ABSTRACT
The social structure of ancient Arabia, like that of the Western Sudan, was premised upon blood kinship. Arabs and Sudanis alike traced descent from a common ancestor, and stressed the communal ties of the group as against the independence of the individual. It was the genius of Mul;lammad that over a remarkably short period he was to transform the basis of Arab society-to mold out of the anonymity of collective life a place for the individual. The ties of Islam and the community of faith were to supersede the old bonds of kinship. The inauguration of the Islamic Dispensation was to prefigure a new relation between men-in the lJadith's phrase, 'the white man was not to be above the black nor the black above the yellow; all men were to be equal before their Maker', and equal before His sacred law. 1 Among believers superiority was to be evidenced by priority in the faith or by stricter observance of its precepts.
