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the chief black eunuch, who was brought to Istanbul, studied there, and rose to high rank as a
judge in the Ottoman service. There were also other, earlier works of the
same type, but these have not survived.
    The books that have come down to us follow the same main pattern. They
discuss the origins of the blacks and deal with the reasons for their blackness,
rejecting hostile myths concerning this. They set forth the good qualities of
blacks and also draw attention to blackness itself as a good quality in certain
plants, stones, and animals. They insist that whites cannot claim superior
merit because of their whiteness but must earn it by piety and good deeds.
Most of them then discuss Ethiopians among the slaves and freedmen of the
Prophet's Companions who fled from Arabia, the words of Ethiopic origin in
the Qur'an and more generally in Arabic, utterances of the Prophet concerning Ethiopians, and the like. There are also collections of anecdotes illustrating good and pious deeds by blacks, though here the usual theme is that
simple piety is better than sophisticated wickedness, with the black used as the
example of simplicity as much as of piety.''

    Another type of information on racial attitudes may be found in religious
literature, specifically that which by apt quotation seeks to condemn racial
prejudice and discrimination. During the centuries which followed the death
of the Prophet, pious Muslims collected vast numbers of what are known as
hadiths, that is to say, traditions concerning Muhammad's actions and utterances. A very large proportion of these arc certainly spurious-but this, while
it may nullify their value as evidence of the Prophet's own views, still leaves
them as important evidence on the development of attitudes during the period
in which they were manufactured. A number of these traditions deal with
questions of race and color. There are some which specifically condemn one
or another race. Thus the Prophet is quoted as saying of the Ethiopian:
"When he is hungry he steals, when he is sated he fornicates. "'h This is
undoubtedly spurious, but is also well known in early and modern times as an
Arabic proverb about the Zanj.-" Similar traditions, equally spurious, are
cited disparaging the Persians, the Turks, and other parties to the struggles of
early Islamic history. Sometimes these traditions have an eschatological content, as for example when the Prophet predicts that the Ka'ba, the sanctuary
in Mecca, will be destroyed by "black-skinned, short-shanked men," who will
tear it apart and thus begin the destruction of the world.''
    Such traditions are few, and most of them are not regarded as authentic. A
larger body of accepted traditions survives, the general purport of which is to
deplore racial prejudice and to insist on the primacy of piety. One of the
commonest is the phrase ascribed to the Prophet, "I was sent to the red and
the black"-an expression taken to embrace the whole of mankind.' With the
passage in the Qur'an already quoted as point of departure, the manufacturers
of tradition-for these too are almost certainly spurious-have as their purpose to insist that true merit is to be found in piety and good deeds and that
these take precedence over gentle, noble, or even purely Arab birth.
    These traditions, and those opposed to them, clearly reflect the great
struggles in the early Islamic Empire between the pure Arab conquistador
aristocracy, claiming both ethnic and social superiority, and the converts
among the conquered, who could claim neither ethnic nor family advantage
and perhaps for that reason insisted on the primacy of religious merit.
    Here I may draw attention to a rhetorical device very common in classical
Arabic usage-an argument by the absurd. It is, however, very different from
that device which we call the reductio ad absurdum. The purpose of the
reductio ad absurdum is to demonstrate the falsity of an argument by stating it
in its