The Bilali Muhammad Document is a handwritten,

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

manuscript on West African

Islamic law Sharia, Sharī'ah, Shari'a, or Shariah () is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition based on scriptures of Islam, particularly the Qur'an and hadith. In Islamic terminology ''sharīʿah'' refers to immutable, intan ...

. It was written in the 19th century by Bilali Mohammet, an enslaved Guinean held on Sapelo Island of Georgia. The document is held at the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the

University of Georgia The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...

as part of the Francis Goulding papers. It is referred to as the "Ben Ali (Bilali) Manuscript".

History

Bilali Mohammed was an enslaved Guinean 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 Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

. He was a master cultivator of

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

, a skill prized by Georgia planters. William Brown Hodgson was among scholars who met Bilali. Bilali was born in Timbo,

Guinea Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Côte d'Ivoire to the southeast, and Sier ...

sometime between 1760 and 1779 to a well-educated West African Muslim family. He was enslaved as a teenager, taken to the Bahamas and sold to Dr. Bell, where he was worked as a slave for ten years at his Middle Caicos plantation. Bell was a Loyalist colonial refugee from the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which Am ...

who had been resettled by the Crown at Middle Caicos. He sold Bilali in 1802 to a trader who took the man to Georgia. Bilali Mohammed was purchased by Thomas Spalding and assigned as his head driver at his plantation on Sapelo Island. Bilali could speak Arabic and had knowledge of the ''

Qur'an The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...

''. "Due to his literacy and leadership qualities, he would be appointed the manager of his master's plantation, overseeing approximately five hundred slaves". In the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...

, Bilali and his fellow Muslims on Sapelo Island helped to defend the United States from a British attack. Upon Bilali's death in 1857, it was discovered that he had written a thirteen-page Arabic manuscript. At first, this was thought to have been his diary, but closer inspection revealed that the manuscript was a transcription of a Muslim legal treatise and part of West Africa's Muslim curriculum. The first partial translation of the document was undertaken in 1939 by

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...

and published in the '' Journal of Negro History.'' Since the turn of the 21st century, it has been analyzed by Ronald Judy, Joseph Progler, Allan D. Austin and Muhammed al-Ahari.

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 Matn (source text) with several extended commentaries is a traditional genre in Islamic literature. The commentaries may be linguistic, spiritual, and even have the function of relating the text to similar works. Further research on Bilali's life and his influence upon both American Islamic literature and to the Gullah dialect of English needs to be carried out in order to present a complete picture of this unique historical American Muslim author.

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 Dwight York (aka Imam Isa), who claimed that Bilali was his great-grandfather, have conflated Bilali Muhammad (aka Ben Ali, BuAllah, Bilali Smith, and Mahomet Bilali) with individuals with similar names. He is not the same person as Joseph Benenhaly, or either of the Wahab brothers of Ocracoke Island.The Wahab family name was not Arabic but a variant spelling of Walkup or Wauchope, from Scotland.

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.

References

External links

Description of the Bilali Document
by Moustafa Bayoumi at th
Border and Transcultural Studies Research CircleBilali Muhammad's Life and the Bilali Document
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{{Gullah topics, state=collapsed Islam in Georgia (U.S. state) Islamic literature African-American Islam African-American history of Georgia (U.S. state) Sierra Leonean-American history 19th-century documents Gullah history