Atlas

Saudi ArabiaAbout 615

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. In April 1964 Malcolm X made the pilgrimage, and the sight of Muslims of every color worshiping together, he reported, changed what he believed.

PeopleBilal ibn RabahUmm Ayman, BarakahMansa MusaMalcolm X, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz

ReadI. A king under whom no one is wrongedI. Bilal and Umm AymanV. Mansa Musa, 1324VII. Malcolm’s pilgrimage

Saudi ArabiaAbout 630

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

Ethiopia and EritreaAbout 615

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. Years later one of the envoys Quraysh had sent, Amr ibn al-As, came back, and by Ibn Ishaq's account gave his allegiance to Islam here, at the king's hand.

PeopleThe Negus, Ashama ibn AbjarAmr ibn al-As

ReadI. The hearingII. The envoy goes back

Tigray, EthiopiaAbout 630 to today

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

EthiopiaTenth century onward

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.

ReadIII. Chinguetti, Harar, Sokoto

Egypt641 to 1324

Cairo and Fustat

About 641 Amr ibn al-As founded Fustat, which now lies inside Cairo, and its mosque, which Egypt's antiquities ministry calls the oldest surviving mosque in Egypt and Africa. 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.

PeopleAmr ibn al-AsMansa Musa

ReadII. The first mosqueIII. Cairo, 972V. Mansa Musa, 1324

EgyptAbout 642

Alexandria

The Byzantine patriarch Cyrus agreed terms with Amr ibn al-As: the Roman garrison would sail away, and the Muslims would not seize the churches. Amr entered the city without a fight, and the Coptic patriarch Benjamin came home here after thirteen years in hiding.

PeopleAmr ibn al-AsBenjamin I, patriarch of Alexandria

ReadII. The surrender of AlexandriaII. The patriarch comes home

Sudan652 to 1963

Old Dongola

Capital of the Christian kingdom of Makuria. In 652 an army from Egypt besieged it, and the two sides made the treaty called the baqt. In 1317 the throne hall of its kings became a mosque, the oldest preserved mosque in Sudan. Satti Majid was born here in 1883 into a well-known holy family, and memorized the Quran as a boy. He seems to have reached the United States in 1904, and he went home to Sudan sometime in the 1940s and died there in 1963.

PeopleSatti Majid

ReadII. The archers of the eyesII. The throne hallVII. A shaykh from Dongola

Tunisia670

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

ReadIII. Kairouan, 670

TunisiaAbout 699

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.

ReadIII. Cairo, 972

Morocco859

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

ReadIII. Fez, 859

Morocco1304

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

ReadV. The man from Tangier

Morocco1594 to 1608

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

ReadIII. Timbuktu

Mali1327 to 2013

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

ReadIII. Timbuktu

West AfricaAbout 1312 to 1352

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

ReadV. Mansa Musa, 1324V. The man from Tangier

MauritaniaEleventh and twelfth centuries

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.

ReadIII. Chinguetti, Harar, Sokoto

Nigeria1804 to 1864

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

ReadV. Sokoto, 1804III. Chinguetti, Harar, Sokoto

Senegal and MauritaniaAbout 1770 to 1807

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

ReadVI. Omar ibn Said

Senegal1730 to 1734

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

ReadVI. Names we still have

Guinea1788

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

ReadVI. Names we still haveVI. Sapelo Island

Senegal and The Gambia1500s to 1800s

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. In 1964 Malcolm X traveled to Senegal after his pilgrimage, and in the 1980s Shaykh Hassan Cisse opened a Quran school in Senegal for Black American children.

PeopleMalcolm X, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz

ReadVI. How manyVI. CharlestonVII. Malcolm’s pilgrimageVII. Bilal’s name

BeninAbout 1824

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

ReadVI. Names we still have

Kenya780 to 1425

Shanga

A town on the coast of Kenya, abandoned in 1425. At its center the archaeologist Mark Horton found a sequence of mosques, each rebuilt over the last, nine times between 780 and 1000. The first were small buildings of wattle and daub, and they are evidence of Islam practiced on this coast as early as 780, about a century after the death of the Prophet.

ReadIV. The first mosquesV. The monsoon coast

Kenya1889 to today

Lamu

In 1889 Habib Swaleh, a scholar of Hadrami descent who had come here from the Comoro Islands, founded the Riyadha Mosque, and it soon became a center of learning. It is one of the longest continuously functioning Islamic teaching institutions in the Swahili world. Habib Swaleh gave the Lamu Maulid, the celebration of the Prophet's birthday, its present form, and in 2012 the Riyadha still organized it.

PeopleHabib Swaleh

ReadIV. LamuIV. Go and see

Kenya1498

Malindi

Vasco da Gama's ships anchored off Malindi on April 14, 1498, on their way to India. Its king gave them a pilot, a native of Gujarat according to the Portuguese chroniclers, and on April 24 they sailed for Calicut.

ReadIV. The Portuguese

Kenya1331 to today

Mombasa

Ibn Battuta passed through in 1331 or 1332, and wrote that its people were pious and upright and had well-built wooden mosques. Vasco da Gama's ships anchored off it in April 1498 but did not enter the port. In 1505 the Portuguese sacked it, and at the end of the sixteenth century they built Fort Jesus here, on the World Heritage List since 2011.

ReadIV. A sultan of giftsIV. The Portuguese

Tanzania1107 to 1873

Zanzibar

At Kizimkazi, a mosque bears Kufic inscriptions about its building in 500 after the Hijrah, which is 1107. In 1840 Seyyid Said, whose capital had been Muscat, moved his court to Zanzibar, and it became one of the main slave-trading ports of East Africa. In 1873 his son, Sultan Barghash, signed a treaty with Britain to close every public market for imported slaves in his dominions. Christ Church stands on the site of the last market, in the Stone Town, on the World Heritage List since 2000.

ReadIV. The first mosquesIV. Zanzibar and the trade in peopleV. The monsoon coast

TanzaniaNinth to nineteenth century

Kilwa

An island town, richest in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when its wealth was gold and it minted its own coins. Its Great Mosque, built in the eleventh century and greatly enlarged in the thirteenth, is the oldest standing mosque on the East African coast. Ibn Battuta, who came in 1331 or 1332, praised its sultan, Abu'l-Muzaffar Hasan, for his gifts and generosity. The Portuguese took Kilwa in 1505. Its ruins have been on the World Heritage List since 1981.

PeopleIbn BattutaAbu’l-Muzaffar Hasan

ReadIV. Kilwa at its heightIV. A sultan of giftsIV. The PortugueseV. The man from Tangier

South Carolina1790 to 2023

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

ReadVI. CharlestonVI. A petition in Charleston, 1790

VisitThe Carolina trail

South Carolina1800s

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.

ReadVI. Charleston

VisitThe Carolina trail

North CarolinaAfter 1807, and today

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 masjid on Murchison Road has carried his name since 1991, and in 2010 the state set its historical marker for him at the edge of the masjid's lawn.

PeopleOmar ibn Said

ReadVI. Omar ibn SaidVI. Go and seeVII. Back on Murchison Road

VisitThe Carolina trail

Georgia1812 to today

Sapelo Island

Bilali Muhammad, head driver of Thomas Spalding's plantation, wrote a thirteen-page primer of Islamic practice in Arabic, built on the Risala of Ibn Abi Zayd. 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

ReadVI. Sapelo Island

VisitThe Carolina trail

Mississippi1788 to 1828

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

ReadVI. Names we still have

Maryland and Washington, D.C.1730 to 1819

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

ReadVI. Names we still have

New York1847 to 1965

New York

Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua reached New York on his master's ship in 1847 and escaped. Satti Majid seems to have reached the United States in 1904, and in 1921 he was writing to the British consul here on behalf of stranded sailors from Aden and India. By 1954 Malcolm X led the Nation of Islam's temple in New York. He was shot and killed at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965.

PeopleMahommah Gardo BaquaquaSatti MajidMalcolm X, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz

ReadVI. Names we still haveVII. A shaykh from DongolaVII. Malcolm’s pilgrimage

Michigan1854 and 1930 to 1934

Detroit

Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua published his biography here in 1854. In 1930 a peddler of silks named Wallace Fard began preaching a new faith in Paradise Valley, the city's Black neighborhood, and founded the Temple of Islam and the University of Islam. Elijah Poole joined in 1931 and took the name Elijah Muhammad.

PeopleMahommah Gardo Baquaqua

ReadVI. Names we still haveVII. The Nation

Illinois1922 to 1975

Chicago

By the middle of 1922 the Ahmadiyya mission had moved its American headquarters to Bronzeville, on the South Side. Noble Drew Ali made Chicago the center of the Moorish Science Temple of America. Elijah Muhammad died here on February 25, 1975, and his son began turning the community toward Sunni Islam.

PeopleW. Deen Mohammed

ReadVII. A shaykh from DongolaVII. The MoorsVII. Bilal’s name

Dominican Republic1522

Hispaniola

At the admiral Diego Colón's sugar mill, about twenty enslaved men, most of them speakers of Wolof, rose at Christmas at the beginning of the year 1522, by Oviedo's reckoning, and killed nine Christians on their march toward Azua before they were taken and executed. Oviedo does not say whether they were Muslims. In 1526 a Spanish royal order forbade sending enslaved Wolof to the Indies.

ReadVIII. Forbidden passengers

Jamaica1834 to 1838

Kingston

Here in 1834 the magistrate R. R. Madden saw Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, a scholar of Timbuktu held as a slave for nearly thirty years, sign his name in Arabic, and helped him buy his freedom. Abu Bakr wrote his life in Arabic and exchanged letters in Arabic with Muhammad Kaba, held for fifty-six years on an estate in Manchester parish, who wrote an address for emancipation in 1838.

PeopleAbu Bakr al-SiddiqMuhammad Kaba Saghanughu

ReadVIII. A scholar of TimbuktuVIII. Letters in Arabic

Trinidad and Tobago1804 to 1838

Port of Spain

Fort George, at St James, was built from 1804 by enslaved men, among them Jonas Mohammed Bath, a Mandingo who led the Muslims of Trinidad in saving to buy each other's freedom. In 1838 twelve Mandingo men asked to be sent home with their families to Sierra Leone, and signed their memorial in Arabic.

PeopleJonas Mohammed Bath

ReadVIII. The Mandingos of Trinidad

Brazil1835

Salvador, Bahia

On the night of 24 to 25 January 1835, at the end of Ramadan, enslaved and freed Africans led by Muslims, the malês, rose here, dressed in white and carrying amulets with phrases of the Quran in Arabic. Seventy-nine people died. The case files of 234 of the accused, and the Arabic papers seized in the rebels' houses, are kept in the state archive of Bahia.

PeoplePacífico Licutan

ReadVIII. Bahia, 1835VI. Names we still have