Abducted in Mali when he was about 14, 60 years later he was still “a strict Mahometan abstains from spirituous liquors, and keeps the various fasts, particularly that of the Rhamadan” wrote his “owner”, James Hamilton Couper. Nevertheless, Bilali and his large family used to fast during Ramadan. There is no doubt that Islam’s fourth pillar, fasting, was exceedingly hard for people underfed and overworked. Reflecting the Muslims’ influence, non-Muslims all over the Caribbean to this day offer saraka, unaware of its Islamic origin. The cake is not called saraka, but the act of giving is a sadaqa, a freewill offering, and that word is uttered as the women give it. Rice cakes are the charity still offered by West African Muslim women on Fridays. There was a word for it: Saraka, followed after the sharing by “Ameen, Ameen, Ameen.” In the 1930s, their descendants recalled with fondness the rice cakes their mothers gave to children. In the Sea Islands, the women left their mark on this tradition. It is hard to imagine how people in dismal poverty could give alms, the third pillar of Islam, but still, charity proved to be the most widespread and resilient of all the Muslims’ religious practices. As Bilali pulled the beads, one descendant recalled, he said “Belambi, Hakabara, Mahamadu.” In the 1930s, men and women formerly enslaved in Georgia described how their relatives and others prayed several times a day: they knelt on mats, bowed, said strange words, and had “strings of beads” or misbahs. A portrait of Yarrow Mamout by artist Charles Willson Peale, made in Georgetown, Washington, DC in 1819 Mamout was a kind of celebrity who was “often seen and heard in the streets singing Praises to God – and conversing with him,” stated noted artist Charles Willson Peale.
After 44 years of slavery, he was freed and bought a house in Washington, DC. Yarrow Mamout, another highly visible Muslim, was taken from Guinea in 1752 when he was about 16. He added, “I knew several, who must have been, from what I have since learned, Mohamedans though at that time, I had never learned of the religion of Mohamed.”Ĭharles Spalding Willy had this to say about Bilali from Guinea, enslaved by his grandfather on Sapelo Island, Georgia: “Three times each day he faced the East and called upon Allah.” He witnessed other “devout Mussulmans, who prayed to Allah morning, noon and evening.” In his 1837 autobiography, Charles Ball, who escaped slavery, related in great detail the story of a man who prayed aloud five times a day in a language others did not understand. Prayer, the second pillar of Islam, was one of these visible manifestations of faith noted by enslaved and enslavers alike. Part of the Muslims’ conspicuousness was due to their continued observance, whenever possible, of the most noticeable tenets of their religion. Founder of Georgia James Oglethorpe, Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State Henry Clay, author of the US national anthem Francis Scott Key, and portraitist of the Founding Fathers Charles W Peale were acquainted with some of them. Slaveholders, travellers, journalists, scholars, diplomats, writers, priests and missionaries wrote about them. Though they were a minority among the enslaved population, Muslims were acknowledged like no other community. Among the 400,000 Africans who spent their lives enslaved in the United States, tens of thousands were Muslims. They had grown up in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Benin and Nigeria where Islam was known since the 8th century and spread in the early 1000s.Įstimates vary, but they were at least 900,000 out of the 12.5 million Africans taken to the Americas. Muslims are usually thought of as 20th-century immigrants to the US, yet for well over three centuries, African Muslims like Omar were a familiar presence. In 2021, Omar, an opera about his life, will premiere at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. Omar ibn Said, a Muslim, was born in 1770 in Senegal and by the time of his death, he had been enslaved for 56 years. In the summer of 1863, newspapers in North Carolina announced the death of “a venerable African”, referred to, in a paternalistic manner, as “Uncle Moreau”.