Concerning these words of Al Fadl ibn Al Abbas ibn 'Utba ibn Abi Lahab, Ibn Mandour, of the 13th century AD, says in his well-known Arabic lexicon Lisan Al Arab, "He (Al Fadl ibn Al Abbas) says 'I am pure' because the color of the Arabs is dark". Ibn Mandour further says, "It is said that he (Al Fadl) meant that he is from the purest of the Arabs because most Arabs are black-skinned".
Ibn Berry, the well-known Arab grammarian of the 12th century AD, explains Al Fadl ibn Al Abbas's words by saying, "...He means by this that his genealogy is pure and that he is a pure Arab because the Arabs describe their color as black and they describe the color of the non-Arab Persians as red". Click below for original in Arabic.
Ibn Mandour further describes the pure Arabs by saying, "Lank hair is the kind of hair that most non-Arab Persians and Romans have while kinky hair is the kind of hair that most Arabs have". Click below for original in Arabic.
There you have it--testimony from the original Arabs themselves. They have told us that the pure Arabs are black-skinned with kinky hair. They have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that the true appearance of the pure Arabs is entirely different from what people today think that a pure Arab looks like. Does it make any sense to disregard what the original, pure Arabs said about the appearance of the pure Arabs?
