ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Al-Jahiz's (776–868 A.D). famous treatise Fakhr al-Sudan ala-al Baydan (868 A.D.) [The Book of the Glory of the Blacks] (Preston, 1981). During the Abbasid period (750–1258 A.D.), which was marked by increasing ethnic divisions, Blacks were able to conduct a historical uprising, known as the Zanj revolt (869–883 A.D.). At the time when Al-Jahiz wrote his treatise, the Shu’ubiyya resistance movement staged by non-Arab Muslims against Arab exclusivity was raging. The chapter looks at the multiple ways Al-Jahiz's text resonates with the work of modern theorists of race such as Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Stuart Hall, and Cornel West who all argue that blackness has no essence, and that race is a social construct that is tied to concrete material conditions. The chapter also draws on bell hooks’ concept of loving blackness and its pledge to undermine racism and promote the idea of blackness as beautiful. It also examines Al-Jahiz's racial naturalism which postulates that climate and geography shape the characteristics of whiteness and blackness, and which makes him a forerunner of Ibn Al Jawzi's racial naturalism as delineated in his treatise “Illuminating The Darkness: The Virtues of Blacks and Abysinnians.”
