Lives
Thirty people, in the order they lived. Each card points back to the chapter that tells the story.
30 shown
died about 630
The Negus, Ashama ibn Abjar
Aksum, Abyssinia
The Christian king who heard Ja’far recite the chapter of Mary and refused to hand the Muslim refugees back to Quraysh. When he died, the Prophet, peace be upon him, prayed the funeral prayer for him in Madinah and called him a brother.
Chapter I: The First Refugedied about 640
Bilal ibn Rabah
Makkah, Madinah, Syria
Son of an Abyssinian mother, enslaved in Makkah, tortured for his faith and freed by Abu Bakr. He was the first to call the adhan, and the Prophet heard his footsteps ahead of him in Paradise.
Chapter I: The First Refugeseventh century
Umm Ayman, Barakah
Makkah and Madinah
Described in the sources as Abyssinian. She cared for the Prophet in his childhood after his mother died, emigrated to Madinah, and raised Usama ibn Zayd.
Chapter I: The First Refugeseventh century
Mariya the Copt
Hafn in Egypt, and Madinah
Sent to the Prophet, peace be upon him, by the Muqawqis of Egypt, she was the mother of his son Ibrahim. An early teacher named her as the tie of marriage between the Muslims and Egypt, and her home village was later spared the poll tax.
Chapter II: Along the Nileseventh century
Amr ibn al-As
Makkah, Aksum and Egypt
The Quraysh envoy who came to Aksum to fetch the first refugees, and who years later gave his allegiance to Islam at the same king’s hand. He led the Muslim army into Egypt, founded Fustat and its mosque, and gave the Coptic patriarch a safe conduct.
Chapter II: Along the Nilepatriarch 622 to 661
Benjamin I, patriarch of Alexandria
Alexandria
Head of the Coptic church, who spent thirteen years in hiding from the Byzantine authorities. Amr ibn al-As wrote him a letter of safe conduct, and he came home to Alexandria and his people.
Chapter II: Along the Nileninth century, by tradition
Fatima al-Fihri
Fez
By tradition, the daughter of a family from Kairouan who spent her inheritance founding the mosque of al-Qarawiyyin in 859. Historians debate the details. The school has not closed since.
Chapter III: Houses of Learning922 to 996
Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani
Kairouan
Jurist of Kairouan and author of the Risala, the short handbook of Maliki law that West African children memorized for a thousand years. Bilali Muhammad’s manuscript in Georgia quotes from it.
Chapter III: Houses of Learning
ruled about 1312 to 1337
Mansa Musa
Mali
King of Mali whose pilgrimage of 1324 passed through Cairo and left the gold market unsettled for years. He brought scholars and books home, and a mapmaker in Majorca drew him holding gold.
Chapter V: Kingdoms and Roads1304 to about 1369
Ibn Battuta
Tangier
Left Tangier for the pilgrimage at twenty-one and, by his own account, traveled for about twenty-nine years. He saw Kilwa and Mogadishu about 1330 and crossed the Sahara to Mali in 1352.
Chapter V: Kingdoms and Roadssultan in 1331 or 1332
Abu’l-Muzaffar Hasan
Kilwa
Sultan of Kilwa when Ibn Battuta came in 1331 or 1332. Ibn Battuta wrote that he was noted for his gifts and generosity, and that he gave the clothes off his back to a poor man who asked for them. He was also called Abu al-Mawahib, the father of gifts.
Chapter IV: The Monsoon Coast1556 to 1627
Ahmad Baba
Timbuktu and Marrakesh
Timbuktu’s most famous scholar. Deported to Marrakesh after the Moroccan conquest, he taught there in exile and came home in 1608.
Chapter III: Houses of Learning1754 to 1817
Usman dan Fodio
Hausaland
Scholar and preacher whose reform movement of 1804 founded the Sokoto Caliphate. He and his family left hundreds of written works.
Chapter V: Kingdoms and Roads1793 to 1864
Nana Asma’u
Sokoto
Poet and teacher in three languages. About 1830 she organized the jajis, women who traveled between villages to teach other women, using her verse as the curriculum.
Chapter III: Houses of Learningabout 1853 to 1936
Habib Swaleh
Comoro Islands and Lamu
Scholar of Hadrami descent, born in the Comoro Islands, who came to Lamu and in 1889 founded the Riyadha Mosque, which soon became a center of learning. He gave the Lamu Maulid, the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, its present form. In 2012 his descendants still organized it.
Chapter IV: The Monsoon Coast
about 1701 to 1773
Ayuba Suleiman Diallo
Bundu, Maryland, London
Captured in 1730 and sold in Maryland. A letter he wrote in Arabic led to his release. He was freed in England in 1733, sat for William Hoare, and sailed home in 1734.
Chapter VI: Across the Water
about 1736 to 1823
Yarrow Mamout
Maryland and Georgetown
Brought to Maryland about 1752, freed about 1796, a homeowner in Georgetown by 1800. Charles Willson Peale painted him in 1819.
Chapter VI: Across the Waterabout 1757 to after 1838
Muhammad Kaba Saghanughu
Bouka, Jamaica
Born into a Muslim family in the Mandingo country, he was taken to Jamaica in 1777 and held on one estate for more than fifty years. In 1834 he wrote to Abu Bakr al-Siddiq in Arabic, and in 1838 he wrote an address for emancipation in English words spelled in Arabic letters.
Chapter VIII: Other Shores
about 1762 to 1829
Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima
Timbo and Natchez
A prince of Futa Jallon, captured in 1788 and enslaved for about forty years in Mississippi. Freed in 1828, he died in Liberia the next year.
Chapter VI: Across the Water
about 1770 to 1863
Omar ibn Said
Futa Toro, Charleston, North Carolina
A scholar taken to Charleston in 1807. In 1831 he wrote his life in Arabic, the only known surviving autobiography of its kind in America, opening it with verses from the Quran.
Chapter VI: Across the WaterRead his autobiographyborn about 1794
Abu Bakr al-Siddiq
Timbuktu, Jenne, Jamaica
Born in Timbuktu and educated at Jenne, he was taken in war in his fourteenth year and spent about twenty-seven years in Jamaica, where he kept his owner’s accounts in Arabic. Freed in 1834, he wrote his life in Arabic and set out for home with an English traveler, who was murdered in the desert. What became of him is not known.
Chapter VIII: Other Shoresdied about 1857
Bilali Muhammad
Futa Jallon and Sapelo Island
Head driver on Sapelo Island, Georgia, who wrote a thirteen-page primer of Islamic practice in Arabic, built on the Maliki handbook of Ibn Abi Zayd. His descendants still live on the island.
Chapter VI: Across the Waterfreed by 1834
Lamine Kebe
Futa Jallon and the American South
A schoolteacher enslaved for about thirty years. Before sailing for Liberia in 1835 he described the schools of his homeland to an American who wrote the account down.
Chapter VI: Across the Waternineteenth century
Jonas Mohammed Bath
Trinidad
A Mandingo who, enslaved, helped build Fort George at Port of Spain. He led the Muslim Mandingos of Trinidad, who saved to buy each other’s freedom, and petitioned to take his people home to Africa.
Chapter VIII: Other ShoresSalvador, 1835
Pacífico Licutan
Salvador, Bahia
An aged and respected Muslim leader of Salvador, whose Muslim name was Bilal. He was held in the City Hall prison for his master’s debts when the revolt of January 1835 began, and the rebels attacked the prison to free him. He escaped the death sentence and was condemned to a thousand lashes.
Chapter VIII: Other Shores
born about 1824
Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua
Djougou, Brazil, New York
Enslaved in Brazil, he reached New York on his master’s ship in 1847, escaped with the help of antislavery friends, and published his biography in Detroit in 1854.
Chapter VI: Across the WaterRead his own accountin Brazil 1865 or 1866
Abd al-Rahman al-Baghdadi
Ottoman navy, Brazil
An imam of the Ottoman navy whom a storm brought to Brazil. He came to know the enslaved and free Muslims of African descent there, tried to teach them Islam as he understood it, and wrote an account of all he saw.
Chapter VIII: Other Shores1883 to 1963
Satti Majid
Dongola, New York, Buffalo
A Sudanese scholar who memorized the Quran as a boy and seems to have reached America in 1904. He founded Muslim societies, one of them in Pittsburgh, and in 1929 sailed for Egypt to put the Moorish Science Temple’s book before the scholars of al-Azhar.
Chapter VII: After the Water
1925 to 1965
Malcolm X, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz
Omaha, New York, Makkah
The Nation of Islam’s most effective minister. In 1964 he broke with it, made the pilgrimage to Makkah, traveled through Africa, and came home with a new name and the Islam practiced outside the Nation.
Chapter VII: After the Water1933 to 2008
W. Deen Mohammed
Chicago
Son of Elijah Muhammad. After his father died in 1975 he turned the community toward Sunni Islam, renamed its newspaper for Bilal ibn Rabah, and in 1992 became the first Muslim to deliver an invocation in the United States Senate.
Chapter VII: After the Water