Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam: Select Bibliography

Compiled by Dr. Wesley Muhammad, 2011

This is just a small bibliography for those seeking to research the subject on their own. This is a starter's bibliography and makes no presumptions of thoroughness. I have, for example, excluded here most relevent non-English sources in primary (e.g. Arabic) and secondary (e.g. German and French) languages. 

I. Afrabia and the Black Arabs

Al-Mansur, Khalid Abdullah Tariq. Seven African Arabian Wonders of the World: The Black Man’s Guide to the Middle East (n.p.: First African Arabian Press, 1991).

Anati, Emmanuel. Rock-Art in Central Arabia. Vol 1: The “Oval-Headed” People of Arabia (Louvain and Leuven, 1968)

Baldwin, John D. Pre-Historic Nations  (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1869).

Brace, C. Loring et al, “The questionable contribution of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age to European craniofacial form,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 103 (2006): 242-247.

Clapp, Nicholas. The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands (Boston and New York: Mariner Books, 1999)

del Olmo Lete, Gregorio. Questions of Semitic Linguistics. Root and Lexeme: The History of Research (Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Presst, 2008).

Diankonoff, Igor M. “The Earliest Semitic Society,” Journal of Semitic Studies 43 (1998): 209-219.

Faraclas, Nicholas. “They Came Before the Egyptians: Linguistic Evidence for the African Roots of Semitic Languages,” in Silvia Federici (ed.), Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and Its “Others” (Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger, 1995) 175-96.

Field, Henry. “Ancient and Modern Inhabitants of Arabia,” The Open Court 46 (1932): 847-869.

Goldenberg, David M. The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)

Houston, Drusilla Dunjee. Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire (Baltimore: Black Classic Press Reprint, 1985)

Mazrui, Ali A. Euro-Jews and Afro-Arabs: The Great Semitic Divergence in World History (Lanham: University Press of America, 2008).

Meeks, Dimitri. “Locating Punt,” in David O’Connor and Stephen Quirke (edd.), Mysterious Lands (London: UCL Press, 2003) 53-80.

Petraglia, Michael D. “The Lower Paleolithic of the Arabian Peninsula: Occupations, Adaptations, and Dispersals,” Journal of World History 17 (June 2003): 173ff.

Petraglia, Michael D. and Jeffrey I. Rose (edd.). The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia: Paleoenvironments, Prehistory and Genetics (Springer, 2009).

Rashidi, Runoko. “Africans in Early Asian Civilizations: A Historical Overview,” in Runoko Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertima (ed.), African Presence in Early Asia (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999).

Retsö, Jan. The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).

Rice, Michael. The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).

Seligman, C.G. “The Physical Characters of the Arabs,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 47 (1917): 214-237.

Thomas, Bertram. “Racial Origin of the Arabs,” in idem, The Arabs: The life-story of a People who have left their deep impress on the world (London: Thorton Butterworth Ltd., 1937) 353-359.

Tosi, Maurizio. “The Emerging Picture of Prehistoric Arabia,” Annual Review of Anthropology 15 (1986): 461-490.

Van der Meulen, D. “Into Burning Hadhramaut” The National Geographic Magazine 62 (1932): 393-421.

II. Pre-Qur’anic Islam

Al-Udhari, Abdullah. The Arab Creation Myth (Prague: Archangel, 1997).

Baldick, Julian. Black God: The Afroasiatic Roots of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Religions (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997).

Cauvin, Jacques. The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Daum, Werner. Ursemitische Religion (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1985).

Kister, M.J. “Labbayka, Allahumma, Labbayka...On a monotheistic aspect of a Jahiliyya practice,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 2 (1980):33-49.

Idem. “ ‘A Bag of Meat’: A Study of an Early Hadith’” BSOAS 33 (1970): 267-275.

LaSor, William Sanford. “Proto-Semitic: Is the Concept No Longer Valid?” MAARAV 5-6 (Spring, 1990): 189-205. 

Lewy, Hildegard. “Origin and Significance of the Mâgên Dâwîd: A Comparative Study in the Ancient Religions of Jerusalem and Mecca,” Archiv Orientalni 18 (1950): 330-365.

Oldenburg, Ulf. “Above the Stars of El: El in Ancient South Arabic Religion,” ZAW 82 (1970): 195ff.

Rubin, Uri. “Hanifiyya and Ka’ba: An inquiry into the Arabian pre-Islamic background of din Ibrahim,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 13 (1990): 85-111.

Ryckmans, J. „Notes sur le rôle du taureau dans la religion sud-arabe,“ in Melanges D’Islamologie dédiés à la mémoire de A. Abel par ses collègue, ses élèves et ses amis, Volume II (Brussels: Publication du Centre pour l’Etude des Problèmes du Monde Musulman Contemporain, 1977) 355-373.

Teixidor, Javier. The Pagan God: Popular Religion in the Greco-Roman Near East (Princeton: Princeton University Press , 1977).

Winnet, F. “Allah Before Islam,” The Moslem World 28 (1938): 239-248.

III. The African Origins of Islam

Al-Jahiz, Fakhr al-sudan ala al-bidan “The Boast of the Blacks Over the Whites,” translated by T. Khalidi in Islamic Quarterly 25 (1981): 23ff.

ben-Jochannan, Yosef A.A. African Origins of the Major ‘Western Religions’ (1970; Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1991).

Berry, Tariq. The Unknown Arabs: Clear, Definitive Proof of the Dark Complexion of the Original Arabs and the Arab Origin of the so-called African Americans (Morocco, 2002). 

Idem. “A True Description of the Prophet Mohamed's Family (SAWS),” http://savethetruearabs.blogspot.com/2009/08/true-description-of-prophet-mohameds_26.html. Accessed October 22, 2009.

Bilal, Rafiq and Thomas Goodwin. Egyptian Sacred Science in Islam: The Sacred Science of Ancient Egypt as Revealed in Al-Islam (1987). 

Chandler, Wayne B. “Ebony and Bronz: Race and Ethnicity in Early Arabia and the Islamic World,” in Runoko Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertima (ed.), African Presence in Early Asia (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999).

Chinyelu, Mamadou. “Africans in the Birth and Spread of Islam,” in Ivan Van Sertima (ed.), Golden Age of the Moor (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993).

Muhammad, Wesley. Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam (Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2009)

IDEm. Anyone who says that the Prophet is black should be killed”: The De-Arabization of Islam and the Transfiguration of Muhammad in Islamic Tradition @ http://drwesleywilliams.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Muhammad_Article.170121832.pdf

IDEM. “Prophet Muhammad and the Black Arabs: The Witness of Pre-Modern Chinese Sources,” @ http://drwesleywilliams.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Muhammad_Black_Arabs_China_Site.187112134.pdf

Reynolds (Marniche), Dana. “The African Heritage & Ethnohistory of the Moors,” in Ivan van Sertima, Golden Age of the Moor (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992).

Idem. “Afro-Arabian Origins of the Early Yemenites and their Conquest and Settlement of Spain” @ http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/afro-arabian-origins-of-the-early-yemenites-and-their-conquest-and-settlement-of-spain-dana-marniche/ accessed October 23, 2009.

IV. The Aryanization of Islam

Agha, Saleh Said. The Revolution Which Toppled the Umayads: Neither Arab nor ‘Abbāsid (Leiden: Brill, 2003).

Boratav, Pertev N. and W. Eberhard. “The Negro in Turkish Folklore.” Journal of American Folklore 64 (1951): 83-88.

Bulliet, Richard W. Islam: The View From the Edge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

Drory, Rina. “The Abbasid Construction of the Jahiliyya: Cultural Authority in the Making.” Studia Islamica 83 (1996): 33-49.

Modi, Jivanji Jamshedji. “The Physical Character of the Arabs: Their Relations with Ancient Persians” Anthropological Society of Bombay 7 [1919]: 724-68.

Mottahedeh, Roy P. “The Shu’ubiyah Controversy and the Social History of Early Islamic Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (1976): 161-182.

Southgate, Minoo. “The Negative Images of Blacks in Some Medieval Iranian Writings.” Iranian Studies 17 (1984): 3-35.

V. The Historicity of Prophet Muhammad and Early Islam

Constantelos, Demetrios. “The Moslem Conquests of the Near East as Revealed in the Greek Sources of the Seventh and the Eighth Centuries.” Byzantion 42 (1973): 325-357.

Hagen, Cottfried. “The Imagined and the Historical Muhammad,” JAOS 129 (2009): 97-111.

Crone, Patricia. “What Do we actually know about Muhammad.” Open Democracy October 06, 2008.

Görke, Andreas and Gregor Schoeler. “Reconstructing the Earliest sīra texts: the Hiğra in the Corpus of ‘Urwa b. al-Zubayr.” Islam 82 (2005):209-220.

Griffith, Sidney H. “Muhammad and the Monk Bahîrâ: Reflections on a Syriac and Arabic Text from Early Abbasid Times,” Oriens Christianus 79 (1995): 146-174.

Hoyland, Robert G. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton, 1997).

Idem. “The Earliest Christian Writings on Muhammad: An Appraisal,” in H. Motzki (ed.), The Biography of Muhammad (Leiden, 2000).

Johns, Jeremy. “Archaeology and the History of Early Islam: The First Seventy Years,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46 (2003): 411-436.

Kaegi, Walter Emil. “Initial Byzantine Reactions to the Arab Conquest.” Church History 38:2 (1969): 139-149.

Hugh Kennedy, The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2007).

Muhammad, Wesley. God’s Black Prophet’s: Deconstructing the Myth of the White Muhammad of Arabia and the Jesus of Jerusalem (Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2010).

 Schoeler, Gregor. The Biography of Muhammad: Nature and Authenticity (Routledge Studies in Classical Islam, 2010). 

Whelan, Estelle. “Forgotten Witness: Evidence for the Early Codification of the Qur’an,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 118 (1998):1-14.

VI. Islam and Africa

Al-bili, uthman sayyid ahmad ismail. Some Aspects of Islam in Africa (Reading: Ithica Press, 2008).

Azumah, John Alembillah. The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001)

Brett, Michael. “The Spread of Islam in Egypt and North Africa,” in Michael Brett (ed.) Northern Africa: Islam and Modernization (London: Frank Cass, 1973).

Diop, Cheikh Anta. Precolonial Black Africa: A Comparative Study of the Political and Social Systems of Europe and Black Africa, From Antiquity to the Formation of Modern States (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1987)

Drake, St Clair. Black Folk Here and There: An Essay in History and Anthropology, 2 vols. (Los Angeles: University of California Center for Afro-American Studies, 1991 [1987] ). Vol. I.

Hrbek I (ed.), UNESCO General History of Africa, III: Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century (Abridged Edition; Paris, UNESCO, 1992).

Lapidus, Ira M. “The conversion of Egypt to Islam,” Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972): 248-261.

Levtzion, Nehemia and Randall L. Pouwels, “Patterns of Islamization and Varieties of Religious Experience Among Muslims of Africa,” in Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels (edd.), The History of Islam in Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000).

Segal, Ronald. Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001).