Pre-modern conceptions of whiteness

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Recovery of Helen by Menelaus. Attic black-figure amphora, c. 550 BC. Homer calls Helen "white-armed". Helen and Menelaos Staatliche Antikensammlungen 1383 cropped glare reduced and solid white background.png
Recovery of Helen by Menelaus. Attic black-figure amphora, c. 550 BC. Homer calls Helen "white-armed".

The description of populations as white in reference to their skin colour predates and is distinct from the race categories constructed from the 17th century onward. [1] Coloured terminology is occasionally found in Graeco-Roman ethnography [2] [3] and other ancient and medieval sources, but these societies did not have any notion of a white or pan-European race. [4] In Graeco-Roman society whiteness was a somatic norm, although this norm could be rejected and it did not coincide with any system of discrimination or colour prejudice. [5] [6] [7] Historically, before the late modern period, cultures outside of Europe and North America, such as those in the Middle East and China, employed concepts of whiteness. [8] Eventually these were progressively marginalised and replaced by the European form of racialised whiteness. [8] Whiteness has no enduring "true essence", but instead is a social construct that is dependent on differing societal, geographic, and historical meanings. [9] [10] Scholarship on race distinguishes the modern concept from pre-modern descriptions, which focused on skin colour, complexion and other physical traits. [11]

Contents

Background

Beginning with the rise of agricultural economies and the increasing stratification of societies around the world approximately 6000 years ago, light skin came to be increasingly associated with higher social status. [12] Because lower status individuals were typically required to participate in arduous outdoor toil, dark skin began to be associated with lower social status in agricultural societies around the world. Over time whiteness became associated with happiness, success, freedom from outdoor toil, and even spiritual purity. [12] In the ancient and medieval societies of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, light skin, especially among women, came to be a sign of living a privileged lifestyle, having noble ancestry, and also became an indicator of beauty. [12] [13]

Fertile Crescent

Mesopotamia

In ancient Mesopotamia healthy skin colours were described as sāmu ("ruddy" or "reddish") or peṣû ("white") while ill-health was associated with the skin colour arqu ("pale-brown" or "yellow"), a reference to jaundice. [14] [15] [16] Peṣû was descended from the Proto-Semitic word f/pṣḥ, which was related to whiteness and brightness. [17] The word sāmu would also be used to refer to red hair, either dyed or natural, with natural red hair being associated with the Eurasian Steppe. [18] For Akkadians, peṣû might also be used to refer to medical conditions such as albinism or severe anaemia, or a woman's fair complexion. [17] [19] In contrast the Akkadian word ṣalmu ("black") would be used to describe people with dark skin, such as the Nubian pharaoh of Egypt's 25th Dynasty. [20] Along with brown eyes, blue eyes or namru ("dazzling(-blue)), are also referred to in Mesopotamian writings. [21]

Ancient Egypt

According to anthropologist Nina Jablonski:

1820 drawing of a Book of Gates fresco of the tomb of Seti I, 1279 BC, depicting (from left) four groups of people: four Libyans, a Nubian, an Asiatic, and an Egyptian. Races2.jpg
1820 drawing of a Book of Gates fresco of the tomb of Seti I, 1279 BC, depicting (from left) four groups of people: four Libyans, a Nubian, an Asiatic, and an Egyptian.

In ancient Egypt as a whole, people were not designated by color terms [...] Egyptian inscriptions and literature only rarely, for instance, mention the dark skin color of the Kushites of Upper Nubia. We know the Egyptians were not oblivious to skin color, however, because artists paid attention to it in their works of art, to the extent that the pigments at the time permitted. [23]

The Ancient Egyptian (New Kingdom) funerary text known as the Book of Gates distinguishes "four groups" in a procession. These are the "red-brown" Egyptians, the "pale" Levantine and Canaanite peoples or "Asiatics", the "black" "Nubians" and the "fair-skinned Libyans". [24] [25] The Egyptians are depicted as considerably darker-skinned than the Levantines (persons from what is now Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan) and Libyans, but considerably lighter than the Nubians (modern Sudan). Sex differences in skin colour were also depicted in Egyptian art, with women being depicted as noticeably lighter skinned than men. [26] Men would be painted dark reddish-brown, while women could be painted "white, tan, cream, or yellow". [27] Classical archaeologists typically ascribe this divergence to the differing lifestyles of men and women. [28] According to Charles Freeman, depictions of women with light skin suggested a high status, and were a "sign that a woman did not have to work in the sun". [29] As with other Mediterranean cultures, light skin came to be the feminine ideal in Egyptian art. [30]

The Levant

Ancient Greeks labeled the Phoenicians, and Levantines in general, as Phoinike (Φοινίκη), a word derived from the Greek work Phoinos, meaning "ruddy", possibly in reference to the skin colour of Ancient Levantines. [31] [32] [33] In the Hebrew Bible, figures such as Esau and King David are described as "ruddy". [34] [35] According to scholar David M. Goldenberg, the ancient Israelites and Judean peoples preferred women with a "fair complexion". [36] This preference is established in both biblical and post-biblical literature. [37] For example, The Genesis Apocryphon describes Sarah as being "beautiful" in "her whiteness." [37] A later scenario is written about by one of the Tannaim in which a potential groom refuses to marry a woman who he believes to be "ugly" and "black" (sḥehorah) until he finds out she is in fact "beautiful" and "white" (levanah). [37] In the Song of Songs a woman praises her lover for being "white and ruddy" while she is described as "clear as the moon". [38] [39]

Goldenberg wrote:

A rabbinic text commenting on the skin diseases mentioned in the Bible (Leviticus, chs. 13–14; Deut 24:8), states: "An intensely bright white spot [baheret] appears faint on the very light-skinned [germani], while a faint spot appears bright on the very dark-skinned [kushi]. Rabbi Ishmael said: 'The Jews—may I be like an expiatory sacrifice for them [an expression of love]—are like the boxwood tree [eshkeroae], neither black nor white, but in between.'"2 This statement records a second-century (R. Ishmael) perception that the skin color of Jews is midway between black and white.3 More precisely it is light brown, the color of the boxwood tree.4 This early perception of the intermediate, light-brown shade of the Jewish complexion is corroborated by a number of papyri from the Ptolemaic period in Egypt that describe the complexion of various Jews as "honey-colored." [40]

India

The nature of skin colour and its role in the Indian caste system is strongly contested. [41] According to the Indian sociologist G. S. Ghurye the groups mentioned in the Vedas, the Arya and Dasa , were distinguished by their skin colour or "varna" with the Arya being associated with a fair complexions and the Dasa being associated with dark complexions. [42] [43] Similarly, sociologist James Alfred Aho states that skin colour was used as a marker for what eventually became the caste system. [44] Anthropologist Arthur Helweg states that the initial basis for the varna system was skin colour. [45] Bengali scholar Jayantanuja Bandyopadhyaya records that in the Rigveda, the god Indra distributed the lands of the conquered Dasa to the "white-coloured" Arya. [46] As such, Bandyopadhyaya characterises the conflict between the "white-skinned" Arya and "black-skinned" Anarya, or non-Aryans, as having racial overtones. [46] The Indian Marxist historian D. D. Kosambi, wrote that the darker skin of the Dasyu "contrasted with the lighter skin-colour of the newcomers [Aryans]." [47] The Mahabhashya , Ṛgveda, and Gopatha Brahmana contain, according to Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, references to Brahmins with "white skins and red or yellow hair." [48] Per David Lorenzen, there are some references in later Vedic literature that suggest the Brahmin and Vaishya castes are referred to as "white or fair". [49]

The Indian scholars Varsha Ayyar and Lalit Khandare assert that colourism, or discrimination based on skin pigmentation, has existed in India since pre-colonial times, predating any Eurocentric concepts of whiteness. [50] Similarly, the scholar Nina Kullrich submits that references to colour in Indian culture predate European colonialism and that although racism and colourism are linked together, they are not equivalent, with a desire for whiteness being a part of Indian culture that is distinguished from European concepts. [51]

Others, such as Michael Witzel, state that the Rigveda uses krsna tvac "black skin" as a metaphor for irreligiosity. [52] The Indian historian Romila Thapar states that skin colour differences are more likely to be symbolic descriptors. [53] Kadira Pethiyagoda also states that while varna does literally mean colour, and was used to classify groups of people and express differences, recent scholarship suggests these terms were symbolic. [54]

Ancient Greece

The Alexander Mosaic, Pompeii, c. 100 BC, depicting the Macedonian cavalry of Alexander the Great fighting Persians under Darius III at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC. Alexandermosaic.jpg
The Alexander Mosaic , Pompeii, c. 100 BC, depicting the Macedonian cavalry of Alexander the Great fighting Persians under Darius III at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC.

As with Ancient Egyptians, Mycenaean Greeks and Minoans generally depicted women with pale or white skin and men with tanned skin. [56] Men with pale or light skin, leukochrōs (λευκόχρως, "white-skinned") could be considered weak and effeminate by Ancient Greek writers such as Plato and Aristotle. [57] According to Aristotle, "Those whose skin is too dark are cowardly: witness Egyptians and the Ethiopians. Those whose skin is too light are equally cowardly: witness women. The skin colour typical of the courageous should be halfway between the two." [58] Similarly, Xenophon of Athens describes Persian prisoners of war as "white-skinned because they were never without their clothing, and soft and unused to toil because they always rode in carriages" and states that Greek soldiers as a result believed "that the war would be in no way different from having to fight with women." [59] [60] In the Republic , Plato writes: "the swarthy are of manly aspect, the white are children of the gods, divinely fair". [61]

In Greek literature women including goddesses such as Hera and Aphrodite and mortals such as Penelope, Andromache, and Nausicaa can be described as leukōlenos (λευκώλενος, "white-armed"). [62] [63] Athena is described as having blondish or brownish hair (xanthe (Ξανθή)) [64] and blue, green, or grey eyes. [65] [66] Contrarily male warriors like Odysseus were usually described as having brown or bronzed skin, unless attention was being brought to skin that was vulnerable to injury in battle. [62] [63] Greek visual art usually showed women as white, much lighter than the typical male. [67] As a goddess of beauty, Aphrodite was usually given very white skin in both graphic and textual art. [37] Whiteness was generally seen as a desirable part of femininity in Ancient Greek culture. [68] [63] The anonymous ancient Greek text the 'Alexander Romance' describes an exchange of letters between Alexander the Great and Queen Candace of Meroe (in Nubia), in which the queen writes: "Do not despise us for the colour of our skin. In our souls we are brighter than the whitest of your people." [69]

Fresco of a woman in the Ostrusha mound, 4th century BC. Thrace ostrusha woman.jpg
Fresco of a woman in the Ostrusha mound, 4th century BC.

Classicist James H. Dee states "the Greeks do not describe themselves as 'White people'—or as anything else because they had no regular word in their colour vocabulary for themselves." [71] People's skin colour did not carry useful meaning; what mattered is where they lived. [72]

Herodotus described the Scythian Budini as having deep blue eyes and bright red hair [73] and the Egyptians – quite like the Colchians – as melánchroes (μελάγχροες, "dark-skinned") and curly-haired. [74] He also gives the possibly first reference to the common Greek name of the tribes living south of Egypt, otherwise known as Nubians, which was Aithíopes (Αἰθίοπες). [75] Later Xenophanes of Colophon described the Aethiopians as black and snub-nosed and the Thracians as having red hair and blue eyes. [76] In his description of the Scythians, Hippocrates states that the cold weather "burns their white skin and turns it ruddy." [77] [78]

The 2nd century Anatolian Greek sophist Polemon of Laodicea advocated a view of ancient physiognomy which attributed variations in skin and hair colour to the actions of the Sun. An anonymous 4th century Latin treatise, based on the work of Polemon, describes several stereotypes, including some related to skin colour, such as the claim that light-skinned "Northern" people are "courageous and bold and so forth". The Arabic translations of Polemon similarly includes white skin in a list of several traits held by Greeks of Hellenic or Ionian descent. [79] In the Physiognomy Polemon describes ancient Greeks as follows:

"The pure Greek is of medium stature, between tall and short, broad and weak. He is of erect posture, beautiful in face and appearance, white in colour, mixed with red, medium in flesh, with medium palms and elbows, alert, quick to learn, neither small nor large of head, in his neck thickness and strength. His hair is soft and red, with some curliness and some waviness on account of its lankness. In his face there is squareness, in his lip slimness, and his nose is pointed and evenly proportioned. His eyes are moist, bluish-black, very mobile, and very luminous. This is the description of the pure Greek." [80]

A 4th century text by the physician Adamantius, which is largely based on Polemon's work, includes a similar description of the Greeks. [81]

Ancient Rome

The Caribbean scholar Mervyn C. Alleyne states that the Romans used the term candidus , a neutral term for white, to refer to themselves. [82] Romans would also use the term albus , which referred to the physical phenomenon of whiteness, to refer to their skin colour. [83] [84] Vitruvius used candidus in his description for populations of northern Europe that "have huge bodies and are white in colour". [85] The Roman writer Julius Firmicus Maternus would contrast the Germaniae candidi (white Germans) with 'Ethiopians', while Pliny spoke of Northern Europeans having candida atque glacialis cutis or "white and frosty skins". [86] The Roman satirist Juvenal offensively contrasted white and black men, stating: "Let the straight-limbed man deride the one with deformed foot, let the white man deride the black African". [87] According to the Roman geographers Pomponius Mela and Pliny, a group of white Ethiopians (leukaethiopes), possibly a reference to lighter-skinned Berbers, inhabited the North African interior. [88] [89] The term candidus was later replaced during the Germanic invasion of Rome by the term blancus, which served a similar purpose, and which has survived in modern languages such as French blanc , Spanish blanco , Portuguese branco , and Italian bianco . [90] Like candidus, blancus, was a neutral term used for Caucasian peoples. [82]

1st century AD Pompeian fresco, showing Dido, enthroned, attended by a handmaiden (left), looking towards the personification of Africa (right). Dido throne MAN Napoli Inv8898.jpg
1st century AD Pompeian fresco, showing Dido, enthroned, attended by a handmaiden (left), looking towards the personification of Africa (right).

As with the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans saw whiteness as an important part of feminine beauty. [68] For example, in Virgil's Aeneid , Dido, the Phoenician queen of Carthage, and lover of Aeneas, is described as candida or "white". [82] Virgil also refers to the goddess Venus as having "snow white arms". [92] The Carthaginian poet Luxorius wrote disparagingly of the skin colour of Ethiopian women while praising the colour white as the ideal colour for women. [92]

References to skin colour appear in Roman literature beyond references to women. Being unable to tell the difference between a white person and a black person was a common Roman idiom, used metaphorically to establish a state of ignorance. [93] These idioms are attested in the writings of Cicero and Catullus. [93] In the second of his Satires, the Roman satirist Juvenal writes "let the straight-legged man laugh at the club-footed man, the white man (albus) at the black (aethiops)", [94] although many varying translations are possible. [95] [96] [97] [98] [99] In his fictional dialogue Hermotimus, the Hellenised Syrian satirist Lucian speculates on whether an isolated Ethiopian would assume out of hand that there are no "white or yellow" men on Earth. [100] [101] [102]

Several Roman authors, such as Tacitus and Suetonius, expressed concerns in their writings about Roman "blood purity" as Roman citizens from outside of Roman Italy increased in number. Neither author, however, suggested that the naturalisation of new citizens should stop, only that manumissions (freeing slaves) and grants of citizenship should be less frequent. Their concerns of blood purity did not match modern ideas of race or ethnicity, and had little to do with features such as skin colour or physical appearance. [103] Terms such as Aethiop, which Romans used for black people, carried no social implications, and though phenotype-related stereotypes certainly existed in Ancient Rome, inherited physical characteristics were typically not relevant to social status; [104] people who looked different from the typical Mediterranean populace, such as black people, were not excluded from any profession and there are no records of stigmas or biases against mixed race relationships. [105] The main dividing social differences in Ancient Rome were not based on physical features, but rather on differences in class or rank. Romans practised slavery extensively, but slaves in Ancient Rome were part of various different ethnic groups and were not enslaved because of their ethnic affiliation. [106] According to the English historian Emma Dench, it was "notoriously difficult to detect slaves by their appearance" in Ancient Rome. [103]

Late antiquity

In late antiquity, some early Christian writers began connecting the metaphorical goodness and morality associated in European culture with the colour white to the physical skin colour itself, while at the same time associating the negative concepts attached to the colour black with dark skin. [107] [108] For example, the writer Paulinus of Nola claimed that Ethiopians had been turned black due to committing vices. [107] Similarly Gregory of Nyssa believed that "Christ came into the world to make blacks white … Babylonians into Jerusalemites, the prostitute into a virgin, Ethiopians radiantly white." [107] When speaking of baptising an Ethiopian, Fulgentius of Ruspe said he saw the Ethiopian as one who was "not yet whitened by the grace of Christ." [107] According to a 7th century biography, Pope Gregory I bemoaned the presence of Anglo-Saxon child slaves in Rome who were "white of body and have blonde hair". [109] [86] In the 8th century, the English monk The Venerable Bede, generally associated the black skin of Ethiopians with "spiritual darkness" but at the same time rejected any idea that the colour differences between, as he termed it, "a black Ethiopian and a white Saxon" would affect their fates during the Last Judgement. [86]

The 6th century Byzantine scholar Procopius referred to various invading barbarian tribes as being white, such as the Gothic tribes who he claimed had "white bodies and fair hair" and the Hephthalites or "White Huns" who, according to him, had "white bodies and countenances". [110] [86] Indian scholars also referred to the Hephthalites as Sveta Huna (White Huns). [111] Hephthalites portrayed in the Sogdian art of the Afrasiab palace are shown as having pale or ruddy faces. [112]

China

A 1st century image of a soldier in a red uniform, part of the Sampul tapestry, found in north-western China. The figure is believed to represent a member of the Yuezhi. UrumqiWarrior (cropped).jpg
A 1st century image of a soldier in a red uniform, part of the Sampul tapestry, found in north-western China. The figure is believed to represent a member of the Yuezhi.

In pre-modern China, the Han Chinese used whiteness as a non-racial social category that included themselves while excluding many non-Chinese peoples. [115] While whiteness was used to identify and define Chinese people, Chinese culture did not exclusively apply the term to any single ethnicity, and other ethnic groups, such as Manchus and Europeans, could be described as white. [115] Other groups, however, such as Indonesians, and Malaysians, were referred to as "black". [115] Chinese culture also associated light skin with having a higher social status due to light complexions signifying "freedom from manual labour". [115]

Scholars of Ancient China also describe Indo-European-speaking peoples of north-western China, such as the Yuezhi, as having "white" or "reddish white" skin. [116] Similarly, the Wusun tribe are said to have had green eyes and red beards. [117]

Muslim world

Sclavinia, Germania, Gallia and Roma bringing gifts to Otto III, from Otto's Gospels, c. 1000. 4 Gift Bringers of Otto III.jpg
Sclavinia, Germania, Gallia and Roma bringing gifts to Otto III, from Otto's Gospels, c. 1000.

During and after the Middle Ages, the peoples of the Middle East used the term white to distinguish themselves from darker-skinned "others". [115] "White", "red", and "black" became ethnic identifiers with "black" signifying inferiority. [115] These colour terms became fixed after the initial Arab Conquests. [119] Whiteness in this era became a valued physical attribute, with a white complexion being associated with the social elite. [119]

Middle Easterners noted that Europeans were "excessively white" with "pale blue" eyes. [119] Muslim scholars of the Islamic Golden Age, such as Avicenna, described the northern tribes bordering the Muslim world as white; Avicenna writes: "The Slavs acquire whiteness / Until their Skins turn soft." [120] The Arab explorer Ahmad ibn Fadlan during his northern travels detailed the Rus' people of the Viking Age as being "blonde and ruddy" and "big men with white bodies." [121] [122] The medieval Muslim sociologist Ibn Khaldun noted that those north of the Arabic-speaking world typically didn't use the term white: [123]

The inhabitants of the north are not called by their color, because the people who established the conventional meanings of the words were themselves white. Thus whiteness was something usual and common to them, and they did not see anything sufficiently remarkable in it to cause them to use it as a specific term.

— Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah (1377) [124] [125]

The medieval Arab world used various terminology for people in reference to their skin colour with terms like al-bidan and al-abyad meaning "white people" and al-Sudan and Zanj meaning "black people". [126] [127] In general in the Arab world, the term "white" was used to refer to Arabs, Persians, Greeks, Turks, Slavs, and other peoples in the north. [128] According to historian Arnold J. Toynbee, Arab rulers of the Umayyad Caliphate would sometimes refer to Persians and Turkish subjects as "the ruddy people", implying their racial inferiority. [129] Despite this, some Islamic hagiographies say Muhammad, as well as other Abrahamic figures, had a "white or ruddy colour". [130]

The term "white" was also used within Koranic exegesis as part of the "Curse of Ham". According to the 9th century scholar, Ibn Qutaybah, the religious writer and son of a companion of Muhammad, Wahb ibn Munabbih, related an interpretation of the story of Noah that stated Noah's son Ham had been a white man, but was later cursed by God to have his skin and the skin of his descendants turned black. [131] As such Ham became the ancestor of all dark skinned people including Ethiopians, Nubians, Copts, and Berbers who were, according to other Islamic traditions related to the "Curse of Cannan", now also cursed to be bondsmen or slaves. [132]

White slavery

Slave-market in the town of Zabid in Yemen offered slaves of multiple races. Illustration from a 13th century book produced in Baghdad by al-Wasiti. Slaves Zadib Yemen 13th century BNF Paris.jpg
Slave-market in the town of Zabid in Yemen offered slaves of multiple races. Illustration from a 13th century book produced in Baghdad by al-Wasiti.

Different labels were used to categorise slaves in Islamic society, with white slaves being referred to as mamlūk ("owned") and blacks slaves referred to as abd ("slave") and white eunuchs referred to as jarādiyya ("locusts") and black eunuchs referred to as ghurābiyya ("ravens"). [134] According to the Arab writer Al-Jahiz, the majority of white eunuchs in medieval Basra were Slavs. [135] By the 10th and 11th centuries, during the era of slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate, white slaves from Spain (al-Andalus slave trade), Sicily, and the Balkans (Balkan slave trade) could be purchased in the Muslim slave markets of Damascus and Baghdad. [136] The Christian Arab intellectual Ibn Butlan of Baghdad wrote the first slave vade mecum, or handbook, in the 11th century, which recorded and described different ethnic and racial groups, dividing white slaves from black slaves and suggesting different tasks for each group based on their attributes. [137] Ibn Butlan suggested that white slaves, such as Turks and Slavs (saqaliba), should be used as soldiers while black slaves should be used as labourers, servants, and eunuchs. [138] Generally in the Arab world, white slaves came to be used to fill administrative and domestic positions while black slaves were used for rough labour. [139] According to Bernard Lewis, white slaves could also conceivably become "generals, provincial governors, sovereigns and founders of dynasties", while such positions were rarely bestowed upon black slaves. [139] Likewise, emancipated white slaves were offered more opportunities for social advancement in Arab society than emancipated black slaves. [140] The same limitation of opportunity applies to the emancipated slave. The emancipated white slave was free from any kind of restriction; the emancipated black slave was at most times and places rarely able to rise above the lowest levels. [140]

In medieval Southern Europe slaves came to be categorised based on colour with Christians using typical labels for Muslim slaves such as sarraceno blanco (white Saracen), sarracenno nigrium (black Saracen), and sarraceno lauram (Saracen of intermediate colour). [141] In 13th century Barcelona the majority of Muslim slaves in slavery in Spain listed were classified as blanche (white). [141] In 13th century Genoa slaves classified as albi (white) made up nearly half of the total recorded slave population. [141] Records show Provencal France would also distinguish between noir (black) and blanc (white) slaves. [141] In Islamic controlled Iberia (Al-Andalus) Muslims could own other Muslims as slaves during the era of slavery in al-Andalus, a practice usually banned within Islam, if the enslaved Muslims were either black or loro (of intermediate colour) but not if they were classified as white. [141] [142] Generally, in medieval Iberia and Italy, people were described as white, black, or of intermediate colour. [143]

Christendom

'The Luttrell Psalter', British Library MS 42130, fol. 82r, c. 1325-35. Richard-Saladin legendaerer Kampf vor Jaffa.jpg
'The Luttrell Psalter', British Library MS 42130, fol. 82r, c. 1325–35.
Konrad von Limpurg as a knight being armed by his lady. Codex Manesse, c. 1304-40. Konrad von Limpurg as a knight being armed by his lady, from Codex Manesse, 1305-15 (43356185121).jpg
Konrad von Limpurg as a knight being armed by his lady. Codex Manesse, c. 1304–40.

Medieval Christians seldom used "race" as a human category; the word emerged in 15th century Romance-language texts on animal husbandry, and writers tended instead to use words like gens and natio when classifying human groups. Medieval ideas about skin colour were complex. Dark skin – depicted in art using brown, black, blue, grey and sometimes purple hues – often signified negative moral and spiritual qualities distinct from physical appearance. Thus, the image of Saladin facing Richard I in the 14th century Luttrell Psalter depicts the Saracen with dark blue skin and a monstrous expression, even though the Muslims of the Levant at the time of the Third Crusade were predominantly light-skinned Mamluks. Christian theologians, for whom blackness represented sin and the devil, describe the newly baptised as "whitened" by the washing away of their sins. [144]

Female beauty

By the Late Middle Ages, the idealised, light-skinned features of high status figures in Gothic art signalled their moral purity, social rank, and political authority. The princesses of Chivalric romance and the noble ladies of courtly love literature similarly combined white skin with other positive social markers: slender proportions, graceful bearing, and expensive dress. [145]

The ideal of feminine beauty was formalised in the 12th century by Matthew of Vendôme in the Ars Versificatoria, which includes two descriptions Helen of Troy as a model. In the first example, her forehead is white as paper, the space between her eyes white and clear (a "milky way"), her colouring white and red (like rose and snow), and her teeth like ivory. In the second portrait, her forehead is like milk, teeth like ivory, neck like snow, legs fleshy (or white). [146]

Chaucer

According to the medievalist Candace Barrington:

White faces fill Chaucer's Canterbury Tales . Their ubiquity can be easy to ignore because they are not labeled as white. Aside from the occasional lady with the fair face—which could refer to her skin tone, her beauty, or both—skin color is noteworthy in Chaucer's tales not as a visible, essential bodily quality but as a changeable trait linked to such external factors as climate, work, and habit. [147]

Lower-class labourers ("churls") and drunkards typically have dark or ruddy faces and skin—for example, Perkyn Revelour ("brown and as berye") and the canon's yeoman (with a "leden hewe"). Dark skin is thus a consequence of "sin, sun, damnation, or putrefying flames", not a natural physical condition of certain groups of people. Chaucer's characters are all "by default, unrelentingly but invisibly white." [147]

See also

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Blond or blonde, also referred to as fair hair, is a human hair color characterized by low levels of eumelanin, the dark pigment. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some yellowish color. The color can be from the very pale blond to reddish "strawberry" blond or golden-brownish ("sandy") blond colors. Occasionally, the state of being blond, and specifically the occurrence of blond traits in a predominantly dark or colored population are referred to as blondism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Garamantes</span> Ancient North African population

The Garamantes were ancient peoples, who may have descended from Berber tribes, Toubou tribes, and Saharan pastoralists that settled in the Fezzan region by at least 1000 BC and established a civilization that flourished until its end in the late 7th century AD. The Garamantes first emerged as a major regional power in the mid-2nd century AD and established a kingdom that spanned roughly 180,000 km2 (70,000 sq mi) in the Fezzan region of southern Libya. Their growth and expansion was based on a complex and extensive qanat irrigation system, which supported a strong agricultural economy and a large population. They subsequently developed the first urban society in a major desert that was not centered on a river system; their largest town, Garama, had a population of around four thousand, with an additional six thousand living in surrounding suburban areas. At its pinnacle, the Garamantian kingdom established and maintained a "standard of living far superior to that of any other ancient Saharan society" and was composed of "brilliant farmers, resourceful engineers, and enterprising merchants who produced a remarkable civilization."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ahmose-Nefertari</span> Ancient Egyptian queen consort

Ahmose-Nefertari was the first Great Royal Wife of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. She was a daughter of Seqenenre Tao and Ahhotep I, and royal sister and wife to Ahmose I. Her son Amenhotep I became pharaoh and she may have served as his regent when he was young. Ahmose-Nefertari was deified after her death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Circassian beauty</span> Ethnic stereotype

The concept of Circassian beauty is an ethnic stereotype of the Circassian people. A fairly extensive literary history suggests that Circassian women were thought to be unusually attractive, spirited, smart, and elegant. Therefore, they were seen as mentally and physically desirable for men.

Identifying human races in terms of skin colour, at least as one among several physiological characteristics, has been common since antiquity. Such divisions appeared in early modern scholarship, usually dividing humankind into four or five categories, with colour-based labels: red, yellow, black, white, and sometimes brown. It was long recognized that the number of categories is arbitrary and subjective, and different ethnic groups were placed in different categories at different points in time. François Bernier (1684) doubted the validity of using skin color as a racial characteristic, and Charles Darwin (1871) emphasized the gradual differences between categories. Today there is broad agreement among scientists that typological conceptions of race have no scientific basis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Complexion</span> Skin color

Complexion in humans is the natural color, texture, and appearance of the skin, especially on the face.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Curse of Ham</span> Biblical curse imposed on Canaan

In the Book of Genesis, the curse of Ham is described as a curse which was imposed upon Ham's son Canaan by the patriarch Noah. It occurs in the context of Noah's drunkenness and it is provoked by a shameful act that was perpetrated by Noah's son Ham, who "saw the nakedness of his father". The exact nature of Ham's transgression and the reason Noah cursed Canaan when Ham had sinned have been debated for over 2,000 years.

The race and appearance of Jesus, widely accepted by researchers to be a Judean from Galilee, has been a topic of discussion since the days of early Christianity. Various theories about the race of Jesus have been proposed and debated. By the Middle Ages, a number of documents, generally of unknown or questionable origin, had been composed and were circulating with details of the appearance of Jesus. These documents are now mostly considered forgeries.

Brown is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a light to moderate brown complexion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aethiopia</span> Ancient Greek term for parts of Africa

Ancient Aethiopia, first appears as a geographical term in classical documents in reference to skin color of inhabitants in upper Nile of northern Sudan, areas south of the Sahara, and certain areas in Asia. Its earliest mention is in the works of Homer: twice in the Iliad, and three times in the Odyssey. The Greek historian Herodotus uses the appellation to refer to regions south of Egypt when describing "Aethiopians," indicating Nubia, not the modern nation of Ethiopia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face powder</span> Cosmetic product applied to the face

Face powder is a cosmetic product applied to the face to serve different functions, typically to beautify the face. Originating from ancient Egypt, face powder has had different social uses across cultures and in modern times, it is typically used to set makeup, brighten the skin and contour the face. Face powders generally come in two main types. One of which is loose powder, which is used to assist with oily skin in absorbing excess moisture and mattifying the face to reduce shininess. The other is pressed powder which conceals blemishes and maximises coverage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Egyptian race controversy</span> Question of the race of ancient Egyptians

The question of the race of the ancient Egyptians was raised historically as a product of the early racial concepts of the 18th and 19th centuries, and was linked to models of racial hierarchy primarily based on craniometry and anthropometry. A variety of views circulated about the racial identity of the Egyptians and the source of their culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White Aethiopians</span> Roman exonym

White Aethiopians is a term found in ancient Greco-Roman literature, which may have referred to various light-complexioned populations inhabiting the Aethiopia region of antiquity. The exonym is used by Pliny the Elder, and is also mentioned by Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy and Orosius. These authorities do not, however, agree on the geographical location of the White Aethiopians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minium (pigment)</span> Pigment

Minium, also known as red lead or red lead oxide, is a bright orange red pigment that was widely used in the Middle Ages for the decoration of manuscripts and for painting. Often mistaken for less poisonous cinnabar and vermillion, minium was one of the earliest pigments artificially prepared and is still in use today. It was made by roasting white lead pigment in the air; the white lead would gradually turn yellow, then into an orange lead tetroxide. Minium's color varied depending upon how long the mineral was roasted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black people in ancient Roman history</span> History of African people in the Roman Empire

In classical antiquity, Greek and Roman writers were acquainted with people of every skin tone from very pale to very dark (associated with populations from sub-Saharan Africa. People described with words meaning "black", or as Aethiopes, are occasionally mentioned throughout the Empire in surviving writings, and people with very dark skin tones and tightly-curled hair are depicted in various artistic modes. Other words for people with other skin tones were also used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethnicity of Cleopatra</span> Debate regarding the race of the Egyptian ruler

The ethnicity of Cleopatra VII, the last active Hellenistic ruler of the Macedonian-led Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, has caused debate in some circles. There is a general consensus among scholars that she was predominantly of Macedonian Greek ancestry and minorly of Iranian descent. Others, including some scholars and laymen, have speculated whether she may have had additional ancestries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trans-Saharan slave trade</span>

The trans-Saharan slave trade, also known as the Arab slave trade, was a slave trade in which slaves were mainly transported across the Sahara. Most were moved from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations; a small percentage went in the other direction.

Attitudes of medieval Arabs to Black people varied over time and individual attitude, but tended to be negative. Though the Qur'an expresses no racial prejudice, ethnocentric prejudice towards black people is widely evident among medieval Arabs, for a variety of reasons: the declining power of the Aksumite Empire; Arabs' extensive conquests and slave trade; the influence of Aristotelian ideas regarding slavery, which some Muslim philosophers directed towards Zanj; and the influence of Judeo-Christian ideas regarding divisions among humankind. On the other hand, the Afro-Arab author Al-Jahiz, himself having a Zanj grandfather, wrote a book entitled Superiority of the Blacks to the Whites, and explained why the Zanj were black in terms of environmental determinism in the "On the Zanj" chapter of The Essays.

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  14. ↑ Thavapalan, Shiyanthi (21 October 2019). The Meaning of Color in Ancient Mesopotamia. BRILL. pp. 69–70, 74. ISBN   978-90-04-41541-6. OCLC   1114270506. Arqu can also describe the yellow color of ochre...it is the sallow, unhealthy yellow, pale brown color...healthy faces are described as "ruddy" with sāmu (2.5.10).
  15. ↑ Thavapalan 2019, p. 259: two shades - "reddish" (samu) and "whitish" (pest).
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  17. 1 2 Thavapalan 2019, p. 139.
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  24. ↑ "The first are RETH, the second are AAMU, the third are NEHESU, and the fourth are THEMEHU. The RETH are Egyptians, the AAMU are dwellers in the deserts to the east and north-east of Egypt, the NEHESU are the Cushites, and the THEMEHU are the fair-skinned Libyans" Book of Gates, chapter VI (Archived 10 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine ), translated by E. A. Wallis Budge, 1905.
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  52. ↑ Witzel, Michael (25 October 2012). "chapter 14:Ṛgvedic history: poets, chieftains, and polities". In George Erdosy (ed.). The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. Walter de Gruyter. p. 325. ISBN   978-3-11-081643-3. OCLC   1055590401. while it would be easy to assume reference to skin color, this would go against the spirit of the hymns: for Vedic poets, black always signifies evil, and any other meaning would be secondary in these contexts
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  71. ↑ James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (December 2003 – January 2004), pp. 163 ff.
  72. ↑ Painter, Nell (2 February 2016). The History of White People. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. p.  1. ISBN   978-0-393-04934-3.
  73. ↑ Herodotus: Histories , 4.108.
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  76. ↑ Xenophanes of Colophon: Fragments, J. H. Lesher, University of Toronto Press, 2001, ISBN   0-8020-8508-3, p. 90.
  77. ↑ Hippocrates; Héraclite d'Éphèse (1923). William Henry Samuel Jones; Paul Potter; Wesley D. Smith (eds.). Hippocrates, Volume 1. Harvard University Press. pp. 125–126. ISBN   978-0-674-99162-0. OCLC   1004814805.
  78. ↑ Painter 2016, p. 10.
  79. ↑ Benjamin Isaac (31 October 2013). The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity. Princeton University Press. p. 158. ISBN   978-1-4008-4956-7. OCLC   1029799329. They are men sufficiently tall, broad-shouldered, straight, firm, their skin is white, they are fair … they have straight legs, shapely extremities, the size of their head is just right, their neck strong, their hair dark blonde, soft, and nicely thick, their face is square, their lips are thin, nose strait, their eyes melting, bright and vigorous, catching much light.
  80. ↑ Swain, Simon, ed. (2007). Seeing The Face, Seeing The Soul: Polemon's Physiognomy From Classical Antiquity To Medieval Islam. Oxford University Press. p. 427. ISBN   9780199291533.
  81. ↑ Swain, Simon, ed. (2007). Seeing The Face, Seeing The Soul: Polemon's Physiognomy From Classical Antiquity To Medieval Islam. Oxford University Press. p. 533. ISBN   9780199291533. (On the Greek appearance.) Any who have guarded the Hellenic and lonic race and kept it pure are sufficiently large men, rather broad, upright, strong, with a rather white colour, pale, having a moderate and rather firm mixture of flesh, straight legs, shapely extremities, a round head of medium size, a strong neck, rather pale and soft hair that curls gently, a square face, thin lips, a straight nose and moist, dark blue, fierce eyes with plenty of light in them; for the Hellenic race has the best eyes of all races.
  82. 1 2 3 Alleyne, Mervyn C. (2002). Construction and Representation of Race and Ethnicity in the Caribbean and the World. University of the West Indies Press. pp. 43–45. ISBN   9789766401146. OCLC   1001205856. Candidus ultimately came to express the neutral colour white...the Romans applied the term candidus to themselves to distinguish themselves racially from the darker peoples across the Mediterranean...This neutral colour term then came to be used in reference to Caucasian peoples. Blancus assumed the meanings of albus and candidus
  83. ↑ Alleyne 2002, p. 43:For white, there is in Latin on the one hand, albus, which, in the classical period, tended to refer to the physical phenomenon of whiteness.
  84. ↑ Kwesi Tsri (20 April 2016). Africans Are Not Black: The case for conceptual liberation. Routledge. pp. 27–28. ISBN   978-1-317-18409-6. the Romans differentiated between colour hues in their colour terminology in regard to albus (white), candidus (shining or glistening white) … "when Romans applied a skin colour descriptor to themselves it was albus
  85. ↑ Alleyne 2002, p. 44: Vitruvius's description of the Nordic peoples: sub septentrionibus nutriuntur gentes, immanibus corporibus, candidus coloribus ("there are people living in the northern regions who have huge bodies and are white in colour")
  86. 1 2 3 4 Rix, Robert (2014). The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination: Ethnicity, Legend, and Literature. Routledge. pp. 133–136. ISBN   978-1-317-58969-3. Thus the Ethiopian is contrasted with the Germaniae candida in the writings of Julius Firmicus Maternus; Pliny also has unnamed northerners with candida atque glacialis cutis (white and frosty skins)... the Byzantine scholar Procopius, in his sixth-century History of the Wars describes the Gothic nations in terms not very different from the characteristics emphasized in the anecdote; these northern tribes have "white bodies and fair hair"
  87. ↑ "Juvenal". binghamton.edu.
  88. ↑ van Wyk Smith, Malvern (1 July 2009). The First Ethiopians: The image of Africa and Africans in the early Mediterranean world. NYU Press. pp. 357–359, 371–372. ISBN   978-1-86814-834-9. According to Pliny's older contemporary, Pomponius Mela, the leukaethiopes or "white Ethiopians" were the more remote Berbers of the North African interior (1. 22-23; translated Romer 1998; Goldenberg, 2003, 123)... leukaethiopes or "white Ethiopians", were the lighter-skinned Berber nomads of inner North Africa
  89. ↑ Smith 2009, p. 66:In the Natural History, the corresponding section opens with an excursus on the "interior circuit of Africa," incorporating in its geographical catalogue "the Egyptian Libyans, and then the people called in Greek the White Ethiopians
  90. ↑ Alleyne 2002, p. 45:after the Germanic invasions of Italy from the north (beginning circa the 3rd century AD), that candidus and albus disappeared from spoken usage in favour of the Germanic word blancus (French blanc, Spanish blanco, Portuguese branco, Italian bianco). This neutral term came to be used in reference to Caucasian peoples
  91. ↑ David L. Balch (2008). Roman Domestic Art and Early House Churches. Mohr Siebeck. p. 208. ISBN   978-3-16-149383-6. OCLC   1001191118.
  92. 1 2 Goldenberg 2009, p. 85-87.
  93. 1 2 Keith R. Bradley (1 January 2012). Apuleius and Antonine Rome: Historical Essays. University of Toronto Press. p. 165. ISBN   978-1-4426-4420-5. OCLC   1091458234. To claim you did not know whether someone was white or black in order to express ignorance was proverbial at Rome, as classical textual commentators have commonly observed: Catullus for example writes to Caesar, Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi uelle placere, nec scere utrum sis albus an ater homo (93: I have no very great desire to make myself agreeable to you, Caesar, nor to know whether your complexion is black or white." cf. Quint.Inst. 11.1.38) Similarly Cicero addresses Antony in the Phillipics, referring to a man who had left him an inheritance: Et quidem uide quam te amarit is qui albus aterne fuerit ignoras (2.41:" He must indeed have loved you dearly, seeing that you do not even know if he was black or white). The terms are forceful suggesting a keen sensitivity to skin colour in Roman culture
  94. ↑ Juvenal (2004). Juvenal and Persius (in Latin and English). Loeb. Satire II line 23 'ego te ceventem, Sexte, verebor?' infamis Varillus ait, 'quo deterior te?' loripedem rectus derideat, Aethiopem albus' . . . 'Shall I be in awe of you, Sextus, when I see you wiggling your arse?' says the notorious Varillus. 'How am I worse than you? It should be the man who walks upright who mocks the man who limps, the white man who mocks the black.'
  95. ↑ Juvenal (7 March 1996). Susanna Braund; P. E. Easterling (eds.). Juvenal: Satires Book I, Book 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 126. ISBN   978-0-521-35667-1. OCLC   1001164729.
  96. ↑ Robert Earl Hood (1994). Begrimed and Black: Christian Traditions on Blacks and Blackness. Fortress Press. p. 40. ISBN   978-1-4514-1725-8. Let the straight-legged man laugh at the club-footed, the white man at the Ethiopian
  97. ↑ J. A. Rogers (1 January 2012). Nature Knows No Color-Line. Wesleyan University Press. p. 46. ISBN   978-0-8195-7551-7. OCLC   1036750773. Let the straight limbed man mock the bandy-legged, the white man sneer at the Ethiop.
  98. ↑ Marcus Jerkins (12 October 2021). Black Lives Matter to Jesus: The Salvation of Black Life and All Life in Luke and Acts. Fortress Press. p. 104. ISBN   978-1-5064-7463-2. OCLC   1263869024. It should be the man who walks upright who mocks the man who limps, the white man who mocks the black
  99. ↑ Melamed 2003, p. 63: Juvenal provide the loaded proverb: 'Whoever walks straight may mock the cripple, whoever is white-skinned may mock the black'
  100. ↑ Snowden 1983, p. 87.
  101. ↑ Luciano de Samosata; Lucian (of Samosata.); C. D. N. Costa (2005). C. D. N. Costa; Desmond Costa (eds.). Lucian: Selected Dialogues. OUP Oxford. p. 102. ISBN   978-0-19-925867-3. OCLC   1004617461.
  102. ↑ Lucian (of Samosata.) (1905). The Works of Lucian of Samosata: Complete with Exceptions Specified in the Preface, Volume 2. Clarendon Press. p. 58. OCLC   214350793.
  103. 1 2 Dench, Emma (2010). "Roman Identity". In Barchiesi, Alessandro; Scheidel, Walter (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Roman Studies. Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN   978-0-19-921152-4.
  104. ↑ Thompson, Lloyd (1993). "Roman Perceptions of Blacks". Electronic Antiquity: Communicating the Classics. 1 (4).
  105. ↑ Snowden, Frank M. (1997). "Misconceptions about African Blacks in the Ancient Mediterranean World: Specialists and Afrocentrists". Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics. 4 (3): 40–41, 50–51. JSTOR   20163634 – via JSTOR.
  106. ↑ Rubel, Alexander (28 May 2020). "chapter 1: What the Romans really meant when using the word 'Barbarian'. Some thoughts on 'Romans and Barbarians'". In Roxana-Gabriela Curcă; Alexander Rubel; Robin P. Symonds; Hans-Ulrich Voß (eds.). Rome and Barbaricum: Contributions to the Archaeology and History of Interaction in European Protohistory. Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. p. 11. ISBN   978-1-78969-104-7. OCLC   1157271751.
  107. 1 2 3 4 Alleyne 2002, p. 52-53.
  108. ↑ Rodriguez, Ruben Rosario (19 July 2008). Racism and God-talk: A Latino/a Perspective. NYU Press. p. 29. ISBN   978-0-8147-7610-0. OCLC   182529004.
  109. ↑ Kathy Lavezzo (2006). Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and English Community, 1000-1534. Cornell University Press. pp. 27–28. ISBN   978-0-8014-7309-8. OCLC   1022618111.
  110. ↑ Patrick Howarth (1995). Attila, King of the Huns: Man and Myth. Barnes & Noble Publishing. p. 26. ISBN   978-0-7607-0033-4. OCLC   1005499571.
  111. ↑ Dani, A.H.; Litvinsky, B.A.; Zamir Safi, M.H. (1999). "chapter 7: Eastern Kushans, Kidarites in Gandhara and Kashmir, and Later Hephthalites". In Ahmad Hasan Dani (ed.). History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume 3. Motilal Banarsidass Publ. p. 169. ISBN   9788120815407. OCLC   1000137121.
  112. ↑ Litvinsky, B.A. (1999). "chapter 6: The Hephthalite Empire". In Ahmad Hasan Dani (ed.). History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume 3. Motilal Banarsidass Publ. p. 136. ISBN   9788120815407. OCLC   1000137121.
  113. ↑ Yatsenko, Sergey A. (2012). "Yuezhi on Bactrian Embroidery from Textiles Found at Noyon uul, Mongolia" (PDF). The Silk Road. 10: 45–46.
  114. ↑ Francfort, Henri-Paul (1 January 2020). "Sur quelques vestiges et indices nouveaux de l'hellénisme dans les arts entre la Bactriane et le Gandhāra (130 av. J.-C.-100 apr. J.-C. environ)". Journal des Savants: 26–27, Fig.9.
  115. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Bonnett 2018, p. 9-11.
  116. ↑ Barber, E. J. W. (1999). The Mummies of Ürümchi. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 118–119. ISBN   978-0-393-32019-0. OCLC   1036773980. Other Chinese sources characterized the "Greater Yuezhi" as having "white" or "reddish white skin, another typically Caucasoid feature.
  117. ↑ So, Francis K. H. (2009). "In Search of the Lost Indo-Europeans in Chinese Dynastic History". In Findeisen, Raoul David; Isay, Gad C.; Katz-Goehr, Amira (eds.). At Home in Many Worlds: Reading, Writing and Translating from Chinese and Jewish Cultures: Essays in Honour of Irene Eber. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 134. ISBN   978-3447061353. Among the Barbarians in the Western Regions the look of Wusun is most unusual. Barbarians of today that have green eye and red beard and look like monkeys are the offspring of this people
  118. ↑ Raffensperger, Christian (12 March 2012). Reimagining Europe. Harvard University Press. p. 19. ISBN   978-0-674-06546-8. OCLC   1037937289.
  119. 1 2 3 Bonnett 2018, p. 12-14.
  120. ↑ Hardy, Paul-A. (15 April 2008). "Chapter 3 Medieval Muslim Scholars on Race". In Julie K. Ward; Tommy L. Lott (eds.). Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays. John Wiley & Sons. p. 49. ISBN   978-0-470-75204-3. OCLC   1039168694.
  121. ↑ Jones, Gwyn (2001). A History of the Vikings. Oxford University Press. p. 164. ISBN   978-0-19-280134-0. OCLC   1015516902.
  122. ↑ Cosman, Madeleine Pelner; Jones, Linda Gale (2009). Handbook to Life in the Medieval World, 3-Volume Set. Infobase Publishing. p. 237. ISBN   978-1-4381-0907-7. OCLC   1061403313.
  123. ↑ Smith 2009, p. 53.
  124. ↑ Ibn Khaldûn (31 March 2020). N. J. Dawood (ed.). The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History - Abridged Edition. Princeton University Press. pp. 60–61. ISBN   978-1-4008-6609-0. OCLC   1145619966.
  125. ↑ Scott Malcomson (4 October 2000). One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 143. ISBN   978-1-4299-3607-1. OCLC   872599966.
  126. ↑ Euben, Roxanne L. (1 July 2008). Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge. Princeton University Press. pp. 78–79. ISBN   978-1-4008-2749-7. OCLC   1162382282.
  127. ↑ Derek Nurse; Thomas Spear (10 June 2017). The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 8-15. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 29. ISBN   978-1-5128-2166-6. OCLC   1004881410.
  128. ↑ Lewis 1992, p. 26.
  129. ↑ Lewis 1992, p. 22.
  130. ↑ Lewis 1992, p. 36. The same association of light with good is shown in the Muslim hagiographic literature, which depicts the Prophet himself as of white or ruddy color. Similar descriptions are given of his wife `A'isha, his son-in-law `Ali and his descendants, and even his predecessors, the prophets Abraham, Moses, and Jesus..
  131. ↑ Lewis 1992, p. 123-125: Wahb ibn Munabbih said: Ham the son of Noah was a white man, with a handsome face and a fine figure, and Almighty God changed his color and the color of his descendants in response to his father's curse....because Shem covered his father's nakedness, his descendants would be prophets and nobles (sharif), while those of Ham would be bondsmen and bondswomen until the Day of Judgment..
  132. ↑ Lewis 1992, p. 123-125.
  133. ↑ John P. McKay; John Buckler; Patricia Buckley Ebrey; Bennett D. Hill (2003). John P. McKay (ed.). A History of World Societies (6 ed.). Houghton Mifflin. p. 256. ISBN   978-0-618-30195-9. OCLC   1077994664. Slave Market at Zabid, Yemen During the thirteenth century, this market offered slaves of many races, women and children for domestic purposes and harems, boys to be trained for military and administrative service.
  134. ↑ Lewis, Bernard (1992). Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. Oxford University Press. pp. 56–59. ISBN   978-0-19-505326-5. OCLC   1022745387.
  135. ↑ Murray Gordon (1989). Slavery in the Arab World. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 107. ISBN   978-0-941533-30-0. OCLC   1120917849.
  136. ↑ John P. McKay; Bennett D. Hill; John Buckler (1992). A History of World Societies: To 1715 (3 ed.). Houghton Mifflin Company. p. 281. ISBN   978-0-395-47294-1. OCLC   1273568072. In the slave markets of Damascus and Baghdad in the tenth and eleventh centuries, a buyer could select from white slaves from Spain, Sicily, and southeastern Europe...
  137. ↑ Lewis 1992, p. 48: Ibn Butlan, an eleventh-century Christian physician in Baghdad, wrote a sort of slave trader's vade mecum, which is the first of a series of such works.26 He reviews the range of slaves available in the markets of the Middle East, and considers the different kinds, black and white, male and female, classifying them according to their racial, ethnic, and regional origins and indicating which groups are best suited to which tasks. Similar advice on these matters is offered by a number of later writers.
  138. ↑ Lewis 1992, p. 56: Ibn Butlan, in his handbook, suggests a proper ethnic division of labor for both male and female slaves. As guards of persons and property, he recommends Indians and Nubians; as laborers, servants, and eunuchs, Zanj; as soldiers, Turks and Slavs.
  139. 1 2 Lewis 1992, pp. 56–59.
  140. 1 2 Lewis 1992, p. 60.
  141. 1 2 3 4 5 Forbes, Jack D. (1993). Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. University of Illinois Press. pp. 26–27. ISBN   978-0-252-06321-3. OCLC   1013305190.
  142. ↑ Forbes 1993, p. 107: in a Muslim-controlled village, a newly converted Muslim could possess a Muslim slave provided that the latter was black or loro and not white.
  143. ↑ Forbes 1993, p. 66: the late medieval period in Italy and the Iberian peninsula saw people being variously classified as albo, alvi, bianco, branco (white), new, nigri, negri, negro, negre, preto (black), and as of intermediate colors: lauro, loro, llor, berretini, rufo, pardo, olivastre, etc.
  144. ↑ Patton, Pamela A. (2020). "Blackness, Whiteness, and the Idea of Race in Medieval European Art". In Albin, Andrew; Erler, Mary C.; O'Donnell, Thomas; Paul, Nicholas L.; Rowe, Nina (eds.). Whose Middle Ages?: Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past. New York: Fordham University Press. pp. 155–159. doi:10.1515/9780823285594. ISBN   9780823285594.
  145. ↑ Patton 2019, p. 163–164.
  146. ↑ Brewer, D. S. (1955). "The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature, Especially 'Harley Lyrics', Chaucer, and Some Elizabethans". The Modern Language Review. 50 (3): 258. doi:10.2307/3719759. JSTOR   3719759 – via JSTOR.
  147. 1 2 Barrington, Candace (2012). "Dark Whiteness: Benjamin Brawley and Chaucer". In Eileen Joy, Myra Seaman; Masciandaro, Nicola (eds.). Dark Chaucer: An Assortment (PDF). Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books. p. 3.

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