Please come out with Part 2 soon! This was very informative and you delivered a truckload of information very smoothly. I look forward to your next analysis! As a mixed POC it warms my heart to see such in-depth discussion about the African presence in Europe, fiction or not. I agree with you, we all seek to put ourselves in past narratives, or at least a representation of ourselves. I only knew a little about characters like Feirefiz, Morien, and Palamedes, but this went in on them with the details I didn't know. I had no idea Feirefiz was Indian!
I'll most likely post a video focusing on the narrative and historical context of the Morien story in the Dutch Lancelot Compilation in about a month when it is assigned for my class to read. I've been stalling, partly because the only English translation of the text is over a century old, and I've been told that it "contains many inaccuracies". David F. Johnson and Geert Claassens, who translated other parts of the Dutch Lancelot Compilation, are working on it, but their collaboration has been put on hold by COVID-19 travel restrictions. Johnson was the one who told me the 1908 Weston translation contained inaccuracies, but he didn't elaborate. So I'll probably post a video based on the Weston translation, and then, whenever the Johnson & Claassens translation is available, remake the video to be more accurate. But I'm encouraged to hurry up and post something about the translation that's currently available since people are interested and find it relevant.
@@ericluttrell Actually regarding the "Feirfiz was indian" part. Considering how much his description lines up with other moors, his bringing of moors and saracens to fight, and his physical and theological descriptions (you mention the worship of classical gods which moors specifically have been accused of worshiping since the song of roland), and belacanes (who was referred to explicitly as a moor iirc?) is it not more likely that the loose reference to Indian names by wolfram is merely superficial, perhaps him just being topical by including some significant political figure. It would seem odd for the only "indian" knight to be described in a way no different than other moorish and saracen knights, and have nothing "indian" about him aside from his name, which Wolfram is likely to not even be fully aware of as originating in an area distinct from the Africa that all the other moors in the various materr of Britain and France originate from. Idk, it just seems odd to throw away everything else that screens moorish and go "indian" because of possible naming. Like take Idris Elba for example. It would be like a thousand years from now someone reading a description of him physically and where his parents came from, thinking "oh, he's what they would call "black" at that time, he or his parents must have come from West Africa" and then saying, "well "Idris" is Welsh and there's a famous welsh poet alive at that time so he probably came from wales." I know I'm oversimplifying your point but its only because that's what I understand of it. I think at most Wolfram may have heard the names of (what we now currently understand to be indian) mulsim/pagan rulers and decided to call feirfiz's mom and lady that, assuming that they came from the same place as all other muslims/pagans. Because there doesn't seem to be literally anything else that points to india. I hope you can enlighten/clear things up! Love the vid! I think an important think to add as well is that in the medieval mind India as we understand it didn't exist as a distinct location at this time and places like Ethiopia were considered one of the "three Indias" despite also being understood as a black African nation. It's very possible for Wolfram to have used "indian" names to refer to what he thought were grand characters in say Ethiopia, Africa, like the rest of his Moor characters, but in no way intended to mean that Feirfiz came from "India" as we understand it geographically as he himself didn't understand what "India" meant as a distinct geographic locale.
This is amazing and really well organized/research, you deserve a million-bajillion more views than you have! I can't fathom how anyone could dislike this. I think the type of folk who watch TheQuartering must've given you those dislikes or something... But anyways, thanks to you I'm very interested in Wolfram and will definitely put Parzival on my reading list, and will be checking out your other lectures.
If your interested, there is also a famous Portuguese knight from the 1500's called João de Sá (aka Panasco). There is even a painting called Chafariz d'El Rey where.he appears, with two black apprentices
I’m going to listen to this again and do a deep dive. I am an artist and my friend gave me the Image of the Black in Western Art. There are so many interesting points you bring up. I’m Welsh on my mothers side and am interested in ancient Europe. Also, I’m very much interested in foregrounding this kind of dialogue in Europe and America. Africans had an important presence in European history. Interesting that you brought up Viktor Shklovsky. Keep up the good work!
Oh btw Ibn Sayeed of Mogadishu, Somalia, traveled to China before Ibn Battuta and actually exchanged notes with Battuta in India. Also Baba Gor a trader in precious stones, ended up in India and became a holyman he was from Kano in today's Nigeria.
The proper pronunciation today would be Morian (Like Dorian). He is a part of our Dutch cultural history in Pre-colonial times and came to be a sort of celebrated hero figure too before the colonial era repopularized more crusader-like ideologies concerning Moors/blacks and Muslims and these stories were en large shoved under the rug. The songs and stories would teach medieval children and adults about the Moors and morality towards them. There have been many Moors that have visited, lived and started families in the Netherlands throughout history. Since the Netherlands was historically a refuge for refugees of any sort, political, ethnic or religious. Moors came to over time not only signify black folks from the south but also signify the mixed black people that were a result of intermarriage and the likes (Like sir Morian). A famous portrait from one of our legendary painters Rembrandt is called "the Two Moors" and depicted two of Rembrandts neighbors at the time, obviously, they were black (1655). Fun fact: the European name Maurice also originates from the same thing, like Moriaen / Moriaan it was used as a name for those from often mixed families. And it meant "From Mauretania" which was roughly the area that is now Morocco and the Southern regions of it - a name already present in genealogical records of the Netherlands since the year 1100 AD and mentions even earlier in other forms.
Does this same more representation in the story of sir Morien also apply to the Saracen knight sir Palomides from the Tristram chapters of Le Morte d’Arthur?? I’ve only known of Palomides as the moor knight in Malory’s text, also a bother of his is mentioned there, so this story of the Dutch Lancelot is new to me. Sadly I’ve been very exposed to the Malory canon and other more recognizable sources like the Vulgate and the Chrétien poems.
I don't think that Palomides appears in the Dutch Lancelot Compilation, but I could be wrong. I only have access to what has been translated into English, but it doesn't appear to contain much more than a vague reference to the Tristan/Palomides stories. I hope I didn't imply that there was something wrong with Malory. I just wanted people to know that most of what we assume is the standard story of Arthur and his knights comes directly or indirectly from Malory and that there is a lot more out there.
@@ericluttrell I appreciate the answer, thank you very much. I understand you didn’t mean wrong when speaking about Malory, as I understand the racial debate when it comes to adapt these stories to our present audience. During a course I took in Spanish Literature or professor did an outstanding job at conveying the ideas of social cooperation between Muslims and Christians in Medieval Spain, and I find it interesting that Malory’s portrayal of Palomides isn’t much acknowledged in some of the written retellings of the early and mid 20th century that use Malory as a core source. I’m working on a Spanish retelling myself, and I do plan to give Palomides a chapter or two based on Malory’s take on Tristram. I hope it’s something many could enjoy.
@@carloscabello4392 those modern retellings were done at the height of scientific racism in academia. Clear depictions of Africans(Black) being civilized and chivalrous was counter to what was deemed suitable, or even possible at that time. The safest thing, in my opinion would be, to just omit, or give a vague reference to such characters. Researchers tend to focus on what would secure funding or interest from the public. Staying away from figures like Sir Morien, Sir Primus, Memnon, and others, would have been the logical thing to do back then.
48:43 I always look at people as being extremely delusional when they say these things considering you have so called black people in Australia, the Solomon Islands, India, etc Literally all over the world. Great distances away from Africa, but there couldn't be any black people in Europe?
Firstly do you know the difference between genes and DNA? People can still have certain genetic traces without them being physically presented. Example: my grandparents are both blonde, blue eyed and straight haired. My mother came out with red hair, and dark brown eyes, but still has a blonde hair, blue eye gene. I have jet black hair and dark brown eyes like my father. Her parents basically looked like they could be siblings and she came our looking so much different, and still possesses the genetic traits that both her parents had. You know what that means...that means both of her parents carried the red hair, and brown eye gene even though they didn't look like they would. You can't look at a person and determine what kind of genes they carry. Thats a completely ignorant assumption to have. Race, and ethnicity are social constructions that do not exist biologically in DNA, or RNA. Got that. You are really showing your ignorance by mentioning scientific racism ideologies. Scientific racism has been disproven. Most people with sense are aware that race is a social construction. And as far as ethnicity everyone has the same two haplogroups.
@@HadassahFarahdi What are you going on about? I'm stating that there are black people all over the world and they were there long before the trans Atlantic slave trade. What are you talking about?
Still working on it. It's not up yet. Sorry. You can read a translation of the text here: d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/weston-morien or here: archive.org/details/morienmetricalro00westrich Hopefully I'll have time to finish the video in the next month or so.
I think you're right. We can't say for sure that Feirefiz was based on a real person, but the description seems to indicate that either Wolfram or his source was familiar with the condition, and, therefore, had interacted directly with dark-skinned people, probably at home in Europe.
@@ericluttrell Understanding how superstitious talk to a degree, I can only see that in the description of this character, I found this fascinating. As well as how you break down the details the of King Arthur and the Round Table. I was a childhood fan of this story and The Three Musketeers
I think the mottled description is more a physical manifestation of his mixed heritage. I'm thinking of depictions such as this: commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wolfram_Parz_Feirefiz_cpg339_540v.jpg I'm sure Feirefiz is intended to look mixed black/white, but combining the moralistic associations skin color has resulted in a literal black and white description I think
I'm not sure I follow. Horsemanship began circa 2000BC on the steppe north of the Black Sea with the Indo-Europeans who were the forerunners of Western Civilization. The point that I tried to make in the video is that there were no walls blocking movement between continents or among peoples. That goes for phenotype, too. The original human inhabitants of Europe had black skin, unless you count Neanderthals, who had white skin. The first modern (post-Neanderthal) humans to have white skin came from Anatolia (modern day Turkey). The early Indo-Europeans mentioned above looked more like Native Americans. So...it's complicated. But the main text I'm discussing here was written in the 14th century, 3000+ years after the populations (at least the average individual) of Europe, Asia, and Africa began to look more or less like they do today. The thing about horses is they a open up a much wider world, and, as we've seen more recent centuries with Native Americans, it doesn't take people long to learn to ride. We know there were horse-drawn chariots in Egypt just a few centuries after the horse was domesticated in Western Asia, because they are depicted in ancient Egyptian art. And, like I said in the video, European literature represents people Africans, Asians, and Europeans going back and forth between continents quite a bit. A good book on that subject is Geraldine Heng's Invention of Race in the Middle Ages. Heng makes some overgeneralizations based in presentism here and there, but, overall, it's a great place to start if you're looking for all the people that most people didn't know existed in medieval Europe. David Johnson and Gert Claassens are working on a new translation of Moriaen. And, even though I intended to it three years ago, this summer I should be posting the second lecture that gets into the specifics of Moriaen's story.
The Moors were those black people sir. go google image of a Moorish warrior in his pure form. Also the Numidian cavalry who were the moor's forefathers. Today most North African were mixed because of the vandal ruling there for some time and the the barbary slave trade later on . we also have the Nigerian Hausa people who have great horse culture
Another historical figure whose ethnicity that still a point of contention is the African born Roman emperor Lucius Septimus Severus who some claim was black, other claim he was arab looking and others claim he was white.
Europe was the western terminal of the Silk Road, which meant people of all types traveled through there. There were Africans in medieval Europe, as well as Asians, and vice versa in China and Korea. Sir Walter Scott's novel "Quentin Durward" described African migrants in 1460s France, including two notorious criminal brothers that tried to abduct a pair of noblewomen and were subsequently executed by the King's provost marshal. Before their fall from grace, the two brothers were on good terms with the King and enjoyed extremely high standing and rank in the royal household itself.
Not making a point about colour, but are you aware that Morien also appears in Y Gododdin? "Morien defended the fair song of Myrddin and laid the head of a chief in the earth" Trying to date anything from Y Gododdin is an absolute minefield, but use of Myrddin instead of Merlin means it is likely at least pre-galfridian, so presumably the first occurance. Imagine the romance writer just went looking for a name in old Welsh literature to reuse for his story.
True. Thanks for pointing that out. The name appears, yes. That's not the same as saying the character appears. Names with Mor* employ an old Indo-European word for "black" or "dark." It's in Mordred, as well as Morgan (le Fey) and the Irish Morrigan, which has led many to assume these two battle-sorceresses were morphologically related (which I'd also like to believe, but scholars with more proto-Celtic linguistic acumen than me insist they are not). That leaves us to plenty of debate as to what Iron Age Britons and Gaels meant by "black." Likely, it meant something other than melanin. But the Dutch Morien is explicitly described in African terms, even though the character seems to be a narrative descendant of Wulfram's (probably-Indian) Feirefiz. Still, I think I'll address this in upcoming videos about both Morien and Morgan le Fey. Thanks for calling it to my attention!
@@ericluttrell and I also think Morgan and the Morrigan are linked. Aside from that similarity the other goddesses sometimes named as part of the triple are Nemain and Anann (actually alternative names of the same one of the triple). In Arthuriana the lady of the lake is variously called Nimue / Ninian / Vivian, and Morgause is originally Anna.
I think you're just obviously wrong about PJW's motivation and your interpretation is way off. If you saw a trailer of a remake of "Menace to Society", starring no black people, you might call that ridiculous. It's literally the exact same impulse. It really doesn't make sense to me to add anymore motivation than that.
This video has under 1k views, that sucks. Everyone should know this. It's so dumb that the way we learn history is: Europe existed and then we discovered Africa. I was thinking that putting every third person as black in the medieval movies is an Americanisation of history but now I'm well so surprised... there might have been less racism at that time compared to now.
stupidity... oh its white history lets force blacks into it just so ed leszc feels good. why must you people want to ruin my people and culture by making us look mixed race or living with blacks.. freak lover.
I unironically think there might have been less racism back then. They thought of like nationalities and cultures (people outside of the West were barbarians, etc), but “whiteness” and “blackness” as we see it today hadn’t really been invented or culturally escorted back then. I am lead to believe they would care WAY more about accent, culture, language, and place of birth than like physical complexion.
@@actaeondiomedes4270 The lie of neo-liberalism, the idea that this is the end of history and now is the best time to be alive. Not that I wanna go to the past or anything like that though.
@@EdLrandom This ^^^. The unquestioned ubiquity of some really troubling neoliberal tendencies is something that is really becoming an active problem for the West, and like I’m in the US and I feel something has to change soon or like a lotta people are gonna die. I’m worried for the future.
The same people who staunchly defend changes in movie/TV content to conform with social engineering goals were the first to decry shows like "Father Knows Best" as being racist and homophobic.
Interesting video, hadn't heard of Morien before, thanks. Pretty sure your point about elephants all coming from Sub Saharan Africa is inaccurate. War elephants of the ancient world were mostly from a now extinct species of North African elephant. Not gonna defend that guy acting like a dick on Twitter, but the misrepresentation of North African people as Sub Saharan is a fair point. Even the way Sub Saharan people are generally represented as a single ethnic group is a ridiculous simplification.
I certainly wasn't trying to imply that all North Africans looked like people from Sub-Saharan Africa. Odds are that a randomly-selected Carthaginian would have been much more likely to look like Taleb than the actor in the documentary, but Carthage was, from its foundation by Phoenicians, a nexus for travelers (by land and sea). I've since watched the documentary that Taleb was reacting to (Barbarians Rising), and his general criticism is valid. All the actors portraying Mediterranean peoples appear to be of either Northern European or Sub-Saharan descent, and it seems to be a deliberate attempt to inject modern assumptions about race into a war between two Mediterranean peoples (though Hannibal clearly had a diversity of allies from Garamantians to Celt-Iberians). My point was that almost no population is or has ever been homogeneous. Tom Segura makes that point more concisely than I did: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YjemKIfZ6hE.html
North africans became light skinned after waves of foreign invasions but original North Africans a dark skinned. A lot fled below the sahara to evade Islam, and some mixed with the Arabs. Others mixed with the over 1 million european slaves that were held in captivity in North Africa. Not to mention the Vandals that had already settled there even earlier. Plus the Romans. Thats why most berbers look like they do today. But most ancient descriptions of Moors(from songs of Roland and other texts) are of Black Africans. Research the painting “the moors and the wildmen” .. its an eye opener.
@@mackycherif4649 Thanks for the tapestry suggestion, never heard of that and it's very interesting. Makes me wonder if the dark skinned royal family were the patrons who had the tapestry commissioned, but there seems to be very little info on who it was created for. However, it was created about a millennia after the Germanic / Arabic settlements of North Africa, and more than 2 millennia after the Phoenician settlement, so can't be used as evidence for an "original" Berber skin colour. I imagine North Africa has always had some amount of European, Middle Eastern and Sub Saharan influences long before any known historical settlements, but they are also genetically distinct and shouldn't be misrepresented as completely homogenous with any of these groups.
@@archaicwolf4292 I didn't say there weren't, and I'm quite sure there were. Equally, I don't think a mummy from nearly 1000km South of the Mediterranean coast and about 7000 years ago, during a time that the Sahara was still green and home to a vast population that are obviously no longer there, should be used as evidence for the broad ethnicity of North Africans in the medieval period.
since my family tree has many dynasties of Europe in it... i hardly doubt any of my knight grandfathers would train foreigner or even allow black man in..
@@bazar7992 u follow my logic he was a golden man red Aryan moss green man brown if you are referring to the Eyrarland statuette, it´s made from bronze - golden first, oxidising to brown if not regulary cleaned, then oxidising further to (usually) green, forming also a red Cuprit layer between the copperalloy and its main patina and the outer surface often accumulating microdust/dirt if laying in the same and therefore getting kinda dark your statue is a cleaned up bronze relic, that reoxidised
I kove your content and appreciate your knowledge and the fact that you are sharing it here. But you just don't get it here. At all. Imagine the Black Panther reboot stars Chris Pratt Nd Wakanda is moved to Ireland and peopled with red haired freckled white people. It's perfectly ok because it's a made up country in a fictional universe, right? I would have LOVED a female Dr. Who right after, say, Tom Baker's run ended. That would have been creative and interesting, not predictable and safe like today. The fact is that it's not having Black Romans or other diverse characters that upset more thoughtful people. It's that when they take up more characters it reduces the number of characters of European origin in depictions of European history. Did we need 5 main characters in "Woman King" to be whites who were somehow raised in the tribe? The hypocrisy combined with clear signaling of unpopular political affiliations are the problem, not the presence of non whites. Btw, Morgan Freeman's character Azeem was my favorite character in Prince of Theives growing up. We all wanted to play as him! That's an example of doing this kind of thing right and respectfully to native cultures, including European ones. Not replacing Little John or Friar Tuck but adding a plausible character and making him compelling.
The original Irish and Scot were black aboriginals long before other people came there. read ancient and modern Britons. also they found a statuette of a black woman in Germany they call it the venus of Willendorf. Also the patron saint of knights is a black man named st maurice
Check out the lie of Saint Maurice is very good and also go look at all the black king in medieval crests specially German. But very good work with this, you trying to keep it real at least.🫡
