Black Knights: Arabic Epic and the Making of Medieval Race [Hardcover]

A new account of racial logics in premodern Islamic literature.
 
InBlack 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, racialized 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.Rachel Schineis assistant professor of Arabic and history at the University of Maryland.Introduction

Part One: Making Race
1. Origin Stories of the Black-Arab Hero
2. Conceiving ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
3. The (Popular) Science of Difference

Part Two: Race through Time
4. The Past
5. The Present

Part Three: Race through Space
6. Venturing Abroad
7. Returning Home

Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

Schines originality as a storyteller extends to her scholarship proper:Black Knightsreads excellently. Despite its theoretical density, the book reconciles an impressive abundance of scholarly conversations held across several disciplines into a coherent discourse sustained over 300-plus pages.Black Knightsbenefits many readers, especially comparatists working in ethnic studies or medieval romances. As a tour de force of scholarly intervention, it providlS8