Post by osmansharif on Nov 13, 2011 22:18:04 GMT -5
Ogu Eji-Ofo Annu
“If one understood Arab Culture it is immediately apparent that Blackness is highly cherished conceptually and in reality. In Arab culture the best camel is the black one the best Fig is the blackest, the best eyes are black, the best olives are black, the most beautiful rock is the Black Kaaba. Any Bedouin Arab that is asked his color, would undoubtedly respond Asmar or Aswad which means Black/Brown. No Arab ever describes himself as Bidan which means White. ”
Who are the Arabs:
In today’s world, one is seducively led by the racist western media to believe that the Arabs of Arabia and Africa represent a peculiar phenotype with all other non-conforming types being somewhat alien to that concept. In this way they impose a certain central Asian phenotype as the “racial Arab” and the almost ubiquitous Black Arabs of the modern times as either descendants of slaves or immigrants.
In this way, they attempt to disconnect the linkage between the ancient Kushitic Black Arabs globally celebrated in antiquity (now reclassified as some “caucasoid” “semitics”) and their Kushitic African roots. This article is therefore another blow against the citadel of falsehood erected by the western intelligensia used to discourage, dis-empower dissipate and diffuse the energy of the Black nation. Again one notes and deplores the unrelenting effort by non-continental peoples to appropriate the history and the achievements of brilliant Black African luminaries as their own.
Much confusion attends the word “Arabs”, because it has not always been used with rigourous consistency. Moreover, in the wake of the global dominance of the Arab culture and Islamic political power in the between 7AD and 14 AD, the number of Arabs increased exponentially by the addition of many non Arab Arabized people, because acculturation and assimilation were delibrately fostered by state policy.
Today, the word Arabs does not strictly imply or designate any known racial category of people. It is an ethnic identification that has several aspect including liguistics, politics and genealogy. Its meaning is nuanced depending on the particular context.
As an ethnic identity, an Arab is someone who considers himself to be an Arab regardless of racial or ethnic origin. This definition encompasses many Africans, Indians, Indonesians and Chinese who describe themselves as Arabs.
Usually the first language of persons who claim to be Arab is Arabic. There are over 200 million people worldwide whose first language is Arabic. Again these peoples spread over a large portion of the globe spanning from central Africa to central Asia. More than 70% of the so-called Arabs in the world live physically in Africa.
Given that the Arabic language is a Semitic language, which forms part of the Afro-Asia language family, which originated in Africa, one can rightly view Arabic as an African language. Of the official languages of the African Union that include English, French, Spanish, Portugese, and Arabic, Arabic language is the only Afro-Asiatic language spoken. The rest are Euro-Aryan English, French, Spanish and Portugese. See Uwechia Jide; Hamito-Semitic Africa: www.africaresource.com/rasta/2006/04/10/hamito-semitic-africa-semites-of-africa-ii/. See also Peter T. Daniels, Origin of Semitic: listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-January/011842.html.
Viewed from a political perspective, someone who is a resident or citizen of a country where Arabic is an official or national language, or is a member of the Arab League or is part of the wider Arab world is an Arab. This definition would cover more than 300 million people. Under this definition, there are more Arabs in Africa than anywhere else in the universe. Most of those Arabs that live in Africa are Black Africans, from Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Eriteria, Kenya Tanzannia, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. Many of them trace their ancestry to Yemen.
On its formation in 1946, the Arab League defined an “Arab” as: “… a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples.” The Arab League’s definition of an Arab leaves no room for any racialist twist on the meaning of Arab and Arabic. These words simply denote ethnicity. Yet again, based upon this definition, there are more Black Africans who have a legitimate claim to the Arabic ethnicity than anywhere else in the world.
According to Habib Hassan Touma (1996, p.xviii), “An ‘Arab’, in the modern sense of the word, is one who is a national of an Arab state, has command of the Arabic language, and possesses a fundamental knowledge of Arabian tradition, that is, of the manners, customs, and political and social systems of the culture.” Here again, one finds that there more Black African Arabs based on this definiton than any other regional phenotype that lays claim to that heritage.
A hadith related by Ibn Asakir in Tarak Dimashq and attributed to Islam’s prophet Muhammad states that :”Being an Arab is not because of your father or mother, but being an Arab is on account of your tongue. Whoever learns Arabic is an Arab.” < www.islamtoday.com/show_detail_section.cfm?q_id=266&main_cat_id=11>.
Genealogically, an Arab is someone who can trace his or her ancestry back to the original inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. Different groups estimate the relative importance of these factors differently. Most people who consider themselves Arabs do so on the basis of the overlap of the political and linguistic definitions.
Since there are so many different phenotypes all considered as Arabs, the query posed and answered by this paper then is: who are the original Arabs? Were they Black or White or Black and White? It is posited here that the original Arabs were Black African Kushites from the Nile valley who had settled in southwest Asia in the Arabian Peninsula in ancient times.
They were Kushitic-Ethiopians, speakers of an African prototypical Semitic language who had left from an area falling between the regions bordered by modern day Dafur in Sudan and Asmara in Eriteria. They took their African genes, their African intelligence, their African culture, their African language and their African love and built the ancient and the modern civilization known as Arabic civilization. In the paragraphs that follow, one is gradually introduced to the original Black Kushitic Arabs. See Uwechia Jide; Hamito-Semitic Africa: www.africaresource.com/rasta/2006/04/10/hamito-semitic-africa-semites-of-africa-ii/. See also Peter T. Daniels, Origin of Semitic: listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-January/011842.html.
Black Arabs and Classical Literature
Up to a century and a half ago our information concerning Arabia was based mainly on Greek and Latin writers, such as Herodotus (Histories), Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca Historica), Strabo (Geography, Book XVI), Pliny, Ptolemy, and others. All those writers reported without any equivocation that Arabia was part of the ancient Kingdom of Ethiopia Kush, extending from Africa into Solomon Islands.
Later Arabic writers and geographers, such as Hamadani’s “Arabian Peninsula,” Bekri and Yaqut’s geographical and historical dictionaries, and similar works also provide extremely valuable. However, those works are to be treated with caution because they contain fabulous and legendary traditions, partly based on native popular legends and partly on Jewish and rabbinical fancies.
From the available literature and authorities, historians have broadly divided Arabs into three classes according to their different great ancestors. They are:
The original Black Arabs who were supposedly punished by destruction and deluge because, as legend has it in the book of Quran, they disobeyed their Prophets and flouted God’s instructions; they were: Ad, Thamud, Tasam, Jadeis, Imru.
The classical Black Arabs, who are believed to have descended from Yaarub ibn Yashjub ibn Ghatan and thus called Ghataniyun. They had lived in the Yemen; they included a number of tribes and sub-tribes, two of which became historically prominent viz., Himyar and Kahlan (al’arab al’ariba).
The Arabized Arabs: These tribes immigrated into Arabia from different sections of central Asia. Many of them intermarried with the desert dwelling nomadic blemmyes – the Bejas (original Bedouin Arabs) and the Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian tribes of Africa. Their mix -blood children who adopted a mingled form of their parents cultures are known as the Arabized Arabs (al ‘arab al musta ‘riba).
Today, upon the dictates of the western intelligensia, this banch is the so-called prototypical Arabs. They are the picture boys of the white-semitic theories which seek to claim that some white or at the very least some off-white people were and remain the original and only Arabians. By employing vague and non-categorical semantics with words like “Semites,” ‘Hamites,” Ishmaelites,” “caucasiods,” the western negro-phobic intelligensia and educational establishment seek to erase every trace of black Africa from Arabia.
Nonetheless, if one understood Arab culture it is immediately apparent that Blackness is highly cherished conceptually and in reality. In Arab culture the best camel is the black one the best fig is the blackest, the best eyes are black, the best olives are black, the most beautiful rock is the Black Kaaba. Any Bedouin Arab that is asked his color, would undoubtedly respond Asmar or Aswad which means Black/Brown. No Arab ever describes himself as Bidan which means White because they all understand instinctively if not consciously that Africa is their root.
The Black Arabs as described in “Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews”:
Josephus was a soldier, priest and scholar who was born in 37 AD. His written works are seminal in western history and for many centuries were some of the most widely read and influential books of the western civilization. In the paragraphs that immediately follow, excerpts of Josephus’ commentary on the Arabs and near easterners who were contemporary to his period are reproduced. See The Catholich Encyclopadia < www.newadvent.org/cathen/08522a.htm>
Arabia the Daughter of Kush
The classical Greek and Roman writers commonly accepted the division of Arabia into Deserta (desert), Felix (happy), and Petraea (stony). Not much is known today about the exact configuration of those divisions. Later day Islamic Arabic geographers know nothing of this division, and this is not surprising since many of those later day Arabs are actually immigrants that later acculturated and assimilated into the culture of the original Black Arabs.
Arab geographers of the Islamic period divided Arabia generally into five provinces: The first is Yemen, embracing the whole south of the peninsula and including Hadramaut, Mahra, Oman, Shehr, and Nejran. The second is Hijaz, on the west coast and including Mecca and Medina, the two famous centres of Islam. The third is Tehama, along the same coast between Yemen and Hijaz. The fourth is Nejd, which includes most of the central table-land, and the fifth is Yamama, extending all the wide way between Yemen and Nejd. This division is also inadequate, for it omits the greater part of North and East Arabia.
A more recent division of Arabia, according to politico-geographical principles, is into seven provinces: Hijaz, Yemen, Hadramaut, Oman, Hasa, Irak, and Nejd. It has always been the assertion of experts that certain tribes that lived on the coast of Yemen and on the coast of Ethiopia and Eriteria were almost identical. The linkages between Ethiopia Kush and Arabia must be considered in the context of any discourse on Arab people, or more precisely stated the Black Africans of Arabia.
Ethiopia-Kush
As stated in the preceding paragraph, the key to understanding the origin and culture of the Arabs is through African Kushitic Ethiopia.
Contacts between eastern Africa and Arabia have existed since the time immemorial. Archeological evidence has demonstrated that Africans of the Caspian culture probably moved across the Strait of Bab El Mandel and implanted the same Caspian culture in Arabia on the other side of the strait. See Leaky, L.S.B., Stone Age Africa pp 38-78.
The Strait of Bab-El-Mandel, which separates Africa from Arabia, is quite narrow at some points averaging a couple of days journey on a sea raft or small canoe. Communication and travel have consequently been possible since pre-historic times.
It will thus not be a surprising claim to the well informed that East African people (being the first aboriginals of the earth) have long settled in Arabia as the original inhabitants. For instance, besides the Caspian culture, African people also founded the so-called Afro-Arabian Tihama cultural complex in the mid-2nd millennium.
In addition to the coastal site of Adulis in Eritrea and sites farther inland in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan, vestiges of the Tihama cultural complex are represented on the Saudi coastal plains and the western and southern coasts of Yemen. (Fattovich 1997).
Moreover, African settlements were further stimulated by the growth of the Egyptian state from the 4th millennium onward, with more extensive migration of African population in Arabia around the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. Semitic speaking settlers from Ethiopia-Kush settled in Arabia built complex cultures and civilizations of which the later Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and Jews would document for coming generations. See Josephus Book 1.
Long before Yemen had become a politically articulated entity, the Ethiopian-Axumites had built many powerful states along the coast of Red Sea and the hilly countries of Ethiopia such as ancient Adulis, Coloe, Yeha Tokanda, and the so called Ethio-Sabean state of Daamat (circa 800-600 B.C.) etc. Ethiopia-Axum, the ancient dominant power in the region, gradually incorporated the African-Yemenites into its political sway.
By 12th century B.C. Southern Arabia fell under the complete control of the Ethiopian-Axumites through their long domination of the Red Sea trade routes. The first kingdom built by the Ethiopian-Axumites in Arabia was Saba just across the straits in Yemen in 800 B.C. See Ephraim Isaac and Cain Felder, “Reflections on the Origins of the Ethiopian Civilization”, Eight International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, November 1984. Successive civilisations of Mineans, Sabaeans and Himyarites interacted closely with their counterparts in Ethiopia.
For a while the Ethiopian-Kushitic Arabs focussed their energies on the Yemeni side of the coast in states like Saba and Daamat. Products were shipped into Yemen from Ethiopia and exported all over the world through the Red Sea.
Following the decline of Saba and Daamat, the international trade hub moved to the kingdom of Axum on the opposite side of the Red Sea coast. From its seaports such as Adulis, Ethiopian-Kushites, Axum’s trade network extended from Egypt as far as India.
Axum survived for more than 2500 years as a great state dominating the Red Sea regions although western historians would grudgingly concede 800 years. It occupied and ruled southern Arabia for part of this period. Utilitarian Aksumite pottery has been found in large quantities in deposits from the 5th and 6th centuries in the Yemen Hadramawt, suggesting that there may have been substantial immigration during that period. Axumites descended groups such as the Habashahs, still live in southern Yemen today fully cognizant of their African origins and connections.
Indeed, interaction between Yemen and Ethiopia in ancient times is sometimes compared with the historical relationship between Europe and America, with the Red Sea as substitute for the Atlantic Ocean.
THE BEJA PEOPLE: HABITAT AND HISTORY
Another important group of Black African groups who contributed genetically, and culturally to the formation of the Arabs are the Bejas otherwise called the Blemmyes. It appears that the Blemmyes as encountered in classical literature provided the foundation for the ethnic group known today as Bedouins.
The indigenous Beja people are nomads who have inhabited the semi-desert area in the Red Sea coast of Sudan and the hilly country behind it for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians referred to them as the people of Buka or Medju (Medjay), the Romans dubbed them Blemmyes and in the Odessa they were described as Erembes. They are a Kushitic-Khemitic people who spoke a mixed dialect of semitic and Cushitic language. They identify themselves today as the most original and ancient of the Arab tribes.
Kemitic Pharaohs called them Absha, meaning the desert dwellers that is, the Bedouins in Arabic language – and Ramses II called them Beja, purporting fighters. Thus one can reasonably see the Bejas as fulfilling the Arab Bedouin archetype of the fearsome, nomadic owners of the Sahara, highly temperamental but compassionate. Throughout history, they have been regarded as very efficient fighting machines. It is important to note that besides the Nubians, it is well documented that the Beja were employed in the Egyptian army and were credited for their courage and fortitude during the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt.
The Roman Historian Ammianus Marcellinus inspite of his odious ethno-centrism provides us more clues on the racial and ethnic identity of the earliest Arabs. In his book The Roman History, Book XIV.iv.1-7. (380 A.D.)) the Saracens a named that was used to describe the Arabs in both ancient and modern times (stems most likely from the Arabic Sarqiyyun, meaning ‘easterners’) were described as the Blemmys tribes who lived along the banks of the Nile beyond the cataracts. According to Ammianus Marcellinus:
“Book XIV.4:
At this time also the Saracens, a race whom it is never desirable to have either for friends or enemies, ranging up and down the country, if ever they found anything, plundered it in a moment, like rapacious hawks who, if from on high they behold any prey, carry it off with a rapid swoop, or, if they fail in their attempt, do not tarry. And although, in recounting the career of the Prince Marcus, and once or twice subsequently, I remember having discussed the manners of this people, nevertheless I will now briefly enumerate a few more particulars concerning them.
Among these tribes, whose primary origin is derived from the cataracts of the Nile and the borders of the Blemmyae, all the men are warriors of equal rank; half naked, clad in colored cloaks down to the waist, overrunning different countries, with the aid of swift and active horses and speedy camels, alike in times of peace and war. Nor does any member of their tribe ever take plow in hand or cultivate a tree, or seek food by the tillage of the land; but they are perpetually wandering over various and extensive districts, having no home, no fixed abode or laws; nor can they endure to remain long in the same climate, no one district or country pleasing them for a continuance.
Their life is one continued wandering; their wives are hired, on special covenant, for a fixed time; and that there may be some appearance of marriage in the business, the intended wife, under the name of a dowry, offers a spear and a tent to her husband, with a right to quit him after a fixed day, if she should choose to do so. And it is inconceivable with what eagerness the individuals of both sexes give themselves up to matrimonial pleasures.
But as long as they live they wander about with such extensive and perpetual migrations, that the woman is married in one place, brings forth her children in another, and rears them at a distance from either place, no opportunity of remaining quiet being ever granted to her. They all live on venison, and are further supported on a great abundance of milk, and on many kinds of herbs, and on whatever birds they can catch by fowling. And we have seen a great many of them wholly ignorant of the use of either corn or wine.”
The Black African Bejas/Saracens also called the Blemmys gave to the Arabs of today (blacks and pales) the knowledge to live in the Sahara as well as the most basic cultural elements that define the Bedouin culture including nomadic identity, marital culture and martial arts. For instance, the war-like Blemmyes (Beja) had normally fought with curiously shaped bows, and it was from them that the tribes of Hijaz and Yemen (in Arabia) and the other Arab tribes adopted the use of the bow. Historically, the Beja ruled the vast territory of theirs (laying between Northern Nigeria and Sudan) in five kingdoms namely, the Naqis, Baqlin (Taflin), Bazin, Jarin and Qata (Qita, also perhaps Qasa).
Arabia Petra
Arabia Petra spread between African Kushitic Egypt and Mesopotamia (another African kushitic area in the ancient times) (Josephus). It was originally settled by an early branch of the Cushitic Ethiopian people who spoke a proto-type semitic dialect.
The Beja’s known as the ancient Blemmyes one of the earliest known nomadic tribes to dwell in the deserts of Africa and Arabia probably provided the founding population of Arabia Petra.
Other sections of the African population from the early Caspian culture and other culture complex centered on Ethiopia Axum and Ethiopia Kush may have equally contributed to the early settlement of Arabia Petra.
Some of these early African Black Arabs crossed the Red Sea whilst others migrated overland through the Nile valley into Arabia. Arabia Petrea thus became an early blending pot of African cultures. Due to this cultural ferment many nomads soon abandoned their wandering lives to establish sophisticated towns and cities together with the more sedentary population. These melange later became known as the Nabateans and their capital was Petra. (Drussilla Houstons) See also nabataea.net/arabia.html.
During the Roman period, the word Arab was a synonymy for Nabatean and vice versa. When the Romans incorporated Nabatea into their Empire, it was officially designated as the Province of Arabia. Numerous sculptures found in Arabia Petra clearly depict its population as African through their physical features. One classical example is that of Emperor Philip of Arabia one of the later Emperors of Rome, who was indigenous to Arabia Petra. His sculptures demonstrate that physically speaking, Emperor Philip of Arabia was a Black man of African descent. Here is a picture of a statue of the Black African Roman Emperor Philip “the Arab”.
Emperor Philip the Arab
Arabia Felix
Arabia Felix laid further south of Petra. Arabia Felix was bounded by the Shiraz region of the Persian Gulf, the Eritrean or Red sea (Africa) as well as the Indian Ocean. This country was rich in spices and in it was situated the famous cities of Mecca and Medina.
Here was the country of the Yemenis, the Habashas, the Sabas, the Hadramautians and the Mineans. All these were sections of the Ethiopian-Axumite tribes similar to the Amharas, the Oromos and the Tigriyeans, who had expanded the ancient lucrative spice trade to Arabia.
It should be noted that in addition to coffee, Ethiopia is the original homeland of incenses such as frankincense, myrrh, and spices like cinnamon. The traditional African planters of these cash crops and the African maritime operators of this most lucrative of ancient trades extended their operations from Ethiopia across the straits of Bab-el-Mandel to take advantage of the fertile land and the natural habours of Arabia Felix, which subsequently became export hubs of the ancient trade. (See Strabo,geography Book XVI.iv.19). Produce was shipped routinely from the highlands of Ethiopia into Ethiopian owned- Arabia Felix for exports to the rest of the world.
Given the historical, genetic, physical and geographical proximity between Ethiopia and Arabia Felix and the similarity of the cultural expression of both land, it is not a wonder why the ancient Greek writers swore that the Ethiopians ruled the whole of Arabia. It was clear to the sophisticated Greeks and the worldly Romans that Black Africans settled and developed this portion of Arabia!
Arabia Deserta
Arabia Deserta was originally people by the Bejas and kindred groups from Africa. These are the original owners of the Sahara and its extension known as the Arabia Desert. The Bejas as we have seen from preceeding paragraphs were the first to be called Bedouins due to their nomadic culture and their preference for Desert habitats.
In the beginning of Holocene period, a group of landless, barbarian, starving, pale-skinned Central Asian refugees now known as the pale-skin Arabs (i.e. the so-called Semites) began living side by side with the nomadic African Cushitic Bejas who owned the entire Sahara desert between the Nile and the Arabian peninsula. Over the course of time these two peoples have intermingled culturally and genetically that there is barely any pale skin (Arabized) Arabs alive today that does not carry extensive Africa genes in his blood. The descendants of this intermingling are the so-called modern Semitic Arabs (more precisely known as the Arabized Arabs) who trace their roots through Abraham.
The Central Asian barbarians did not develop any states, high culture or language in Arabia. They were destitues, mostly ignorant, unread and illiterate. The Koran takes great pain to dissociate this group from the high cultural attainment of ancient Arabia. It is clearly stated that until the advent of the Islamic Prophet Muhammed, these so-called Semites lived in a state of perpetual brutality, savagery, warfare and robbery. The Koran also takes pain to identify the original Black Arabs who had lived in Ad, Thamud, Imru etc, as the originators and builders of Arab civilization and culture.
These Arabized Arabs have sublimated stories of their origin in the legend of Abraham, which narrates of his journey from somewhere proximate to central Asia into the Black African territory of Arabia. He was said to have married a Black Egyptian-born wife, Hagar/Hajir, and their son was named, Ishmael/Ismail. In this legend one immediately becomes aware of the central Asian origin of its heros and the resultant miscegenation which gave rise to the Arabised Arabs.
These so-called descendants of Abraham (actually mix breed from Black African Bejas and pale central Asian-stanis like the Turkmenistanis) settled in Mecca which was then under the overlordship of the Kushitic-Ethiopic owners of Arabia-Felix. This category of Arabs normally called themselves Adnaniyun that is, after one of their great tribal ancestors Adnan.
Despite the mythical origin of this peculiar historical source, it is clear that conscious effort has been made by Arabized Arabs to associate their tribes to African Royal pedigree.
Since it is generally known that Kushitic citizenship was matrilineal, and only children born by Kemitic Kushite mothers could aspire to be Kings in Egypt and Ethiopia, it does not take a lot of imagination to understand the role of the black Egyptian (Kemitic Kushite) Hagar in the Abraham story. The Arabized Arabs actually claim a Black African historical and archetypal mother!
No wonder “Aswad” (Black) is such an attractive concept in Arabic language.
The Himyarites: Yemen, Hadramaut, Oman
Yemen is one of the oldest inhabited portions of the Arabian Peninsula. It includes the entire southwest quarter, which possesses many advantages in climate and soil. Yemen was a colony of early Black Africans until the Arabized Arabs who are described in the preceding paragraph gradually infiltrated it. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Himyarites/Yemenites (and Hadramutians) are the same group of peoples as the African Ethiopians.
They are genetically, linguistically, and physically identical with Ethiopians. This may perhaps explain the reason why the ancient Greeks and Roman writers believed that Arabia was a political extension of Ethiopia Kush. (See Catholic Encyclopedia: Arab)
Even today, the similarity is so striking that one cannot fail to observe the clear connectedness between the Ethiopian tribes who live on both sides of the Red Sea.
Encyclopedia Britannica states that: “Yemenis of “northern†origin are thought to have descended from Mesopotamians who entered the region in the 1st millennium BC (mixed breed Arabized Arabs). The “southern†group represents the South Arabian stock (original African Ethiopian peoples), and the Arabic of the rural areas of former South Yemen is still heavily influenced by the ancient African Semito/Cushitic (i.e.South Arabian) languages.
The two groups maintain disparate genealogies and historical traditions concerning their roles and origins: The northern Yemenis trace their ancestry to Isma’il (Ishmael) through his descendant ‘Adnan, whereas their southern countrymen claim descent from Qahtan (the biblical Joktan).” As has been amply demonstrated, a branch of the Cushitic Ethiopian people whom later historians named the Sabeans settled South Yemen. They are a kindred nation of the Ethiopian Amharas, Tigreyans, and Eriterians (with possible addition from the Oromos) sharing a similar language, culture, architecture, religion, literature and written scripts.
Migrating from Ethiopia Kush, those Africans first settled in extreme southern west of the Peninsula. They then spread northward and eastward over Yemen, Hadramaut and Oman. Those Black Africans were later called the Himyarites after the name of one of their more famous states. The word Himyar is a synonym for dark or dusky, indicating the racial origin of these ruling peoples of early Arabia.
The Black Ethiopians were renowned international maritime traders of the ancient times. In the 1st century BC the coastal Himyarites, with control of the sea routes, established their dominion over Saba, and over the other south Arab kingdoms during the 1st century AD. They effectively monopolized supply of both indigenous resins (frankincense and myrrh – sought after by every temple of the ancient world) and imports of spice, textiles and ivory from India and East Africa.
The Ethio-Yemenite/Himyarites were a highly cultured people, masters of engineering and architecture. They were also a highly literate society that exhibited a great love for literature and written records. The Himyaritic language had a written script which for the most part is lost, but the few discovered fragments of the script suggests that it is African in origin and character. Its grammar is almost identical with the written Semitic languages of Ethiopia.
According to older versions of the Encyclopedia Britannica: “The institutions of Yemen bear a close resemblance to African types. The inhabitants of Yemen, Hadramaut, Oman and the adjoining districts, in the shape of the head, colour, length and slenderness of limbs and scantiness of hair, point to an African origin.” Even in these modern times, these Himyarites (Yemenites) still identify culturally with the Black (so-called sub-saharan) people of African Ethiopia. Arabia Kush and Arabia Musri
Even today, it is accepted that a common tread of language, culture, religion and physical human type occur in the Arabia as well as East Africa. Hack writers and imperialists intelligentsia have tried to explain away these very phenomena because they destroy the foundation of their racialist assumptions. Yet, some obnoxious racist historians and their unsupported lies cannot erase 50,000 years of African ownership of the Arabian Peninsula.
To further buttress the thesis of this article, it appears that they were two principalities in Arabia known as Kush or Ethiopia and Musri or Misraim. The two names are synonyms of very famous nations that existed in Africa from the dawn of time. Mizraim refers to Egypt whilst Kush refers to modern day Sudan and Ethiopia.
Ancient Assyrian, Greek, and Roman writers regularly referred to Arabia as part of Ethiopia populated by the same race of people. Assyrian, Greek and Roman texts also confirm that at least two Kingdoms of Arabia were denoted similarly as two of the most prominent undeniably African countries. Although not much is known about these principalities of Arabia Kush and Musri, there are sufficient snippets of information gathered from different ancient fragments including Assyrian text to give one an idea of these principalities.
In 1320 BC Shalmaneser I, began ruling Assyria. He subjugated many tribes and brought them within the political sway of Assyria. His records have him as having marched against the land of Musri (i.e. Arabia Musri or Mizraim also known as Arabia Egypt), in Northern Arabia. This is a clear reference to a polity in Arabia that shared certain deep connections with Egypt in Africa.
Assurbanipal a king of ancient Assyria also repeatedly spoke of his various successful expeditions into and conquests in the lands of Musri, Magan, Meluhha, and Kush in Arabia. This is another very important reference source on the existence of a Kushitic political establishment in ancient Arabia.
About 1120-1110 B.C. Tiglath-pileser I, became King of Assyria in place of his father Asshur-resh-ishi. Tiglath-pileser also recorded his exploits against the Musri or Mizraim of ancient Arabia. See “A Brief Overview Of Assyrian History From Early Beginnings To Sargon II” by Lishtar: Gateway
However one sees it, the ancient African Arabian connection cannot be escaped. In those days, it was the Black Africans that set the initiate and determined the agenda.
Their colonization of Arabia is obvious from the fact that they knew to name those settlements in Arabia after the names of the African regions from where they originated.
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Important Kingdoms of Arabia
The two most important kingdoms of ancient Arabia were that of the Mineans and that of the Sabeans. An African Kushitic branch of people who migrated from Ethiopia established those two principalities and many others which we shall presently consider.
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Minean
The Minean Kingdom seems to have flourished in southern Arabia as early as 1200 B.C., and from the various Minean inscriptions found in northern Arabia they seem to have extended their power even to the north of the peninsula. Their principal cities were Main, Karnan, and Yatil. The Sabeans, after two centuries of repeated and persistent attacks, succeeded in overthrowing the rival Minean Kingdom and thence became the central power in Arabia.
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Sheba/Saba
The memories of the Queen of Saba retain some of the greatest national legends and inspirational themes of the modern Ethiopian state. The Queen of Sheba was actually a real historical queen of Ethiopia known as Makeda. She was the founder of the last Ethiopian dynasty, which began with Menelik the First and ended with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1974. Her dynasty lasted for more than three thousand years and her name is etched in gemstones in Ethiopia.
Whereas the memory of Empress Makeda is so pervasive and dominant in Ethiopia’s historical and cultural consciousness, there is virtually no living memory of this great Empress in Yemen. People of Yemen have no living traditions on the Queen of Sheba nor of any dynasty based on this great Empress of Africa. Thus Ethiopia appears to be the more plausible center of her historical empire.
According to tradition, and the Kebra Negast, this Empress had inherited a farflung and powerful empire from her father Anagbo and built it to greater extents. Its reaches stretched from Arabia to India. Her capital was located on the Ethiopian mainland, and ruins of her palaces are top line tourist attraction for anyone who has ever visited Ethiopia.
Sheba/Saba appears to have been one of her principalities that was established in Arabia. It also served as a major trade center for the caravan route.
Without doubt, the Sabans were as black-skinned as the Ethiopians whom the Greeks thought were the blackest people in the world. The Shebans were an Ethiopian people, who had long lived in fertile parts of the Arabian Peninsula close to the coast of their African homeland. Sheba was as much a part of Ethiopia as Scotland is a part of Britain.
The Sabean, or Himyaritic, Kingdom (the Homeritae of the classics) is thought to have become increasing independent of Ethiopia and to have flourished either contemporaneously (D. H. Mueller) or after (Glaser, Hommel) the Minean Kingdom.
Its administrative center was Marib (the Mariaba of the Arabian classics) famous for its dam, the breaking of which is often mentioned by later Arabic poets and traditions as the immediate cause of the fall of the Sabean power. Saba, however was still prominent till about 300 A.D., when it was regained by the African Ethiopians.
Kataban
A third kingdom was that of Kataban, another Black African established principality, which gave rise to the modern Oman. The capital of Kataban was named Timna and was located on the trade route which passed through the other kingdoms of Hadramaut, Saba and Ma’in.
The chief diety of the Katabanians was Amm, probable connected with Ammon or Amun the chief God of Ancient Egypt and the people called themselves the “children of Amm” hence the modern day Arabic name Oman a cognate of the name Ammon.
Oman is one of those Gulf States still predominantly African in phenotype despite years of miscegenation. The Katabans were shrewd international traders of spices and perfumed which were primarily sourced from Ethiopia and Mozambique.
Together with their neigbours in Hadramut and Saba and Ethiopia, Kataban was known as the land of spices. The Sabeans destroyed the Katabanian state, with its capital, Timna, around the second century after Christ.
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Hadramut and Habashah
A fouth Kingdom, Hadramaut, is also a very closely connected with Ethiopia and Somalia. Ethiopian/Kushitic Arabs built another kingdom called Habashah. The nexus between Habashah and Ethiopia is demonstrated by the fact that in Ethiopia there is a tribe of people known as Habashah who are kindred to the Habashas of South Arabia.
Tradition holds that the Ethiopian Habashah crossed over to Yemen and established the principality of Yemeni Habashah. These two Habashahs still maintain very close cultural links and there is virtually no difference between the Habashahs of Arabia and the Habashahs of Ethiopia.
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The African Axumites and the Black Arabs:
The land of Punt was recognized by the ancient Egyptians as the land of the gods, of spices of incense and sweet perfumes. It was said the gods loved to be in that land due to its aromatic pungency. Punt was in those days the most prolific and ancient source of spices and incense. Punt was not only a sacred land it was also a country of great wealth which came from its ancient maritime trade through which it supplied incense and spices to the world.
The land of Punt was said to be located somewhere in the current modern state of Ethiopia. It was located just across the Red Sea close to the Bab-El-Manden. It was peopled by Black African Kushites. Many principalities rose on the surge of it’s pre-eminence.
One must note that Axum was neither the first nor the greatest Ethiopian civilization. Adulis (a famous sea-port of great antiquity), for instance had an older existence than Axum. Moreover, there are archaeological discoveries illustrating pre- Axumite civilization and culture, located at Coloe (some 20 km from Adi Qeyih), Yeha (near Axum), Tokanda (near Coloe). Axum is an indigenous African civilization which harmoniously blends in the proto-Afro-Semitic cultural complex of Ethiopia with the Afro-Cushitic Ethiopian cultural strain.
The Cushitic/Semitic- Black African Axumites had long dominated the coastal Red Sea trade before the establishment of the first Black Arab principality. They had grown successful off the lucrative ancient trade in spices and perfumes. Frankincense and myrrh, cinnamon, precious stones and metals were indigenous to their country. International trade was second nature to them since Punt was one of the oldest, if not the oldest maritime capital of the world.
The civilizations of Ethiopia was characterized by the practice of agriculture via irrigation and terracing. Ethiopians had knowledge of wheat and barley long before 1000 B.C. Soft wheat cultivation was concentrated around the centers of Axum, Harar and Addis Ababa. “The farmers of Arwe used the plough and the hoe or digging stick to prepare their fields for cultivation.” From here the plough was taken to South Arabia. (Winters, 2006).
Moreover, the expertise developed by the Southern Arabian monumental stone builders could have only been worked out in Ethiopia because in Ethiopia was the nearest and the most abundant stone quarries of the region, whereas Arabia being mostly desert and coast had little source of natural stones. It is logical to assume that stone building traditions must have developed in a region that had abundant stones even though it may later have dispersed to outlaying areas.
The African Ethiopian-Axumites, began ruling parts of Himyar (e.g. the Tehama/Tihama district) way before 1000 B.C. although grudge-filled western historians with an agenda against Black Africans would only concede A.D. 378 as the beginning of the over lordship. Yet there is repletion of evidence suggesting Ethiopia’s historical overweening influence over Arabia.
According to Fattovich: during the late 2nd millennium BCE, a cultural complex arose in the Tihama region of Yemen and northern Ethiopia and Eritrea (specifically Tigray Region, central Eritrea, and coastal areas like Adulis). Based on the profusion of archeological, cultural and textual evidence an African origin has been posited. (Fattovich, Rodolfo 1997)
By 525, when the Black Ethiopian Axumites regained dominance in Arabia, overthrew the upstart Himyarite power, and destroyed its fledging ambition, Ethiopia-Axum was entering into its waning period of political dominance in the region.
In 568 the Black Ethiopian-Axumites were lost their political dominance in Arabia. Political power became more localized and the native Yemenites gradually replaced the Ethiopian aristocracy. Eventually this nascent kingdom was again conquered by the Persians, and it became a vassal kingdom of the Persian Empire until the year 634, when it was absorbed, together with all the other Arabian States, by the Mohammedan conquest.
“If one understood Arab Culture it is immediately apparent that Blackness is highly cherished conceptually and in reality. In Arab culture the best camel is the black one the best Fig is the blackest, the best eyes are black, the best olives are black, the most beautiful rock is the Black Kaaba. Any Bedouin Arab that is asked his color, would undoubtedly respond Asmar or Aswad which means Black/Brown. No Arab ever describes himself as Bidan which means White. ”
Who are the Arabs:
In today’s world, one is seducively led by the racist western media to believe that the Arabs of Arabia and Africa represent a peculiar phenotype with all other non-conforming types being somewhat alien to that concept. In this way they impose a certain central Asian phenotype as the “racial Arab” and the almost ubiquitous Black Arabs of the modern times as either descendants of slaves or immigrants.
In this way, they attempt to disconnect the linkage between the ancient Kushitic Black Arabs globally celebrated in antiquity (now reclassified as some “caucasoid” “semitics”) and their Kushitic African roots. This article is therefore another blow against the citadel of falsehood erected by the western intelligensia used to discourage, dis-empower dissipate and diffuse the energy of the Black nation. Again one notes and deplores the unrelenting effort by non-continental peoples to appropriate the history and the achievements of brilliant Black African luminaries as their own.
Much confusion attends the word “Arabs”, because it has not always been used with rigourous consistency. Moreover, in the wake of the global dominance of the Arab culture and Islamic political power in the between 7AD and 14 AD, the number of Arabs increased exponentially by the addition of many non Arab Arabized people, because acculturation and assimilation were delibrately fostered by state policy.
Today, the word Arabs does not strictly imply or designate any known racial category of people. It is an ethnic identification that has several aspect including liguistics, politics and genealogy. Its meaning is nuanced depending on the particular context.
As an ethnic identity, an Arab is someone who considers himself to be an Arab regardless of racial or ethnic origin. This definition encompasses many Africans, Indians, Indonesians and Chinese who describe themselves as Arabs.
Usually the first language of persons who claim to be Arab is Arabic. There are over 200 million people worldwide whose first language is Arabic. Again these peoples spread over a large portion of the globe spanning from central Africa to central Asia. More than 70% of the so-called Arabs in the world live physically in Africa.
Given that the Arabic language is a Semitic language, which forms part of the Afro-Asia language family, which originated in Africa, one can rightly view Arabic as an African language. Of the official languages of the African Union that include English, French, Spanish, Portugese, and Arabic, Arabic language is the only Afro-Asiatic language spoken. The rest are Euro-Aryan English, French, Spanish and Portugese. See Uwechia Jide; Hamito-Semitic Africa: www.africaresource.com/rasta/2006/04/10/hamito-semitic-africa-semites-of-africa-ii/. See also Peter T. Daniels, Origin of Semitic: listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-January/011842.html.
Viewed from a political perspective, someone who is a resident or citizen of a country where Arabic is an official or national language, or is a member of the Arab League or is part of the wider Arab world is an Arab. This definition would cover more than 300 million people. Under this definition, there are more Arabs in Africa than anywhere else in the universe. Most of those Arabs that live in Africa are Black Africans, from Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Eriteria, Kenya Tanzannia, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. Many of them trace their ancestry to Yemen.
On its formation in 1946, the Arab League defined an “Arab” as: “… a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples.” The Arab League’s definition of an Arab leaves no room for any racialist twist on the meaning of Arab and Arabic. These words simply denote ethnicity. Yet again, based upon this definition, there are more Black Africans who have a legitimate claim to the Arabic ethnicity than anywhere else in the world.
According to Habib Hassan Touma (1996, p.xviii), “An ‘Arab’, in the modern sense of the word, is one who is a national of an Arab state, has command of the Arabic language, and possesses a fundamental knowledge of Arabian tradition, that is, of the manners, customs, and political and social systems of the culture.” Here again, one finds that there more Black African Arabs based on this definiton than any other regional phenotype that lays claim to that heritage.
A hadith related by Ibn Asakir in Tarak Dimashq and attributed to Islam’s prophet Muhammad states that :”Being an Arab is not because of your father or mother, but being an Arab is on account of your tongue. Whoever learns Arabic is an Arab.” < www.islamtoday.com/show_detail_section.cfm?q_id=266&main_cat_id=11>.
Genealogically, an Arab is someone who can trace his or her ancestry back to the original inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. Different groups estimate the relative importance of these factors differently. Most people who consider themselves Arabs do so on the basis of the overlap of the political and linguistic definitions.
Since there are so many different phenotypes all considered as Arabs, the query posed and answered by this paper then is: who are the original Arabs? Were they Black or White or Black and White? It is posited here that the original Arabs were Black African Kushites from the Nile valley who had settled in southwest Asia in the Arabian Peninsula in ancient times.
They were Kushitic-Ethiopians, speakers of an African prototypical Semitic language who had left from an area falling between the regions bordered by modern day Dafur in Sudan and Asmara in Eriteria. They took their African genes, their African intelligence, their African culture, their African language and their African love and built the ancient and the modern civilization known as Arabic civilization. In the paragraphs that follow, one is gradually introduced to the original Black Kushitic Arabs. See Uwechia Jide; Hamito-Semitic Africa: www.africaresource.com/rasta/2006/04/10/hamito-semitic-africa-semites-of-africa-ii/. See also Peter T. Daniels, Origin of Semitic: listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/2004-January/011842.html.
Black Arabs and Classical Literature
Up to a century and a half ago our information concerning Arabia was based mainly on Greek and Latin writers, such as Herodotus (Histories), Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca Historica), Strabo (Geography, Book XVI), Pliny, Ptolemy, and others. All those writers reported without any equivocation that Arabia was part of the ancient Kingdom of Ethiopia Kush, extending from Africa into Solomon Islands.
Later Arabic writers and geographers, such as Hamadani’s “Arabian Peninsula,” Bekri and Yaqut’s geographical and historical dictionaries, and similar works also provide extremely valuable. However, those works are to be treated with caution because they contain fabulous and legendary traditions, partly based on native popular legends and partly on Jewish and rabbinical fancies.
From the available literature and authorities, historians have broadly divided Arabs into three classes according to their different great ancestors. They are:
The original Black Arabs who were supposedly punished by destruction and deluge because, as legend has it in the book of Quran, they disobeyed their Prophets and flouted God’s instructions; they were: Ad, Thamud, Tasam, Jadeis, Imru.
The classical Black Arabs, who are believed to have descended from Yaarub ibn Yashjub ibn Ghatan and thus called Ghataniyun. They had lived in the Yemen; they included a number of tribes and sub-tribes, two of which became historically prominent viz., Himyar and Kahlan (al’arab al’ariba).
The Arabized Arabs: These tribes immigrated into Arabia from different sections of central Asia. Many of them intermarried with the desert dwelling nomadic blemmyes – the Bejas (original Bedouin Arabs) and the Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian tribes of Africa. Their mix -blood children who adopted a mingled form of their parents cultures are known as the Arabized Arabs (al ‘arab al musta ‘riba).
Today, upon the dictates of the western intelligensia, this banch is the so-called prototypical Arabs. They are the picture boys of the white-semitic theories which seek to claim that some white or at the very least some off-white people were and remain the original and only Arabians. By employing vague and non-categorical semantics with words like “Semites,” ‘Hamites,” Ishmaelites,” “caucasiods,” the western negro-phobic intelligensia and educational establishment seek to erase every trace of black Africa from Arabia.
Nonetheless, if one understood Arab culture it is immediately apparent that Blackness is highly cherished conceptually and in reality. In Arab culture the best camel is the black one the best fig is the blackest, the best eyes are black, the best olives are black, the most beautiful rock is the Black Kaaba. Any Bedouin Arab that is asked his color, would undoubtedly respond Asmar or Aswad which means Black/Brown. No Arab ever describes himself as Bidan which means White because they all understand instinctively if not consciously that Africa is their root.
The Black Arabs as described in “Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews”:
Josephus was a soldier, priest and scholar who was born in 37 AD. His written works are seminal in western history and for many centuries were some of the most widely read and influential books of the western civilization. In the paragraphs that immediately follow, excerpts of Josephus’ commentary on the Arabs and near easterners who were contemporary to his period are reproduced. See The Catholich Encyclopadia < www.newadvent.org/cathen/08522a.htm>
Arabia the Daughter of Kush
The classical Greek and Roman writers commonly accepted the division of Arabia into Deserta (desert), Felix (happy), and Petraea (stony). Not much is known today about the exact configuration of those divisions. Later day Islamic Arabic geographers know nothing of this division, and this is not surprising since many of those later day Arabs are actually immigrants that later acculturated and assimilated into the culture of the original Black Arabs.
Arab geographers of the Islamic period divided Arabia generally into five provinces: The first is Yemen, embracing the whole south of the peninsula and including Hadramaut, Mahra, Oman, Shehr, and Nejran. The second is Hijaz, on the west coast and including Mecca and Medina, the two famous centres of Islam. The third is Tehama, along the same coast between Yemen and Hijaz. The fourth is Nejd, which includes most of the central table-land, and the fifth is Yamama, extending all the wide way between Yemen and Nejd. This division is also inadequate, for it omits the greater part of North and East Arabia.
A more recent division of Arabia, according to politico-geographical principles, is into seven provinces: Hijaz, Yemen, Hadramaut, Oman, Hasa, Irak, and Nejd. It has always been the assertion of experts that certain tribes that lived on the coast of Yemen and on the coast of Ethiopia and Eriteria were almost identical. The linkages between Ethiopia Kush and Arabia must be considered in the context of any discourse on Arab people, or more precisely stated the Black Africans of Arabia.
Ethiopia-Kush
As stated in the preceding paragraph, the key to understanding the origin and culture of the Arabs is through African Kushitic Ethiopia.
Contacts between eastern Africa and Arabia have existed since the time immemorial. Archeological evidence has demonstrated that Africans of the Caspian culture probably moved across the Strait of Bab El Mandel and implanted the same Caspian culture in Arabia on the other side of the strait. See Leaky, L.S.B., Stone Age Africa pp 38-78.
The Strait of Bab-El-Mandel, which separates Africa from Arabia, is quite narrow at some points averaging a couple of days journey on a sea raft or small canoe. Communication and travel have consequently been possible since pre-historic times.
It will thus not be a surprising claim to the well informed that East African people (being the first aboriginals of the earth) have long settled in Arabia as the original inhabitants. For instance, besides the Caspian culture, African people also founded the so-called Afro-Arabian Tihama cultural complex in the mid-2nd millennium.
In addition to the coastal site of Adulis in Eritrea and sites farther inland in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sudan, vestiges of the Tihama cultural complex are represented on the Saudi coastal plains and the western and southern coasts of Yemen. (Fattovich 1997).
Moreover, African settlements were further stimulated by the growth of the Egyptian state from the 4th millennium onward, with more extensive migration of African population in Arabia around the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. Semitic speaking settlers from Ethiopia-Kush settled in Arabia built complex cultures and civilizations of which the later Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and Jews would document for coming generations. See Josephus Book 1.
Long before Yemen had become a politically articulated entity, the Ethiopian-Axumites had built many powerful states along the coast of Red Sea and the hilly countries of Ethiopia such as ancient Adulis, Coloe, Yeha Tokanda, and the so called Ethio-Sabean state of Daamat (circa 800-600 B.C.) etc. Ethiopia-Axum, the ancient dominant power in the region, gradually incorporated the African-Yemenites into its political sway.
By 12th century B.C. Southern Arabia fell under the complete control of the Ethiopian-Axumites through their long domination of the Red Sea trade routes. The first kingdom built by the Ethiopian-Axumites in Arabia was Saba just across the straits in Yemen in 800 B.C. See Ephraim Isaac and Cain Felder, “Reflections on the Origins of the Ethiopian Civilization”, Eight International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, November 1984. Successive civilisations of Mineans, Sabaeans and Himyarites interacted closely with their counterparts in Ethiopia.
For a while the Ethiopian-Kushitic Arabs focussed their energies on the Yemeni side of the coast in states like Saba and Daamat. Products were shipped into Yemen from Ethiopia and exported all over the world through the Red Sea.
Following the decline of Saba and Daamat, the international trade hub moved to the kingdom of Axum on the opposite side of the Red Sea coast. From its seaports such as Adulis, Ethiopian-Kushites, Axum’s trade network extended from Egypt as far as India.
Axum survived for more than 2500 years as a great state dominating the Red Sea regions although western historians would grudgingly concede 800 years. It occupied and ruled southern Arabia for part of this period. Utilitarian Aksumite pottery has been found in large quantities in deposits from the 5th and 6th centuries in the Yemen Hadramawt, suggesting that there may have been substantial immigration during that period. Axumites descended groups such as the Habashahs, still live in southern Yemen today fully cognizant of their African origins and connections.
Indeed, interaction between Yemen and Ethiopia in ancient times is sometimes compared with the historical relationship between Europe and America, with the Red Sea as substitute for the Atlantic Ocean.
THE BEJA PEOPLE: HABITAT AND HISTORY
Another important group of Black African groups who contributed genetically, and culturally to the formation of the Arabs are the Bejas otherwise called the Blemmyes. It appears that the Blemmyes as encountered in classical literature provided the foundation for the ethnic group known today as Bedouins.
The indigenous Beja people are nomads who have inhabited the semi-desert area in the Red Sea coast of Sudan and the hilly country behind it for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians referred to them as the people of Buka or Medju (Medjay), the Romans dubbed them Blemmyes and in the Odessa they were described as Erembes. They are a Kushitic-Khemitic people who spoke a mixed dialect of semitic and Cushitic language. They identify themselves today as the most original and ancient of the Arab tribes.
Kemitic Pharaohs called them Absha, meaning the desert dwellers that is, the Bedouins in Arabic language – and Ramses II called them Beja, purporting fighters. Thus one can reasonably see the Bejas as fulfilling the Arab Bedouin archetype of the fearsome, nomadic owners of the Sahara, highly temperamental but compassionate. Throughout history, they have been regarded as very efficient fighting machines. It is important to note that besides the Nubians, it is well documented that the Beja were employed in the Egyptian army and were credited for their courage and fortitude during the expulsion of the Hyksos from Egypt.
The Roman Historian Ammianus Marcellinus inspite of his odious ethno-centrism provides us more clues on the racial and ethnic identity of the earliest Arabs. In his book The Roman History, Book XIV.iv.1-7. (380 A.D.)) the Saracens a named that was used to describe the Arabs in both ancient and modern times (stems most likely from the Arabic Sarqiyyun, meaning ‘easterners’) were described as the Blemmys tribes who lived along the banks of the Nile beyond the cataracts. According to Ammianus Marcellinus:
“Book XIV.4:
At this time also the Saracens, a race whom it is never desirable to have either for friends or enemies, ranging up and down the country, if ever they found anything, plundered it in a moment, like rapacious hawks who, if from on high they behold any prey, carry it off with a rapid swoop, or, if they fail in their attempt, do not tarry. And although, in recounting the career of the Prince Marcus, and once or twice subsequently, I remember having discussed the manners of this people, nevertheless I will now briefly enumerate a few more particulars concerning them.
Among these tribes, whose primary origin is derived from the cataracts of the Nile and the borders of the Blemmyae, all the men are warriors of equal rank; half naked, clad in colored cloaks down to the waist, overrunning different countries, with the aid of swift and active horses and speedy camels, alike in times of peace and war. Nor does any member of their tribe ever take plow in hand or cultivate a tree, or seek food by the tillage of the land; but they are perpetually wandering over various and extensive districts, having no home, no fixed abode or laws; nor can they endure to remain long in the same climate, no one district or country pleasing them for a continuance.
Their life is one continued wandering; their wives are hired, on special covenant, for a fixed time; and that there may be some appearance of marriage in the business, the intended wife, under the name of a dowry, offers a spear and a tent to her husband, with a right to quit him after a fixed day, if she should choose to do so. And it is inconceivable with what eagerness the individuals of both sexes give themselves up to matrimonial pleasures.
But as long as they live they wander about with such extensive and perpetual migrations, that the woman is married in one place, brings forth her children in another, and rears them at a distance from either place, no opportunity of remaining quiet being ever granted to her. They all live on venison, and are further supported on a great abundance of milk, and on many kinds of herbs, and on whatever birds they can catch by fowling. And we have seen a great many of them wholly ignorant of the use of either corn or wine.”
The Black African Bejas/Saracens also called the Blemmys gave to the Arabs of today (blacks and pales) the knowledge to live in the Sahara as well as the most basic cultural elements that define the Bedouin culture including nomadic identity, marital culture and martial arts. For instance, the war-like Blemmyes (Beja) had normally fought with curiously shaped bows, and it was from them that the tribes of Hijaz and Yemen (in Arabia) and the other Arab tribes adopted the use of the bow. Historically, the Beja ruled the vast territory of theirs (laying between Northern Nigeria and Sudan) in five kingdoms namely, the Naqis, Baqlin (Taflin), Bazin, Jarin and Qata (Qita, also perhaps Qasa).
Arabia Petra
Arabia Petra spread between African Kushitic Egypt and Mesopotamia (another African kushitic area in the ancient times) (Josephus). It was originally settled by an early branch of the Cushitic Ethiopian people who spoke a proto-type semitic dialect.
The Beja’s known as the ancient Blemmyes one of the earliest known nomadic tribes to dwell in the deserts of Africa and Arabia probably provided the founding population of Arabia Petra.
Other sections of the African population from the early Caspian culture and other culture complex centered on Ethiopia Axum and Ethiopia Kush may have equally contributed to the early settlement of Arabia Petra.
Some of these early African Black Arabs crossed the Red Sea whilst others migrated overland through the Nile valley into Arabia. Arabia Petrea thus became an early blending pot of African cultures. Due to this cultural ferment many nomads soon abandoned their wandering lives to establish sophisticated towns and cities together with the more sedentary population. These melange later became known as the Nabateans and their capital was Petra. (Drussilla Houstons) See also nabataea.net/arabia.html.
During the Roman period, the word Arab was a synonymy for Nabatean and vice versa. When the Romans incorporated Nabatea into their Empire, it was officially designated as the Province of Arabia. Numerous sculptures found in Arabia Petra clearly depict its population as African through their physical features. One classical example is that of Emperor Philip of Arabia one of the later Emperors of Rome, who was indigenous to Arabia Petra. His sculptures demonstrate that physically speaking, Emperor Philip of Arabia was a Black man of African descent. Here is a picture of a statue of the Black African Roman Emperor Philip “the Arab”.
Emperor Philip the Arab
Arabia Felix
Arabia Felix laid further south of Petra. Arabia Felix was bounded by the Shiraz region of the Persian Gulf, the Eritrean or Red sea (Africa) as well as the Indian Ocean. This country was rich in spices and in it was situated the famous cities of Mecca and Medina.
Here was the country of the Yemenis, the Habashas, the Sabas, the Hadramautians and the Mineans. All these were sections of the Ethiopian-Axumite tribes similar to the Amharas, the Oromos and the Tigriyeans, who had expanded the ancient lucrative spice trade to Arabia.
It should be noted that in addition to coffee, Ethiopia is the original homeland of incenses such as frankincense, myrrh, and spices like cinnamon. The traditional African planters of these cash crops and the African maritime operators of this most lucrative of ancient trades extended their operations from Ethiopia across the straits of Bab-el-Mandel to take advantage of the fertile land and the natural habours of Arabia Felix, which subsequently became export hubs of the ancient trade. (See Strabo,geography Book XVI.iv.19). Produce was shipped routinely from the highlands of Ethiopia into Ethiopian owned- Arabia Felix for exports to the rest of the world.
Given the historical, genetic, physical and geographical proximity between Ethiopia and Arabia Felix and the similarity of the cultural expression of both land, it is not a wonder why the ancient Greek writers swore that the Ethiopians ruled the whole of Arabia. It was clear to the sophisticated Greeks and the worldly Romans that Black Africans settled and developed this portion of Arabia!
Arabia Deserta
Arabia Deserta was originally people by the Bejas and kindred groups from Africa. These are the original owners of the Sahara and its extension known as the Arabia Desert. The Bejas as we have seen from preceeding paragraphs were the first to be called Bedouins due to their nomadic culture and their preference for Desert habitats.
In the beginning of Holocene period, a group of landless, barbarian, starving, pale-skinned Central Asian refugees now known as the pale-skin Arabs (i.e. the so-called Semites) began living side by side with the nomadic African Cushitic Bejas who owned the entire Sahara desert between the Nile and the Arabian peninsula. Over the course of time these two peoples have intermingled culturally and genetically that there is barely any pale skin (Arabized) Arabs alive today that does not carry extensive Africa genes in his blood. The descendants of this intermingling are the so-called modern Semitic Arabs (more precisely known as the Arabized Arabs) who trace their roots through Abraham.
The Central Asian barbarians did not develop any states, high culture or language in Arabia. They were destitues, mostly ignorant, unread and illiterate. The Koran takes great pain to dissociate this group from the high cultural attainment of ancient Arabia. It is clearly stated that until the advent of the Islamic Prophet Muhammed, these so-called Semites lived in a state of perpetual brutality, savagery, warfare and robbery. The Koran also takes pain to identify the original Black Arabs who had lived in Ad, Thamud, Imru etc, as the originators and builders of Arab civilization and culture.
These Arabized Arabs have sublimated stories of their origin in the legend of Abraham, which narrates of his journey from somewhere proximate to central Asia into the Black African territory of Arabia. He was said to have married a Black Egyptian-born wife, Hagar/Hajir, and their son was named, Ishmael/Ismail. In this legend one immediately becomes aware of the central Asian origin of its heros and the resultant miscegenation which gave rise to the Arabised Arabs.
These so-called descendants of Abraham (actually mix breed from Black African Bejas and pale central Asian-stanis like the Turkmenistanis) settled in Mecca which was then under the overlordship of the Kushitic-Ethiopic owners of Arabia-Felix. This category of Arabs normally called themselves Adnaniyun that is, after one of their great tribal ancestors Adnan.
Despite the mythical origin of this peculiar historical source, it is clear that conscious effort has been made by Arabized Arabs to associate their tribes to African Royal pedigree.
Since it is generally known that Kushitic citizenship was matrilineal, and only children born by Kemitic Kushite mothers could aspire to be Kings in Egypt and Ethiopia, it does not take a lot of imagination to understand the role of the black Egyptian (Kemitic Kushite) Hagar in the Abraham story. The Arabized Arabs actually claim a Black African historical and archetypal mother!
No wonder “Aswad” (Black) is such an attractive concept in Arabic language.
The Himyarites: Yemen, Hadramaut, Oman
Yemen is one of the oldest inhabited portions of the Arabian Peninsula. It includes the entire southwest quarter, which possesses many advantages in climate and soil. Yemen was a colony of early Black Africans until the Arabized Arabs who are described in the preceding paragraph gradually infiltrated it. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Himyarites/Yemenites (and Hadramutians) are the same group of peoples as the African Ethiopians.
They are genetically, linguistically, and physically identical with Ethiopians. This may perhaps explain the reason why the ancient Greeks and Roman writers believed that Arabia was a political extension of Ethiopia Kush. (See Catholic Encyclopedia: Arab)
Even today, the similarity is so striking that one cannot fail to observe the clear connectedness between the Ethiopian tribes who live on both sides of the Red Sea.
Encyclopedia Britannica states that: “Yemenis of “northern†origin are thought to have descended from Mesopotamians who entered the region in the 1st millennium BC (mixed breed Arabized Arabs). The “southern†group represents the South Arabian stock (original African Ethiopian peoples), and the Arabic of the rural areas of former South Yemen is still heavily influenced by the ancient African Semito/Cushitic (i.e.South Arabian) languages.
The two groups maintain disparate genealogies and historical traditions concerning their roles and origins: The northern Yemenis trace their ancestry to Isma’il (Ishmael) through his descendant ‘Adnan, whereas their southern countrymen claim descent from Qahtan (the biblical Joktan).” As has been amply demonstrated, a branch of the Cushitic Ethiopian people whom later historians named the Sabeans settled South Yemen. They are a kindred nation of the Ethiopian Amharas, Tigreyans, and Eriterians (with possible addition from the Oromos) sharing a similar language, culture, architecture, religion, literature and written scripts.
Migrating from Ethiopia Kush, those Africans first settled in extreme southern west of the Peninsula. They then spread northward and eastward over Yemen, Hadramaut and Oman. Those Black Africans were later called the Himyarites after the name of one of their more famous states. The word Himyar is a synonym for dark or dusky, indicating the racial origin of these ruling peoples of early Arabia.
The Black Ethiopians were renowned international maritime traders of the ancient times. In the 1st century BC the coastal Himyarites, with control of the sea routes, established their dominion over Saba, and over the other south Arab kingdoms during the 1st century AD. They effectively monopolized supply of both indigenous resins (frankincense and myrrh – sought after by every temple of the ancient world) and imports of spice, textiles and ivory from India and East Africa.
The Ethio-Yemenite/Himyarites were a highly cultured people, masters of engineering and architecture. They were also a highly literate society that exhibited a great love for literature and written records. The Himyaritic language had a written script which for the most part is lost, but the few discovered fragments of the script suggests that it is African in origin and character. Its grammar is almost identical with the written Semitic languages of Ethiopia.
According to older versions of the Encyclopedia Britannica: “The institutions of Yemen bear a close resemblance to African types. The inhabitants of Yemen, Hadramaut, Oman and the adjoining districts, in the shape of the head, colour, length and slenderness of limbs and scantiness of hair, point to an African origin.” Even in these modern times, these Himyarites (Yemenites) still identify culturally with the Black (so-called sub-saharan) people of African Ethiopia. Arabia Kush and Arabia Musri
Even today, it is accepted that a common tread of language, culture, religion and physical human type occur in the Arabia as well as East Africa. Hack writers and imperialists intelligentsia have tried to explain away these very phenomena because they destroy the foundation of their racialist assumptions. Yet, some obnoxious racist historians and their unsupported lies cannot erase 50,000 years of African ownership of the Arabian Peninsula.
To further buttress the thesis of this article, it appears that they were two principalities in Arabia known as Kush or Ethiopia and Musri or Misraim. The two names are synonyms of very famous nations that existed in Africa from the dawn of time. Mizraim refers to Egypt whilst Kush refers to modern day Sudan and Ethiopia.
Ancient Assyrian, Greek, and Roman writers regularly referred to Arabia as part of Ethiopia populated by the same race of people. Assyrian, Greek and Roman texts also confirm that at least two Kingdoms of Arabia were denoted similarly as two of the most prominent undeniably African countries. Although not much is known about these principalities of Arabia Kush and Musri, there are sufficient snippets of information gathered from different ancient fragments including Assyrian text to give one an idea of these principalities.
In 1320 BC Shalmaneser I, began ruling Assyria. He subjugated many tribes and brought them within the political sway of Assyria. His records have him as having marched against the land of Musri (i.e. Arabia Musri or Mizraim also known as Arabia Egypt), in Northern Arabia. This is a clear reference to a polity in Arabia that shared certain deep connections with Egypt in Africa.
Assurbanipal a king of ancient Assyria also repeatedly spoke of his various successful expeditions into and conquests in the lands of Musri, Magan, Meluhha, and Kush in Arabia. This is another very important reference source on the existence of a Kushitic political establishment in ancient Arabia.
About 1120-1110 B.C. Tiglath-pileser I, became King of Assyria in place of his father Asshur-resh-ishi. Tiglath-pileser also recorded his exploits against the Musri or Mizraim of ancient Arabia. See “A Brief Overview Of Assyrian History From Early Beginnings To Sargon II” by Lishtar: Gateway
However one sees it, the ancient African Arabian connection cannot be escaped. In those days, it was the Black Africans that set the initiate and determined the agenda.
Their colonization of Arabia is obvious from the fact that they knew to name those settlements in Arabia after the names of the African regions from where they originated.
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Important Kingdoms of Arabia
The two most important kingdoms of ancient Arabia were that of the Mineans and that of the Sabeans. An African Kushitic branch of people who migrated from Ethiopia established those two principalities and many others which we shall presently consider.
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Minean
The Minean Kingdom seems to have flourished in southern Arabia as early as 1200 B.C., and from the various Minean inscriptions found in northern Arabia they seem to have extended their power even to the north of the peninsula. Their principal cities were Main, Karnan, and Yatil. The Sabeans, after two centuries of repeated and persistent attacks, succeeded in overthrowing the rival Minean Kingdom and thence became the central power in Arabia.
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Sheba/Saba
The memories of the Queen of Saba retain some of the greatest national legends and inspirational themes of the modern Ethiopian state. The Queen of Sheba was actually a real historical queen of Ethiopia known as Makeda. She was the founder of the last Ethiopian dynasty, which began with Menelik the First and ended with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1974. Her dynasty lasted for more than three thousand years and her name is etched in gemstones in Ethiopia.
Whereas the memory of Empress Makeda is so pervasive and dominant in Ethiopia’s historical and cultural consciousness, there is virtually no living memory of this great Empress in Yemen. People of Yemen have no living traditions on the Queen of Sheba nor of any dynasty based on this great Empress of Africa. Thus Ethiopia appears to be the more plausible center of her historical empire.
According to tradition, and the Kebra Negast, this Empress had inherited a farflung and powerful empire from her father Anagbo and built it to greater extents. Its reaches stretched from Arabia to India. Her capital was located on the Ethiopian mainland, and ruins of her palaces are top line tourist attraction for anyone who has ever visited Ethiopia.
Sheba/Saba appears to have been one of her principalities that was established in Arabia. It also served as a major trade center for the caravan route.
Without doubt, the Sabans were as black-skinned as the Ethiopians whom the Greeks thought were the blackest people in the world. The Shebans were an Ethiopian people, who had long lived in fertile parts of the Arabian Peninsula close to the coast of their African homeland. Sheba was as much a part of Ethiopia as Scotland is a part of Britain.
The Sabean, or Himyaritic, Kingdom (the Homeritae of the classics) is thought to have become increasing independent of Ethiopia and to have flourished either contemporaneously (D. H. Mueller) or after (Glaser, Hommel) the Minean Kingdom.
Its administrative center was Marib (the Mariaba of the Arabian classics) famous for its dam, the breaking of which is often mentioned by later Arabic poets and traditions as the immediate cause of the fall of the Sabean power. Saba, however was still prominent till about 300 A.D., when it was regained by the African Ethiopians.
Kataban
A third kingdom was that of Kataban, another Black African established principality, which gave rise to the modern Oman. The capital of Kataban was named Timna and was located on the trade route which passed through the other kingdoms of Hadramaut, Saba and Ma’in.
The chief diety of the Katabanians was Amm, probable connected with Ammon or Amun the chief God of Ancient Egypt and the people called themselves the “children of Amm” hence the modern day Arabic name Oman a cognate of the name Ammon.
Oman is one of those Gulf States still predominantly African in phenotype despite years of miscegenation. The Katabans were shrewd international traders of spices and perfumed which were primarily sourced from Ethiopia and Mozambique.
Together with their neigbours in Hadramut and Saba and Ethiopia, Kataban was known as the land of spices. The Sabeans destroyed the Katabanian state, with its capital, Timna, around the second century after Christ.
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Hadramut and Habashah
A fouth Kingdom, Hadramaut, is also a very closely connected with Ethiopia and Somalia. Ethiopian/Kushitic Arabs built another kingdom called Habashah. The nexus between Habashah and Ethiopia is demonstrated by the fact that in Ethiopia there is a tribe of people known as Habashah who are kindred to the Habashas of South Arabia.
Tradition holds that the Ethiopian Habashah crossed over to Yemen and established the principality of Yemeni Habashah. These two Habashahs still maintain very close cultural links and there is virtually no difference between the Habashahs of Arabia and the Habashahs of Ethiopia.
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The African Axumites and the Black Arabs:
The land of Punt was recognized by the ancient Egyptians as the land of the gods, of spices of incense and sweet perfumes. It was said the gods loved to be in that land due to its aromatic pungency. Punt was in those days the most prolific and ancient source of spices and incense. Punt was not only a sacred land it was also a country of great wealth which came from its ancient maritime trade through which it supplied incense and spices to the world.
The land of Punt was said to be located somewhere in the current modern state of Ethiopia. It was located just across the Red Sea close to the Bab-El-Manden. It was peopled by Black African Kushites. Many principalities rose on the surge of it’s pre-eminence.
One must note that Axum was neither the first nor the greatest Ethiopian civilization. Adulis (a famous sea-port of great antiquity), for instance had an older existence than Axum. Moreover, there are archaeological discoveries illustrating pre- Axumite civilization and culture, located at Coloe (some 20 km from Adi Qeyih), Yeha (near Axum), Tokanda (near Coloe). Axum is an indigenous African civilization which harmoniously blends in the proto-Afro-Semitic cultural complex of Ethiopia with the Afro-Cushitic Ethiopian cultural strain.
The Cushitic/Semitic- Black African Axumites had long dominated the coastal Red Sea trade before the establishment of the first Black Arab principality. They had grown successful off the lucrative ancient trade in spices and perfumes. Frankincense and myrrh, cinnamon, precious stones and metals were indigenous to their country. International trade was second nature to them since Punt was one of the oldest, if not the oldest maritime capital of the world.
The civilizations of Ethiopia was characterized by the practice of agriculture via irrigation and terracing. Ethiopians had knowledge of wheat and barley long before 1000 B.C. Soft wheat cultivation was concentrated around the centers of Axum, Harar and Addis Ababa. “The farmers of Arwe used the plough and the hoe or digging stick to prepare their fields for cultivation.” From here the plough was taken to South Arabia. (Winters, 2006).
Moreover, the expertise developed by the Southern Arabian monumental stone builders could have only been worked out in Ethiopia because in Ethiopia was the nearest and the most abundant stone quarries of the region, whereas Arabia being mostly desert and coast had little source of natural stones. It is logical to assume that stone building traditions must have developed in a region that had abundant stones even though it may later have dispersed to outlaying areas.
The African Ethiopian-Axumites, began ruling parts of Himyar (e.g. the Tehama/Tihama district) way before 1000 B.C. although grudge-filled western historians with an agenda against Black Africans would only concede A.D. 378 as the beginning of the over lordship. Yet there is repletion of evidence suggesting Ethiopia’s historical overweening influence over Arabia.
According to Fattovich: during the late 2nd millennium BCE, a cultural complex arose in the Tihama region of Yemen and northern Ethiopia and Eritrea (specifically Tigray Region, central Eritrea, and coastal areas like Adulis). Based on the profusion of archeological, cultural and textual evidence an African origin has been posited. (Fattovich, Rodolfo 1997)
By 525, when the Black Ethiopian Axumites regained dominance in Arabia, overthrew the upstart Himyarite power, and destroyed its fledging ambition, Ethiopia-Axum was entering into its waning period of political dominance in the region.
In 568 the Black Ethiopian-Axumites were lost their political dominance in Arabia. Political power became more localized and the native Yemenites gradually replaced the Ethiopian aristocracy. Eventually this nascent kingdom was again conquered by the Persians, and it became a vassal kingdom of the Persian Empire until the year 634, when it was absorbed, together with all the other Arabian States, by the Mohammedan conquest.
