Black History Month: Ayuba Suleiman Diallo - The Enslaved African Muslim Whose Significance To British Muslim History Would Lead Centuries Later To a National Campaign To Stop His Portrait Being Sold Abroad By: Dr. Muhammed Al-Ahari

In the third of our four-part series to mark this annual event, Dr. Muhammed Al-Ahari details the extraordinary life of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, an African American Muslim who “wrote his way out of .”

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo was an enslaved trader and scholar who is mentioned in slavery literature as Job Ben Solomon. His 1734 biography makes his life the most accessible of these early and perhaps its the first biography of any African American. It was certainly the first advertised for sale [2].

Bluett’s “The Narrative of Job Ben Solomon” [3] is an understudied text which is at the same time the start of British- African, African American and Muslim American literature. Though less than 60 pages it provides details of West African lives in the early 18th century and includes details about agriculture, trade, religious life, education, clothing, leadership and wildlife.

Diallo’s painting by William Hoare of Bath in 1733

Bluett, an attorney and church minister, befriended Diallo and wrote that he was a highly literate Arab scholar who came from a wealthy and aristocratic family in , . Three copies of the Qur’an are attributed to him during his stay in following his emancipation by James Oglethorpe, the British founder of the colony of Georgia. It is claimed he wrote the copies of the Qur’an from memory, drew a map of West Africa with names written in and wrote a dozen short letters.

Bluett states, “His memory was extraordinary; for when he was fifteen years old, he could say the whole Alcorn by heart, and while he was here in England, he wrote three copies of it without the assistance of any other copy, and without so much as looking to one of those three when he wrote the others.” One copy is in possession of the family of a British Parliamentarian [5]. The whole manuscript has been kept from public view, so it has not been analyzed fully since it was rediscovered. The end of chapter four (Sūrah An-Nisā’) and the beginning of chapter five (Sūrah Al-Mā’idah) of the Qur’ān is presented on one of the three pages on the Pictured: Bluett’s text Bonhams Auctioneers site. The final page in the Bonhams Auctioneers’ article refers to “An unusual Qur’ān manuscript, written from memory by Ayub bin Sulaiman.”

But some question whether Diallo could write more than greetings and a few Qur’anic phrases. His knowledge of Arabic was, however, good enough to aid the curator of the British Museum, Sir , in translating a few coin inscriptions.[5]

It should be noted that in England, Diallo was treated as an equal, and even joined the Gentleman’s Spalding Club. No other Muslim during the time of slavery achieved such an elevated status.

The only other major source on Diallo’s life is Francis Moore’s “Travels Into the Inland Parts of Africa” [8]. However, no records detail Diallo’s life under slavery and his life once he returned to Africa. We know only that after repatriation Diallo became a trade agent between his people — the British — and the French - but Moore states Diallo failed to expand the British Gum trade.

The famous color painting of Diallo, painted by British artist William Hoare, was used in the Bluett text as a 1733 pen and Cover of “Travels Into ink version. This was the first portrait of an African in Europe the Inland Parts of Africa” and shows Diallo wearing West African traditional clothing with a Qur’an in a carrying pouch hanging from his neck.

In 2009, the original portrait was rediscovered and was purchased by the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) at a Christie’s auction that year. However, the sale resulted in a tussle with the British government which imposed a temporary export ban on the grounds that it was an important part of British Muslim history.

The National Portrait Gallery in London launched a public appeal to raise £554,937 to prevent its sale. Most of this money was provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Art Fund and the Gallery launched a public appeal for the remaining £100,000. The money was eventually raised but the QMA agreed to lend the painting instead.

Pictured: Job with the first page from his handwritten Qur’an

By all accounts, Diallo was a deeply religious man who first tried to run away from slavery in after a white boy threw sand in his face as he prayed. It appears he had accepted slavery as a fact of life but refused to tolerate religious harassment. This led to an extraordinary writing campaign to be granted his freedom, which included a 1731 letter in Arabic to his father in Futa Jallon, asking for a ransom to free him.

A translation of this famous letter reads: “His name is Ayyub ben Sulaiman from the land of Bundu. Oh community of Muslims in the land of Bundu. Oh Muslim women in the land of Bundu. Ayyub ben Sulaiman was taken to the land of the Christians across the great sea. Oh community of Muslims let everyone know among the community of the land of Bundu that he is Ayyub ben Suleiman. AsSalaamu aliekum Oh community of Muslims in the land of Bundu. There is no Job with the first page power except from the highest, the supreme.” (My translation) from his handwritten Qur’an

After numerous letters and the assistance of Bluett and numerous influential friends and well-wishers, seven months later he was a free man, and left America for England.

There are still missing parts of Diallo’s story. His lineage and descendants have yet to be fully traced, the other two copies of his handwritten Qur’ans have yet to be located and Arabic copies of Christian texts gifted to him when he was in England are unaccounted for. Diallo also has yet to be fully recognized for his role in the birth of the genres of African-American, British-African and Muslim American Literature.

Diallo’s Qur’an was rediscovered in 2013. As a historian, I tried to start a campaign to see if the Muslim community in America could purchase and preserve it. However, it was auctioned off by Bonhams in September that year and is currently in an undisclosed private collection in Lebanon.

Figure 6: Job's Map of his homeland

References [1] Al-Ahari, Muhammed A. (2006). Five Classic Muslim Slave Narratives. Chicago: Magribine Press. [2] Austin, Allan D. African Muslims in Antebellum America: transatlantic stories and spiritual struggles. (London: Routledge, 1997). [3] Bluett, Thomas. Some Memories of the Life of Job, the Son of the Solomon High Priest of Boonda in Africa; London: Richard Ford, 1734. [4] Diouf, Sylviane Anna. Servants of : African Muslims Enslaved in the . New York: New York University Press, 1998. [5] Grant, Douglas. The Fortunate Slave: An Illustration of African Slavery in the Early Eighteenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, 1968. [6] “Job ben Solomon,” Spaulding’s Gentleman’s Magazine 20 (1750), 272. [7] Judy, Ronald A.T. (Dis)Forming the American Canon: African-Arabic Slave Narratives and the Vernacular. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. [8] Moore, Francis. Travels into the Inland parts of Africa.

Muhammed al-Ahari is an American essayist, scholar, and writer on the topics of American Islam, Black Nationalist groups, heterodox Islamic groups, and modern occultism. He has published more than twenty books on Islam and American Muslim history through the Chicago-based Magribine Press.