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ROAD SCHOLARS

The Mu'azzin's Song: Islam and the African Diaspora of the Indian Ocean

Omar H. Ali

Among my earliest memories as Mande, Kiswahili, Gujarati, Engli sh, a child living in North Africa during Malay, and others. the mid·l 970s was listening to the azan, Until recently mu'azzins used only the melodic call to prayer heard daily their voices to project their call - some­ across much of the Muslim world. Each thing akin to a tenor at the top of a morning, just before sunrise, I would hear crescendo. Today, however, many azans the "song" as it gently filtered through Image from Schomburg Center, -whether heard in Cairo, Hyderabad, my dreams. In the distance, the mu'azzin New York Public Li brary. Jakarta, or an enclave of London, - the person making the call - would Brooklyn, or Buenos Aires - are pre­ slowly fill the morning air with the opening captive's freedom. Prompted by a dream, recorded and amplified through speakers, words, Allah-u-akbar (God is great), Muhammed then asked Bilal - known losing their personal touch and more stretching and then soulfully bending each intimate character of times past. for his powerful yet melodic voice - if he vowel. Like a grain of sand, each rendition would call the prayer for the community. of the azan is slightly different from the The origin of the azan stretches back Bilal agreed and soon emerged as a leader next, each mu'azzin expressing his own some fourteen hundred years to western of the ummah - helping to carry out the unique sensibility. Arabia. There, beginning with Islam's first takeover of Mecca and serving as inspira­ mu'azzin, Bilal ibn Rabah- the son of tion for the mu'azzin-training brotherhood For centuries the mu'azzin has affirmed an Ethiopian mother and an Arab father that would bear his name. and reaffirmed the unity and continuity - the caller would invite the community of the ummah, the ever-growing, to prayer. According to tradition, Bilal, It is with Bilal that we see the beginnings ever-changing community of Muslims who was a slave and a contemporary of of the intersection of Islam and the African comprising a kaleidoscope of cultures the Prophet Muhammed, heard of the Diaspora. Inextricably linked, Islam and and societies - urban, rural, coastal, prophet's message of a single, compas­ the African Diaspora would spread and and everything in between (a subject I sionate, and merciful god, Allah, and develop in tandem across the Indian Ocean discuss as a Road Scholar in my lecture refused to recant his newfound faith even world. Bilal's story would pass into legend "The Many Faces of Islam") . Although the when tortured by his owner who opposed and oral history, eventually recorded in a=iln is delivered in Arabic, hints (inflec­ the prophet's message. A close companion the Hadith - stories of the early ummah tions, emphases) of the mu'azzin's local or of Muhammed, Abu Bakr, heard of Bilal's which, along with the Qur'an (Koran), :egional accent invariably come through: tenacity and purchased the African fo rm the principal written sources of

Road Scholar Omar H. Ali is a historian at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He wrote the narrative for the online exhibit "The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World" at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of The New York Public Library and is working on a new book, Islam in the Indian Ocean World: A Documentary History. He invites you to contact him at [email protected].

Islam, to which scholars have added for four months, and then reverse direc­ Africans and their descendants in the histories, biographies, and legal and tion for another four, were the crews that Indian Ocean world tended to have greater philosophical treatises. made their way from port to port along social mobility than in the Atlantic world the Indian Ocean littoral. Over the course due to Islamic laws and societal conven­ When most of us think about Islam, we of many centuries, such crews traded and tions that incorporated the children think of someone of Arab descent from spread goods, technologies, traditions, of enslaved women into the homes of the Middle East, yet three-quarters of languages, and religion - specifically slaveholders as free kin while allowing Muslims are not from the Arab heartlands. Islam, but also African-based religions (indeed, encouraging) greater authority Spread across sub-Saharan Africa (from which created new forms of syncretism among captives with specialized skills (for Wes t Africa across the Sahel and down (the fusion of religions, such as the example, administrative and military); the the Swahili coast), South Asia (India, practice of controlling the zar "winds," Qur'an would provide explicit justification Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka), or spirits, among Muslim Afro-Iranians; for emancipation. Southeast Asia (Malaysia and Indonesia), or paying homage to Sufi saints among the Far East (China), and to a lesser extent Muslim Afro-Indians in the way that There are many faces of Islam, just as there in Europe, the United States, and Latin Hindus pay homage to their holy men are many faces of humanity. While Islam America, Muslims ·comprise approximately and women) . As part of their travels has certain basic tenets (belief in a single 1.5 billion people - nearly one in four and settlement they created new coastal god and compassion for others), there are of the world's total population. cultures and societies that mixed Africans infinite ways that it is interpreted and prac­ with Arabs, Persians, and Indians - ticed (including rules and regulations that When most of us think about the African cosmopolitan cultures - in a great arc have more to do with social control than Diaspora, we think about black people from the Swahili coast to the Malabar anything else). One cannot therefore mean­ in the Atlantic world - the Caribbean, coast of western India. ingfully separate Islam (in some "pure" Brazil, and the United States. Beginning form) from interpretations of Islam, and in the early 16th century, and over the Africans journeyed to distant lands, some­ its uses - which, as with other religions, next three hundred and fifty years, an times radically different from their own. run the gamut of practices (from the most estimated eleven million West, West­ Initially, most of these men and women generous and progressive acts of humanity Central, and Southeastern Africans were came from the coastal areas of eastern to the most misogynistic and backwards). forcibly migrated to the Americas as Africa. Over time, more came from the Indeed, there are many faces and many part of the transatlantic slave trade. Less interior Great Lakes region, followed by experiences of Islam. known is that an estimated twenty percent Central Africa. They took their customs, of the Africans taken to the Americas their skills, their arts, their music, their For me, the azan, like the rising sun, were Muslim. languages, and their world views with remains an immeasurable source of them wherever they wen t, Africanizing comfort - an invitation into the seamless­ However, a far older dispersion of Africans the Indian Ocean world along the way. ness of history, where the past and present took place across the Indian Ocean, which are inseparable, an audible reminder of has parallels to the Atlantic migration but Like their counterparts in the Atlantic my connection to all of life and all of what also a number of significant differences. world, most African migrants across the we create and recreate together. The African Diaspora of the Indian Ocean Indian Ocean world were enslaved as world began centuries before that of the captives of war, the victims of outright Atlantic and likewise shaped the lives of kidnapping, or made chattel as debt lens of millions of people through contact, repayment. They were then sold, some­ HOW TO SPONSOR A ROAD cultural influence, and the fruits of black times several times over. But not all SCHOLA RS PROGRAM labor. This other Diaspora, which grew Africans in the Indian Ocean world with the spread of Islam, nevertheless were captives, just as not all enslaved An application to apply for a remains the lesser known of the two people were Africans. Unlike in the Road Scholars program may be major migratory trajectories of Africans Americas, slavery in the Indian Ocean found at www.nchumanities.org. in the world. was never racially codified; people who Questions about applying for were enslaved in the Middle East and a program or becoming a Road Sweeping across the Indian Ocean and its Asia came from different backgrounds. Scholar should be directed to several seas were thousands of dhows - Carolyn Allen at (336) 256-0140 12.reen-rigged ships - carrying Africans. And there were other important differ­ or callen@nchumanit ies.org. Propelled by the seasonal winds that blow ences between the Atlantic and Indian in clockwise fashion for four months, stop Ocean African Diasporas: historically,

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