Bilali Document
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The Bilali Muhammad Document is a handwritten,
History
Bilali Mohammed was an enslaved West African on a plantation on Sapelo Island, Georgia. According to his descendant, Cornelia Bailey, in her history, God, Dr. Buzzard and The Bolito Man, Bilali was from the area of present-day Sierra Leone. He was a master cultivator of rice, a skill prized by Georgia planters.
William Brown Hodgson was among scholars who met Bilali.
Bilali Mohammed was purchased by
The first partial translation of the document was undertaken in 1939 by
Synopsis
The Bilali Muhammad Document is also known as the Ben Ali Diary or Ben Ali Journal. On close analysis, the text proves to be a brief statement of Islamic beliefs and the rules for ablution, morning prayer, and the calls to prayer. When it was translated, it was found that it had nothing of an autobiographic nature.
It could, justifiably, be called the "Mother Text" of American Islamic literature, according to researcher Muhammed al-Ahari, due to it being the first Islamic text written in the United States. A comprehensive extended commentary with citations from traditional Islamic texts and American Islamic texts, and related subject areas, is under preparation by al-Ahari as national secretary of the Noble Order of Moorish Sufis and long-time researcher on American Islamic history and literature.
The concept of a
Errors in prior research
Several reviewers of the manuscript have portrayed it as the scribblings of an old man copying from memory lessons of childhood. But, more expert translations of the text have shown it to be an original composition that drew from the Risalah of Abi Zayd of al-Qayrawan.
Some accounts, including that of Reverend
Legacy
The Bilali Muhammed Historical Research Society, named for him, was established in Chicago in 1987; it published a one-issue journal, Meditations from the Bilali Muhammad Society (1988), in Charleston, South Carolina. The research institute has since been renamed the Muslim American Cultural Heritage Institute. It has a new board and is planning to become incorporated as a 503c corporation in Chicago.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library
- ^ Francis Goulding papers
- ^ Hodgson, William Brown (1857). The Gospels, written in the Negro patois of English, with Arabic characters by a Mandingo slave in Georgia. London. p. 7-8.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Martin, B. G. (1994). "Sapelo Island's Arabic Document: The "Bilali Diary" in Context". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 78 (3): 589–601.
- ^ Rebel Music by Hisham D. Aidi
- ^ Ronald Judy
- ^ Joseph Progler
- ^ Allan D. Austin
- ^ Yusuf Benenhaly
- ^ The Wahab family name was not Arabic but a variant spelling of Walkup or Wauchope, from Scotland.
Further reading
- Bilali Muhammad: Muslim Juriprudist in Antebellum Georgia, translated by Muhammad Abdullah al-Ahari,
- Muhammed al-Ahari (2006). Five Classic Muslim Slave Narratives. Magribine Press, Chicago.
- Bailey, Cornelia; God, Dr. Buzzard and The Bolito Man, 2003.
- Greenberg, Joseph H. "The Decipherment of the 'Ben-Ali Diary,'" Journal of Negro History, vol. 25, no.3 (July 1940): 372-375.
- Ronald AT Judy, (Dis)forming the American Canon: African–Arabic Slave Narratives and the Vernacular ISBN 0-8166-2056-3
- Joseph Progler, "Ben Ali and His Diary: Encountering an African Muslim in Antebellum America", Muslim and Arab Perspectives, Vol. 11 (Fall 2004), pp. 19–60.
- Joseph Progler, "Reading Early American Islamica: An Interpretive Translation of the Ben Ali Diary", Tawhid: Journal of Islamic Thought and Culture, Vol. 16, No. 3, (Autumn 2000), pp. 5–43.
- Rasheed ibn Estes Barbee, Diary of a Muslim Slave in America: The Bilali Muhammad Document and The Treatise of ibn Abi Zayd Al-Qayrawaani