Africans in the New World

Early Fulani Diaspora in the Americas

The impact of Africans in the New World

Five African Cultures - Yoruba, Kongo, Ejagham, Mande and Fulani. A significant part of these cultures have been maintained in the New World, which includes the United States, Cuba, Haiti, Trinidad, Mexico, Brazil and other places. Seven Africans taken into slavery who became well known are: Ayub Job Djallo (1730), Bundu , Fulani SenegalKunta Kinte (1767), Juffure, Mandingo, The GambiaYarrow Mamood (1796), Fulani GuineaIbrahim Abdul Rahman ibn Sori (1788), Timbo, Fulani GuineaUmar Ibn Sayyid (1807), Fuuta Toro, Fulani SenegalSali Bilali, (1790), Masina, Fulani-Mandingo, MaliBen Ali-Bilali (1803), Fuuta-Jallon, Guinea

Job ibn Solomon Jallo

Job ibn Solomon Jallo was a trader and religious leader (Imam) who came from Bundu, Senegal. He was captured in the Gambia in 1730 and brought to Annapolis, Maryland.Job was the son of an imam (leader of the prayer) in Bundu. Reports describe him as a well-mannered, courtly, intelligent, monotheistic, and literate human being who came out of Africa. Job was a hafiz, who wrote out by hand three copies of the Qur’an from memory.

Kunta Kinte

Kunta Kinte was born in 1750, in the village of Juffure in Gambia. In 1767 at the age 16, kunta was captured and enslaved. He was shipped to Annapolis, Maryland. On the Lord Ligonier and sold to a Virginia planter. Kunta Kinte fought hard to hold on to his West-African and Islamic heritages. He is the great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather of the world renowned writer of Roots, Alex Haley.

Yerrow Mamood

Yerro Mahmood (Yarrow Mamout) had worked out his freedom and became a landowner and a local character in Georgetown, Washington, DC. He is known to have practiced Islam publicly. By 1807 he was free and had purchased stock in the Columbia Bank, being one of the first to do so. Yarrow lived to be more than 100 years old. His portrait is in the Smithsonian museum in Washington, DC.

Ibrahim Abdul Rahaman

Ibrahim Abdul Rahaman was a Calvary leader, who was captured returning home from a successful battle. His homeland was Timbo, (Fuuta-Jalon) in present day Guinea.He was a Fulani and lived from 1762 to 1829. Rahaman had been a student in Timbuktu and still wrote Arabic after being away for more than thirty years. In 1828, at age of 66, after 40 years of slavery, he finally gained his freedom. Ibrahim Abdul Rahaman was known as the “Prince of Slaves.”

Omar ibn SayyidOmar ibn (Said) Sayyid (1770-1864), was a Fulani. He was taken from a famous family of teachers from Fuuta Tooro in present day Senegal.Omar lived more than a half century as storyteller and an oriental (Muslim) saint to neighbors and visitors from near and far. Omar left several short pieces of his writing, which were prayers from the Bible and the Qur’an. He died in 1864 at the age of 94, and was buried on the Owen Hill plantation in the Family burial ground.

Salih BilaliSalih Bilali came from an aristocratic and powerful family of Masina, present day Mali. He was born around 1765. His parents were mixed Mandingo-Fulbe from a town called Kianah in the district of Temourah, along the middle of Niger southwest of Timbuktu. He had learned to read Arabic in Africa. Salih was kidnapped around 1790 when the Segu Bambara empire was on the rise.Robert Abbott, a descendant of Salih Bilali, founded the Chicago Defender, The nation’s first black newspaper. He erected and obelisk in honor of his father and two aunts on the grounds of fort Frederica on St.Simons Island, Georgia.

Ben Ali

Bilali Muhammad, sometimes called Bu (Abu) Ali, or Ben Ali was a Fula from Timbo Futa Jallon in the highlands of present day Guinea-Conakry. Bilali left a manuscript in Arabic that indicated he was a man trained well beyond the basic Qur’anic education. Bilali’s book was titled First Fruit of Happiness (after translation), it was also known as a slave Diary.Bilali started one of the first Muslim communities in America. While still in slavery, the community built villages similar to those used in Africa.

Muhammad Ali Ben SaidMuhammad Ali Ben Said known as (Nicholas Said) was born in 1833 in Bornu near Lake Chad.He was sergeant in the Colored Volunteers Infantry; He had medical training and knew nine languages.His autobiography (Native of Bornoo) was published in the Atlantic.

Abraham among Indians

Sample of Omar Ibn Sayyid’s Writings

ResourcesAmir Nashod Ali Muhammad “Muslims in America” Seven Century

of History (1312-1998), by, Amana Publications.Allan D. Austin (African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles ) New York: Routledge, 1997Terry Alford (Prince Among Slaves) New York: Oxford University Press, 1986 African Slave Trade and European Imperialismhttp://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/timelines/htimeline3.htm

African Diasporahttp://www.cc.colorado.edu/Dept/HY/HY243Ruiz/Research/diaspora.html

African Diaspora Research Projecthttp://www.msu.edu/unit/uap/africa.html