ABSTRACT
The social structure o f ancient Arabia, like that o f the W estern Sudan, was premised upon blood kinship. Arabs and Sudanis alike traced descent from a common ancestor, and stressed the communal ties o f the group as against the independence of the individual. It was the genius o f Muhammad that over a remarkably short period he was to transform the basis o f Arab society-to mold out o f the anonymity of collective life a place for the individual. The ties o f Islam and the community o f faith were to supersede the old bonds o f kinship. The inauguration o f the Islamic Dispensation was to prefigure a new relation between men-in the hadith'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 o f its precepts.
