Islam and the Black American
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. This series is called Islam in Early America. It is to discuss the rich and vibrant history of African American Muslims from West Africa and their journey into America into present day. It is a story that is rich with unique, interesting people with lots of talents, courage, determination, hard work, and a great influence on the American culture and American society. When we look at Islam in early America, we have to begin to look at how they arrived. How did Islam arrive to the shores of North America? Early as the 12th century, we find stories of the great Mansa Abu Bakr II, who was the second son of Sheikh Anta Joub. And Sheikh Anta Joub was a great historian and a great scholar of his time. So it would be interesting that he would have a son, one of them being Mansa Abu Bakr and the other one Mansa Musa, as we're all familiar with the great wealthy king who traveled from Mali all the way to Mecca and returned upon his way. But how did he become king? It was actually because of his brother Abu Bakr who renounced his throne in order to be a great voyager. He initially heard about a land across the ocean. And so he sent out 200 ships with enough resources for several years. When those ships didn't respond and only one ship returned back to him,
there was a sailor who gave him an account of a great storm that actually began to soak in all of the ships into a hole. But this one ship began to back up. And he was able to turn his ship around and arrive back to West Africa to tell the tale. But that didn't stop the curiosity nor the determination of Mansa Abu Bakr. He then decided that there was something beyond the storm, something worth going after. And so then he sent 2,000 ships, 1,000 for himself and his other sailors and another 1,000 filled with resources and food for years to come. There are great historians. Khadija J. in Egypt tells an account of Al-Umari in 1325 that begins to tell the story of the expeditions of Abu Bakr. But was there any evidence? Did anything suggest that he had actually arrived to the coast of America? It turns out that historians years later found several accounts of his arrival to the Americas. One is that one of the things that he carried along in his ship, where they were actually spears, and more than 60% of the head of those spears were coated with gold mixed with silver and then some copper. When Columbus arrived, he actually discovered some of the arrows that were left from the tips of these spears. And when he saw them, the native people called them guanine. And guanine was actually a West African term that was used to describe gold.
And so that was the beginning of a little bit of the evidence of the expedition of Abu Bakr. Later on, we find that in the 14th century, there is a map called the Pir Reis map that is discovered in Turkey. And this map was originally used by a Turkish voyager who decided that he also wanted to explore the newfound land. But this map that he had, that he was using, was something very unique about it. What was unique about the map is that it had the interior rivers as well as some of the mountains of America, something that had not been documented before that. And it was said that this was actually a map that not only those who had traveled with Mansa Abu Bakr, but other Moors had come together to collaborate on this particular map. So these are some of the clues. In Brazil, as well as it said that Abu Bakr reached, there have been found coins that actually have Mandinka script inside of them. And yet, one other wonderful thing that happens as a discovery to his expedition, as proof of his arrival, is that in a cave in Arizona, there was found written on the walls, the elephants are sick. Now one might wonder, what's the significance of the elephants being sick? The significance of the cave writing is that number one, it's in Mandinka script. The other thing is that elephants are not unique to America. The elephants that are painted in this cave in Arizona are African elephants. So this was also proof of the expedition of Mansa Abu Bakr.
This, as we know, is some of the earliest accounts of African Muslims arriving to the coast of America. Later on, we find Native Americans actually having documents, of Sharia documents that are about property management, about marriage agreements between not only individuals, but also nations, showing further proof of the relationship of West Africans and Native Americans and their interrelationship with each other, and particularly their relationship with Islam. Now, many historians have began as they're searching for Islam on the shores of America, particularly within African history, and they find that there is a gap. And slowly, slowly, as we have more historians who are searching on this topic, that gap is getting smaller and smaller. We know that there were also Moors who traveled with Columbus. It's actually Ferdinand Columbus, the son of Columbus, who actually documents where his father not only found a mosque on the hilltop in Cuba, but in addition to, he commented on how the clothing of many Native Americans in the area matched the clothing of many of the Moors that he had seen inside of Spain in terms of its fabrication as well as in its design. There are other accounts of Ferdinand Columbus giving more details of even watching how some of the Native Americans conducted worship, and they commented on the similarity of that worship between the Moors that they had seen and some of the Native American worship that they were witnessing. This was further proof of an ongoing relationship between Moors and West African Muslims
and their relationship with Native Americans here on American soil.
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