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ABSTRACT
During the celebration of emancipation in the British West Indies, Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu, a 90-year-old former apprentice from West Africa living in Jamaica wrote and likely delivered a speech in Arabic script and had it delivered to Jamaican Governor, Sir Lionel Smith. This recently discovered manuscript exhibits elements of the ‘freedom narrative’ as defined by Paul E. Lovejoy and of ‘creole testimony’ as identified by Nicole N. Aljoe. The language and discourse of the address reveal that linguistic and cultural creolization can be deliberate rather than organic. Kabā Saghanughu ingeniously used the official colonial discourse of this public occasion to project into the historical record his autobiography and critique of slavery.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge Professor Geraldine Friedman, who put us in touch with each other to make the collaboration possible.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Elizabeth A. Dolan is Professor of English, Lehigh University, 35 Sayre Drive, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA. Email: [email protected]
Ahmed Idrissi Alami is Associate Professor of Arabic Studies, School of Languages and Cultures, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. Email: [email protected]
Notes
1 Elizabeth A. Dolan and Ahmed Idrissi Alami, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address on the Occasion of Emancipation in Jamaica’, The William and Mary Quarterly 76, no. 2 (2019): 289–312.
2 In a letter written to Colonial Secretary Glenelg at the end of July, Smith encloses the following 6 addresses: ‘Presbyterian Church address, Port Maria 17 July 1838’, ‘Jamaican missionary address, Port Maria 17 July 1838’, ‘Baptist ministers, Montego Bay 20 July 1838’, ‘Baptist minister, Luca, 21 July 1838’, ‘Wesleyan and Pres ministers, Luca, 21 July 1838’, and ‘Apprentices, Montego Bay 20 July 1838’ (TNA: CO 137/231/140, Lionel Smith to Lord Glenelg, 27 July 1838). A month later, Smith sent four additional addresses: ‘Letter from the Baptist congregation in Four Paths, Clarendon, signed by W. G. Barrett, Minister, and James Reid Minister’, ‘Letter from the Baptist Church and Congregation, Brown’s Town, and of the Congregation Bethany St. Anne’s, signed by John Clark, Pastor’, ‘A Translation of Robert Peart’s Arabic address intended to be presented to Sir Lionel Smith’, ‘An address written by former apprentices of Manchester Simon Martin, James Martin, William Bernard, Francis Green’ (TNA: CO 137/231/153, Smith to Glenelg, 13 August 1838). Kabā Saghanughu’s address was given particular attention by Smith because it was the only one written in non-Latin script, specifically Arabic, and because Smith likely held Kabā Saghanughu in high regard as an elder in the community of apprentices. For more detail on Kabā Saghanughu’s status in his conmmunity, see Dolan and Idrissi Alami, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address’, 307.
3 Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Belfast: D1584/7/4, Robert Peart, ‘Letter (in Arabic, with accompanying translation) from a grateful, 90-year-old, released slave to Sir Lionel Smith, Governor of Jamaica’, 1838. For an image of the document, see Dolan and Idrissi Alami, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address’, 290.
4 Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘“Freedom Narratives” of Transatlantic Slavery’, Slavery & Abolition 32, no. 1 (2011): 91–107; Nicole N. Aljoe, Creole Testimonies: Slave Narratives from the British West Indies, 1709–1838 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). These studies of West Indian texts differentiate them formally from those produced in the United States. American texts published after Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845) echo the formal characteristics of this important work, and thus there are consistent and identifiable aesthetic features of this genre in the U.S. See, for example, Robert B. Stepto, From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
5 Aljoe, Creole Testimonies, 53.
6 Although Lovejoy does not discuss Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic address, he explicitly classifies Kabā Saghanughu’s biographical details found in other documents as a freedom narrative alongside Equiano’s 1792 narrative. Ibid.
7 Aljoe, Creole Testimonies, 11.
8 Ibid., 4.
9 Ibid., 13.
10 Ibid., 14.
11 This unique document supports the view that those “enslaved were necessarily non-Western in culture. Only a small minority were literate (usually in Arabic), and even they had little opportunity to produce a diary or journal.” Philip D. Curtin, ed. Africa Remembered: Narratives of West Africans from the Era of Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 4.
12 Dolan and Idrissi Alami, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address’, 300–301.
13 This manuscript was given the name Kitāb al-Salāt (Book of Prayer) and translated into English with a critical analysis by Daddi Addoun and Lovejoy. For more information on this document, see Yacine Daddi Addoun and Paul Lovejoy, ‘The Arabic Manuscript of Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu of Jamaica, c. 1820’, in Caribbean Culture: Soundings on Kamau Brathwaite, ed. Anna Paul (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2007), 313–41; and for the letters exchanged, see R(ichard) R(obert) Madden, A Twelvemonth’s Residence in the West Indies, during the Transition from Slavery to Apprenticeship [1835] (Westport, Conn: Negro University Press, 1970).
14 J. H. Buchner, The Moravians of Jamaica: History of the Mission of the United Brethren’s Church to the Negroes in the Island of Jamaica, from the year 1754–1854 (London: Longman, Brown, 1854). The Moravian Archives in the Spanish Town Archives, Jamaica are also a valuable resource for information about Kabā Saghanughu’s life.
15 Paul Lovejoy, ‘The urban background of Enslaved Muslims in the Americas’, Slavery & Abolition 26, no. 3 (2005): 360.
16 Ibid. Kabā Saghanughu family was of Soninke origin. Paul E. Lovejoy, Jihād in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016), 49.
17 Madden, A Twelvemonth’s Residence, 197.
18 Ibid., 361.
19 Ibid., 362.
20 See especially Yacine Daddi Addoun and Paul Lovejoy, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu and the Muslim Community of Jamaica,’ in Slavery on the Frontiers of Islam, ed. Paul E. Lovejoy (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004), 208 and Maureen Warner-Lewis, ‘Religious Constancy and Compromise among Nineteenth-Century Caribbean-based African Muslims,’ in Slavery, Islam, and Diaspora, eds. Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ismael Musah Montana, and Paul E. Lovejoy (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2009), 250.
21 Buchner, The Moravians of Jamaica, 79.
22 Ibid., 53.
23 Daddi Addoun and Lovejoy, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu and the Muslim Community of Jamaica,’ 199.
24 Jon S. Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 87.
25 Ibid., 88.
26 The Moravian Church of North America expresses this relative openness in their motto: ‘In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things love’. ‘And in all Things . . .’, This Month in Moravian History 73 (May 2012), www.moravianchurcharchives.org.
27 Paul E. Lovejoy, Jihād in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016), 178–179.
28 The location of the silver cup is unknown, though it is described in The Liberator along with the translation of Kabā Saghanughu’s address. The Liberator, Boston, MA (September 7, 1838): 2.
29 Daddi Addoun and Lovejoy, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu and the Muslim Community of Jamaica,’ 208 and Warner-Lewis, ‘Religious Constancy and Compromise’, 250.
30 Ibid., fn 50.
31 Lovejoy established Kaba Saghanughu’s place of origin. Jihād in West Africa, 111.
32 The same translation was also published in The Jamaica Question: Papers on the Condition of the Labouring Population of the West Indies. Presented to Parliament by Her Majesty’s Command. (Lindfield, Sussex: W. Eade, 1839), 64–6. The original translator is not known.
33 Dolan and Idrissi Alami, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address’, 301.
34 West African Muslim names enable the mapping of genealogical networks of belonging. Keith Cartwight observes that these names point to ‘a system in which first names tend to be derived from Islamic hagiography, while family names are patrilineal’. Cartwright, Reading Africa into American Literature: Epics, Fables, and Gothic Tales (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 40.
35 Dolan and Idrissi Alami, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address’, 301. Italics added to emphasize the differences between the imperial translation and the new translation.
36 Aljoe, Creole Testimonies, 66.
37 Commenting on the Moravian perception of slavery, Katherine Faull Eze notes that ‘once baptized, the black was regarded by the Moravian missionaries as a brother. Physical bondage was justified as a part of the social structure of the time; however, spiritual bondage was the mark of true slavery’ (41). For more on interactions between Moravians and black slaves, see Faull Eze, ‘Self-Encounters: Two Eighteenth-Century Memoirs from Moravian Bethlehem’, in Crosscurrents: African Americans, Africa, and Germany in the Modern World, eds. David McBride, Leroy Hopkins, and C. Aisha Blackshire-Belay (Columbia: Camden House, 1998), 29–52.
38 Dolan and Idrissi Alami, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu’s Arabic Address’, 301.
39 Aljoe, Creole Testimonies, 13.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 These include the following 10 addresses: ‘Presbyterian Church address, Port Maria 17 July 1838’, ‘Jamaican missionary address, Port Maria 17 July 1838’, ‘Baptist ministers, Montego Bay 20 July 1838’, ‘Baptist minister, Luca, 21 July 1838’, ‘Wesleyan and Pres ministers, Luca, 21 July 1838’, and ‘Apprentices, Montego Bay 20 July 1838’ (TNA: CO 137/231/140, Lionel Smith to Lord Glenelg, 27 July 1838), and ‘Letter from the Baptist congregation in Four Paths, Clarendon, signed by W. G. Barrett, Minister, and James Reid Minister’, ‘Letter from the Baptist Church and Congregation, Brown’s Town, and of the Congregation Bethany St. Anne’s, signed by John Clark, Pastor’, ‘A Translation of Robert Peart’s Arabic address intended to be presented to Sir Lionel Smith’, ‘An address written by former apprentices of Manchester Simon Martin, James Martin, William Bernard, Francis Green’ (TNA: CO 137/231/153, Smith to Glenelg, 13 August 1838).
43 Aljoe, Creole Testimonies, 125.
44 Ibid, 9.
45 Ibid, 67.
46 Shu-Mei Shih and Françoise Lionnet, ‘Introduction’, in The Creolization of Theory, eds. Shu-Mei Shih, Pheng Cheah, Leo Ching, Barnor Hesse, Anne Donadey, Françoise Lionnet, Étienne Balibar, and Dominique Chancé (Duke University Press, 2011), 2.
47 Mullin, 15.
48 Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736–1831 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 14.
49 Ibid.
50 Mechal Sobel, Trabelin’ on: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 37–8.
51 Buchner, The Moravians of Jamaica, 51.
52 Ibid., 53.
53 J. O. Hunwick, ‘The Influence of Arabic in West Africa: A Preliminary Historical Survey’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 7 (1964): 25.
54 Daddi Addoun and Lovejoy, ‘The Arabic Manuscript’, 313.
55 Lindon Barrett, ‘Hand-Writing: Legibility and the White Body in Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom’, American Literature 69, no. 2 (June 1997): 315–36. 316.
56 Allan Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 24.
57 Ibid.
58 Basima Kamel Shaheen, ‘Literary Form and Islamic Identity in The Life of Omar Ibn Said’, in Journeys of the Slave Narrative in the Early Americas, eds. Nicole N. Aljoe and Ian Finseth (Charlottesville, VA: The University of Virginia Press, 2014), 187.
59 Ibid., 189.
60 Aljoe, Creole Testimonies, 131.
61 For a discussion of this exchange see Daddi Addoun and Lovejoy, ‘Muhammad Kabā Saghanughu and the Muslim Community of Jamaica’.
62 Ibid. It is very likely that the document Kabā Saghanughu’s wife destroyed during the riots could have been the original copy of the Kitāb al-Salāt or a copy of a religious treatise that includes exhortation for resistance and rebellion against slavery.
63 Many studies have focused on the impact of Islam on culture and society in Africa. In investigating the Qur’an and Islamic education in West African society, Rudolph Ware uses the paradigm of embodiment to demonstrate how Islam informs and shapes structures of knowledge, culture and history in the region. This study provides insights in how Muslims in West Africa, like Kabā Saghanughu, would have conceptualized their religious identities and ‘embodied’ the teachings and mores of Islam. In his assessment, ‘Islamic and African studies need to take African Muslims seriously as bearers and interpreters of forms of Islamic knowledge and embodied practice with powerful claims to scriptural authority and prophetic precedent’. Rudolph T. Ware III, The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 14l.
64 Such problems of legibility have been pointed out by Ronald A.T. Judy in his reading of Ben Ali’s Diay manuscript in relation to ‘emancipation through writing’ and ‘linguistic indeterminacy’. Ronald A.T. Judy, DisForming the American Canon: African-Arabic Slave Narratives and the Vernacular (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 21.
65 Orlando Patterson, The Sociology of Slavery: An Analysis of the Origins, Development and Structure of Negro Slave Society in Jamaica (Cranbury, N. J., 1969), 178.
66 ‘Several slave memoirs written in Arabic or Spanish were translated into English by abolitionists for primary impact on American and British readers’ and further the cause of emancipation. Angelo Contanzo, ‘The Narrative of Archibald Monteith,’ Callaloo, 13, no. 1 (Winter, 1990): 115.
67 Aljoe, Creole Testimonies, 14.
68 Ibid. 33.