Ignaz Goldziher
[203] THE BEDOUINS OF THE ARAB DESERT do not have much respect for crafts and craftsmen. Among these it is the smith who is the subject of particular contempt.1 Burkhardt tells us about the 'Anaza bedouins that they consider the blacksmith's trade to be degrading and that the smiths among them are those Arabs who have immigrated from the Jawf into their territory. Nobody would marry his daughter to a ṣāni' (i.e. craftsman, smith); the latter can only marry among themselves or marry the daughters of the slaves of the 'Anaza.2 Many Arab tribes in Africa share this contempt for the blacksmith's trade.3
Ancient Arab literature abounds in traces of this attitude:
Indeed, the place where the dog eats is repulsive,
And the smith works in a truly low place.4
In satires by ancient Arab poets the objects of derision are commonly reproached with the fact that their ancestor worked with the bellows (kīr). Thus Umayya ibn Khalaf believed he could most effectively hurt the Medinan poet Ḥassān ibn Thābit, who occupies a place of honour in Muslim poetry for being the trumpet of the Prophet's fame and the poetical scourge of his enemies, by deriding him with the following epigram:
Who will carry a message to Hassan for me, a message that will
crawl as far as 'Ukāẓ?
Was not your father a blacksmith among us, by the stalls of the
wine-sellers, a man of no loyalty;
A Yemenite who was forever working the bellows and blowing
into the flames of the fire?5
[204] Ḥassān was a town dweller, and in his home farming and crafts were not despised trades. His countrymen, who were favourable towards the new religion, forever suffered the derision of Arabs of older family lineage6 who did not consider them as equals and put them on a par with the despised Nabaṭ.7 It is all the more remarkable, and also proof of the merely formulaic nature of this kind of derision, when we find that this same Ḥassān in turn reproaches his enemies with being "blacksmiths" and "working with bellows". He too thinks that he will most humiliate the family of the QurashT al-'Āṣ ibn al-Mughīra, who was commonly called "the stupidest man of the Quraysh", by spreading the following satire about him:
Sons of blacksmiths! When you pride yourselves on your ancestral
seat, you only boast about the bellows before the throne
of Ibn Junda',
Which your father built, even before he built his own home in
Hars. Now you should keep the exiled blacksmith a secret,
And throw from you the ashes of the bellows... .8
There are more instances where he calls the family of al-Mughīra "blacksmiths' slaves" ('abīdu quyūn) whose father "collects the ashes before the bellows":9
This is your trade that has been known since time immemorial, making arrows and tinkering.10
The poet al-Nābigha, in what is surely an apocryphal poem, is also said to have derided the king al-Nu'man, who was disfavourable towards him, by saying that he was the "heir of a ṣā'igh", a goldsmith, which he combines with the epithet of "coward".11 Philologists have found that this king's maternal grandfather was indeed a goldsmith in Fadak.12 Furthermore, the mu'allaqa poet 'Amr ibn Kulthūm uses this blot on the ancestry of this same king to deride his mother (the daughter of the goldsmith in Fadak):
Sulayma could not possibly expect there to be blacksmiths and mail-wrights13 in the palace of al-Khawarnaq!
And addressing her son, the king al-Nu'mān, he exclaims:
May God withdraw his favour from him who among us is closest
to shame, who is most degraded because of his [maternal]
uncle and weakest because of his father.
And the most worthy of an uncle who is working the bellows and
making earrings and women's jewels in Yathrib (Medina).14
It is to be assumed that when the poet shouted these slanderous words at the king, he was far away from the ruler's sphere of influence.
In early Islamic times the ideas and views of pagan times still held sway in the Arab poets' world of honour and shame. This is the reason why the "blacksmith" and the "bellows" do not disappear from their list of invective vocabulary, in which it is easy to demonstrate certain stereotypes. One of the most fruitful poetic occasions of early Umayyad times is the contest between the poets Jarīr and al-Farazdaq, in the course of which Jarīr accuses his opponent:
Your father was not allowed to hold the reins of a horse, but he
was allowed to work the bellows.15
That is, he was very far from being a noble warrior, and rather was only a common craftsman. This view was dominant in society in general at that time. In al-Kūfa a family from the Asad tribe, after one of whose members even a mosque (Simāk) was named, was a target for derision because one remote ancestor was a certain Hālik ibn 'Amr, who was said to have been an armourer.16 He is the eponymous hero of the trade; those who practise it are called a "Hāliki", a title that is difficult to explain.17
Kremer described in broad outlines the influences that ended the status of the crafts as trades for slaves, and led, during the further development of Islam, to their assuming a place in free society.18 To the factors mentioned by him must be added the influence of the religious view of the world that counterbalanced the contempt the pagan Arabs felt for the crafts. In Muslim tradition, crafts are even assigned to some kings: the biblical kings David and Solomon were famous mail-Wrights.19
Within this view of the world, however, other prejudices against certain trades soon developed. To begin with, professions would be classified in relation to the dignity associated with them. The opinion attributed to the caliph al-Walīd ibn 'Abd al Malik, for instance, expressed in a message to one of his governors, is most characteristic in this context:
You should put the weaver and the shoemaker on one rank, the cupper and the veterinarian on another one, the junk dealer and the money changer on another one, on yet another one the schoolteacher and the eunuch, and the slaver and Satan on the same rank.20
It would be possible to use several of the details mentioned in this ranking as starting points for manifold remarks on cultural history. However, this would lead us too far astray, although it would be very tempting to analyse, for instance, the low rank assigned to the teacher. This, however, is not the right place for such a discussion, as here we are dealing with the crafts. There are three among them that have been pointed out as being particularly degrading. "Three trades", we read further, "have always been pursued by only the lowest of men: weaving, bleeding and tanning".21 In one tradition, the cupper's earnings are mentioned in one breath with those of prostitutes [205] and with the cost of purchasing dogs (see also the collocation in Deuteronomy 23:19).22 "The Arabs [of the same tribe]", we find in another place, "are all equal; only the weaver and the cupper must not be considered the equals of their tribesmen".23
The obsolete terms of abuse "blacksmith" and "son of a blacksmith" are now replaced by new ones, also from the field of the crafts: "weaver, son of a weaver" (ḥā'ik ibn ḥā'ik).24 The Tamīmī eulogist Khālid ibn Ṣafwān, a contemporary of the first 'Abbāsid caliph, abuses the tribe of Banū Ḥārith ibn Ka'b as follows: "a people among whom you will not find anyone but cloak-weavers, leather-tanners and monkey-trainers".25 This last-named trade was a very common one in the second and third centuries AH,26 but it seems to have been known even at the first beginnings of Islam. Ḥassān calls his opponent Khālid ibn Usayd a "trained monkey" (kird mu'addab) in an epigram.27 Consequently we have to assume that at that time trained monkeys could be seen in Medina, otherwise the poet could not have used this image.
The weaver's trade was the object of a particular hatred. Among the Romans the weaver was also the prototype of the uncouth craftsman.28 Until the second century AH the Arabs considered weaving to be slaves' work,29 and female slaves were sometimes called "weaving girls" (ḥayyāka),30 While tanners and cuppers are despised because of the nature of their trade, weavers, on the other hand, are despised because of intellectual shortcomings associated with their trade: "Of the ten tenths of stupidity found in the world, you will find nine tenths among the weavers". When legend took over the history of the weavers' trade, it seemed natural to invent all manner of evil deeds as having been committed by weavers. The following sayings by 'Alī are quoted: "He who walks in the street with a weaver will lose his daily bread; he who talks to a weaver will be afflicted by the weaver's evil; he who visits a weaver's shop will find his body turning yellow". A listener asked 'Alī about the reasons for this warning, "for the weavers are our brothers". 'Alī said:
They have stolen the Prophet's sandals; they have urinated in the forecourt of the Ka'ba; they are the devil's own kin and followers of the Dajjāl (the antichrist). They have stolen the turban of Yaḥyā ibn Zakarīyā (John the Baptist), the knapsack of Khiḍr, and the weaving of Sarah; they have [even] stolen a fish from 'Ā'isha's oven. Mary once asked them to direct her, and they led her on the wrong path: so she cursed them so that God should make them the object of the people's scorn and send no blessing on their hands' work.31
However, there were some people who had freed themselves of similar prejudice and who respected honest trades in any shape. These were in particular those moralists who preached a morality free from any religious or social prejudice. Their views are translated by Abū l-'Atāhiya, a poet with Buddhist32 leanings and a contemporary of the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd in his words:
Truly, fear of God is glory and nobility—love for the world is
hardship and poverty;
If a pious man shows his fear of God in the right way, it does
not matter whether he is a weaver or a cupper.33
1 I have dealt in detail with this subject matter in my Mythos bei den Hebräern (Leipzig, 1876), 97-106; trans, as Mythology among the. Hebrews (London, 1877), 81-89. The data in the present publication should be seen as gleanings from the discussions there.
2 John Lewis Burckhardt, Voyages en Arable, trans. J.-B.-B. Eyriès (Paris, 1835), III, 47.
3 Gustav Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan (Berlin, 1879-81), I, 443-44.
4 A1-La'īn al-Minqarī in Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-'arab (Būlāq, AH, 1300-1308), XVII, 86 s.v. b-k-y.
5 Al-'Aynī, 'Umdat al-qārī (Istanbul, AH 1308-11), IV, 563.
6 See also my Muhammedanische Studien (Halle, 1888-90), I, 93.
7 See, e.g., Abū 1-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī(Būlāq, AH 1285), XIII, 120:5, nabat bi- Yathrib.
8 Ḥassān ibn Thābit, Dīwān (Tunis, AH 1281), G3 bottom.
9 Ibid., 96:1.
10 Ibid., 95:2.
11 Wilhelm Ahlwardt, ed., The Divans of the Six Ancient Arabic Poets (London, 1870), Nābigha App. 41:2.
12 Aghānī, IX, 169:2.
13 Massāj, "weaver"; in Arabic the word n-s-j is also used for the making of chain-mail and in this context it is probable that this is the intended meaning.
14 Aghānī, IX, 124.
15 A'bd al-Qādir al-Baghdādī, Khizanat al-adab (Būlāq, AH 1299), II, 468:3.
16 Al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān, ed. M.J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1866), 264.
17 Al-Huṭay'a, Dīwān, ed. Ignaz Goldziher in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 46 (1892), 518-19, n. on poem 29 v. 3 (separate edition, Leipzig 1893, 154).
18 Alfred von Kremer, Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalijen (Vienna, 1875-77), II, 183-86.
19 See al-Huṭay'a, Dīwān, on poem 11 v. 11 (110 in the separate edition). It is always suspicious if this is referred to in pre-Islamic poetry. This, in fact, happens frequently; see Wiener Zeitschrtft für die Kunde des Morgeniandes 3 (1889), 363.
20 Al-Raghib al-Iṣfahānī, Muḥāḍarāi at-udabā' (Cairo, AH 1287), I, 284.
21 The Babylonian Talmud, Qiddüshīn 82a, enumerates several dubious trades; the three mentioned here are among them.
22 Muslim, Ṣaḥīh (Cairo, AH 1283), IV, 41.
23 Al-Dhahabī, Mīzān ai-i'tidāl (Lucknow, AH 1301), II, 210, 250.
24 This is how al-Jāḥiẓ has Asli'ath ibn Qays, the brother-in-law of the caliph Abū Bakr, characterised. See Aghānī, XIV, 143:2; also al-Ṭabarī, Ta'rīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. M.J. de Goeje et al. (Leiden, 1879-1901), II, 1121:1.
25 Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Muḥādarāt al-uilabā', I, 215.
26 See Muhammedanische Studien, II, 164. See also al-Hamadānī, Maqāmāt (Beirat, 1889), 93, where a karrād, a monkey-trainer, entertains the audience.
27 Dīwān, 25:5.
28 Petroruus Arbiter, Cena trimalchionis, trans, with commentary by Ludwig Friedlander (Leipzig, 1891), 211.
29 Ghulām ḥā'ik: Aghānī, IV, 174:4. See also al-'abd al-ḥā'ik in al-Ṭabarī, Ta'rīkh, II, 245:15.
30 See, e.g., Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-'arab, XVII, 42 bottom s.v. r-'-n.
31 Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, Muḥāḍarāt al-udabā', I, 284.
32 Ignaz Goldziher, "Ṣâliḥ b. 'Abd-al-Ḳuddûs und das Zindîḳthum während der Regierung des Chalifen al-Mahdî", in E. Delmar Morgan, ed., Transactions of the Ninth International Congress of Ortentalista (London 1893), II, 114.
33 Abū l-'Atāhiya, Dīwān (Beirut, 1886), 243:5; Aghānī, III, 127pu: wa-in ḥāka aw ḥajama.