African Muslims in Trinidad

If this means anything at all there is always hope for the ultimate redemption of this country regardless of its challenges at this time. However, the effort toward redemption needs further help.

For example, we do have a national problem because we do not know our own West Indian history. Nor for that matter world history.

I note that Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has stated that he wants to see a greater emphasis on the teaching of history in the education curriculum.

I have also noted that among the priorities of the Ministry of Education is to “emphasise the teaching of our country’s history and geography in schools.” As a student of Trinity College, in the fifties, we were fortunate to study history in all its manifestations. After being grounded in medieval history in the early forms, by Third Form we had the choice of studying either West Indian history or West Indian geography as we prepared for O-Levels.

I remember that our founding principal, Peter Helps, an Englishman, taught the first forms about the several matters including the Hegira, Prophet Muhammad’s (upon whom be peace) flight from Mecca to Medina, in 622.

By Sixth Form we were doing European history and a special course within Caribbean history — emancipation to apprenticeship.

Unfortunately, today many people do not know such basics like the fact that the first Muslims to come to Trinidad were Africans. They preceded the Indian Muslims who came during indentureship. All the Africans had been enslaved but they came from different places, some from America and others from the continent.

And they were literate in Arabic.

The information about the African Muslims is very well documented. There are references in the reports of Brig- Gen Sir Thomas Hislop (governor from 1804 to 1811), Rev JH Hamilton, a rector of the Church of England (1841) and references in various African Muslim petitions to the British Government.

There is a great deal of information in the works of Dr JD Elder (1969), Dr Carl Campbell (1975), Prof Michael A Gomez (2005), and Dr Brinsley Samaroo (2010), among others.

The importance of the African Muslim presence in Trinidad has also been noted by Gomez who said that “…African Muslim presence (in Trinidad) constitutes one of the largest, most organised, most vibrant, most enduring, and most influential African Muslim communities in all of the Americas prior to the 20th century, perhaps rivalled only by their coreligionists in Brazil.” Before the 20th century, African Muslims in Trinidad lived at Guaracarite (Hausa Road), Mayo, Mandingo Road (just south of Princes Town), Quare Village in Valencia, Manzanilla, Belmont and East Dry River. In Belmont there were a number of African Muslims who were Mandingos, Hausa, Fulani and Yoruba.

Jonas Mohammed Bath emerged as one of the most prominent African Muslims in Trinidad. Mohammed was born in 1783. He was brought to Trinidad during the early 19th century as a slave of the British Government. Because he was literate in Arabic, he served as imam and Commissioner of Affidavits among Muslims in Port of Spain.

He formed a Mandingo society.

The group owned land and property.

Under his leadership they “formed a distinct society of themselves strictly bound together by their Mohammedan faith” and operated with the mission of emancipating their members from slavery.

Bath would seek out newly arrived Mandingos who had been enslaved. He usually purchased their freedom and in some cases was able to have them repatriated to the continent.

Bath Street in East Dry River is named after this African Muslim.

AIYEGORO OME Mt Lambert