Origin from 1731
Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, an educated Fulani Muslim from Bundu in present day Senegal, was captured and sold into slavery in 1730 and transported to Annapolis, Maryland, in 1731. Set to work in tobacco fields, he sought out solitude to pray after being mocked while at prayer, and his ability to write Arabic drew the attention of the lawyer Thomas Bluett, whose 1734 memoir of Diallo's life, published after Diallo returned to Africa a free man, became one of the earliest printed accounts in English of an enslaved Muslim's own faith in colonial America.
Facts
Dates
Start YearSourced to the subject's own account StatusSourced to the subject's own accountArrived marks one of the earliest well documented cases of an enslaved Muslim's own practice of Islam in Britain's American colonies, not a claim that Diallo was the first Muslim brought to the Americas or that his case was typical; most enslaved Muslims left no comparable written record. In Other Languages (4 names)
- أيوب سليمان جالو
- Ayuba Suleiman Diallo
- अयूब सुलेमान डियालो
- ایوبا سلیمان دیالو
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Americas directly: "Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, an educated Fulani Muslim from Bundu in present day Senegal, was captured and sold into slavery in 1730 and transported to Annapolis, Maryland, in 1731."
This source names Maryland directly: "in 1730 and transported to Annapolis, Maryland, in 1731."
Occurred In
Spread Event Of
Anchors, more than a century and a half early, the general claim already on the map's own 1900 entry that Muslim presence in the Americas runs from enslaved West African Muslims brought before abolition, giving that claim a single documented name and date.
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