Overview

A new account of racial logics in premodern Islamic literature. In Black Knights, Rachel Schine reveals how the Arabic-speaking world developed a different form of racial knowledge than their European neighbors during the Middle Ages. Unlike in European vernaculars, Arabic-language ideas about ethnic difference emerged from conversations extending beyond the Mediterranean, from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. In these discourses, Schine argues, Blackness became central to ideas about a global, ethnically inclusive Muslim world. Schine traces the emergence of these new racial logics through popular Islamic epics, drawing on legal, medical, and religious literatures from the period to excavate a diverse and ever-changing conception of Blackness and race. The result is a theoretically nuanced case for the existence and malleability of racial logics in premodern Islamic contexts across a variety of social and literary formations.

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9780226836164

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Reviews

“Elegant, complex, and original, Black Knights analyzes tropes of racialized blackness in popular epics to break new ground in Arabic literary studies. By drawing out the humanity of literary characters, medieval storytellers, and nonelite audiences, Schine shows how the racial logics embedded in these tales form an untapped archive of premodern social life.” -- Kristina Richardson, University of Virginia “Schine’s Black Knights builds on an impressive range of scholarship to present the reader with a carefully nuanced discussion of the meanings of race in premodern Arabic popular epics that both educates and enthralls. This book follows the makings of race through its relationship to gender, natural philosophy, and faith to expose the concept’s contingency but also its centrality and productivity to our understanding of Arabic culture. This work will be a touchstone for future scholars working on race more broadly, especially in the context of epic narratives.” -- Justin Stearns, New York University, Abu Dhabi “Through close, supple analyses of popular Arab-Islamic heroic epics, Schine expertly shows how blackness, both symbolic and real, is put to dynamic use. Her nuanced reading of female characters, in particular, shows how racialized and othered subjects benefit from inclusion in the Arab-Islamic order. Black Knights is indispensable for any grounded and informed understanding of the history of blackness and racialization in premodern Islam and in the medieval world.” -- Shawkat M. Toorawa, Yale University

Author Information

Rachel Schine is assistant professor of Arabic and history at the University of Maryland.

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