Whether or not the rabbinic tradition of Canaanite emigration was misunder- stood, there is good reason to think that the Zanj and Kushytes were believed to be descended from the Canaanites. In Islamic sources Canaan is commonly named as the ancestor of various black African peoples. Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 730) says that the black African Nubians, Zanj, and Zaghawa descend from Canaan, and that “the descendants of Kush and Canaan are the races of the Sūdaˉn: the Nūba, the Zanj, the Qazaˉn, the Zaghaˉwa, the Habasha, the Qibţ and the Barbar.” . Ibn ʿAbd al-Hakam (9th century) states that Canaan is the father of the Blacks . (sūdaˉn) and the Abyssinians. Yaʿqūbī (d. 897): “The posterity of Kush ben Ham and Canaan ben Ham are the Nuba, the Zanj, and the Habasha.” Maqdisī (10th . century) says that Canaan is the father of, among several African peoples, “the Sūdaˉn [and] the Nūba.” The Akhbaˉr al-zamaˉn (10th or 11th century):
“Among the children of Canaan are the Nabīt, Nabīt signifies ‘black’.... Among the children .. of Sūdaˉn, son of Canaan, are ... the Zanj.” The Book of the Zanj states that the Nūba, the Habash, and the Zanj are the descendants of Canaan.
Other Muslim sources relate Canaan specifically to Kush either as father and son or son and father. So Maqrīzī (d. 1442): “The Nubians are descended from Nuba son of Kush son of Canaan son of Ham.” Tabarī quotes Ibn Masʿūd (10th century) and “some of the companions of the Prophet” to say that Canaan was the son of Kush. Tabarī himself says several times that Kush was the son of Canaan as . does Ibn Saʿd (d. 845) and Qazwīnī (d. 1283). Masʿūdī (d. 956) refers to Kush as the son of Canaan, or as the great-grandfather of Canaan. Kaʿb al-Ahbar (a Jewish . convert to Islam, d. ca. 652) has Canaan as the son of Kush, as also Dimashqī (d. 1327). Ibn Hawqal (10th century) makes Nimrod, the biblical son of Kush, a son of Canaan.
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The tradition, then, that black Africans were directly related to, and more specifically descendants of, Canaan was very well established in the Muslim world.
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Canaan was very well established in the Muslim world. It is not, therefore, surprising that Halakhot Pesukot and Halakhot Gedolot, authored within that world, reflect this view by listing the Zanj with the Canaanite peoples. Their grouping together of the Zanj with the Canaanites is not due merely to a taxonomic classification of prohibited marriages but reflects a perceived genealogical relationship. Maimonides did not group Kushytes with Canaanites but his reason for permitting marriage with the Kushytes—because “Sennacherib had commingled all peoples”—implies a belief that the Kushytes descended from peoples who were biblically prohibited. Since there was such a belief in the surrounding Muslim world, i.e. that the Kushytes descended from the prohibited Canaanites, Maimonides’ reference to the Kushytes apparently reflects, and counters, that belief. But, as opposed to the Halakhot, by grouping the Kushytes with other peoples (Edomites, Egyptians, Ammonites, and Moabites) Maimonides did not mean to imply a genealogical relationship with them any more than he wished to imply a genealogical relationship between them and “any other nation,” who are also grouped with these four peoples. The placement of the law regarding the Kushytes within the organization of chapter 12 of Mishneh Torah, ‘Issure biʾah is based on other than genealogical principles.
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While these h . adiths are spuriously attributed to Muh . ammad, they do reflect the attitudes of the time they were written, as does Masʿūdī’s (10th century) stricture “Do not intermarry with the sons of Ham.” Particularly relevant, because of the time and place of its author, is Jah . iz . of Basra’s (d. 868/9) argument against the prevailing custom ˉ of not marrying Black women. 66 No doubt, racist sentiment existed among the Jews just as among the Muslims. It is true that there are a number of references, some certain and some speculative, to the acceptance of black African converts to Judaism (not necessarily from slave manumissions) before, during, and after this period.
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To return then to the question posed at the beginning of this article, the rejected prohibition of marriage with the black African Zanj, as reflected in Halakhot Gedolot and Halakhot Pesukot and the similar rejected prohibition of marriage with Kushytes in Mishneh Torah, may be the result of both the belief that black Africans descended from the Canaanites, and the suspicion that the Black may be, or may be descended from, an unemancipated slave.