In the context of IslamOnline.net’s special coverage of Muslims in South Africa, Shafiq Morton offers his perspective on the history of Islam in the country. Below is the second of a three-part series.
We have already examined how Muslims and others could have landed in South Africa prior to the Portuguese and Dutch, from pre-Islamic seafarers such as the Phoenicians, to the Chinese in the 14th century. But now, it’s time to focus on the late 17th century, the more traditionally accepted era of Muslim arrival to the Cape of Good Hope.
Cape Town, a picturesque seaport that nestles at the foot of the granite-faced Table Mountain at the junction of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, is without doubt the seminal hub of South African Islam. Even today, more than 50 percent of the country’s 2 million Muslims live in the Cape Town area, where over 130 masjids serve their devotional needs (Taraweeg Survey).
As a seaport, Cape Town has always had a cosmopolitan population; the Muslim community has reflected this demographic since day one.
To this effect the Cape Times, a local newspaper, observed in 1882 that no country on the face of the earth was “more mixed in its inhabitants” than the Cape of Good Hope.
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Early Cape Town, a Dutch style town (1700’s) |
And even today, if one attends the congregational Friday prayers in any Cape Town mosque, a person will be confronted with the full spectrum of humanity sitting in the rows. The “Malay” description applied to Cape Muslims by the colonialists and apartheid authorities has always been an acknowledgment of their Islam, rather than their race.
That Islam arrived in the Cape (Africa’s southernmost urban center) via the Far East is a curious twist in an absorbing tale. North of the equatorial belt, Africa is almost 70 percent Muslim, and it just seems more plausible that the deen should have spread from the north—but it didn’t.
And this is what sets South African Islam apart from the rest of the continent. Brought to the soil of Africa through oppression in another part of the world, many of South Africa’s greatest Islamic pioneers arrived in chains.
Professor Yusuf da Costa writes that the slave trade was primarily responsible for the “involuntary migration” of large numbers of Asian and African people to other parts of the world, including South Africa. Some were political exiles and prisoners who had opposed Dutch and British colonization of their countries, and their numbers included many Muslims (Pages).
Most slaves (about 50 percent) came from India’s Malabar and Bengal Coasts, with the rest hailing from Madagascar, Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka), Africa, and the Malay-Indonesian archipelago.
Thus, maintains, da Costa, the “earliest Cape Muslims were part of the involuntary migration from Africa and Asia that lasted from 1652 to 1834.” He also notes that a group of “free” Muslims, “Mardykers,” found themselves at the Cape shortly after 1652.
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Jan van Riebeeck |
Hailing from Amboyna, an Indonesian island, they were the servants of Dutch officials returning to the Netherlands from the Far East. Jan van Riebeeck, a Dutch East India Company administrator, had landed at the Cape in 1652 to establish a way station for the Dutch fleet (Mahida).
Van Riebeeck was short of labor to tend his vegetable gardens near the company fort on Woodstock Beach, so some of the Mardykers opted to stay behind at the Cape in 1658. They were prevented from openly practicing their Islam by the Statutes of India, a “placaat” that forbade (on the pain of death) the public practice or propagation of any religion except for the Dutch Reform Church.
The Mardykers were, nevertheless, permitted to worship in private, and it could be argued that it was this group that engendered a semblance of social urban cohesiveness amongst the early Muslims. They were joined by another group, this time the “Vryezwarten” (Free Blacks), who were convict laborers indentured in 1743 to construct a breakwater in Table Bay.
In 1770, the British traveler George Foster observed that a “few slaves” were meeting weekly in the home of a “free Mahommadan to read, or rather chant, several prayers and chapters of the Qur’an” (Mahida).
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Muslims were prevented from openly practicing their religion by the Statutes of India, a “placaat” that forbade the public practice or propagation of any religion except for the Dutch Reform Church. |
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The doyen of Cape historians, Dr. Achmat Davids, observes that the Mardykers and Vryezwarten, who became relatively prosperous, were vital players in consolidating Islam at the Cape. Although economically co-opted by the Europeans, the “Free Black” Muslim community thoroughly identified itself with its fellow Muslim slaves and exiles, providing them with cultural refuge.
In fact, there is later evidence that the “Free Black” Muslims not only owned slaves themselves, but also married into the slave and exile population—this in addition to providing the first property on which to build South Africa’s first mosque and madrasah in 1798
[1].While the “Free Black” Muslims provided the infrastructure for Islam at the Cape, it could be said that the exiled `ulama from the Far East—“Orang Cayen” noblemen of the Malay-Indonesian Sultanates—gave the community its spiritual impetus. They were sent to the Cape to neutralize their influence in Southeast Asia.
In 1667, The Polsbroek left Batavia with three West Sumatran political prisoners in chains. The Cape Archives report:
On 24 January 1667, the ship The Polsbroek left Batavia and arrived here on 13 May 1668 with three political prisoners in chains. Malays of the West Coast of Sumatra, who were banished to the Cape until further orders on the understanding that they would eventually be released. They were rulers “Orang Cayen,” men of wealth and influence. Great care had to be taken that they were not left at large as they were likely to do injury to the Company. Two were sent to the Company’s forest and one to Robben Island.
The forest to which these men, Sheikh Abdurahman Matebe Shah and Sheikh Sayyid Mahmud, were banished was Constantia—a day’s wagon ride from Table Bay. Sayyid Mahmud, whose shrine is visited to this day, was described as a “religious advisor” and is regarded as the first of the many Hadhrami Sayyids (descendents of the noble Prophet) to be exiled to the Cape.
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The tomb on the grave of Shaikh Yusuf of Makasar on the dunes of Sandvlei near Faure |
The Sayyids of Hadhraumat, intrepid traders and da`wah preachers, had ventured into East Africa and the Malay-Indonesian archipelago in about the 15th century. Dr. Achmat Davids observes that Islam was still spreading among animistic island communities when the Dutch arrived in the 17th century.
The impact of Sheikh Sayyid Mahmud and his companion on the broader Cape community is not known, although it is significant that their grave sites and those of a Muslim community in the forest have been known to Capetonians for over three hundred years.
The next significant event was the arrival of the 68-year-old Sheikh Yusuf of Makasar, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Taj Al-Khalwatiyyah Al-Maqasari
[2], on the Voetboog in 1694. Born of Indonesian nobility in Sulawesi, he departed for Makkah when he was 18 and returned to become a teacher and spiritual guide to the Bantamese court of Sultan Ageng.Bantam was a fiercely independent sultanate and one of the most resistant to Dutch control. Court intrigue stirred up by the Dutch saw Sultan Ageng displaced and forced to take up arms to defend himself. Sheikh Yusuf sided with Sultan Ageng and was finally captured in 1686.
By this time, Sheikh Yusuf’s reputation as a scholar, warrior, and wali had spread far and wide throughout the archipelago. For the Dutch, he was the proverbial political “hot potato.” His captors brought him to Batavia but were unable to curb his influence.
Exiled to Ceylon, the princes of Goa petitioned for his release. His popularity forced the Dutch to finally exile him to the distant shores of South Africa. And so, accompanied by 12 scholars, 2 wives, 2 slaves, 12 children, and 14 followers, Sheikh Yusuf was confined to a farm called “Zandvliet” in False Bay.
In spite of its isolation and distance from Cape Town, the sandy, windswept Zandvliet—now called Macassar—is believed to have been the first known rallying point for Muslims at the Cape. Professor Dangor writes that Sheikh Yusuf, the undisputed giant of South African Islam, had a threefold impact.
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The first Qur’an in South Africa was written entirely from memory by the Rajah and given as a gift to the Governor. |
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First, the Indonesian `alim restored dignity to a largely downtrodden community. Second, as a practicing Sufi, he created durable socio-religious structures. And third, through his missionary work, he won over many local Khoi-Khoi and runaway slaves to Islam, thus injecting the community with new blood.
Sheikh Yusuf passed away in 1699, and in 1704 most of his family and followers were allowed to return to Batavia. His one daughter, who had married the exiled Rajah of Tambora, stayed behind, as did two of his followers. One of them, Sheikh Mohamed Hassan Ghaibe Shah Al-Qadiri, is buried on Signal Hill overlooking the central business district of Cape Town, indicating that he must have played some recognized role in the early Cape community.
The Rajah of Tambora—after having been chained in Van Riebeeck’s castle at Cape Town—was confined to Vergelen, the residence of Governor Simon van der Stel. It was there that the first Qur’an in South Africa was written entirely from memory by the Rajah and given as a gift to the Governor.
Dr. Achmat Davids argues that the Rajah’s influence on the Muslim community was negligible. His children converted to Christianity and assumed the surnames of de Haan and Sultania after his death. Interestingly enough, Robert Shell writes that Piet Retief, the famous Afrikaner Voortrekker leader, was a direct descendant of the Rajah of Tambora.
In 1744, two further prominent `ulama were exiled to the Cape. Tuan Sayyid `Alawi and Sayyid Abdurahman Matarah arrived from Mocca in Yemen. Classified as “Mohammedaansche Priesters” by the archives, they were to be kept in chains for the rest of their lives. They were incarcerated on Robben Island where Sayyid Matarah died in 1755.
Tuan Sayyid `Alawi was released shortly after Sayyid Matarah’s death, and became a policeman in Cape Town. He was renowned for his da`wah work and is the first official imam of the South African Muslim community.
Sources
Abu Hamid. Sheikh Yusuf Makassar: `Alim, Sufi, Author, Hero. Indonesia: Hasanuddin University, 1994.
Cape Times, 1 August 1882.
Davids, Achmat. The Mosques of the Bo-Kaap. Athlone: The South African Institute of Arabic and Islamic Research, 1980.
Mahida, Ebrahim Mahomed. History of Muslims in South Africa: A Chronology. Durban: Arabic Study Circle, 2003.
Pages from Cape Muslim History. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter, 1994.
Shell, Robert. The Establishment and Spread of Islam at the Cape from the beginning of Company Rule to 1838. BA (Hons) Thesis, UCT, Cape Town, 1974.
Taraweeg Survey 2002, Boorhanol Islam Movement, Cape Town.
** Shafiq Morton is a senior South African journalist and a presenter at the Voice of the Cape radio station.
[1] Saartjie van de Kaap, whose manumitted father Coridon of Ceylon became the first Muslim land-owner in Cape Town, ceded her property for use as South Africa’s first mosque by Tuan Guru (Imam `Abdallah Qadi Abdus Salam), a formerly imprisoned exile who married a “free Black” Muslim woman, Kaija (Khadija?) van de Kaap, upon his release from Robben Island in 1793.
[2] Sheikh Yusuf had ijazah in all the major Sufi orders, but was known as the “Crown” of the Khalwatiyyah.