someone as white, they meant either
that he had a pure, noble, essence or
that he had a nice, smooth complexion
without any blemishes. They meant he
had a black complexion with a lightbrownish undertone.
Berry’s point is confirmed by the
appropriate Classical Arabic/Islamic
sources. Ibn Maníår affirmed that
“When the Arabs say that a person is
white, they mean that he has a pure,
clean, faultless integrity…They don’t
mean that he has white skin…”
Similarly, al-Dhahabī informs us that
“When the Arabs say a person is white,
they mean he is black with a lightbrownish undertone.”
Particularly important was the
observation of the 9th century CE
Arabic scholar Thalab, who tells us that:
“The Arabs don’t say that a man is
white because of a white complexion.
White to the Arabs means that a
person is pure, without any faults. If
they meant his complexion was white,
they said ‘red’ (aÈmar).”
Indeed, as David Goldenberg notes,
‘white ’ أبیضin pre-modern Arabic was
about “luminosity, not chromaticity.”
That is to say, أبیضconnoted brilliance,
not paleness of skin. The latter was
described as ‘red’ أ حمرaÈmar, which is
how non-Arab whites such as Persians
and Byzantines were described.
In other words, what we call white
today the early Arabs called red and
what they called white often was what
we would today call black!
It is certain that Muhammad (s.a.w)
could not have been what we consider
white today; he could not have
been fair or pale-skinned at all, for a
pale-skinned Arab was such an oddity
that the Prophet (s.a.w) could not
have claimed be a pure QurayshÊ Arab.
The seventh century Arab from the tribe
of Nakhāʾī, Shurayk al- Qā∙ī, could claim
that, because it was such a rare
occurrence “a fair-skinned Arab is
something inconceivable and
unthinkable.” So too did al-Dhahabī
report that:
“Red, in the language of the people
from the Hijaz, means faircomplexioned and this color is rare
amongst the Arabs.”
On the other hand, the Arabs prided
themselves on being black, is conscious
contrast to the pale-skinned non-Arabs.
Al-JaÈiícould still claim in the 9th
century:
العرب تفخر بسواد اللون
al-arab tafkhar bi-sawad al-lawn
“The Arabs pride themselves in (their)
black color”.
These noble Black Arabs even detested
pale skin. Al-Mubarrad (d. 898), the
leading figure in the Basran
grammatical tradition, is quoted as
saying:
“The Arabs used to take pride in their
darkness and blackness and they had
a distaste for a light complexion and
they used to say that a light
complexion was the complexion of the
non-Arabs”.