B.L. Robinson-Jones, Ohio University, Choice, 1999
Outstanding Academic Title - Choice 1999 Diouf has written one of the few works that not only chronicles the history of Muslim men, women, and children during the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery, but also provides illustrated examples of how African Muslims preserved their faith and maintained their religious lifestyle in the midst of a hostile environment. Diouf asserts that although they left a mark on the religious and cultural landscape of African America, the Muslims have disappeared from the African American collective consciousness and have been overlooked by scholarly research. Replete with examples from the personal narratives and correspondence of the Muslims during this time period, Diouf's study demonstrates how enslaved Muslims served as agents in history, making this work a necessary addition to history and African studies collection. Highly recommended. All levels.


The Journal of American History
"It will interest and perhaps inspire students of the African diaspora and slavery in the Americas."


Black Diaspora, February/March 1999
A detailed examination of an area of Black History that was somehow pretty much ignored.


Le Journal, 1/99
Easily accessible. Provides a wealth of remarkable historical information.


Copley News Service 12/02/98
Opens a new door on the African Diaspora and provides readers with even more insight into Islam, as well as enslaved Africans. Diouf's study greatly enhances current literature on the Diaspora.


QBR The Black Review of Books, January/February 1999
Sylviane Diouf has given us a book as attractive as its title .... Diouf's work fills an important research gap... This historical study is ground-breaking not only in its theme but also its approach, which can be described as pan-Africanist to the extent that it relates the histories of these deported Muslims to the political upheavals of Medieval Africa . . .; forges links between the varied sites of their dispersal from the 16th to the 19th century . . . and examines the issue of return to Africa and the lineage (or the absence thereof) of this first African Islam. Servants of Allah has a wealth of arguments that provoke reflection and that will not leave the reader indifferent or lacking in bibliographical references.


Book Description
Despite the explosion of works on African Americans and religious history, little is known about the Muslims who came to America as slaves. Most assume that what Muslim faith any Africans did bring with them was quickly absorbed into the new Christian milieu. But, surprisingly, as Sylviane A. Diouf shows in this new, meticulously researched volume, Islam flourished during slavery. This book presents a history of African Muslims following them from West Africa to the Americas. It details how, even while enslaved, many Muslims managed to follow most of the precepts of Islam. Literate in Arabic, urbane and well-traveled, they drew on their organization and the strength of their faith to maintain successful, cohesive communities and to play a major role in the most well-known slave uprisings. Servants of Allah is the first book to examine the role of Islam in the lives of both individual practitioners and in the American slave community as a whole, while also shedding light on the legacy of Islam in today's American and Caribbean cultures.


From the Back Cover
Faith and spirituality have always been powerful forces in the histories of people of African descent. Central to that history is Islam. Servants of Allah documents the significance of Islam in the development of black societies in the Americas. The connection between West Africa and the Americas was grounded in a religious and cultural continuity that many scholars have previously ignored. Servants of Allah makes an important contribution to a critically important dimension of black scholarship. Manning Marable, Director, Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University. A welcome and timely work on a subject of great importance. By combining materials in African Islam with New World sources and thereby linking both sides of the Atlantic, the author provides a fresh angle on studies of the Diaspora. Readers will find in the book a great deal of information presented in a clear, lively style. Lamin Sanneh, D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity, and Professor of History, Yale University. An excellent work on African Muslim slaves in the New World. Diouf has demonstrated what vigorous scholarship and creative imagination can do to reconstruct the lives and times of these men and women of Africa. Sulayman Nyang, Professor of African Studies, Howard University. An accessible, lucid account of an important and complicated aspect of African enslavement in the Americas, and a provocative and effective reading of the interaction of African Muslims with the American slave institution. Diouf explodes myths, establishes the facts, and sustains an argument for the presence of Islamic influences in certain artistic and religious traditions of Africans in the Americas. This will become an important book. Molefi Kete Asante, author of The Afrocentric Idea. Everywhere in the Americas, the African Muslims left influential footsteps that Diouf intelligently uncovers. Here are enlightening stories and statistics for anyone attempting to fully understand the settlement and impact of the Old World on the New and on today. Allan D. Austin, author of African Muslims in Antebellum America.


Excerpted from Servants of Allah : African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas by Sylviane A. Diouf. Copyright © 1998. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
From Chapter 4: A large proportion of the Muslims arrived in the New World already literate, reading and writing Arabic and their own languages transcribed in the Arabic alphabet. As other Africans came from exclusively oral cultures, and as learning to read and write was either illegal or actively discouraged for all slaves in the Americas, literacy became one of the most distinguishing marks of the Muslims. The Muslims' literacy clearly set them apart from the rest of the slaves and became as distinctive as a physical trait. A slaveholder was so impressed with his literate slave, for example, that he mentioned only this characteristic when he put a notice in the Charleston Courier of February 7, 1805, to advertise him as a fugitive. Thirty-year-old Sambo was a "new negro" who had absconded with another African and a native-born woman. He was, reported his owner, a man "of grave countenance who writes the Arabic language." It would be interesting to know how the slaveholder came to learn about his new slave's literacy, as well as what, and under which circumstances, Sambo - a common name among Hausa - had been writing. Illiteracy among men and women was not restricted to the slave quarters. Many male colonists and most women could neither read nor write, because literacy in European cultures was reserved for the wealthy males. The furthest some societies went was to allow the poor and women to read for religious reasons - so that the Bible could be accessible - but not to write. As a result, a large number of American colonists who came from what were considered the lower European classes were illiterate or barely literate. In the colonies themselves, education was reserved for the privileged few; the movement toward mass literacy started only in the nineteenth century. Prior to that, in Brazil for instance, "the simplest rudiments were so little diffused that not infrequently wealth ranchers of the interior would charge their friends of the seaboard to secure for them a son-in-law who, in place of any other dower, should be able to read and write." Because the literacy rate was high in Muslim Africa, and because of a concentration of learned Muslims in America, as discussed in chapter I, the literacy rate among Muslim slaves was in all probability higher than it was among slaveholders. As Gilberto Freyre, the Brazilian scholar, remarked, "in the slaves' sheds of Bahia in 1835, there were perhaps more persons who knew how to read and write than up above in the Big Houses." This situation was sometimes used to the advantage of the owners, who relied on their slaves' skills. Such was the case with Abu bakr al Siddiq's owner in Jamaica, who had him keep his property' s records in Arabic. But the disparity in education of master and slave also created animosity. To some illiterate or barely literate masters, having slaves who could read and write was vexing. In that regard, Theodore Dwight, the secretary of the American Ethnological Society, observed that "several other Africans have been known at different periods, in different parts of America, somewhat resembling Job-ben-Solomon in acquirements [e.g., of literacy and education] ; but, unfortunately, no full account of any of them has ever been published. The writer has made many efforts to remedy this defect, and has obtained some information from a few individuals. But there are insuperable difficulties in the way in slave countries, arising from the jealousy of masters, and other causes." Further, Dwight mentioned that writer and ethnologist William Hodgson, who had resided in North Africa, tried to make inquiries about the literate Muslims in the American South but had to abandon the undertaking "in despair," due to the hostility of their masters. The hostility toward the literate Africans that many slaveholders expressed did not arise from the fear that their property would somehow trick them by forging passes or getting access to useful news. Even though Brazilian slaveholders discovered that the Africans' literacy in Arabic could indeed by hazardous to their safety, the animosity described by Dwight had another origin. In the eyes of the slaveholders, the Muslims' literacy was dangerous because it represented a threat to the whites' intellectual domination and a refutation of the widely-held belief that Africans were inherently inferior and incapable of intellectual pursuits. The Africans' skills constituted a proof of humanity and civilization that did not owe anything to the Christians' supposed civilizing influence. If these men and women could read and write, if they were not the bland slates or the primitive savages they had been portrayed to be in order to justify their enslavement, then the very foundation of the system had to be questioned. This issue was so potent that, as discussed in the previous chapter, North Americans felt compelled to deny the Africanness of the "outstanding" Muslims and to portray them as Arabs.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Servants of Allah does not subscribe to current theoretical fashions. Servants of Allah seeks to debunk the stereotypical image of the enslaved African in the Americas. Many, especially those who were Muslims at the time of capture, were learned and able to read. Because this imagery was contrary to the required projection of the African, Ms. Diouf indicates, the slaveholding establishment tried to regard African Muslims as Orientals, Arabs, or Moors, by virtue of a well-known tautology: Since the African was by definition barbaric, an educated slave could not be African. Through writing, certain Muslims protested against the enslavement of their friends and families; thanks to the written word, some of them returned to Africa.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Despite the explosion in work on African American and religious history, little is known about Black Muslims who came to America as slaves. Most assume that what Muslim faith any Africans did bring with them was quickly absorbed into the new Christian milieu. But, surprisingly, as Sylviane Diouf shows in this new, meticulously researched volume, Islam flourished during slavery on a large scale.

Servants of Allah presents a history of African Muslim slaves, following them from Africa to the Americas. It details how, even while enslaved many Black Muslims managed to follow most of the precepts of their religion. Literate, urban, and well traveled, Black Muslims drew on their organization and the strength of their beliefs to play a major part in the most well known slave uprisings. Though Islam did not survive in the Americas in its orthodox form, its mark can be found in certain religions, traditions, and artistic creations of peoples of African descent.

But for all their accomplishments and contributions to the cultures of the African Diaspora, the Muslim slaves have been largely ignored. Servants of Allah is the first book to examine the role of Islam in the lives of both individual practitioners and in the American slave community as a whole, while also shedding light on the legacy of Islam in today's American and Caribbean cultures.

FROM THE CRITICS

Sylvie Kande - Quarterly Black Review

Servants of Allah is constructed in a highly classical manner: the sobriety of its analysis lets the facts speak for themselves, with a minimum of editorializing; it is structured logically and symmetrically in a manner that illuminates the nodal point of the Muslim's distinctiveness within the slave system, namely, their mastery of writing....Servants of Allah has a wealth of arguments that provoke reflection and that will not leave the reader indifferent or lacking in references for further reading.

American Historical Review

Sylviane A. Diouf has written a sophisticated and important book on the history of West African Muslims in the New World. The author's cogent analyses of source materials from Old World-West African Islam and New World-transatlantic slave communities establishes a strong and persuasive case for rich and extensive Islamic influences in black religious and cultural traditions in Brazil, the United States, and the Caribbean islands. This creative and refreshing interpretation of West African-Islamic spiritual continuities in the African Diaspora is fascinating and very readable. The author's major contribution lies in her great insight into the worldview and the ethos of the African Muslim slaves in the Americas.

Booknews

Explores the stories of African Muslim slaves in the New World. The author argues that although Islam as brought by the Africans did not outlive the last slaves, "what they wrote on the sands of the plantations is a successful story of strength, resilience, courage, pride, and dignity." She discusses Christian Europeans, African Muslims, the Atlantic slave trade, literacy, revolts, and the Muslim legacy. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Slavery and Abolition

Diouf's book provokes. Diouf does not merely investigate an antebellum community of Muslims who are 'forced' into captivity; she examines the relationships that existed between individual scholars, clerics and adherents to the message of the Qur'an. Diouf details an extensive range of literal, social, political and religious activity, designed to heal, connect, liberate, empower, create and celebrate, leading ultimately to manifestations of freedom. Servants of Allah is an important and useful text because it contains an impressive catalog of vital descriptions of life in captivity and the struggle for freedom.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Servants of Allah has six fact-filled chapters. Diouf deftly covers a regional history of West Africa during the period of the slave trade. She provides us with a contextual setting for all the participants in the trade and asserts the complexities of an already existing slave trade and its difference from what becomes American chattel slavery. She then proceeds to upset further our notions of who slaves were with the phrase "literate, urban, and in some cases well-traveled." Chapter 3 furnishes us with a relatively detailed account of Muslim slave life [in the Americas.] A solid discussion on the importance of names and identity in Islam and the responsibility to maintain that identity in the reality of Christian renaming is one hallmark of this section. This first broad and yet thorough revisiting of a significant and long denied history is absolutely critical for everyone to read. Read all 8 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Sylvie Kande

This historical study is ground-breaking not only in its theme but also its approach, which can be described as pan-Africanist to the extent that it relates the histories of these deported Muslims to the political upheavals of medieval Africa...; forges links between the varied sites of their dispersal from the 16th to the 19th century...; and examines the issue of return to Africa and the lineage (or the absence thereof) of this first American Islam. — Sylvie Kandé, QBR Jan/Feb '99