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Emperor Heliogabalus.
    Other races were of course known. The ancient Egyptians were closely
acquainted with their black southern neighbors and sometimes portray them,
in words or pictures, with characteristic Negroid features. But there is no
evidence that they regarded them as inferior for that reason. The much-cited
inscription of Pharaoh Sesostris III, in the nineteenth century B.C., barring, or
rather restricting, access by blacks to Egyptian territory, is a normal security precaution on a vulnerable frontier, where many wars had been fought. It is
no more a sign of racial prejudice than are numerous similar restrictions on
numerous other frontiers.' The Persians, Greeks, and later Romans had some
occasional contacts with China, and rather more with Ethiopia, which was a
known part of the civilized world even in biblical times. But these countries
were very remote, and contacts with them were few. Ethiopia and China were
both respected, and there is no real evidence in Jewish, Greek, or Roman
sources of lower esteem for darker skins or higher esteem for lighter complexions.' Nor were there slave races. Foreigners, especially if barbarians, were
enslavable. The ancients, like the rest of humanity, believed foreigners to be
inferior. Conquest confirmed that belief and, through the universal rule of
enslaving the conquered, provided it with practical application. Classical writers, from Aristotle onward, stated the general principle that there are races
suited by nature to slavery, but although there are occasional references to
this or that people as fitting this description, these are only passing examples
of wit or spite, in no sense amounting to any kind of scientific or philosophical
statement.'

    The advent of Islam created an entirely new situation in race relations. All
the ancient civilizations of the Middle East and of Asia had been local, or at
most regional. Even the Roman Empire, despite its relatively larger extent,
was essentially a Mediterranean society. Islam for the first time created a truly
universal civilization, extending from Southern Europe to Central Africa,
from the Atlantic Ocean to India and China. By conquest and by conversion,
the Muslims brought within the bounds of a single imperial system and a
common religious culture peoples as diverse as the Chinese, the Indians, the
peoples of the Middle East and North Africa, black Africans, and white
Europeans. Nor was this coming together of races limited to a single rule and
a single faith. The Muslim obligation of pilgrimage, which requires that every
adult Muslim, at least once in his lifetime, must go on a journey to the holy
places in Mecca and Medina, brought travelers from the remotest corners of
the Muslim world, covering vast distances, to join with their fellow believers
in common rites and rituals at the very center of the Islamic faith and world.
The pilgrimage, probably the most important factor of individual, personal
mobility in pre-modern history, combined with the better-known forces of
conquest, commerce, and concubinage to bring about a great meeting and
mixing of peoples from Asia, Europe, and Africa.
    At different times and places, Muslims have responded to the challenge of
racial encounter and cohabitation in a variety of ways. These responses are
reflected, in sometimes striking contrast, in both old and recent literature.
One view of Muslim racial attitudes, widely accepted in the modern West, is
expressed in a famous passage in Arnold Toynbee's Study of History, documented, like so much in that massive work, with a personal experience:
    For instance, the Primitive Arabs who were the ruling element in the Umayyad
Caliphate called themselves "the swarthy people," with a connotation of racial
superiority, and their Persian and Turkish subjects "the ruddy people," with a
connotation of racial inferiority: that is to say, they drew the same distinction that we draw between blondes and