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wa- nasabuhum). the chapter opens with this statement describing what
Makaryus considered to be the current state of race- thinking:
Most scholars say that mankind is divided into four branches
[furūʿ ] to which all sects [ṭawāʾif] and generations may trace
their origins. Their evidence of this division is the differences
that exist in moral, intellectual, and physical qualities. these four
branches are the Caucasian [qawqāsī], Mongolian [manghūlī], Ne-
groid [zanjī], and Malay [malqī].^28though he employs certain medieval arabic terminology,^29 Makaryus
follows a conventional european breakdown of the races of humanity
that began to be developed in the eighteenth century.^30
as is generally the case with race- thinking, Makaryus’s brand was
not simply a mode of classification; he asserted a hierarchy.^31 “Clearly,”
Makaryus insists, “what is meant by the history of humanity is actu-
ally the history of the Caucasian branch. this is because the rest of
the branches did not influence civilization [al-ʿumrān] as did [the Cau-
casians]. Civilization [al- madaniyya] is indebted to it [the Caucasian
‘branch’] as to no other branch for the way in which it has developed.”^32
Of the four races, the most influential in the rise and development of
human civilization, Makaryus claims, is the Caucasian race.
Given his acceptance of the claim that the Caucasians are the most
advanced of the races, it is hardly a surprise that Makaryus, a Christian
arab from Syria, regards “Semites” as one of the three large constitu-
ent groups of Caucasians, along with “arians or Indo- europeans” and
“hamites.”^33 according to Makaryus, Semites include “the hebrews or
Jews, the phoenicians, the assyrians, the arabs, the Babylonians, and
the Chaldeans.”^34 Indeed, Makaryus not only classifies Semites among
humanity’s superior race, Caucasians, but he also locates Semites at the
creative, spiritual helm of their many fellow Caucasians. “It is clear,”
(^28) Makaryus, Tārīkhal-Isrāʾiliyyīn, 1.
(^29) On the negative image of the so- called zanjī in medieval Arabic writing, see lewis,
Race and Slavery in the Middle East, 31– 34, 50– 53, 92– 95. On the zanjī in medieval Jew-
ish imagination, see also Goldenberg, “ ‘It Is Permitted to Marry a Kushite.’ ”
(^30) Cf. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752– 1840), a professor of anatomy at Gottin-
gen University, who classified humanity into five groups: Caucasian, Mongol, Ethiopian,
american, and Malay. For key passages of Blumenbach’s 1775 dissertation On the Natural
VarietyofMankind, see Bernasconi and Lott, The Idea of Race, 27– 37. For a contemporary
review of the work, see augstein, Race, 58– 67.
(^31) as eric Weitz notes, “unlike ethnicity, race always entails a hierarchical construc-
tion of difference.” Weitz, A Century of Genocide, 21.
(^32) Makaryus, Tārīkhal-isrāʾīliyyīn, 2.
(^33) Ibid.
(^34) Ibid.