That the full-blooded Arabs, in whom racial feeling greatly outweighed the religious sense, were very far from sharing the views embodied in these and similar traditions is abundantly shown by Goldziher, who cites many facts and passages which indicate their contempt for the foreign Mawálí, and in particular their disapproval of marriages between Arabs (especially Arab women) and non-Arabs.* A precisely similar phenomenon is presented at the present day by the English in India, who are no more disposed to accord social equality to a Christian than to a non-Christian native, but rather the contrary; indeed, the comparison here is on the whole to the advantage of Islám, where at least the professedly pious steadily opposed this dominant racial prejudice in a way very rare amongst our missionaries—a fact which, without doubt, accounts for their slender success in most parts of Asia.
With the fall of the Umayyads and the rise of the “Persian and Khurásánian” dynasty of the 'Abbásids* there came true, as has been already sufficiently indicated, part at least of Naṣr b. Sayyár's warning to his master Marwán “the Ass”:—
Fa-firrí 'an riḥáliki, thumma qúlí
'Ala'l-Islámi wa'l-'Arabi 's-salámu!
“Flee from thine abode, and bid farewell to Islám and the Arabs!”
There now appears on the scene a definite party, the Shu'úbiyya, or “partisans of the Gentiles,”* who, beginning with the contention that all Muslims were equal, finished in some cases by declaring the Arabs inferior to many other races. “Already under the Caliph Abú Ja'far al-Manṣúr,” says Goldziher (op. cit., p. 148), “we are witnesses of how the Arab waits vainly for entrance before the Caliph's Gate, while men of Khurásán freely go in and out through it, and mock the rude Arab.” The poet Abú Tammám († A.D. 845-46) was rebuked by the Wazír, because he had compared the Caliph to Ḥátim of the tribe of Ṭayy and other personages in whom the Arabs gloried, with the words, “Dost thou compare the Commander of the Faithful with these barbarous Arabs?”
* Of these Shu'úbiyya each one vaunted particularly the claims
to distinction of his own nationality, whether Syrian, Naba-
hospitable,
Comparable to Khusraw or Shápúr, and to Hurmuzán in renown
and consideration;
Lions of the war-hosts, when they rushed forth on the day of
battle.
They disheartened the Kings of the Turks and Greeks, they stalked
in heavy coats of mail
As ravenous lions stalk forth.
Then, if thou askest, wilt thou learn that we are descended from
a race which excels all others.”
Such boasts on the part of the Persian Mawálí were gall
and wormwood to the Arab party, who would fain have
enjoyed a monopoly of this sort of self-glorification; and,
when they could do no more, they replied by such verses as
these:—*
“God so ordained it that I knew you ere Fortune smiled upon you,
when ye still sat in the Haymarket,
But not a year had elapsed ere I saw you strutting about in silk
and brocade and samite.
Then your women sat in the sun and moaned under the water-
wheels in harmony with the turtle-doves:
Now they trail skirts of flowered silk from the looms of 'Iráq, and
all kinds of silk stuffs from Dakn and Ṭárún.
They have already forgotten how but a little while since they
broke Ḥalání-stones in the quarries, and how they carried
bundles of moss in the skirts of their frocks.
But when they had grown rich, then spoke they with impudent
falsehood, ‘We are the noble ones, the sons of the Dihqáns.’