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Ibn Miskawayh (d1030) Al Fawz al-asghar (the small book of greetings) from Rayy (Persia) worked in Baghdad.
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Taken from : www.diafrica.org/kenny/phil/phile5.htm
The Prophet occupies the summit of the Human hierarchy which extends from those who are endowed with the greatest subtlety of intelligence all the way down to the Zanj who live almost like beasts.
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Miskawayh: Tahdhib al-Akhlaq
Taken from: Maimonidean Studies by Arthur Hyman -
The first rank in the human realm, which touches the limit of the animal realm, is the rank of the people who dwell in the farthest parts of the inhabited world both to the north and the south such as the remotest Turks in the country of Gog and Magog and the remotest Zanj and similar nations which are distinguished from apes to a slight degree only. Then a faculty of discernment and understanding grows in men until they reach the central climes�..
The same applies to people not very capable of acquiring virtue. For these are slaves by nature as, for example, the Turks and the Negroes (al-Zanj) and in general all those who do not grow up in noble climes (al-aqalim al-sharifah)
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Miskawayh
Under Muhammad b. Yakut in the year 936 was for the last time an infantry of 3000 Zanj used (against the Buyyides)
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Miskawaihi; Kitab tajarib al-umam: (The Experiences of the Nations)
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Taken from: The Eclipse of the Abbasid caliphate: original chronicles of the fourth Islamic century: The Concluding Portion of The Experiences of the Nations part 5
Miskawaihi was Officeholder at the Courts of the Buwaihid Sultans, Mu'izz ad-daulah, Rukn ad-daulah, and Adud ad-daulah vol.5 translation of: reigns of Muttaqi, Mustakfi and Tali / translated by D.S. Margoliouth; Miskawayhi
Year 355 (began dec 28-965)
Account of what happened in Oman
The people now agreed to give the principate to Abd al Wahhab b. Ahmad b. Marwan.......(who refused but was forced to accept)
.................He agreed with the army that eight months pay should be given them as gratuity, in consequence whereof the money was produced, and Ali b. Ahmad (the clerk who had brought the money) began handing out to the men the eight months money. When he came to the Zanj, men of strength and courage of whom there were six thousand, he said to them : Our prince Abd al-Wahhab has ordered me to bestow on you only four months' pay. This produced a disturbance among them, and he bade them go and speak to the prince. They started ; but when they had got a little way he recalled them to his chamber, and said : If you go to him, he will decline to admit you, and will certainly not give you more than the four month's pay. But what say you to entering my service, in which case I shall give you the eight months' pay, and the principate shall be mine ? They consented. The white troops were disturbed on account of this, and a brawl arose between them and the Zanj, in which a number of the former were killed. The white troops then acquiesced, made common cause with the Zanj, and swore allegiance to Ali b. Ahmad. They then sent a message to Abd al-Wahhab b. Ahmad b. Marvan, informing him that they had appointed someone else to rule over them, and that he must leave the country. He departed, and Ali b. Ahmad (a Quarmatian) became prince.