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The Name
of Allah Be Round About Us
Folklore from the Holy Land
The people of Palestine, Christians as well
as Muslims, believe in the existence of a race if beings of
preadamite origin, called by the general name of
"Jinn." Whilst the angels dwell in the heavens and
have various offices and forms differing according to their
respective abodes (those in the lowest heaven, for instance,
being shaped like cows; those in the second, like falcons; in
the third, like eagles; in the fourth, like horses, and so on),
the Jinn are said by the learned to be created out of the fire
of the "simûm" which they describe as a fire lacking
both heat and smoke.
They are said to dwell chiefly in or amongst
the Jebel Kâf, the range of mountains which surrounds the
earth. some of the Jinn are good Muslims, and do not injure
their human co-religionists, but the greater number of them are
unclean infidels who take up their abode in rivers, fountains,
cisterns, ruined buildings, baths, cellars, ovens, caves,
sewers, and latrines. Some of them choose as dwellings cracks in
the walls or under the door-steps or thresholds of inhabited
houses, so that it is very dangerous for people, especially
females, to sit on a door step in the evening when these night
-prowling evil spirits may do them grievous bodily injury.
The jinn are believed to be able to assume any
shape they please and to change it at pleasure. Among the
peasantry, there is current another story as to their origin. It
is that our mother Eve, on whom be peace, used to bring forth
forty children at a birth, But being unable to nurse more than
half that number, she picked out the twenty best ones and threw
the others away. She told Adam on each occasion that she had borne
only twenty; but he did not believe her.
Adam therefore asked Allah to let any children
she had thrown away live underground and go abroad at night when
all men sleep. Thus the Jinn came into being.
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The Jinn are envious of us men and women,
always on the watch for a chance to injure us; and unless we say,
"Bismillah," whenever we begin any work or take anything
out of our stores, they succeed in robbing us. There is, at the
present day, a man living at Aïn Kârim who has experienced this
to his cost. He has a silly, forward daughter, who, in spite of
frequent warnings from her parents and neighbors, will not invoke
the Name. he was a man of substance, and brought home provisions
in plenty, yet the blessing of Allah did not rest upon his
property.
At length, perplexed and discouraged, he had
recourse to a great sheikh, who asked, "whom have you in the
house?"
"My wife and daughter."
"Does your wife invoke the Name of
Allah?"
"I would not have married her if she had
not done so."
"Does your daughter also 'name'?"
"I regret to say she does not."
"Then," said the sheikh, "don't
let her touch anything about the house, and get rid of her at
once!"
The father acted on the sheikh's advice. And no
sooner had he disposed of his daughter in marriage than the Jinn
ceased to trouble him. But the bridegroom, till then a thriving
man, has not now enough money to buy oil to keep a lamp burning
through the night. [None but the poorest will sleep without a
night light.]
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Not only are the Jinn men and women like
ourselves, but they can, and sometimes do, intermarry with other
sons and daughters of Adam, often against the will of the latter,
when these have neglected to ask the protection of Allah. In proof
of this I will relate an incident that occurred some years ago.
There was a man of the village of El Isawìyeh,
in the valley north of the Mount of olives, who, going down to
reap his harvest in the neighborhood of Ushwah, near Artûf, was
not heard of for nine years. It was said he had been devoured by a
hyena. But in the end he reappeared and told his story. He was
sleeping one night on the threshing floor to protect his store of
dhurra when he was awakened about midnight by a sound of voices
drawing near. Supposing it to be the tax-gatherer and his
assistant "Khayâleh," he lay quite still for fear of
being beaten.
But it was a party of Jinn, and, as, at lying
down, he had neglected through weariness to invoke the protection
of Allah, so now, sudden fear kept him from using that simple
precaution, and left him at the mercy of the demons. he did not
realize who they were till it was too late and had become their
victim. All he knew at first was that a woman came and smote his
forehead, and the blow bereft him of all strength of will. She
made him follow her, and he obeyed blindly.
When they had gone some distance from the
threshing floor she told him she was his wife, and that, unless he
submitted to her desire, her brothers who had seen him follow her,
would kill him horribly. Soon afterwards her brothers came up,
when he saw that they were jinns. They told him he had become one
of themselves, and would thenceforth be invisible to the eyes of
men.
Nine years he belonged to the Jinn, and took
part in all their depredations, till one day, when they were lying
hid among some ruins, he noticed how his companions kept away from
one of the walls on which was a luxuriant growth of feyjan or rue,
and himself, out of curiosity went towards it. At a shriek from
his jinnìyeh of "Don't go near those plants!" he ran
and plucked whole handfuls from the wall. Then, looking roun, he
saw that the Jinn had vanished, and he was free to return to his
human family.
When the fellahìn, his neighbors, disbelieved
this story, he asked after a woman named "Ayesha," and
was told that her husband had repudiated her because she robbed
him and gave his goods to her brothers. There was no other
supposition that could account for the way things vanished from
his house. Thus, one day, he had filled a large "khâbieh"
or mudbuilt bin with barley, but when he opened it on the morrow
it was empty, and, in spite of his wife's protestations, he
believed her to be the thief.
The man who had been with the Jinn explained
that he had asked for the woman on purpose to prove her innocence
and his own truthfulness. he had been present when the barley was
carried off by the Jinn, who knew that the Divine Name was not
habitually called upon in that house. Other things that had been
missed from the village while he was a way had been carried off in
like manner.
Since that time everyone has been careful to
gather handfuls of the plant rue, and to keep it in his house. And
no good man will begin a piece of work without invoking Allah, the
Merciful, the Compassionate. And no respectable woman will take
even a handful of flour from its receptacle without likewise
calling on the Most High. Source:
Folklore of the Holy Land--Muslim,
Christian, and Jewish by J.E. Hanauer. Edited by Marmadeke Picktall.
London: Duckworth and Company, 1907, 1910.
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Africans in the Arabian Gulf—Well, one interesting
indicator of that is names. You have people who are
identifying themselves as affixed to tribes. They have
Bedouin tribal names, and in some ways this parallels the
way that, for example, a slave in the United States would
have the name of the family that owned him. Washington.
Jefferson. These are the names of African Americans today.
They reflect the fact that their origins were those
slave-holding families. You have similar relationships and
nomenclature in the Gulf, names that I heard and asked
people about, who were obviously of African stock. I'd say,
"This is obviously a Nejdi Tribal name, and yet you would
appear to be not have Bedouin origin, but of African origin,
or some combination." So he would say, "No, my family goes
back a long way as clients of that tribe.” “Clients”
denotes a range of relationships to a patriarchy that has
included slaves and indentured servants. So I'm certain
that that could have happened in the 19th century, but it
also could have happened much earlier as well. |
In general—and this is a broad
generalization—I think it is fair to say that in the Gulf, in Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait, a large number of African ethnics who are
nationals in those countries are lower on the socioeconomic ladder.
That said, there are notable exceptions, including senior people in
politics and government in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. When
you have conversations with Gulf nationals of African origin, they are
not necessarily acculturated to welcoming discussions of family
genealogy and African roots, or asking the sorts of questions that might
help situate their particular family history in the context of broader
histories of cultures and peoples in Africa. So it is not necessarily
common to find people who'll wax poetic on their family origin, and
their odyssey from Africa, and in some circles it's kind of a taboo
topic as well. People don't like to dwell on the slave history of the
country.
AfroPop
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Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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Slavery’s
Constitution:
From Revolution
to Ratification
(2009)
By David Waldstreicher
Taking on decades of received wisdom,
David Waldstreicher has written the
first book to recognize slavery’s place
at the heart of the U.S. Constitution.
Famously, the Constitution never
mentions slavery. And yet, of its
eighty-four clauses, six were directly
concerned with slaves and the interests
of their owners. Five other clauses had
implications for slavery that were
considered and debated by the delegates
to the 1787 Constitutional Convention
and the citizens of the states during
ratification. This “peculiar
institution” was not a moral blind spot
for America’s otherwise enlightened
framers, nor was it the expression of a
mere economic interest. Slavery was as
important to the making of the
Constitution as the Constitution was to
the survival of slavery.By
tracing slavery from before the
revolution, through the Constitution’s
framing, and into the public debate that
followed, Waldstreicher rigorously shows
that slavery was not only actively
discussed behind the closed and locked
doors of the Constitutional Convention,
but that it was also deftly woven into
the Constitution itself. |
For one thing, slavery was
central to the American economy, and since the
document set the stage for a national economy, the
Constitution could not avoid having implications for
slavery. Even more, since the government defined
sovereignty over individuals, as well as property in
them, discussion of sovereignty led directly to
debate over slavery’s place in the new republic.
Finding meaning in silences
that have long been ignored, Slavery’s Constitution
is a vital and sorely needed contribution to the
conversation about the origins, impact, and meaning
of our nation’s founding document.
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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Ataturk: Lessons in Leadership
from the Greatest General of the Ottoman
Empire
by Austin Bay
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a Muslim
visionary, revolutionary statesman, and
founder of the Republic of Turkey. The
West knows him best as the leading
Ottoman officer in World War I’s Battle
of Gallipoli—a defeat for the Allies,
and the Ottoman empire’s greatest
victory. Gaining fame as an exemplary
military officer, he went on to lead his
people in the Turkish War of
Independence, abolishing the Ottoman
Sultanate, emancipating women, and
adopting western dress. Deeply
influenced by the Enlightenment, Atatürk
sought to transform the empire into a
modern and secular nation-state, and
during his presidency, embarked upon a
program of impressive political,
economic, and cultural reforms.
Militarily and politically he excelled
at all levels of conflict, from the
tactical, through the operational, to
the strategic, and into the rarified
realm of grand strategy. His ability to
integrate the immediate with the
ultimate serves as an important lesson
for leaders engaged in the twenty-first
century’s great military struggles. He
became the only leader in history to
successfully turn a Muslim nation into a
Western parliamentary democracy and
secular state, leaving behind a legacy
of modernization and military and
political leadership. |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 3 November 2006
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