Wahb Ibn al-Munabbih reports that Hām, the son of Nūh, was originally a white man. He had a beautiful face and a very pleasing appearance. But God changed the colour of Hām following the curse of Nūh, his father. Hāam then went away followed by his children and settled on the coast. God made them multiply and grow. They became the lineage of black people called the Sūdān. They ate fish. They sharpened their teeth like needles so the flesh of fish stuck to the teeth. Some of the descendents of Hām settled in the Maghreb. Hāam produced Kūsh, Kan'ān, and Fūt. The latter went to live in India and Sindh and peopled the area with his posterity. Kūsh and Kan'ān, however, both spawned the race of blacks represented by the Nubians, Zanj, Fazzanais, Zaghāwa, Abyssinians, Copts and Berbers (Ibn Qutayba, 1992, p. 26).  
This disparate canvas would be used by a raft of Arab prose writers to systematically spread their imprecations. Ibn Hawqal, like Ibn Butlān or philosophers such as al-Kindī or Ibn Sīnā, did not bother adding any aesthetic or moral consistency. Al-Mas'ūdī openly admits that Arabs adopted the prejudices inherited from the ancient Greeks and they, in turn, helped to accentuate them.  
He recalls that the philosopher Ya'qūb Ibn Ishāq al-Kindī had discussed the physical and intellectual attributes of blacks. In a treatise on the determination of celestial bodies, he had, says al-Mas'ūdī, repeated the classification of Greek philosopher Galen who gave them ten specific traits, namely:  
Frizzy hair, lack of eyebrows, full nostrils, thick lips, sharp teeth, a strong skin odour, dark black pupils, cracks on hands and feet, [...] developed penises and an excessive cheerfulness. The predominance of this last trait is explained by mental debility amongst black people and low intelligence [...] Tāwus al-Yamanī, the disciple of