The First Refuge

The First RefugeSources

Sources and method

A reading room is only as good as its shelf. This is the shelf, and the way the pages are made.

How a page is made

Sources first. A page is drafted from the works listed on it. Each date, name and number is then checked a second time against a primary source or an institution that holds the evidence: the Library of Congress, a museum, a university library, UNESCO, the hadith collections.

Tradition is labeled. Much of early history reaches us through later writers. When a date or a founder is traditional, the page says “by tradition.” When historians disagree, both views are given.

Scripture is not paraphrased as quotation. Hadith are quoted from Sahih al-Bukhari in the English of Muhammad Muhsin Khan, with the number used at sunnah.com. Verses of the Quran are cited by chapter and verse.

AI assistance is disclosed. The drafting, the fact checking and the layout were done with the help of an AI system. The keeper reads and answers for every page.

The shelf

Each chapter lists its own sources at the foot of the page. These are the works behind the whole room.

Start here

  • Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York University Press, 1998; anniversary edition 2013).
  • Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Harvard University Press, 2016).
  • Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels, editors, The History of Islam in Africa (Ohio University Press, 2000).

The first refuge

  • Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, translated by A. Guillaume (Oxford University Press, 1955), pages 146 to 155.
  • Sahih al-Bukhari 1245 and 1333, narrated by Abu Hurayrah. sunnah.com
  • Sahih al-Bukhari 3877 and 3879, narrated by Jabir ibn Abdullah. sunnah.com
  • Sahih al-Bukhari 1149, narrated by Abu Hurayrah. sunnah.com

Schools and libraries

  • Beverly B. Mack and Jean Boyd, One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma’u, Scholar and Scribe (Indiana University Press, 2000).
  • UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Timbuktu. whc.unesco.org
  • UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Medina of Fez. whc.unesco.org
  • UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Kairouan. whc.unesco.org
  • UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Harar Jugol, the Fortified Historic Town. whc.unesco.org

Kingdoms and travelers

  • Michael A. Gomez, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa (Princeton University Press, 2018).
  • Nehemia Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, editors, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Cambridge University Press, 1981).
  • Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (University of California Press, revised 2012).
  • Mark Horton, Shanga: The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East Africa (British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996).

The Americas and the Carolinas

  • Library of Congress, Omar Ibn Said Collection, with the collection essay. loc.gov
  • Ala Alryyes, editor and translator, A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011).
  • Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (Routledge, 1997).
  • Michael A. Gomez, Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
  • Terry Alford, Prince Among Slaves (Oxford University Press, 1977; anniversary edition 2007).
  • University of Georgia, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Bilali Muhammad document (ms2807). sclfind.galib.uga.edu
  • Lowcountry Digital History Initiative, College of Charleston, African Muslims in the South. ldhi.library.cofc.edu
  • Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (University of Georgia Press, 1940).
  • Joao Jose Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
  • Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Harvard University Press, 2001).

Where the pictures come from

Every image on this site is a historical work in the public domain. None is generated. The copies here were taken from Wikimedia Commons, where each file’s history is recorded.

The portrait of Omar ibn Said is a digital restoration of the original ambrotype. It is shown here in monochrome, because the color in the restored file was added by its restorer.

The map is drawn by this site’s own code from Natural Earth, a public domain map dataset. Places and routes are positioned by their coordinates. The routes are schematic.

Colophon

The text is set in Alegreya, by Juan Pablo del Peral. Arabic is set in Harmattan, a typeface by SIL International designed for the languages of West Africa that are written in Arabic script, and named for the winter wind of the Sahel. The site is built on WordPress by Ameen Systems and holds no advertising and no tracking.

Corrections

Write to corrections@ferrand.africa with the page and the source. Changes of fact are listed here with their date.

October 2026
The reading room opens with four chapters, seventeen lives and a timeline.