HIDDEN HISTORY: How White Slavery

Helped Shape the Modern Arab

1 Reply

“Learn your lineages…” -Prophet Muhammad (s)

“Every king springs from a race of slaves, and every slave

had kings among his ancestors.” -Plato
It is reported that the Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) said, (In a dream) I saw myself following a herd of
black sheep. Then a group of white sheep came (and mixed with the black sheep) until they (the
white sheep) became so many that the black sheep could no longer be seen in the herd of sheep.”
Abu Bakr, the companion of the Prophet (pbuh) and the interpreter of dreams, said, “Oh Messenger
of Allah. As for the black sheep, they are the Arabs. They will accept Islam and become many. The
white sheep are the non-Arab Persians, etc. They will accept Islam and become so many that the
Arabs will not be noticed amongst them.” The Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) then said that an angel had
interpreted the dream the same way.
Zaid ibn Aslam related that the prophet (SAWS) saw a vision and told his companions about it. He
said, “I saw a group of black sheep and a group of white sheep then mixed with the black sheep. I
interpreted it to mean that the non-Arab Persians will enter Islam and then share with you your
genealogy and your wealth.” The companions became surprised by what he (SAWS) said. Then one
said, “The non-Arab Persians will enter our land, Oh Messenger of Allah?!” The Prophet (SAWS)
then said, “Yes. By He Who Has my soul in His Hand, if the religion was hanging on the distant star,
men from the non-Arab Persians would reach it and the luckiest of them would be the people of
Faris.

(Reported in Suyuti, Jalal ad-Deen. “Tareekh al-Khulafaa (d. 1505).

(http://blackarabia.blogspot.com/2011/07/aryanization-of-
islam.html,http://savethetruearabs.blogspot.com/2010/04/black-sheep-white-sheephow-it-all.html)

Do the above narrations and interpretations really prophecy a change in

the phenotype (physical appearance) of the people of Arabia? Do they
really imply that today’s Arabs are a foreign people who have
overwhelmed the original populace?
Historians seem to think so:
Bertram Thomas, historian and former Prime Minister of Muscat and Oman, reported in his work
‘The Arabs’:

“The original inhabitants of Arabia…were not the familiar Arabs of our time but a very much darker
people. A proto-negroid belt of mankind stretched across the ancient world from Africa to Malaya.
This belt…(gave) rise to the Hamitic peoples of Africa, to the Dravidian peoples of India, and to an
intermediate dark people inhabiting the Arabian peninsula. In the course of time two big migrations
of fair-skinned peoples came from the north…to break through and transform the dark belt of man
beyond India (and) to drive a wedge between India and Africa…The more virile invaders overcame
the dark-skinned peoples, absorbing most of them, driving others southwards…The cultural
condition of the newcomers is unknown. It is unlikely that they were more than wild hordes of
adventurous hunters.”

http://www.blackarabia.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-did-black-arabs-become-white.html
Modern dark-skinned descendants of ancient Arabians like the Qarra and Mahra of Oman told

colonial observers they originated in Africa.

“(Regarding) [t]he origin of the Arab race…

the first certain fact on which to base our investigations is the ancient and undoubted division of the
Arab race into two branches, the ‘Arab’ or pure; and the ‘Mostareb’ or adscititions…

A second fact is, that everything in pro-Islamitic literature and record…concurs in representing the
first settlement of the ‘pure’ Arabs as made on the extreme south-western point of the peninsula,
near Aden, and then spreading northward and eastward…

A third is the name Himyar, or ‘dusky’…a circumstance pointing, like the former, to African origin.

A fourth is the Himyaritic language…(The preserved words) are African in character, often in identity.
Indeed, the dialect commonly used along the south-eastern coast hardly differs from that used by
the (Somali) Africans on the opposite shore…

Fifthly, it is remarkable that where the grammar of the Arabic, now spoken by the ‘pure’ Arabs,
differs from that of the north, it approaches to or coincides with the Abyssinian…

Sixthly, the pre-Islamitic institutions of Yemen and its allied provinces-its monarchies, courts, armies,
and serfs-bear a marked resemblance to the historical Africao-Egyptian type, even to modern
Abyssinian.

Seventhly, the physical conformation of the pure-blooded Arab inhabitants of Yemen, Hadramaut,
Oman, and the adjoining districts-the shape and size of head, the slenderness of the lower limbs, the
comparative scantiness of hair, and other particulars-point in an African rather than an Asiatic
direction.

Eighthly, the general habits of the people,-given to sedentary rather than nomad occupations, fond
of village life, of society, of dance and music; good cultivators of the soil, tolerable traders, moderate
artisans, but averse to pastoral pursuits-have much more in common with those of the inhabitants of
the African than with those of the western Asiatic continent.
Lastly, the extreme facility of marriage which exists in all classes of the southern Arabs with the
African races; the fecundity of such unions; and the slightness or even absence of any caste feeling
between the dusky ‘pure’ Arab and the still darker native of modern Africa…may be regarded as
pointing in the direction of a community of origin.”

(The Encyclopedia Britanica [9th Edition; 1:245-46 s.v. Arabia)

(http://blackarabia.blogspot.com/2011/09/were-black-arabs-who-founded-islam.html)

The dark-skinned South Arabian today is short and “extremely round-headed (brachycephalic)” but
he was no doubt originally much taller and dolichocephalic (long-headed) like the so-called Hamites
of East Africa.

In the 13th century CE the Muslim traveler Ibn al-Mujāwir described the Mahra as “tall, handsome
folk” in his Tārīkh al-mustabsir, 271.1.17 and early pre-Christian skulls found in Hadramawt were
markedly dolichocephalic.

It has been suggested that the ‘definite change’ in the racial constitution of the people of Hadramawt
resulted from the invasion and inbreeding of brachycephalic whites such as Armenoids or Persians.

Henry Field suggested that Arabia’s current ethnography is the result of the mixing of two distinct
basal stocks: The dolichocephalic (long-headed), dark-skinned Mediteranean/Eur-African and the
brachycephalic (round-headed) fair-skinned Armenoid. See his “Ancient and Modern Inhabitants of
Arabia,” The Open Court 46 (1932): 854 [art.=847-869].

(http://blackarabia.blogspot.com/2011/09/were-black-arabs-who-founded-islam.html)

East African with Dolichocephalic (“long-headed”) face and head type

Armenoid Kurd with Brachycephalic (“round-headed”) head and fac

These findings are corroborated by Persian sources describing their

first impression of their Arab Muslim conquerors.
“When Fredon (mythical hero) came, they (the black people) fled from the lands of Iran and settled
on the coast of the sea. Now, through the invasion of the Arabs, they (the Zing-i-Siak posht (i.e. the
black skinned negroes)) are again diffused through the country of Iran.”

(Bundahishn (Creation of the Origins)- A Zoroastrian text)

[Note: in these last sentences allusion is made to the Blackness of both the original inhabitants of
Iran, and of the Arabs.]
You’re saying that the real Arabs are Black?! What do these historians
know anyway? They’re not Arab or Muslim. They’re colonialists and
Orientalists out to distort Islamic history.
True. Who better to ask than the Arabs themselves? How did the Arab
historians, grammarians, linguists and pre-Islamic poets describe
themselves? Let’s see:
“Red (al-hamra’) refers to non-Arabs due to their fair complexion which predominates amongthem.
And the Arabs used to say about the non-Arabs with whom white skin was characteristic, such as
the Romans, Persians, and their neighbors: ‘They are red-skinned (al-hamra’)…” al-hamra’ means
the Persians and Romans…And the Arabs attribute white skin to the slaves.”

(Ibn Manzur [Lisan al-arab IV: 209, 210]) http://blackarabia.blogspot.com/2011/09/in-islam-does-

color-of-prophets-matter.html
Couldn’t many “white” people be more accurately described as “red”?

Al-Mubarrad (d. 898), the leading figure in the Basran grammatical tradition, 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-ḥumra wa al-shaqra), and they used to say that such was
the complexion of the non-Arabs.”

Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd, Sharḥ nahj al-balāghah, V:56.http://www.blackarabia.blogspot.com/2013/04/his-

daddy-was-black-his-momma-was-black.html

Lisan El-Arab (an old Arabic dictionary) mentions Shamar’s explanation of the hadiths that say that
the prophet Mohamed (pbuh) said that he was sent to the blacks and the reds. Shamar explains the
hadiths as follows:

‫شمر قال‬: ‫السمرة العرب َألوان علـى والغالب والعجم العرب يعنـي‬
ُّ ُ
َ ‫واأل ْد‬
‫مة‬ ‫َألوان وعلـى‬
‫والـحمرة البـياض العجم‬،

“He means (by the blacks and the reds) the Arabs and the non-Arabs and the complexion of most
Arabs is brown and jet-black and the complexion of most non-Arabs is white and red.”
Hmm… Let’s think about that.

Shams El-Din Mohamed ibn Ahmed ibn Othman El-Dhahabi (died1374 A.D.) explains the hadith that
mentions that a man was “red-skinned as if he was one of the slaves” as follows:

‫ألعجم و وألروم ألشام نصارى من سبوا ألذين ألموالي لون في أنه ألقائل يريد‬

“The speaker means that the man was the color of the slaves who were captured from the Christians
of Syria and from the Romans and the Persians.”

Thus, it was common for the Arabs of the past to describe a light-skinned person as having the color
of the slaves. This is a known fact. Ibn Mandhor (1232-1311 A.D.) says in his book Lisan El-Arab:

ُ ‫الغالبة هي الشعر‬
‫والفرس الروم من العجم شعور علـى الغالبة هي الشعر سبوطة‬. ‫جعودة و‬
‫العرب شعور علـى‬
“Non-kinky hair is the kind of hair that most non-Arabs like the Romans and Persians have while
kinky hair is the kind of hair that most Arabs have.”

Woman with lank hair

Arabs with different grades of kinky hair

The Arabs of the past also used the word green to mean black. El-Fadl ibn El-Abbas ibn ‘Utba El-
Lahabi said:

َ ‫ض ُُر‬
‫وأنا‬ َ ‫ض ُُر َي ْعر ِ ُفنـي؟ من‬
ْ ‫األ‬،
َ ‫خ‬ ْ ‫ة َأ‬
َ ‫خ‬ ُِ ‫تِ فـي الـج ِ ْل َد‬ ُْ ‫ال َع َر‬
ُ ‫ب بـي‬

I am the green one. Who knows me? My skin is green. I am from the family of the Arabs.
Bronze is a copper alloy (combination of copper and tin) and when exposed to air and moisture, it

will develop a greenish layer of build-up on its dark brown surface. Hence the association of green

with dark-brown skin.

Ibn Mandhor, the author of Lisan El-Arab says this about the verse:

‫يقول‬: ‫ألن خالص َأنا‬

َ ‫السمرة العرب َألوان‬

“He says that he is a pure Arab because the color of the Arabs is brown (dark).”

In Lisan El-Arab, Ibn Mandhor also quotes the author of El-Tahdhib, Saad El-Din Masud ibn Umar
El-Taftaazaani (1312-1389 A.D.) as saying the following about the verse:

‫قوالن البـيت هذا فـي‬: ‫قال الـجلدة؛ َأسود َأراد َأنه َأحدهما‬: ‫النـحوي طالب َأبو قاله‬، ‫وقـيل‬: ‫َأنه َأراد‬
‫ألن وصميمهم العرب خالص من‬ َ ‫ة العرب َألوان علـى الغالب‬ ُُ ‫م‬ ُ
َ ‫األ ْد‬،

“There are two sayings about this verse. One is that he meant that he had black skin. This is what
Abu Talib El-Nahwi said. It is also said that he meant that he is a pure unmixed Arab because most
Arabs are black-skinned.”

Abdella ibn Berry (1106-1187 A.D.), the “King of the Grammarians” as he was called, said the
following about the verse:
‫بري ابن قال‬: ‫للهبـي البـيت هذا الـجوهري نسب‬، ‫َة بن العباس بن الفضل وهو‬ َُ ‫ٍل َهب َأبـي بن ُع ْتب‬ َ ،
َ َ
‫لونه سمرة بالـخضرة وأراد‬، ‫مـحض عربـي وأنه نسبه خـلوص بذلك يريد وإِنما‬، ‫ألن‬ َ ‫تصف العرب‬
‫بالـحمرة العجم َألوان وتصف بالسواد َألوانها‬. ‫الـحديث وفـي‬: ‫األحمر إِلـى ُبعثت‬
َ ‫واألسود؛‬ َ ‫وهذا‬
َ َ ُ ْ
‫يعرِفنـي لـمن مسكِينُ أنا قوله فـي الدارمي مسكين أراده الذي هو بعينه الـمعنى‬، ‫ة َلونِـي‬
َ ْ ُّ
ُُ ‫الس ْم َر‬
ُ‫لوان‬
ُ َ
‫بأ‬ َ
ُْ ‫الع َر‬

“El-Jawhari attributed this verse to El-Lahabi and he is El-Fadl ibn El-Abbas ibn ‘Utba ibn Abi Lahab
and he meant by green the brownness (darkness) of his complexion and he meant by that the purity
of his genealogy and that he was an unmixed Arab because the Arabs describe their color as black
and they describe the color of the non-Arabs as red. Like the hadith says, ‘I was sent to the red and
the black. And this is exactly what Miskeen El-Darimi meant when he said: ‘I am Miskeen, for those
who know me. My color is brown (dark), the color of the Arabs’”.

Ibn Mandhor says in his book Lisan El-Arab:

‫قالوا إِذا والعرب‬: ‫األخالق فـي الكرم فمعناه بـيضاء وفالنة َأبـيض فالن‬
َ ‫الـخـلقة لون ال‬، ‫قالوا وإُذا‬:
ِ
َ
‫اللون؛ بـياض عنوا حمراء وفالنة أحمر فالن‬

“When the Arabs said that a man or a woman was ‘white’, they meant that the person was
honorable. They weren’t talking about his/her complexion. When they (the Arabs) said that a man or
a woman was ‘red’, they meant that his/her complexion was white.

The famous, old Arabic dictionary Lisan El Arab also quotes the author of El-Tahdhib, Saad El-Din
Masud ibn Umar El-Taftaazaani (1312-1389 A.D.) as saying:

‫التهذيب‬: ‫َض فالن العرب قالت إِذا‬ ُُ ‫ع ْرض َنقاء فالـمعنى َبـيْضاء وفالنة َأ ْبـي‬ ِ ‫ال …والعيوب الد َنس من ال‬
َُ
‫ـياض به يريدون‬ ‫عرض ونقا ُِء بالكرم الـمدح يريدون ولكنهم اللون َب‬ َ ْ ِ ‫العيوب من ال‬، ‫قالوا وإِذا‬: ‫َأ ْبـيَُض فالن‬
ُُ
‫ْضاء وفالنة الوجه‬ َ
‫ف من اللون نقا َُء أرادوا الوجه َبـي‬ َ َ
ُِ ‫د الكل‬ُِ ‫الشائن والسوا‬

“When the Arabs said that a man or a woman was white, they meant that the person had a faultless
honor…they didn’t mean white skin. What they meant by this was to praise the person for his/her
generosity and faultless honor. When they said that a man or woman had a white face, they meant
that the person had a complexion free of blemishes and free of an unattractive blackness.”
“White” means a glowing complexion, not a pale skin color.

http://savethetruearabs.blogspot.com/2009/08/cure-for-racial-prejudice-against-dark_5648.html

Whatever. If the original Arabs were black, then how do you explain the
predominance of light brown and white Arabs of today?
There are different ways that non-Arabs changed the dark-skinned,
Negroid/Dravidian appearance of Arabia and the Middle East:
1. Intermarriage between non-Arab converts and slaves with Arabs.

“increasing intermarriage (between Arabs and non-Arabs) served to submerge the original
distinctions, and increasing numbers of the conquered, having adopted the religion and language of
the conquerors, took to assuming the identity as if Arabs themselves” (Segal 2001:22)

“In one important way … (the second caliph) Omar was unable to prevent the Moslems from
mingling with the subject peoples … Since they were forbidden to own land, they used their wealth
(from booty) chiefly to buy women … All the children born of these unions – and there were many
thousands of them – called themselves Arabs, in order to identify with the ruling class. When they
grew up and married, their offspring in turn called themselves Arabs. Thus it came about that the
people of the Moslem world, many of them without a drop of Arab blood in their veins, became
known as Arabs.”Such ‘conversion to Arabism’ is illustrated by the words of the Iranian poet
Bashshar b. Barb (d. 783-4), who responded to the caliph al-Mahdi’s question, “Of whom do you
reckon yourself, Bashshar”: “As for my language and dress, they are Arab; but as for my origin, it is
non-Arab (ajam.)”” (Suskind 1972:37)

http://blackarabia.blogspot.com/2011/07/aryanization-of-islam.html

Ninth century poet Abu Al-Hasan Ali ibn Al-Abbas ibn Jurayj, known as Ibn Al-Rumi, wrote a long
poem to the Abbasids blaming them for the way that they treated the family of the Prophet Mohamed
(SAWS). It should be understood that at that time, the Abbasids had become very mixed with the
Romans, Greeks, and Persians. Here is part of what Ibn Al-Rumi said in his famous poem called Al-
Jeemia:

“You insulted them (the family of the Prophet Mohamed) because of their blackness while there are
still pure-blooded black-skinned Arabs. However, you are blue (eyed) – the Romans have
embellished your faces with their color.”
Blue-eyed Syrian (Syria was conquered by Muslims from Rome.)

2. Assimilation (Arabization) and Empowerment of Non-Arabs

In the passage quoted below al-Maqrīzī discusses the influence on Islamic tradition of the Abbasid
caliph al-Maʿmūn (reigned 813-833) and his successors al-Muʿtaṣim (r. 833-842), al-Mutawakkil (r.
847-861) and al-Mustaʿīn (r. 862-866).

“This fellow al-Maʿmūn …left one of the worst possible reputations in the whole history of Islam. This
arose from the fact that he had books on philosophy translated into Arabic, to such a pitch that
heretics and deviationists used them to pervert Islam and to trick the Muslims…He removed from the
pay-registers the Arabs, the Messenger of God’s people, the race through whose agency God had
established the religion of Islam…In their place, he relied on the Turks. He abandoned Arab dress
and clothing, put a crown on his head and wore the dress of the Persians, that race which God had
sent his prophet Muhammad to slay and to combat. With al-Muʿtaṣim, and through his deliberate
agency, the rule of the Arabs came to an end; henceforth, during his reign and under his political
regime, the Turks, upon whom the Messenger of God vowed to make war, assumed power. After
him, they (viz. the Turks) secured an ascendency in all the lands. God gave the Turks dominion
over al-Muʿtaṣim’s son, Jaʿfar al-Mutawakkil, so that they eventually murdered him. They also
murdered al-Muʿtaṣim’s grandson, Aḥmad al-Mustaʿīn. They treated the religion of God as a
plaything and established a reign of terror throughout all the provinces of the caliphate.”

http://www.blackarabia.blogspot.com/2012/04/prophet-muhammads-war-against-white.html

Slave girls were favored as concubines, and certain of the wives of ʿAbbasid caliphs who gave birth
to princes and future caliphs, being of the status of omm walad, are mentioned as being Iranian,
e.g., Marājel, the concubine of Hārūn-al-Rašīd, said to be from Bāḏḡīs in northwestern Afghanistan,
and the mother of the future caliph al-Maʾmūn, born in 170/787, and also Māreda, born in Kūfa but of
Sogdian stock, slave of Hārūn al-Rašīd, who bore him the future caliph al-Moʿtaṣem, born in
179/795 or 180/796.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/homosexuality-iii
Girl from Rasht, Gilan province, Iran (formerly Persia)

Uyghur child (Turkic ethnic group in Central Asia)

3. The changes the last two brought are minor in comparison to the next
one. And this one’s going to be a huge shocker, because it’s a bit of
covered-up history:
There was a massive white slave trade between Europe, Central Asia
and the Middle that lasted over 1,000 years. This brought an enormous
number of white Western and Eastern Europeans into the Middle East.

(The focus on African slaves in Arabia only came after access to white slave trade routes was lost.)

“In the Viking era starting c. 793, the Norse raiders often captured and enslaved militarily weaker
peoples they encountered. In the Nordic countries the slaves were called thralls (Old Norse: þræll)
The thralls were mostly from Western Europe [i.e. Far West Asia], among them many Franks,
Anglo-Saxons and Celts… There is evidence of German, Baltic, Slavic and Latin slaves as well.
The slave trade was one of the pillars of Norse commerce during the 6th through 11th centuries.”

“Slavery during the Early Middle Ages had several distinct

sources. The Vikings raided across Europe, though their slave raids were the most destructive in the
British Isles and Eastern Europe. While the Vikings kept some slaves for themselves as servants,
known as thralls, most people captured by the Vikings would be sold on the Byzantine or Islamic
markets. In the West the targets of Viking slavery were primarily English, Irish, and Scottish, while in
the East they were mainly Slavs. The Viking slave trade slowly ended in the 1000s…”

“The Middle Ages form 1100 to 1500 saw a continuation of the European Slave trade, though with a
shift form the Western Mediterranean Islamic nations (Andalusian Spain, modern day Morocco) to
the Eastern, as Venice and Genoa, in firm control of the Eastern Mediterranean from the 12th
century and the Black Sea from the 13th century sold both Slavic and Baltic slaves, as well as
Georgians, Turks and other ethnic groups of the Black Sea and Caucasus, to the Muslim nations of
the Middle East. The sale of European slaves by Europeans slowly ended as the Slavic and Baltic
ethnic groups Christianized by the Late Middle Ages. European slaves in the Islamic World would,
however, continue into the Modern time period as Muslim pirates, primarily Algerians, with the
support of the Ottoman Empire, raided European coasts and shipping form the 16th to the 19th

centuries…”

“Genoese merchants organized the slave trade from the Crimea to Mamluk Egypt.”

“For a long time [from declaring independence in1441] until the early 18th century, the [Crimean]
khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. In a
process called the “harvesting of the steppe”, they enslaved many Slavic peasants.”

“The Byzantine-Ottoman wars [in or near modern Turkey] and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought
large numbers of Christian slaves into the Islamic world too.”
Asaolu, Richard Oluseyi. Slavery. PediaPress. pp 4-
7. http://books.google.com.sa/books?id=YTXuW0zptegC&dq=Asaolu,+Richard+Oluseyi+slavery&so

urce=gbs_navlinks_s

In early Islamic times, parts of [Arab-ruled] Iran itself remained unislamized, and these infidel regions
could be raided for slaves. This was the case with Daylam in northwestern Iran up to the time of the
appearance there of the ʿAlid dāʿī Ḥasan b. Zayd b. Moḥammad (second half of the 3rd/9th century);
while slaves were captured from the mountainous region of Ḡūr in central Afghanistan, a pagan
enclave there till the early Ghaznavid period.

Slaves came into the Iranian world as captives of war from the Arab campaigns in the Caucasus
against the Ḵazars and from the campaigns in central Asia against the local Iranian peoples and the
Turks of the steppes beyond, from the end of the lst/7th century onward. Thus Naršaḵī mentions
how in 87/706 the Arab governor Qotayba b. Moslem slew all the males in the town of Baykand in
Sogdia and enslaved all the women and children.
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/barda-iii

From early in the Abbasid period the caliphs instituted a tradition of forming army contingents
composed of slaves, mostly taken as captives in the course of frontier wars and raids into Central
Asia, the Caucasus, and India, among other regions. There were also slave markets where young
male slaves, along with female ones, captured as booty or procured by other means, were sold. The
preferred slaves were Turkic ones, admired for their handsome features, their valor, and their martial
gifts. The Samanids, who originated from Sogdiana and were neighbors to the Turkic khanates of
Central Asia, adopted the practice of enlisting slaves in their army—a practice which continued
under the succeeding dynasties, chiefly the Ghaznavids, the Seljuks, and theKʷārazmšāhs.

[Note: The Abbasids ruled Arabia, Iraq, the Levant (Sham) and North Africa for 500 years, from 750
to 1258. The Seljuks ruled Oman, and parts Iraq and the Levant from 1037-1194.]

The love poetry of these periods is generally addressed to such adolescent soldiers or pages. That
these Turks were ‘white’ or pale-skinned is made clear in these poems:

 They are of musky facial hair, sweet of speech, with perfumed tresses / Silver-bodied, gold-
girded, and narrow-waisted( Kāfi Ẓafar of Hamadān, cited by ʿAwfi in his Lobāb al-albāb (pp.
210-13))
 I love silver-bodied, ruby-lipped children. / Wherever you see one of them, call me there
(Farroḵi, Divān, p. 5).
 O beautifully clad child, silver-bodied and ruby-lipped, / the substance of charm and gaiety,
envious houries in pain from you! (Anvari, apud Šamisā, p. 80).
 Attar (ʿAṭṭār [d. 1221] uses in his ghazals, which vibrate with profound and passionate,
amorous feelings, the imagery developed by earlier poets: he sings of the beloved’s moon-
like face, ruby lips, narrow, hair-like waist, cypress-like figure, the lasso of the beloved’s
tresses, the chain of his curls…
Kipchak Turk

Of course there were slaves of other origins as well, e.g., Indian and Slav (generally
termed bolḡār “Bulgarian,” known for their fair skin).

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/homosexuality-iii

There were many other dynasties of Turkic or Persian origin that ruled over what is now considered
the Arab world. Here are a few examples:

 The Fatimids (909-1171, Arabian Peninsula, Levant, North Africa, Sudan) imported Turkic
and Armenian soldiers into their armies.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatimid_Caliphate#Military_system)
 The Seljuk Turks ruled parts of Iraq and the Levant from 1037-1194. The settlement of
Turkic tribes in the northwestern peripheral parts of the empire, for the strategic military
purpose of fending off invasions from neighboring states, led to the progressive Turkicization
of those areas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seljuks
Mamluk Soldier

 The Oghuz Turkic Zangids ruled the Levant from 1127-1250.

 The Kurdish Ayyubids ruled the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa from 1171-1341.
 The Mamluk Sultanate ruled the western Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and Libya from 1250-
1517. The sultanate’s ruling caste was composed of Mamluks- soldiers of predominantly
Kipchak Turk, Cumans, Circassian, and Georgian slave origin. By the late fourteenth
century, Circassians from the North Caucasus region had become the majority in the
Mamluk ranks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamluk_Sultanate_(Cairo)

Circassians (still prominent in the Levant)

On top of being “white”, all of these dynasties, and the many others not
mentioned here, were involved in trading and capturing white slaves, in
addition to settlement of peoples of their respective ethnicities. Who
can doubt the enormous changes this would have brought to the
phenotype and color of these Arab lands? And as all of these people
would be in some degree Arabized (particularly in language) they are
now known as Arabs.
Thus it seems that the Black & White Sheep” Prophecy would indeed
come to pass, and that it was a reference to skin color and phenotype.
The view of the ancient Arabs holds true today: visible European
features or ancestry is a sign of foreign, slave ancestry.
This shouldn’t be a problem. African-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans and
Afro-Latinos openly acknowledge slave ancestry as an explanation of
their presence in the Americas, and they are expected to. Why shouldn’t
white and light-skinned Arabs feel comfortable doing the same? Why
shouldn’t they be expected to? Why not anybody?
It’s not as if slavery is the only way that white and light-skinned Arabs
came to occupy Arabia, just as slavery not the only way that Africans
came to be in America. And whites were not the only slaves in Arabia,
just as Africans weren’t the only slaves in America.
White people everywhere, including in Arabia and the Middle East, need
to acknowledge that slavery is part of their history. They need to
because it’s true.
After all, as the famous philosopher Plato reportedly said

“Every king springs from a race of

slaves, and every slave had kings
among his ancestors.”
black sheep. n. 1. a member of a family or group who is regarded as a disgrace to it. 2. The odd

one out.