The Story of Black

by John Harvey

  In time Christian black, which began in humility, came to represent the harsh and even deadly authority of the Church. The Dominicans, the ‘Black Friars’ who came to staff the Inquisition, were known by their black cloaks and hoods, and they were an order whose founder, St Dominic, did require a covering black garb to be worn (over a white habit).19 But the origin of Christian black lay in the death of Christ, and not only in his sacrifice but in the darkness of the Passion itself, when Jesus cried in torment that God had abandoned him, and the earth quaked and the veil of the Temple was rent, and ‘there was a darkness over all the earth . . . and the sun was darkened’ (Luke 23:44–5). In many painted crucifixions the figure of Christ is spotlit – often sentimentally – against that black darkness. In the Crucifixion of Matthias Grünewald, however, there is no special lighting (illus. 23). Behind Christ there is indeed black darkness, and the landscape is dim as in an eclipse or twilight, but Christ and those mourning for him share a low-key residual daylight. He has died, it seems, in pain and despair, and the scarred body may have started to decompose. The humiliation and misery of His death is there, and his mother appropriately wears not blue but black.

  Later Christ rises, attended by white angels, and He sits beside the Father in white glory now. But Christianity never forgot that depth of abandoned darkness: rather, it was cherished, and distinguished clearly from the blackness of sin. From the first centuries Christianity has preserved the tradition of a sacred darkness or blackness. The darkness represented the deprivation of the soul, yet also it could be identified with excessive light and brightness. God Himself was both blinding light and darkness. In the Bible the Lord ‘made darkness his secret place’ (Psalm 18:11), and when he climbed Mount Sinai to receive the Commandments, Moses ‘drew near unto the thick darkness where God was’ (Exodus 20:21).

  22 Alphonse Legros, La Réfectoire, 1862, etching.

  In Christianity the mystical darkness is best known from the Mystical Theology of ‘Pseudo-Dionysius’, written around 500 in the Middle East. The divine mysteries rest ‘in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence [pouring] overwhelming light’. These contradictions are echoed, with an eloquence of human need, in the fourteenth-century English text The Cloud of Unknowing: ‘And therfore schap thee to bide in this derknes as long as thou maist, euermore criing after him that thou louest.’ Such loving longing is most famously described by the sixteenth-century Spanish priest now known as St John of the Cross in his poem ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’:

  One dark night,

  fired with love’s urgent longings . . .

  I went out unseen,

  my house being now all stilled . . .

  O night more lovely than the dawn!

  O night that has united

  the Lover with his beloved,

  Upon my flowering breast . . .

  all things ceased; I went out from myself,

  leaving my cares

  forgotten among the lilies.

  ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’, the poet says in his own commentary, is a ‘substantial darkness’ that ‘acts upon the soul . . . as fire acts upon a log of wood’, at first making it ‘black, dark and unsightly’ and transforming it at last to be ‘as beautiful as fire’. ‘For the nearer the soul approaches to [God], the blacker is the darkness which it feels . . . and thus, that which in God is supreme light and refulgence is to man blackest darkness.’ It is nonetheless a darkness in which – as in the Song of Songs – the Lover and the divine come together in a peace within human understanding.20

  One may ask how this vision may still speak to us. The twentieth-century painting Christ of St John of the Cross by Salvador Dalí can be criticized for its melodramatic perspective – looking down on Christ from above, as He hangs in absolute solid blackness (illus. 24). The composition is however based on the drawing which St John of the Cross himself made, where again we look down on Christ’s head from above (and to one side). The effect of hiding Christ’s face – as with any painted figure seen from behind – is to question his identity. In the Dalí one may well wonder, is this Christ – this young man with the modern haircut? Or if the crucifixion is that of St John, may this be St John himself, on his cross? But that is unlikely, since St John of the Cross was in holy orders and had a tonsure. Nor is humanity represented here, to be redeemed by the sacrifice, whereas Grünewald showed grieving people aware of their need, their outline touching the outline of Christ. Dalí, by contrast, shows two fishermen occupied with their tackle; the water may be the Sea of Galilee, but they seem unaware of Christ above them. Perhaps He hovers in their future, for the powerful keel of their boat continues upwards into the stem of the cross.

  Nor does the notice on the cross bear the inscription ‘INRI’ (Iesvs Nazarenvs Rex Ivdaeorvm), which is common in paintings of the Crucifixion and may be seen in the Grünewald. Dalí’s notice is blank. This, then, is not the King of the Jews. It may not be Jesus; he may not redeem. He is perhaps modern man, or some of us, in a spiritual – not material – crucifixion (for we see no nails). We do not know if he is alive or dead. We do not know if this is the blackness within which God dwells, or whether it is – as Christ Himself cried – the blackness of absolute abandonment. There is ultimately an ambiguity in blackness: it may be emptiness and loss; it may be power in hiding.

  23 Matthias Grünewald, The Crucifixion, 1510, tempera on panel.

  24 Salvador Dalí, Christ of St John of the Cross, 1951, oil on canvas.

  25 Muhammad with his daughter Fatima and son-in-law Ali, illustration to the Siyer-i Nebi, 1595.

  FOUR

  Black in Society: Arabia, Europe

  IT SEEMS THAT the colour which we wear externally has a relation to the colour that our inner self may be. For it was only after the soul was found black in its sinfulness that whole polities began – slowly – to welcome black into their general dress, and at large into their ‘material culture’.

  It was not only in Christendom that this slow move from inner to outward occurred. On the contrary, society’s change of colour did not occur first in the Christian world but in the world of another faith: Islam. Here, too, the worship of a single God was reflected in an emphasis on light versus blackness; and here too blackness was both the colour of sin and the colour of the most holy things.

  In Islam, as in Christianity, faith became ‘material’ in the use of white and black cloth. Muhammad (c. 570–632) wore sometimes white robes and sometimes black on his military campaigns. His armies flew both white and black flags, which might be inscribed with sacred texts. The principal flag under which they fought was plain black, with no symbol or inscription of any kind. It was known as Al-‘Uqab, the eagle, and derived from the flag of Muhammad’s own Quraish clan – which also was solid black, and probably earlier had an eagle in its centre.

  The use of an eagle as a battle standard goes back further than the Roman legions: in the sixth century BCE the conquering armies of the Persian emperor Cyrus had marched behind an eagle. But an ‘eagle’ that appeared as a solid field of black would seem to have another name: Death. For black had long been the colour of mourning in Arabia, and was also – as further East – the colour one showed when riding out with one’s affiliates to avenge an injury. The black flag of Muhammad, however, also offered salvation, provided one surrendered and was converted. The original banner was said to have been made from the head-cloth of Muhammad’s wife Aisha.1

  Muhammad’s warriors wore a black head-dress, and when Muhammad conquered Mecca, he wore a black cape and black turban. His favourite colour, though, was said to be green. He liked to wear a green cloak and turban – green as the silk robes and cushions of Paradise. About black he had divided feelings, for he also called it ‘the colour of Shaitan [Satan]’, and he disliked the morosely mournful use of black. When a mother brought her child to be named, and the child wore a black shirt, he said, ‘If he wears such clothes throughout his life, he will weep until he dies.’ He forbade the use of some black clothe
s, saying they should be burned, and black dye on hair (other colours were allowed). Black could represent sin, death, imperfection, and Muhammad told a story of his own childhood: that when he was three or four, playing in the countryside, two men in white robes came up to him with a golden bowl full of snow. They cut open his chest and found and removed a black spot from it; then they cleansed his heart with snow and replaced it. Since then, in Islamic tradition, the phrase ‘black spot’ has referred to the centre point of the heart – not necessarily with a dark connotation.2

  In a sixteenth-century illustration to the Turkish epic the Siyer-i Nebi, Muhammad wears green, with a black lining or undergarment (illus. 25). He stands in the centre of a golden flame, and his face, which should not be drawn, is veiled in white. His son-in-law Ali wears the black robes of their clan, the Quraish, with the green turban that was later to mark those who had made the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca. Muhammad’s daughter and Ali’s wife Fatima stands behind them in a blue gown, but is veiled like Muhammad and has her own golden flame. The killing of Ali, in the disputes that followed the death of Muhammad, initiated the great schism in Islam, and Shi‘a Muslims have worn black since that time. Other divisions of Islam have made a strong use of black, sometimes to show their alliance with the Shi‘as. In a Turkish miniature, also sixteenth-century, Muhammad, whose face again is veiled, wears black robes and turban, while the first four Rightly Guided Caliphs who succeeded him wear deeply dark or black robes (illus. 26).

  On the battlefield black banners had a messianic as well as a punitive value. On the Day of Judgement, when the Mahdi leads the holy army out of the East, he too will fly a plain black banner. Male descendants of Muhammad wear black turbans today.

  26 The prophet Muhammad (centre) and his successors, the first four Rightly Guided Caliphs: Abu Bakr (632–4), Umar I (634–44), Uthman (644–56) and Ali ibn Abi Talib (656–61). From a Turkish miniature of the 16th century, gouache on paper.

  BEHIND THE BLACK banners of Islam were the other black cloths, coarse and fine, of Arabia. Central to Arab culture for many centuries was the loose-woven fabric of black goat hair from which tents were made (illus. 27). The goat-hair tent had probably originated in Mesopotamia, and spread later to Mongolia, Iran and Arabia. In the heat of the desert it has a perfect amenity. The open sides allow the constant movement of air, while the loose weave of black hair gives a dappled shade. The black fibres, absorbing the sun’s heat, warm the air above them, which rises, drawing more air in through the sides of the tent and making a constant breeze. If and when it rains, the goat fibres swell and block the spaces, making a gigantic black umbrella.

  The same cooling principle works with dress. One is told one should not wear black in the sun. But the black robe or thawb which Bedouin women wear, or wore until recently, is of very loose weave – often of the most airy, light cotton gauze – and is so large it must be gathered in folds (illus. 28). If you hold one from a balcony it reaches to the ground. The thawb is light though large, and in recent years its science has been examined. The loosely folded layers hold the heat at a distance, while – as with the tents – the outside layer heats, drawing air in and up through the loose weave. In other words, one wears black in the desert because it is cool, and it is cool because it is hot.3

  27 Bedouin tent of black goat’s hair, Palestine, 1890s.

  28 The thawb is a deliberately voluminous cotton-gauze overgarment worn by some women in the Arab world. This example, from Oman, is elaborately embroidered and ornamented.

  Black in Arabia, when it does not stand for death, is the colour of wonderful coolness – of the deepest shade, where life may be enjoyed. For the sun there is the blinding, bleaching enemy of life. Black is good also for goats, though their hair is not loose, because short-wave radiation (heat) cannot penetrate so far into black hair as it can into white.

  Professor Tarif Khalidi of the American University in Beirut has kindly supplied me with a summary of the senses of black (from the swd root) in the most celebrated dictionary of classical Arabic, the Lisan al-‘Arab by Ibn Manzur (who died in 1311). Black may refer to things that are precious, especially in a desert: ‘the two blacks’ are dates and water. Also, as elsewhere, black can refer generally to bad things: ‘black hearts’ refers to enemies, and a ‘black word’ is one that is ugly. The word ‘black’ can also be active visually, in a way that makes sense in brilliant sunlight: so a distant figure is ‘black’, as is a large crowd, or a large, dense forest. As with the forest, black is perceived as near to green, and the villages that make the countryside round a city may again be called black. The ‘crowd’ sense can extend to large majorities of other kinds, including great wealth, as in the remark that someone has much sawad. The words and idea of blackness have then in Arabic a play of antitheses that is comparable with, though different from, European usage. Black can carry the same sense of secrecy as our ‘in the dark’; and the phrase ‘black and red’ is a way of referring to everyone: that is, both Arab and non-Arab.

  Black is the colour especially associated both with sin and holiness. In the eastern corner of the ancient granite shrine in Mecca – the Kaaba – is the Black Stone, still set where Abraham placed it. It was white when it fell from Heaven, in the time of Adam, but long ago was blackened by the sins of men. It was an object of pilgrimage before Islam, when the Kaaba housed the idols which Muhammad swept away. And still it is an object of reverence to the slowly wheeling multitudes who file each year into the Great Mosque in Mecca, and kiss the Black Stone if they can reach it. Thanks to modern photojournalism, it is a familiar sight: a huge cube of stone, draped (from a date later than Muhammad’s) with a jet-black pall (illus. 29). As the armies of Mecca, like those of Rome, used to follow an eagle, so also Mecca has its own ‘lapis niger’.

  Black has various religious values in Islam. In the Qur’an, when Allah tells his angels he is going to create man, he says he will create a mortal ‘of black mud fashioned into shape’. And in later Islamic mysticism, just as in Christian mysticism, it was believed that the blackest depths of night both hid, and represented, ‘the Light of the Absolute’.

  Passage through this mystical ‘night of power’ – the night of ‘black light’ in Sufi teaching – is allegorized in the legend of Muhammad’s ‘night journey’. On the winged white beast al-Buraq, who is ‘larger than a donkey but smaller than a mule’, Muhammad flew one night to the temple in Jerusalem. There he found Abraham, Moses and Jesus, who asked him to lead them in prayer. The angel Gabriel then conducted him through the seven heavens and into Paradise, where he spoke with God, who told him of the importance of regular prayer. With the mercantile expertise of the Quraish, and acting on the advice of Moses, Muhammad persuaded God to reduce the number of daily prayers from fifty to five. He then returned on al-Buraq to Mecca. The subject is popular in the Islamic art of the Persian miniature, where Muhammad may be seen, again with a veiled face and sometimes wearing black robes, riding on al-Buraq, who has a human head with black hair – like the heavenly angels who accompany them.

  29 The Kaaba, The Grand Mosque, Mecca.

  In the later history of Islam, the whirling dervishes may, as their white skirts fly, achieve a divine inner stillness that is at once dark and dazzling: some dervish sects are clad, and spin, in black.

  THOUGH WORN FOR coolness in the desert, and recognized as the colour of devotion, still black was the colour of death and revenge. When Muhammad’s grandson Husain was defeated and killed at Karbala in 680, the Shi‘a formalized their wearing of black as the colour of permanent accusatory mourning. Ever since then, on the Day of ‘Ashura – the anniversary of Husain’s death – Shi‘a men may strip to the waist, otherwise wearing only black, and flog themselves with whips or chains, or cut themselves with knives and let the blood run freely.

  The larger flowering of Arab black was still to come. This occurred when the Abbasid family, who descended from Muhammad’s youngest uncle, al-‘Abbas, took up the mantle of Shi‘a Islam. They di
d so to win Shi‘a support in their campaign against the Umayyad Arabs, whose Caliph ruled in Damascus. They adopted the black of the Quraish and of the Shi‘a, and in 747–9 they rode to fight the Umayyads flying black banners, with a strong messianic implication. Their black was accusatory and vengeful on their own account also, because they not only – while allied with the Shi‘as – mourned ‘Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad, but also their own leader Imam Ibrahim, who had died or been killed in an Umayyad prison.4

  When the Abbasids first rose against the Umayyads, they draped their buildings in black, gathering in the mosque in black clothes and black turbans, black banners in their hands. On their victory black became the colour of their insignia and ceremonial dress. They established their own, Abbasid, caliphate in 750, and in 762 moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad. From Baghdad their conquering black armies rode out, westwards, eastwards, northwards, southwards, until, by 850, their dominions extended from Spain to Persia, and included all the north coast of Africa.

  Not everything was black, for this is the world of levitating carpets and rich-coloured silks, of green-domed mosques, of veiled maidens and sherbets and thieves hiding in pots, which we know from the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba. The autocratic harshness of the caliphate is reflected at the beginning of the Thousand and One Nights, where a monarch who finds that his wife has been unfaithful decides that he must take a new, virgin bride every evening, and kill her the next morning to preserve his honour. But it was also a society in which, more so than under the Umayyads, a non-Arab or a person of humble birth could rise to high rank in the service of the caliph. There was some reflection of a society of opportunity behind the fantasy-rise of Aladdin and Ali Baba from poverty to princeliness (though the idea of a djinn, a genie in a bottle who will do everything for you, sounds like the ultimate dream of slave-ownership). It was a society – a civilization – in which Greek and Latin texts circulated widely in Arabic, and in which the disciplines of science, philosophy and medicine flourished. The art of making paper was introduced from China. Baghdad became the centre of world trade, with the endless arrival of caravans and feeding the bazaars with perfumes from Arabia, glass from Syria, pearls from Persia, grain and linen from Egypt, hardwoods from Asia, spices from India, silks, porcelains and peacocks from China and slaves from Byzantium.