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Abu Hilal al-Askari, Hasan b. Abd Allah b. Sahl (d. ca. 400/1010), was a poet, man of letters and philologist. He was born at the beginning of the 10th century in Askar Mukram in Ahwaz or Khuzistan. He was a pupil of the Abu Ahmad al-‘Askari and owed to him the bulk of his learning, as is proved by the numerous references in his writings. The latest known date of his life is the year 1005AD in which he finished dictating his Kitab al-Awa’il on the so-called inventors of arts etc. (Yakut, Irshdd, iii, 138). He died after 1010AD. He does not know very much about East Africa.

Taken from : Themes in medieval Arabic literature By Gustave Edmund Grunebaum, Dunning S. Wilson

Abu Hilal al Askari: Kitab as-Sina'atain al kitaba wa sir (Book of Style and Poetry)

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Taken from: Wikipedia I'dschaz

The science most suitable to study is, next to the knowledge of God, the science of the elaborate discourse (balaga) and the pure language (fasaha) by which the i'gaz (2) is recognized by God's book ... We know that men, if they do not strive for the science of artful language and disrespect the knowledge of the pure language, recognize the i'gaz (2) of the Koran not by the qualities with which God has distinguished him, as by the beauty of the word guidance, etc……but only that the Arabs are incapable of doing so. But what a shame for the legal scholar (faqih), whose example the others follow, for the Koran reciter, whose direction one obeys, for the tribal Arab and for the foreboding Quraysh, if only he can recognize the miracle of the holy book like a Zanji or a Nabataean, if he needs the same indirect evidence as a non-educated person.

Abu Hilal Al-Askari: Diwan al-Ma’ani (Anthological and Preceptistic) (d1005 AD)

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Taken from: Der Neger in der Bildersprache der arabischen Dichter By Manfred Ullmann

Vol I p194

(Feces balls) They were round, have black backs and resembled the testicles of the zanj, which shine under erect penises….

Vol I p276

Who loves the one who doesn't ………… but who loves a Negress is truly like one who shows you the way in the dark.

Vol I p313

The wine jug is tapped. So get up and you will see a zanj woman braiding a brace (around her ankle).

Vol II p11

I also warn against the wagons of the Tigris when its water-crafts are colored like sandalwood through the high tide and the small boats in the middle dance incessantly, like intoxicated zanj girls dancing.

Vol II 42

From vines that fluctuate under (the load of) grapes which resemble frizzy Zanj and Abyssinians.

Vol II p242

The Zanj advance against the Byzantines, and the Byzantines oppose the Zanj. How ready are they, these white ones marching towards the (black) ones.

Note: My reason for adding so much poetry is that it gives a less racist picture then the philosophers give.

Taken from: Africanism; Blacks in the Medieval Arab Imaginary by Nader Kadhem 2023

Hassan Bin Thabit (d.54 AH) describes their smell and shape: “When they pass by other people, their smell is like the smell of dogs wet by the rain, You won’t find human resemblance to Ham’s children, only male goats with fur on their shoulders.”

(1) Nabatean: were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Levant.

(2) They have the cleanest teeth of mankind because they have much saliva. This is repeated with variations by: Ibn Qutayba (880); Ibn Abd Rabbih (d940); Al-Jahiz (869); Abu Hilal Al-Askari (1005 AD); Ibn Butlan (1066); Abu Ubayd Al Bakri (1067); Al-Raghib al-Isfahani (1109); Al-Zamakhshari (d1144); Ibn al Jawzi (1200); At Tahqiq fi sira ar raqiq (1250); al-Abshihi (1450); Al Amsati al Hanafi (1478).

(3) i'gaz = I‘jaz or inimitability of the Quran is the doctrine which holds that the Quran has a miraculous quality, both in content and in form, that no human speech can match.