"A Negro Who Could Read and Write the Arabic Language": African Muslim Slaves as Intermediaries in North American Plantations and African Colonies

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Date
2015-04-08
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the stories told about an elite group of Muslim slaves in antebellum America who were trained as rulers and Islamic scholars in Africa. It asks what opportunities their prominent backgrounds and literacy in Arabic afforded them in American slave society. It addresses how white society responded to the achievements of this particular group of slaves. Particularly, this thesis looks into the role that such distinguished Muslims slaves played in the designs of the American Colonization Society. This thesis is based primarily upon nineteenth century letters and newspaper and journal articles written about seven Muslim slaves. Of the estimated 30,000 Muslim slaves who arrived in North America between 1711 and 1870, only seven attracted enough attention from contemporary white-society and modern-day historians to present fuller understandings of their lives. These letters and articles provide biographical information about the slaves. They are also key to understanding how white masters, businessmen, and politicians navigated around issues of slavery, race, and personal interests when dealing with literate Muslim slaves. I rely heavily on the first thirteen volumes of The African Repository to highlight how colonization supporters envisioned elite Muslim slaves in their commercial and Christianizing schemes for Africa. Historians analyzing Muslim slaves in antebellum America have revealed that the presence of such slaves stratified slave society by creating the category of the superior “Moor” over the inferior “negro.” After analyzing the development of this category in American plantations, I focus on the American Colonization Society to highlight similar developments in its plans. I conclude that just as masters gave elite Muslim slaves authority over the rest of slaves in plantations, so too, the ACS envisioned them as intermediaries over the rest of Africa, as beacons of light to spread commerce and Christianity through their supposed influence over Arabic-speaking regions and non-Muslim communities.
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Keywords
Muslim Slaves in America, Moors, Antebellum America, Slavery, Islam in America
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