Name: African Muslims in America Before Columbus
Uploaded: 2019-02-25T17:14:37.000Z
Channel: Ieasha Prime
Description: While many start the story of Islam in America with the Enslaved Muslims brought from Africa, Islam has rich early interactions through luminaries like Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad and Mansa Musa. Knowing this history is significant and reshapes the story of how Islam in America is told...

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This topic discusses the presence, history, and experiences of Muslim communities living in Western nations. It addresses contemporary challenges regarding identity and integration while highlighting the positive contributions of Muslims to Western societies.

Islam in the West

African Muslims in America Before Columbus

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Ieasha Prime

Two worlds that were and still are so frequently intertwined, are Islam and Black America. Yet often these two are looked at as either mutually exclusive, or limited to one historical period or transformative personality. In this series, Sr. Ieasha Prime gives a brief overview of the many ways in which these worlds interacted, and the many figures we owe that interaction to.

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Islamic history provides a rich resource of wisdom from the Prophet's life and the legacy of scholars to help us navigate present challenges. This heritage offers insights to address current issues and misunderstandings.

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Islam and the Black American

 This series is called Islam in Early America.  It is to discuss the rich and vibrant history of African American Muslims from West Africa  and their journey into America into present day.  It is a story that is rich with unique, interesting people  with lots of talents, courage, determination, hard work,  and a great influence on the American culture and American society.  When we look at Islam in early America, we have to begin to look at how they arrived.  How did Islam arrive to the shores of North America?  Early as the 12th century, we find stories of the great Mansa Abu Bakr II,  who was the second son of Sheikh Anta Joub.  And Sheikh Anta Joub was a great historian and a great scholar of his time.  So it would be interesting that he would have a son,  one of them being Mansa Abu Bakr and the other one Mansa Musa,  as we're all familiar with the great wealthy king who traveled from Mali  all the way to Mecca and returned upon his way.  But how did he become king?  It was actually because of his brother Abu Bakr  who renounced his throne in order to be a great voyager.  He initially heard about a land across the ocean.  And so he sent out 200 ships with enough resources for several years.  When those ships didn't respond and only one ship returned back to him,  there was a sailor who gave him an account of a great storm  that actually began to soak in all of the ships into a hole.  But this one ship began to back up.  And he was able to turn his ship around and arrive back to West Africa to tell the tale.  But that didn't stop the curiosity nor the determination of Mansa Abu Bakr.  He then decided that there was something beyond the storm,  something worth going after.  And so then he sent 2,000 ships,  1,000 for himself and his other sailors  and another 1,000 filled with resources and food for years to come.  There are great historians. Khadija J. in Egypt tells an account of Al-Umari in 1325  that begins to tell the story of the expeditions of Abu Bakr.  But was there any evidence?  Did anything suggest that he had actually arrived to the coast of America?  It turns out that historians years later found several accounts of his arrival to the Americas.  One is that one of the things that he carried along in his ship,  where they were actually spears,  and more than 60% of the head of those spears were coated with gold  mixed with silver and then some copper.  When Columbus arrived, he actually discovered some of the arrows that were left from the tips of these spears.  And when he saw them, the native people called them guanine.  And guanine was actually a West African term that was used to describe gold.  And so that was the beginning of a little bit of the evidence of the expedition of Abu Bakr.  Later on, we find that in the 14th century,  there is a map called the Pir Reis map that is discovered in Turkey.  And this map was originally used by a Turkish voyager  who decided that he also wanted to explore the newfound land.  But this map that he had, that he was using, was something very unique about it.  What was unique about the map is that it had the interior rivers  as well as some of the mountains of America,  something that had not been documented before that.  And it was said that this was actually a map that not only those who had traveled with Mansa Abu Bakr,  but other Moors had come together to collaborate on this particular map.  So these are some of the clues.  In Brazil, as well as it said that Abu Bakr reached,  there have been found coins that actually have Mandinka script inside of them.  And yet, one other wonderful thing that happens as a discovery to his expedition,  as proof of his arrival, is that in a cave in Arizona,  there was found written on the walls, the elephants are sick.  Now one might wonder, what's the significance of the elephants being sick?  The significance of the cave writing is that number one, it's in Mandinka script.  The other thing is that elephants are not unique to America.  The elephants that are painted in this cave in Arizona are African elephants.  So this was also proof of the expedition of Mansa Abu Bakr.  This, as we know, is some of the earliest accounts of African Muslims arriving to the coast of America.  Later on, we find Native Americans actually having documents,  of Sharia documents that are about property management,  about marriage agreements between not only individuals, but also nations,  showing further proof of the relationship of West Africans and Native Americans  and their interrelationship with each other, and particularly their relationship with Islam.  Now, many historians have began as they're searching for Islam on the shores of America,  particularly within African history, and they find that there is a gap.  And slowly, slowly, as we have more historians who are searching on this topic,  that gap is getting smaller and smaller.  We know that there were also Moors who traveled with Columbus.  It's actually Ferdinand Columbu…

Islam and the Black American

Ieasha Prime

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