were deep black (dalham) in color and
big/tall (dukhm). When
Amir b. al-Tufayl saw them
circumambulating (the Ka'ba) like
dark camels, he said, ‘With such men
as these is the custody of the Ka'ba
preserved.’ Abd Allah b. Abbas was
very black and tall. Those of Abå
Talib’s (a.s) family, who are the most
noble of men, are more or less black
(såd).”
Abd al Mutãalib (d. 578) was the
Prophet’s (s.a.w) grandfather (a.s) and
Abd Allāh (a.s), one of his ten ‘deep
black’ sons, was Muhammad’s (s.a.w)
father. Another deep black son, alAbbās, was father to the above
mentioned Abd Allah b. Abbās,
described as black, and al-Fadl b. alAbbas, whose blackness was legendary.
These were the uncle and first cousins
of Muhammad (s.a.w). Abu Talib (a.s),
another deep black uncle, was father to
Alī b. Aba Talib (a.s), another first
cousin of the Prophet (s.a.w) who was
described as jet-black. All of these
father-son pairs shared this deep
blackness, what about the Abd Allāh Muhammad pair? We would
expect the same, unless Muhammad’s
(s.a.w) mother made a mitigating
contribution. But this is not likely.
Amina (a.s), the Prophet’s (s.a.w)
mother, was an Arab from the Qurayshī
sub-clan Banå Zuhra, which was a black
clan. Amina’s (a.s) cousin and
Muhammad’s (s.a.w) maternal uncle,
Saad also from Banå Zuhra, was very
dark, tall and flat-nosed.
19. But Muhammad (s.a.w) had more
than just Qurayshī blackness running
through his veins. His great, great
grandfather was Abd Manaf who bore
with Stika bt. Murra al-SulaymÊ the
Prophet’s (s.a.w) great grandfather
Hashim. That is to say that the Prophet’s
(s.a.w) great, great grandmother was
from the jet-black Banå Sulaym. Hashim,
the great grandfather, bore with Salma
bt. Amrå ’l-KhazrajÊ the Prophet’s
(s.a.w)
grandfather, Abd al Mutãalib (a.s). This
means that his paternal great
grandmother was from the black
Medinese tribe Banå Khazraj. Abd al
Mutãalib stayed within the Quraysh, but
he bore the Prophet’s (s.a.w)
father Abd Allāh with Faãima bt. Amrå
al-MakhzåmÊ, from the exceptionally
black Makhzåm clan.
There are several other reports that
describe Muhammad as أبیضabya∙
white. How can the same
man (Anas b. Malik) describe another
(Muhammad s.a.w) as both of dark
brown complexion and as white?
The problem, it turns out, is not in these
texts but in our modern, Western
inability to appreciate the premodern
Arabic color classification system. We
assume that terms such as white, green,
blue, and red meant the same to the
early Arabs that they do to us today. But
as Moroccan scholar Tariq Berry
explains in his book, “The Unknown
Arabs”, this is simply not the case:
The term white can be very confusing to
those reading about the description of
people of the past because, in the past,
when Arabs described someone as
white, they meant something entirely
different from what is meant today. In
the past, when the Arabs described