two of Columbus’ captains on the first voyage, in actual fact, were Muslims: Martin Alonso Pinzon was in charge of the Pinta, while his brother Vicente Yanez Pinzon was the designated captain of Nina; both were from the Moroccan Marinid dynasty, descendants of Sultan Abu Zayan Muhammad III (r. 1362-1366). Formerly well-to-do ship riggers, they assisted Columbus in organizing his voyage of exploration, preparing the Santa Maria, the flagship, and covering all its expenses.”

“13. Christopher Columbus has recorded the custom of nose piercing, which used to be and still popular in the Middle Eastern and Arab countries, as being prevalent in some islands across the Atlantic also mentions the writing of letters in Arabic.”

“14. In the account of sixteenth century missionaries in America, the local copper mines, found particularly in Virginia, Tennessee, and Wisconsin were not operated by the natives, but instead by people from the Middle East, towards whom the natives nurtured a profound sympathy.”

“15. A sum of 565 names, 484 in America and 81 in Canada, of villages, towns, cities, mountains, lakes, rivers and etcetera, are etymologically Arabic, designated by locals long before the arrival of Columbus. Many of these names are in fact the same as names of Islamic places; Mecca in Indiana, Medina in Idaho, Medina in New York, Medina and Hazen in North Dakota, Medina in Ohio, Medina in Tennessee, Medina in Texas, Medina and Arva in Ontario, Mahomet in Illinois and Mona in Utah, are just a few noticeable names at the outset. A closer analysis of the names of native tribes will immediately reveal their Arabic etymological ancestry; Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin, Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mohician, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, and Zuni are only a few.”

House and building Structures
“Archeological excavations conducted throughout North America and North Africa reveal a corresponding architectural resemblance between ninth century buildings. The structure of a Berber house of the Atlas Mountains, Morocco (picture 9), for instance, is exactly the same as that of a house in New Mexico (picture 10).
The same similarity can be traced between the Castle of Montezuma discovered in Arizona and the remnants found in Mesa Verde in Colorado and the general structure of Berber buildings (picture 11-12).”
“The research undertaken by Professor Cyrus Thomas of the Smithsonian Institute shows that a small cabin built from piles of rock found in Ellenville, New York is virtually the same as the cabin, again of rock, found around Aqabah, Southern Arabia, both of which are thought to have been built around the start of the eighth century (picture 13).”

“Arabic words prevalent among natives prior to the arrival of Europeans The pervasiveness of many Islamic words across the continent prior to European influx is verified by the following terms discovered in the regions currently known as New England and Nova Scotia, in America and Canada respectively. Fell pointed to some words as example of Arabic influence on Native Americans. All of the words listed below are derived from the Arabic language. However, time had eroded their original meanings, and most are not used in Arabic today.”

“The last Muslim stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell just before the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1492. Non-Christians were forced to either convert to Catholicism to save themselves from the tyranny of the Inquisition or were exiled from the country. Documents exist which prove the existence of immigrant Muslims in Spanish America before 1550. In 1539 an edict from Spanish King Charles V was put into practice which forbade the immigration of Muslims to settlements in the West. This edict was later expanded to expel all Muslims from overseas Spanish colonies in 1543. The existence of Muslims in overseas islands and regions was known along with the fact that the Spanish king issued such an edict. Again, in many Islamic sources, it is noted that Muslims living in Spain and North Africa made overseas voyages during the Andalusia period. Scientific research on this subject will bring out many documents into the daylight, documents which have escaped the notice of both Muslims in America and those throughout the world, which will perhaps serve, in the future if not immediately, as a starting point for a re-evaluation of the history of America.”

Notes
1. Trento, Salvatore Michael. The Search for Lost America, p.15 Penguin Books, New York: 1978.
2. Fell, Dr. Barry. Saga America, p. 190, Time Books, New York: 1980.
3. ibid. p. xiv.
4. ibid. pp. 332-333.
5. ibid. pp. 333-334.
6 ibid. p. 182.
7. ibid. p. 243.
8. ibid. p. 26.
9. ibid. p. 276.
7. Teacher, John Boyd. Christopher Columbus, p. 380, New York: 1950.
8. Columbus, Ferdinand. The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus, p. 232 Rutgers Uni. Press, 1959.
6. Obregon, Mauricio. The Columbus Papers, The Barcelona Letter of 1493.
10. The Landfall Controversy, and the Indian Guides, McMillan Co., New York: 1991.
11. Weiner, Dr. Leo. Africa and the Discovery of America, Vol.2 p. 365-366 Philadelphia: 1920.
12. Obregon, 1493.
13. Trento, 1978, p. 23.
14. ibid. p. 29.
15. ibid. p. 65.
16. Fell, 1980. 250-252.
17. Trento, 1978, p. 15.
18. Fell, 1980. p. 400-403.

Land of Kush (Aethiopia): Geographical Origin Of The “Moors”

West Africa 1743. Year: 1743. This great Historic Map print shows ancient “Aethiopia included West Africa from Gabon in the south to Niger, Mali, and Mauritania in the north.

In German the word “Mohr” [Moor] is associated with people today referred to as sub-Saharan African, the historical usage aims contrast to people from North-West African regions, especially from East Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Aksum, Nubia) and North West Africa (Mauritania, Western Sahara, Mali, Morocco, Algeria, see Bidhan).

In German, the word “Mohr” [Moor] apparently historically has a stronger affinity to the ancient Greek word ethiopos (for “burnt face”). The identification of Moors with Moors comes from the underlying likeness and the Spanish influence where moro for historical reasons, the word for the Arab-Islamic Moors.

The Moor’s head is a heraldic charge associated with Wörth, Upper Bavaria, Germany.This is the ancient emblem of the Diocese of Freising, founded in the 8th century, which became a Metropolitan Archdiocese with the name of München und Freising in 1818, subsequent to the Concordat between Pius VII and King Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria (5 June 1817).

If in the Middle Ages, for example in connection with the “Moor of Freising”, Latinized from caput aethiop (i) s or caput ethiopicum is mentioned, this has therefore not directly something to do in that time context with Ethiopia, but is already generally with “marshmallow” translating.

Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507. He came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church

In this sense also translated Martin Luther the country Kush , the south of Egypt joined (to Ez 29,10  www.bibleserver.com“>LUT ) and Greco-Roman language area was given the name Ethiopia (as also in the Septuagint ), consistent with “Ethiopia”.

Map of the world according to Herodotus.

Here are (Jer 13:23  www.bibleserver.com“>LUT ) may be crucial, which states: “Can such Kuschite [Kushite] change his skin or the leopard his spots?” Here too Luther “the Moor”

 

The prophet Isaiah contrast with his description of Kush does not allude to the skin color, but rather on their height ( “tall”) and Unbehaartheit ( “blank”). ( Isa 18 www.bibleserver.com”>EU )

Map – 1450 BC Mycenean Greece and the Orient

In view of the Ethiopian eunuch Luther also seems the terms “Orient” to identify with each other” and “Ethiopia”.

“Abissinia, doue sono le Fonti del Nilo descritta secondo le relationi de P.P. Mendez, Almeida, Pais, Lobo, e Lodulfo del P. M. Coronelli M.C. Cosmografo della Seren. Rep. di Ventia”–Vincenzo Coronelli (1690)

1670 wrote Jerónimo Lobo about the “true nature of Ethiopia, particularly the abbysinischen Kayserthums“.

Map from 1800s demonstrating Aethiopia as modern Central Africa

On the other hand Giovanni Cavazzi da Montecuccolo understood in 1694 at its historical description of “occidentalischen Mohr country” including, among other areas, the three kingdoms of Congo, Matamba and Angola .

Il Regno de Goti nella Spagna Abbattuto, e Risorto; overo La Perdita, e Racquisto della Spagna occupata da Mori by Rogatis, Bartolomeo de

In 1728 first appeared in German the report by Bartolomeo de Rogatis from the loss of the Kingdom of Spain and the re-conquest of those lands of the Moors , which turn the Moors are meant.

BISHOP SAMUEL ADJAI CROWTHER (1809-1891)

In 1894 the book  Dr. Adschai Samuel Crowt der , the first Protestant Negro bishop, or Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God released. Here, then, is also Nigeria in Ethiopia. It Appeared even in the early 1930s still titles such as Ethiopia was still Christian … (G. von Massenbach, 1933), the debut of Ethiopia (Biographical Samuel Ali Hussein, 1932) or old and new from Ethiopia (Church and Mission History of Christoph Schomerus, 1934), in which case both “black” and “Negro” interchangeably and increasingly throughout Africa for “Mohren-” or “negro country”.

“As the only people of this region familiar to the Greeks were the Nubians of what is now northern and central Sudan, “Ethiopia” often functioned as a synonym for the Nubian kingdom of Kush (or Meroë). The country now called Ethiopia vaguely fit under the same designation, but knowledge of it was scanty at best. The ancient Greeks also used “Ethiopia” to signal other unknown or quasi-mythical lands located to the south or east of the Mediterranean. As a result, even parts of India came to be regarded as “Ethiopia” in some accounts.”

“In the early modern period, European geographers generally located Ethiopia in the unknown (to them) African interior, as can be seen on the map posted above. In certain circumstances, however, they applied the name to sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. As a result, the eastern South Atlantic was commonly dubbed the “Ethiopian Ocean” (or Sea) through the 1700s. In many maps of the time, the Ethiopian Ocean was depicted as extending from the South Atlantic into the western Indian Ocean. The modern concept of discrete oceanic basins dates only to the 1800s; previously, named oceans and seas were often conceptualized as strips of water wrapping around landmasses.”

“In European usage, “Ethiopia” did not refer to the modern country of that name until the second half of the twentieth century. Previously, the Ethiopian kingdom (or empire) was generally called “Abyssinia,” a term derived from the Arabic ethnic designation “Habesh.” Yet in both Ge’ez, the sacred language of Ethiopian Christianity, and the modern Ethiopian Semitic languages (Amharic and Tigrinya), the country has long been called Ītyōṗṗyā. Ītyōṗṗyā is generally thought to be derived from the Greek “Ethiopia.” Some experts reject the connection, however, arguing that the “Book of Aksum, a Ge’ez chronicle first composed in the 15th century, states that the name is derived from ‘Ityopp’is,’ a son (unmentioned in the Bible) of Cush, son of Ham who according to legend founded the city of Axum.” Regardless of its ultimate origin, “Ītyōṗṗyā” certainly sounds as if it were a cognate of “Ethiopia.” Yet even in Ethiopia itself, the Arabic-derived word “Habesha” still denotes the core Semitic-speaking ethnic groups, and is sometimes applied more broadly to all peoples of the country.”

Source: The Migration of Place Names: Africa, Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan