illuminating the virtues of the blacks and Abyssinians

Sunnah center: This is a classic book on the role of black people in Islam.

It was narrated that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) delivered a sermon in which he stated: “O people, indeed your Lord is one and your ancestor is one. Indeed, there is no superiority for the Arab over the non-Arab, nor the non-Arab over the Arab, and there is no superiority for the white over the black, nor the black over the white. Did I get the message across?” The people replied, "The Messenger of Allah has conveyed the message." [Musnad Aḥmad (23489, ṣaḥīḥ)]

Al-Dhahabī said of Ibn al-Jawzī: “He is the shaykh, the imām, the ʿallāmah, the ḥāfiẓ, the mufassir, shaykh al-Islām, the pride of Baghdād. […] Abu 'Abdullāh ibn al-Dubaythi said about him in his Tārīkh: 'Our shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn was the author of many works within the branches of Islamic sciences such as tafsir, fiqh, hadith, history and other than these . He was skilled in the knowledge of the hadth and its sciences, distinguishing the authentic from the weak. He was the best of men in speech and eloquence. He was blessed in his life and knowledge.” […] Al-Muwafaq 'Abd al-Laṭīf said: 'Ibn al-Jawzī would not waste any of his time by writing four booklets a day. He had a share in every branch of knowledge, but in tafsir he was of the most remarkable, in ḥadīth he was a ḥāfiẓ, and his knowledge of history was vast. He was skilled in fiqh and he had an amazing gift for preaching.'” [Extracts from his biography in Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalā (21/365-384)]

The author said: "I witnessed a group of eminent Ḥabash who were discouraged because of the darkness of their complexion. So I made it clear to them that the matter being attended to are good deeds rather than one's appearance, and I have wrote this book for them to mention the virtue of many among the Ḥabash and black people.