Atlas
Thirty places from the reading room on one map. Choose a place to see what happened there, who lived it, and where to read more.
The atlas
Choose a place on the map, or zoom in with the buttons above. The lines trace the first emigration to Aksum, Mansa Musa’s road to Makkah, and the crossing to the Americas.
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30 places
Makkah
Where Islam began. In its first years the believers here had no state and no army, and those without a powerful clan were beaten and starved, so the Prophet, peace be upon him, sent some of them across the Red Sea to Abyssinia. Bilal ibn Rabah was born here to an Abyssinian mother. In 1324 Mansa Musa came here on pilgrimage from Mali.
PeopleBilal ibn RabahUmm Ayman, BarakahMansa Musa
ReadI. A king under whom no one is wrongedI. Bilal and Umm AymanIII. Mansa Musa, 1324
Sources
- Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, translated by A. Guillaume (Oxford University Press, 1955), pages 146 to 155.
- Nehemia Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, editors, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Madinah
When the Negus died, traditionally about 630, the Prophet prayed the funeral prayer for him here and called him a brother. In Madinah, Bilal was the first to call the adhan.
PeopleThe Negus, Ashama ibn AbjarBilal ibn Rabah
ReadI. Your brother AshamaI. Bilal and Umm Ayman
Sources
- 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
Aksum
The kingdom that gave the first Muslims refuge, in the highlands of what are now Ethiopia and Eritrea. Its king, the Negus, heard Ja'far ibn Abi Talib recite from the chapter of Mary, wept, and refused to hand the refugees back to Quraysh.
PeopleThe Negus, Ashama ibn Abjar
ReadI. The hearing
Sources
- Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, translated by A. Guillaume (Oxford University Press, 1955), pages 146 to 155.
- Musnad Ahmad, the narration of Umm Salama on the hearing before the Negus.
Negash
A village whose holy compound holds tombs of companions of the Prophet who found refuge here, and a shrine believed to be the tomb of the king himself. Ethiopian Muslims call it the second Mecca. The mosque, al-Nejashi, was struck by heavy weapons late in 2020, during the war in Tigray, and is now being repaired with help from Turkey.
PeopleThe Negus, Ashama ibn Abjar
ReadI. Negash today
Sources
- Zuzanna Augustyniak and Kamil O. Kuraszkiewicz, “The early Islamic tradition in Ethiopia: report on the first season of the archaeo-ethnographic research in Negash (Tigray),” Studies in African Languages and Cultures 59 (2025), pages 169 to 185. doi.org
- Anadolu Agency, “Ethiopia vows to restore ancient iconic mosque,” January 5, 2021. aa.com.tr
Harar
A walled town that holds 82 mosques, three of them from the tenth century, and 102 shrines. UNESCO notes that it is considered the fourth holiest city of Islam.
ReadII. Chinguetti, Harar, Sokoto
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Harar Jugol, the Fortified Historic Town. whc.unesco.org
Cairo
Al-Azhar held its first Friday prayer in 972 and has been teaching, with interruptions, ever since. In 1324 Mansa Musa passed through on his pilgrimage and gave away so much gold that, by al-Umari's account, it had lost value in the market and had not recovered about twelve years later.
PeopleMansa Musa
ReadII. Cairo, 972III. Mansa Musa, 1324
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Historic Cairo. whc.unesco.org
- Nehemia Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, editors, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Kairouan
Uqba ibn Nafi laid out the town in 670 and marked the place for its mosque. The Great Mosque that stands today was largely rebuilt in the ninth century, and its minaret is dated to 836. Kairouan became the great school of Maliki law in the west, and its jurist Ibn Abi Zayd wrote the Risala, the handbook West African children memorized for a thousand years.
PeopleIbn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Kairouan. whc.unesco.org
Tunis
The Zaytuna mosque here is older still than al-Azhar. Tunisia's heritage agency dates its founding to about 699, soon after the Muslim conquest of the city, and its rebuilding to 728 or 729.
ReadII. Cairo, 972
Sources
- Agency for the Development of National Heritage and Cultural Promotion, Tunisia, Az-Zaytuna Mosque. patrimoinedetunisie.com.tn
Fez
By tradition, Fatima al-Fihri, whose family came from Kairouan, founded the mosque of al-Qarawiyyin here in 859. UNESCO and Guinness World Records describe it as the oldest existing, continually operating educational institution in the world. Historians question parts of the founding story, and it became a state university only in 1963.
PeopleFatima al-Fihri
ReadII. Fez, 859
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Medina of Fez. whc.unesco.org
Tangier
Ibn Battuta was born here in 1304 and left at twenty-one for the pilgrimage. By his own account he kept traveling for about twenty-nine years, down the east coast of Africa about 1330 and across the Sahara to Mali in 1352.
PeopleIbn Battuta
Sources
- Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (University of California Press, revised 2012).
Marrakesh
After the Moroccan conquest of Songhay, Timbuktu's most famous scholar, Ahmad Baba, was deported here in chains. He taught here for years and came home in 1608.
PeopleAhmad Baba
ReadII. Timbuktu
Sources
- Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Harvard University Press, 2016).
Timbuktu
Scholars taught in their own houses and kept their own libraries, and books were the luxury trade. The town has three old mosques: Djinguereber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia. In 2012 and 2013, when armed groups held the town, its librarians moved hundreds of thousands of manuscripts south to Bamako to keep them safe.
PeopleAhmad BabaMansa Musa
ReadII. Timbuktu
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Timbuktu. whc.unesco.org
- Ousmane Oumar Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Harvard University Press, 2016).
Mali
Mansa Musa ruled Mali from about 1312 to about 1337. His pilgrimage of 1324 made him famous far beyond Africa, and in 1375 a mapmaker's workshop on Majorca drew him holding out a disk of gold. Ibn Battuta crossed the Sahara to Mali in 1352.
PeopleMansa MusaIbn Battuta
ReadIII. Mansa Musa, 1324III. The man from Tangier
Sources
- Nehemia Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, editors, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Cambridge University Press, 1981).
- Michael A. Gomez, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa (Princeton University Press, 2018).
- Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (University of California Press, revised 2012).
Chinguetti
One of four old caravan towns in the desert, with Ouadane, Tichitt and Oualata, founded in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and listed together by UNESCO. Chinguetti's families still keep manuscript libraries in mud-brick houses.
ReadII. Chinguetti, Harar, Sokoto
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Ancient Ksour of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata. whc.unesco.org
Sokoto
Usman dan Fodio's reform movement of 1804 became the Sokoto Caliphate. His daughter Nana Asma'u wrote in Arabic, Fulfulde and Hausa, and about 1830 organized the jajis, women who traveled between villages to teach other women.
PeopleUsman dan FodioNana Asma’u
ReadIII. Sokoto, 1804II. Chinguetti, Harar, Sokoto
Sources
- Beverly B. Mack and Jean Boyd, One Woman’s Jihad: Nana Asma’u, Scholar and Scribe (Indiana University Press, 2000).
Futa Toro
Omar ibn Said was born here about 1770, between the Senegal and Gambia rivers, the son of a wealthy man. He had spent many years as a student when, in 1807, he was captured in a war and shipped to Charleston.
PeopleOmar ibn Said
Sources
- Library of Congress, Omar Ibn Said Collection, with the collection essay. loc.gov
Bundu
Ayuba Suleiman Diallo came from Bundu. Captured in 1730 and sold in Maryland, he wrote a letter in Arabic to his father that led to his freedom, and he came home in 1734.
PeopleAyuba Suleiman Diallo
Sources
- Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (Routledge, 1997).
Futa Jallon
Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima was a prince of Timbo, in Futa Jallon, before his capture in 1788. Bilali Muhammad of Sapelo Island came from Futa Jallon too, and Lamine Kebe taught school here before he was enslaved.
PeopleAbd al-Rahman IbrahimaBilali MuhammadLamine Kebe
ReadIV. Names we still haveIV. Sapelo Island
Sources
- Terry Alford, Prince Among Slaves (Oxford University Press, 1977; anniversary edition 2007).
- Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (Routledge, 1997).
Senegambia
Many of the Muslims carried to the Americas came from Senegambia, Futa Toro and Futa Jallon. Historians such as Judith Carney have argued that Carolina planters prized the skills of people from the rice-growing coasts of West Africa. Other scholars doubt that buyers had so much choice.
ReadIV. How manyIV. Charleston
Sources
- Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York University Press, 1998; anniversary edition 2013).
- Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Harvard University Press, 2001).
Djougou
Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua was born here about 1824; his biography calls the town Zoogoo. Enslaved in Brazil, he reached New York on his master's ship in 1847, escaped with the help of antislavery friends, and published his life in Detroit in 1854.
PeopleMahommah Gardo Baquaqua
Sources
- Mahommah G. Baquaqua and Samuel Moore, Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua, a Native of Zoogoo, in the Interior of Africa (Detroit, 1854), on Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina. docsouth.unc.edu
- Robin Law and Paul E. Lovejoy, editors, The Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: His Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America (Markus Wiener, 2001; revised edition 2007).
Shanga
In the Lamu archipelago, the archaeologist Mark Horton excavated a sequence of mosques, one under another, and dated the earliest to the late eighth century.
Sources
- Mark Horton, Shanga: The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East Africa (British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996).
Kizimkazi, Zanzibar
A mosque here carries an inscription dated 500 after the Hijrah, which is 1107. It is the earliest dated inscription on the East African coast.
Sources
- S. Flury, “The Kufic Inscriptions of Kisimkazi Mosque, Zanzibar, 500 H. (A.D. 1107),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1922).
Kilwa
Its Great Mosque was begun in the eleventh or twelfth century and enlarged in the thirteenth and fourteenth. Ibn Battuta, who came about 1330, called Kilwa one of the most beautiful and well-built towns in the world. Its ruins have been on the World Heritage List since 1981.
PeopleIbn Battuta
ReadIII. The monsoon coastIII. The man from Tangier
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Ruins of Songo Mnara. whc.unesco.org
- Ross E. Dunn, The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century (University of California Press, revised 2012).
Charleston
By a commonly cited estimate, as many as four in ten of the Africans brought to what became the United States first set foot on land here. Omar ibn Said arrived in 1807. In 1790 the state House heard a petition from free Moors, subjects of the emperor of Morocco, and in 2023 the International African American Museum opened on Gadsden's Wharf.
PeopleOmar ibn Said
ReadIV. CharlestonIV. A petition in Charleston, 1790
VisitThe Carolina trail
Sources
- Library of Congress, Omar Ibn Said Collection, with the collection essay. loc.gov
- Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York University Press, 1998; anniversary edition 2013).
Georgetown County
A short drive south of Myrtle Beach. By the middle of the 1800s it was one of the leading rice-producing counties in the country, and every acre of it was worked by enslaved people.
ReadIV. Charleston
VisitThe Carolina trail
Sources
- Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Harvard University Press, 2001).
Fayetteville
Omar ibn Said ran from a cruel owner and got this far before he was caught and jailed. In sixteen days he wrote on the walls of his cell, with coals from the fire, in Arabic. A state historical marker for him stands on Murchison Road, and so does Masjid Omar Ibn Sayyid.
PeopleOmar ibn Said
ReadIV. Omar ibn SaidIV. Go and see
VisitThe Carolina trail
Sources
- Library of Congress, Omar Ibn Said Collection, with the collection essay. loc.gov
- North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Highway Historical Marker I-89, “Omar ibn Said.” dncr.nc.gov
Sapelo Island
Bilali Muhammad, head driver of Thomas Spalding's plantation, wrote out thirteen pages of Islamic law in Arabic from memory. His descendants still live on the island. In the 1930s islanders remembered grandparents who prayed on mats and made rice cakes called saraka, from sadaqah, charity.
PeopleBilali Muhammad
VisitThe Carolina trail
Sources
- University of Georgia, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Bilali Muhammad document (ms2807). sclfind.galib.uga.edu
- New Georgia Encyclopedia, “Cornelia Bailey (1945 to 2017).” georgiaencyclopedia.org
- Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (University of Georgia Press, 1940).
Natchez
Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, a prince of Futa Jallon, spent about forty years enslaved near Natchez. A letter he wrote in Arabic brought his case to the secretary of state and the president, and he was freed in 1828.
PeopleAbd al-Rahman Ibrahima
Sources
- Terry Alford, Prince Among Slaves (Oxford University Press, 1977; anniversary edition 2007).
Maryland and Georgetown
Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, captured in 1730, was sold in Maryland. Yarrow Mamout was brought to Maryland about 1752, was freed about 1796, and bought a house in Georgetown in 1800. Charles Willson Peale painted him in 1819.
PeopleAyuba Suleiman DialloYarrow Mamout
Sources
- Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (Routledge, 1997).
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, Charles Willson Peale, Portrait of Yarrow Mamout (Muhammad Yaro), 1819. philamuseum.org
Salvador, Bahia
In January 1835, during Ramadan, enslaved and freed African Muslims rose here in the most serious urban slave revolt in Brazil's history. The authorities found amulets with Arabic prayers on the bodies of the dead.
Sources
- Joao Jose Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
The map is drawn from Natural Earth data, with US state outlines from the Census Bureau’s cartographic boundary files. Each place sits at its coordinates; the routes are drawn as simple curves, not the roads people took. Each entry restates its chapter and cites the sources the chapter cites for that passage.