Historical race concepts Classical ideas with the notion that humanity as a whole was descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah, producing distinct Semitic (Asiatic), Hamitic (African), and Japhetic (Indo-European) peoples. This theory dates back to the Babylonian "Talmud", which states, "the descendants of Ham are cursed by being black, and [it] depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates." In the 9th century, Al-Jahiz, an Afro-Arab Islamic philosopher, attempted to explain the origins of different human skin colors, particularly black skin, which he believed to be the result of the environment. He cited a stony
Levi ben Japheth Levi ben Japheth Levi ben Japheth (Heb. Levi ben Yafet ha-Levi; Arab. Abu Sa'id Levi ibn Yafat was a Karaite Jewish scholar who flourished, probably at Jerusalem, in the first half of the eleventh century CE. Although, like his father Japheth ben Ali, he was considered one of the greatest authorities among the Karaites, who called him "al-Shaikh" (the master), no details of his life are to be found in the Karaite sources. There even exists confusion in regard to his identity; in some of the sources he is confounded with his brother, or his son Sa'id (comp. Pinsker, "Liqqute