Many
of the political exiles were prominent Sufi `ulama and
Indonesian nobility, some of whom were descendants of the Prophet
(peace and blessings be upon him).[1]
Leaders such as Sheikh Yusuf of Makasar, who arrived on South
African shores in chains in 1694 on board the Voetboog, had
lectured in the Haram in Makkah (Abu Hamid).[2]
While
the slaves and exiled `ulama of the Far East, India, and
Africa are traditionally acknowledged as the forefathers of South
African Islam, one has to also recognize the possible influences of
previous visiting seafarers from the Muslim world. These peoples are
known to have impacted southern African culture in some way or
another, particularly its eastern seaboard.
Of
interest in this respect is a map by Marino Sanudo,[3] the 14th
century Venetian statesman and cartographer, that is said to reveal
the tip of Africa, and even Robben Island in Table Bay just outside
Cape Town. Arab geographers and Ptolemy would have informed Sanudo,
a man who agitated for a return to the Crusades. Someone would have
had to sail around Africa before that date for a mapmaker to mark
this island on his charts, which he correctly positions west of
Africa’s southern tip.
Examination
indicates that Jan van Riebeck—who arrived in Cape Town in
1652—may not have brought the first Muslims to the region
as is commonly believed. |
|
To
this effect, the fifth century BC scholar Herodotus said that
“Libya (Africa) was washed on all sides by the sea,” except
where it was attached to Asia. Bartholomew Diaz, the famous
Portuguese explorer, who rounded the southernmost tip of Africa in
1488, is believed to have used well-known maps for his navigation
that showed Africa could be circumnavigated.
As
we’ve said, the popular theory is that South African Islam came
from the Far East via the medium of Dutch colonization. However, a
brief examination of available knowledge and oral legend indicates
that Jan van Riebeck—who arrived in Cape Town in 1652—may not
have brought the first Muslims to the region as is commonly
believed.
My
limited research reveals that our indigenous African history and
oral tradition, especially its encounters with Islam, are still
hugely untapped. For example, how many historians know that ships
of the great West African Islamic Empire crossed the Atlantic, and
reached America’s eastern seaboard centuries before Columbus?
How
many have discovered that Columbus and other European adventurers
heard the Adhan and saw mosques in Cuba and the West Indies?
(Quick).
Bartholomew
Diaz would have probably seen mosque minarets only as far south as
Sofala in modern-day Mozambique. However,
accounts of an ancient fig tree and pre-Islamic “Arabic”
artifacts[4] discovered in East London, South Africa’s only river
port, 600 km south of Sofala (fig trees are not indigenous to
South Africa) and the recovery in 1927 of a Malaysian kabang,
or canoe, that had drifted to Port Elizabeth, some 300 km south
from the Nicobar Islands, are titillating scraps of information.
Al-Biruni,
the famous geographer and scientist, admitted in the ninth century
that Africa had navigable oceans in the south. The discovery of
two massive, ancient wooden shipwrecks in the sands of the Cape
Flats outside Cape Town[5] in the 1800s provides another precious
thread of evidence of ancient civilizations rounding the southern
tip of Africa (Green).
Unfortunately,
the wrecks no longer exist, but observers at the time reported
that the semi-fossilized wood from the abandoned ships used to
burn in the hearths of 19th century Cape Town with a sweet smell,
possibly that of cedar. Some argue that these ships could have
been Phoenician galleys dating from 600 BC when reports first
emerged of ships rounding the Cape.
This
idea is not as farfetched as it sounds. Geographers and sailors
note that the prevailing ocean currents that flow around southern
Africa—the Mozambique and the Benguela—run from Kenya to Cape
Point, and then north from Cape Point towards the Ivory Coast.
However, this does militate against the Phoenician galleys sailing
from Sidon across the Mediterranean and past the western bulge of
Africa against the prevailing currents.
What
strengthens the Phoenician story, though, is their reporting that
the sun was on their right-hand side as they sailed around Africa,
indicating that they had at least penetrated the southern
hemisphere. The knowledge of the ancient Phoenicians would no
doubt have been passed on to other mariners who would have voyaged
to India, the Far East, and China.
For
this reason, there is also an argument that the wrecks could have
been abandoned by the 15th century Chinese admiral Zheng He, whose
huge junks explored the African coast from 1411. Zheng He was
known to be a devout Muslim.[6]
The
Portuguese used to call the yellow-skinned, slit-eyed coastal
Hottentots, “Chinese Hottentots.” The South African author
Lawrence Green says in his book Great African Mysteries
that the traditional pagoda-style hats of the inland Tswana tribe
indicate that they also came from Chinese stock.
Apart
from many possible foreign influences on South African indigenous
peoples (still to be seriously investigated), the early Muslims,
by all accounts, did not penetrate inland farther south than the
Transvaal (where Johannesburg is situated), although San rock
paintings in the Drakensberg mountains southeast of Johannesburg
depict men in “Arab garb,” and another at Makgabeng in the
northern Transvaal shows five men in Oriental clothing in the
position of ruku` (Hall and Marsh).
Of
further interest is a little-known legend that a man called
Musa, the half-Ethiopian son of a companion of the Prophet
Muhammad lies buried somewhere in the Western Cape, just
outside Cape Town. |
|
Sofala
in Mozambique was a well-known port for Zimbabwe’s gold and
ivory, which had to be transported hundreds of kilometers overland
before reaching the sea. The social fabric of Mozamibiquan Islam
was smashed by the Portuguese and given its last rites by the
communist rule of Samora Machel. Islam did, nevertheless, survive
in neighboring Malawi.
It
is said that the famous Zimbabwean stone citadels were built by an
African civilization that mined its gold reserves and traded with
the Arabs. Eastern traders must have known the Zambezi River and
the mighty Victoria Falls long before Livingstone blundered into
the bush.
Of
further interest is a little-known legend[7] that a man called Musa,
the half-Ethiopian son of a Companion of the Prophet Muhammad
(peace and blessings be upon him) lies buried somewhere in the
Western Cape, just outside Cape Town. Apparently Musa, fired up
with the spirit of da`wah, caught a ship for Africa but was
shipwrecked and saved by the local tribes.
The
story goes that the local San tribesmen became good Muslims under
Musa’s guidance. A German convert to Islam, Tariq Knapp, claims
to have unearthed this legend in Fez, Morocco, when a sheikh told
him about it and instructed him to find the grave of Musa and to
build a mosque near its site. Financial constraints and old age
have prevented Knapp from furthering his ijazah.
Another
fascinating legend is told by a tribe called the Ba-Lemba,[8] who
today live as minority groups in the northern Transvaal, Zimbabwe,
and Mozambique. They believe themselves to be of Jewish origin and
of Yemeni extraction.
However,
one man from the tribe who had embraced Islam, Saeed Shaikh, said
he believed that he was descended from Zaid, a grandson of
Hussain, the son of the Prophet’s Companion `Ali. He said
that the emoZaid, the people of Zaid, moved down the east coast of
Africa into the interior. By 950 CE they were in Zimbabwe and
according to reports, co-existed peacefully with other tribes and
were originally known as the “Aba Araba.”
While
Shaikh’s claims of lineage could be fanciful, a subsequent DNA
test by Jewish scholars[9] has revealed that the Lemba have strong
Levite origins. While debate now rages whether the Lemba are one
of the “Lost Tribes” or not, the customs of the Ba-Lemba are
distinctly and undeniably “Abrahamic.” Circumsion, the
abolition of pork, and the burial of the dead in a shroud form an
integral part of their tribal culture.
The
advent of the 18th century saw the rise of European colonialism
and the blockage of Islam’s gradual osmosis into southern Africa
from the north and east. The topic of our next article, in
sha’ Allah, will show how the oppression of Islam in one
part of the world brought it to another and, ironically, caused it
to flourish in isolation from the rest of the continent for over
300 years.
Sources
Abu
Hamid. Syekh Yusuf Makassar: `Alim, Sufi, Author, Hero.
Indonesia: Hasanuddin University, 1994.
Davids,
Achmat and Yusuf da Costa. Pages from Cape Muslim History.
Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1994.
Green,
Lawrence. Great African Mysteries. Cape Town: Howard Timmins,
circa 1960.
Hall,
Sian and Rob Marsh. Beyond Belief, Murders and Mysteries of
Southern Africa. Cape Town: Struik Publishers, 1996.
Menzies,
Gavin. 1421 – the Year China Discovered the World. Great
Britain: Bantam Books, 2003.
Quick,
Abdullah Hakim. Deeper Roots: Muslims in the Americas and the
Caribbean from Before Columbus to the Present. London: Ta-Ha
Publishers, 1998.
Shaikh,
Saeed. Interview. Muslim Views. Cape Town, South Africa.
September 1990.
“South
Africa First Inhabited by Muslims.” Saudi
Gazette. 8 January 1990.
** Shafiq
Morton is a senior South African journalist and a presenter at
the Voice of the Cape radio station.
[1]
Islam was brought to the Far East chiefly by Arab traders and da`is
who married into the local populations. Sayyid Abdur-Rahman Matarah
(also known as Haji Matarim) and Tuan Sayyid `Alawi, for example,
both originally hailed from Yemen. They were exiled to the Cape from
the Far East by the Dutch. The Ba `Alawi Sufi practices of many of
these South African Islamic pioneers carried down the generations in
Cape Town are strong evidence of Arab influence. The Ba `Alawi
originate from Hadhraumat when a leader of the Prophet’s
descendants, Ahmad ibn `Isa (Imam Muhajir), emigrated from Baghdad
during the Abbasid period. Shaikh `Abdullah ibn Qadi `Abd us-Salam,
a prince from Tidore who arrived in Cape Town in 1780, enjoyed the
title “Tuan Guru (Master teacher), one only given to descendants
of the Prophet (s). The links of the Hadhrami Sayyids to the
families of Indonesia is well-known in the region, although some of
the silsilah (family chains) are forged. Sources: Shaikh
Seraj Hendricks, Dr Achmat Davids, Professor Yusuf da Costa. Also
see: “A General Theory on the Islamisation of the Malay-Indonesian
Archipelago” by Dr Syeed Naguib al-Attas, Kuala Lumpur, 1969.
[2]
See: “In the footsteps of the Companions, Shaykh Yusuf of Macassar
(1629-1699)” from Pages From Cape Muslim History by Dr
Achmat Davids and Prof Yusuf da Costa.
[3]
Saudi Gazette. The map shows an island to the west of the
southern tip of Africa. The only island to the west of Africa in
that position is Robben Island.
[4]
Discovered by a former Rhodes University geologist called van Wyk.
The site was on his farm near the Chalumna river mouth. This is in
the same area where author Lawrence Green in his Great African
Mysteries cites Brother Otto, of the Marianhill monastery in
KwaZulu-Natal, unearthing clothed figures painted in caves in the
Kei River valley. These figures, depicted with white skins, wore
clothing similar to that of the peoples of the “Asia Minor”
about 1,000 years before the birth of Jesus.
[5]
See Eight Bells at Salamander, p 17. Green is, incidentally,
cynical about Arabs circumnavigating the Cape. Gavin Menzies, the
author of 1421 – The Year China Discovered the World and a
proponent of Chinese pioneering the route, agrees. Jose Burman in
his book Strange Shipwrecks (publisher unknown as I have a
Photostat copy) supports the Phoenician theory.
[6]
See Gavin Menzies.
[7] Tariq Knapp’s theory is undeniably controversial, highly esoteric,
and somewhat difficult to prove—despite his detailed research. His
account first appeared in the Saudi Gazette of 8 January
1990, and in Muslim Views, Cape Town, South Africa, August
1990. I interviewed him, already an old man, on Voice of the Cape
radio station in 2002. Shaikh Ahmad Hendricks of the Azzawia in Cape
Town was given a copy of Tariq Knapp’s ijazah, written in
Arabic. Knapp’s account is recounted as legend, one that needs
further investigation.
[8]
Interview with Saeed Shaikh.
[9] See:
Neil Bradman and Mark Thomas "Y
Chromosomes Traveling South: The Cohen Modal Haplotype and the
Origins of the Lemba, the "Black Jews of South Africa".
Published electronically February 2000. (This does preclude the
possibility of the Lemba becoming Muslims or Christians while in the
Diaspora.)
