Defining Neighbors. Religion, Race, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter - Jonathan Marc Gribetz

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places, it is only in recent decades that these can be studied not through
“fables and exaggeration,” but rather as “a true science (ʿilman­haqīqiy-
yan) based on observation and research.”^38 Zaydan relies on a number
of english- language scholars in crafting his book; indeed, much of the
book is a translation of a. h. Keane’s The­World’s­Peoples, published
just four years earlier in New York in 1908.^39 Zaydan explains that,
of the five books he reviewed in order to write his book, he preferred
Keane’s because “it organized the peoples [al- umam] by classes, mean-
ing that it graded them on the ladder of humanity as per the laws of
evolution [nāmūs­an-­nushūʾ­wa-­l-­irtiqāʾ].”^40 In his work, Zaydan trans-
lates faithfully most of Keane’s section on the Jews, including the Irish
scholar’s argument against those who claim that, given the variety in
color and height among contemporary Jews, “the Israelite race [al-
ʿunṣur­al-­isrāʾīlī] has been lost,” leaving only “the Jewish sect [aṭ-­ṭāʾifa­
al-­yahūdiyya].” though some believe that Jews no longer constitute a
race but rather a religious community of mixed racial characteristics,
Zaydan follows Keane in insisting that they remain racially distinct.
he highlights their shared features, “the most important of which are
the large, hooked nose and the prominent, watery eyes,” along with “a
protrusion under the chin and coarse, curly hair.”^41 Jews are not all the
same, to be sure, as “among them there is a sect^42 in the lands of the
Maghreb and palestine that is distinguished for its beauty and these
[general] features have already left them.”
Keane was particularly interested in what he considered to be the
Jews’ remarkable adaptability; he referred to them as the “most versa-
tile perhaps of all peoples.”

Originally pure nomads, the Israelites became excellent hus-

bandsmen after the settlement in Canaan, and then they have

given proof of the highest capacity for poetry, letters, erudition

(^38) Zaydān, Ṭabaqāt­al-­umam­aw­as-­salāʾil­al-­bashariyya, 5.
(^39) On Zaydan’s work on race and his use of Keane, see el Shakry, The Great Social
Laboratory, 58– 60.
(^40) Zaydān, Ṭabaqāt­al-­umam­aw­as-­salāʾil­al-­bashariyya, 6. See Keane, The­World’s­Peo-
ples. On Keane, see “Dr. a. h. Keane,” Nature 88 (February 8, 1912), 488. the other
works Zaydan cites are Bettany, The­World’s­Inhabitants,­or­Mankind,­Animals,­and­Plants;
Bettany, The­World’s­Religions; Moncrieff, The­World­of­to-­Day; tylor, Anthropology.
(^41) Zaydān, Ṭabaqāt­al-­umam­aw­as-­salāʾil­al-­bashariyya, 235. Keane’s original reads:
“One observer even asserts that there are all kinds of Jews— brown, white, dark, tall,
short— so that there is no longer any question of a Jewish race, but only a Jewish sect.
nevertheless certain marked features— large hooked nose, prominent watery eyes, thick
pendulous under lip, rough frizzly lusterless hair— are sufficiently general to be regarded
as racial traits.” Keane, The­World’s­Peoples, 331.
(^42) For consistency, I translate ṭāʾifa­again here as “sect” as I do earlier in this passage,
but in this case “group” or “part” might be more precise.