User:Ficaia/Pre-modern conceptions of blackness
Description of populations as "Black" in reference to their skin colour predates and is distinct from the race categories constructed from the 17th century onward. Coloured terminology is occasionally found in Greco-Roman ethnography and other ancient and medieval sources, but these societies did not have any notion of a Black or pan-African race. Scholarship on race distinguishes the modern concept from pre-modern descriptions, which focused on skin colour, complexion and other physical traits.
Fertile Crescent
[edit]Mesopotamia
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Ancient Egypt
[edit]According to anthropologist Nina Jablonski:
In ancient Egypt as a whole, people were not designated by color terms [...] Egyptian inscriptions and literature only rarely, for instance, mention the dark skin color of the Kushites of Upper Nubia. We know the Egyptians were not oblivious to skin color, however, because artists paid attention to it in their works of art, to the extent that the pigments at the time permitted.[1]
The Ancient Egyptian (New Kingdom) funerary text known as the Book of Gates distinguishes "four groups" in a procession. These are the "red-brown" Egyptians, the "pale" Levantine and Canaanite peoples or "Asiatics", the "black" "Nubians" and the "fair-skinned Libyans".[2][3] The Egyptians are depicted as considerably darker-skinned than the Levantines (persons from what is now Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan) and Libyans, but considerably lighter than the Nubians (modern Sudan).[4]
Kingdom of Kush
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India
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Ancient Greece
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Ancient Rome
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Late antiquity
[edit]In the 8th century, the English monk, The Venerable Bede, generally associated the black skin of Ethiopians with "spiritual darkness" but at the same time rejected any idea that the colour differences between, as he termed it, "a black Ethiopian and a white Saxon" would affect their fates during the Last Judgement.[5]
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China
[edit]In pre-modern China, some non-Chinese ethnic groups, such as Indonesians, and Malaysians, were referred to as "black".[6]
Muslim world
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Slavery
[edit]Different labels were used to categorise slaves in Islamic society, with black slaves referred to as abd ("slave") and white slaves being referred to as mamlūk ("owned") and black eunuchs referred to as ghurābiyya ("ravens") and white eunuchs referred to as jarādiyya ("locusts").[7] The Christian Arab intellectual Ibn Butlan of Baghdad wrote the first slave vade mecum, or handbook, in the 11th century, which recorded and described different ethnic and racial groups, dividing black slaves from white slaves and suggesting different tasks for each group based on their attributes.[8] Ibn Butlan suggested that black slaves should be used as labourers, servants, and eunuchs, whereas white slaves, such as Turks and Slavs, should be used as soldiers.[9] Generally in the Arab world, black slaves were used for rough labour and other labouring tasks, whereas white slaves came to be used to fill administrative and domestic positions.[10] According to Bernard Lewis, white slaves could also conceivably become "generals, provincial governors, sovereigns and founders of dynasties", while such positions were rarely bestowed upon black slaves.[10] Likewise, emancipated white slaves were offered more opportunities for social advancement in Arab society than emancipated black slaves.[11]
In medieval Southern Europe slaves came to be categorised based on colour with Christians using typical labels for Muslim slaves such as sarraceno blanco (white Saracen), sarracenno nigrium (black Saracen), and sarraceno lauram (Saracen of intermediate colour).[12] In 13th century Genoa slaves classified as black made up just over half of the total recorded slave population.[12] Records show Provencal France would also distinguish between noir (black) and blanc (white) slaves.[12] In Islamic controlled Iberia (Al-Andalus) Muslims could own other Muslims as slaves, a practice usually banned within Islam, if the enslaved Muslims were either black or loro (of intermediate colour) but not if they were classified as white.[12][13] Generally, in medieval Iberia and Italy, people were described as white, black, or of intermediate colour.[14]
Christendom
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Medieval Christians seldom used "race" as a human category; the word emerged in 15th century Romance-language texts on animal husbandry, and writers tended instead to use words like gens and natio when classifying human groups. Medieval ideas about skin colour were complex. Dark skin – depicted in art using brown, black, blue, grey and sometimes purple hues – often signified negative moral and spiritual qualities distinct from physical appearance. Thus, the image of Saladin facing Richard I in the 14th century Luttrell Psalter depicts the Saracen with dark blue skin and a monstrous expression, even though the Muslims of the Levant at the time of the Third Crusade were predominantly light-skinned Mamluks.[15]
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nubians_in_ancient_Egypt
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-42637998
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/the-fallacy-of-the-fairness-concept/article7074825.ece
https://aeon.co/essays/when-homer-envisioned-achilles-did-he-see-a-black-man
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Jablonski, Nina G. (27 September 2012). Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-520-95377-2.
- ^ "The first are RETH, the second are AAMU, the third are NEHESU, and the fourth are THEMEHU. The RETH are Egyptians, the AAMU are dwellers in the deserts to the east and north-east of Egypt, the NEHESU are the Cushites, and the THEMEHU are the fair-skinned Libyans" Book of Gates, chapter VI (Archived 10 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine), translated by E. A. Wallis Budge, 1905.
- ^ Thavapalan 2019, p. 155-156: As a point of correlation to visual culture, one can observe that in Egyptian art too, Nubians from the south are painted black. Egyptian natives were portrayed with a red-brown complexion, Syrians or Asiatic peoples from the north and east were shown in pale tones and Libyans from the west were represented in white.
- ^ Eaverly, Mary Ann (10 December 2013). Tan Men/Pale Women: Color and Gender in Archaic Greece and Egypt, a Comparative Approach. University of Michigan Press. pp. 18–20. ISBN 978-0-472-11911-0. OCLC 1055877879.
- ^ Rix, Robert (2014). The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination: Ethnicity, Legend, and Literature. Routledge. pp. 133–136. ISBN 978-1-317-58969-3.
Thus the Ethiopian is contrasted with the Germaniae candida in the writings of Julius Firmicus Maternus; Pliny also has unnamed northerners with candida atque glacialis cutis (white and frosty skins)... the Byzantine scholar Procopius, in his sixth-century History of the Wars desribes the in terms not very different from the characteristics emphasized in the anecdote; these northern tribes have "white bodies and fair hair"
- ^ Bonnett, Alastair (8 October 2018). White Identities: An Historical & International Introduction. Routledge. pp. 9–11. ISBN 978-1-317-88037-0.
- ^ Lewis, Bernard (1992). Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. Oxford University Press. pp. 56–59. ISBN 978-0-19-505326-5. OCLC 1022745387.
- ^ Lewis 1992, p. 48: Ibn Butlan, an eleventh-century Christian physician in Baghdad, wrote a sort of slave trader's vade mecum, which is the first of a series of such works.26 He reviews the range of slaves available in the markets of the Middle East, and considers the different kinds, black and white, male and female, classifying them according to their racial, ethnic, and regional origins and indicating which groups are best suited to which tasks. Similar advice on these matters is offered by a number of later writers.
- ^ Lewis 1992, p. 56: Ibn Butlan, in his handbook, suggests a proper ethnic division of labor for both male and female slaves. As guards of persons and property, he recommends Indians and Nubians; as laborers, servants, and eunuchs, Zanj; as soldiers, Turks and Slavs.
- ^ a b Lewis 1992, pp. 56–59.
- ^ Lewis 1992, p. 60: The same limitation of opportunity applies to the emancipated slave. The emancipated white slave was free from any kind of restriction; the emancipated black slave was at most times and places rarely able to rise above the lowest levels..
- ^ a b c d Forbes, Jack D. (1993). Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. University of Illinois Press. pp. 26–27. ISBN 978-0-252-06321-3. OCLC 1013305190.
- ^ Forbes 1993, p. 107: in a Muslim-controlled village, a newly converted Muslim could possess a Muslim slave provided that the latter was black or loro and not white.
- ^ Forbes 1993, p. 66: the late medieval period in Italy and the Iberian peninsula saw people being variously classified as albo, alvi, bianco, branco (white), new, nigri, negri, negro, negre, preto (black), and as of intermediate colors: lauro, loro, llor, berretini, rufo, pardo, olivastre, etc.
- ^ Patton, Pamela A. (2019). "Blackness, Whiteness, and the Idea of Race in Medieval European Art". In Albin, Andrew; Erler, Mary C.; O'Donnell, Thomas; Paul, Nicholas L.; Rowe, Nina (eds.). Whose Middle Ages?: Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past. New York: Fordham University Press. pp. 155–159. doi:10.1515/9780823285594. ISBN 9780823285594.
Sources
[edit]- Thavapalan, Shiyanthi (21 October 2019). The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-41541-6. OCLC 1114270506.
Category:People of African descent Black Category:Race (human categorization) Category:Black (human racial classification)