Culture

200-year-old Quran discovered in South African Mosque

Published

8 months ago

August 23, 2023

A 200-year-old Quran has been discovered at a Mosque in the Kaap district of Cape Town in South Africa, according to the city officials.

The Quran, written in neat graphics, believed to have been hidden by an Indonesian imam who had been banished to the southern tip of Africa by Dutch colonisers, is now the pride of Cape Town Muslims who have jealously guarded it since its discovery.

Cassiem Abdullah, a member of the Mosque committee, told the BBC that builders found the religious book in a paper bag in the Auwal Mosque’s attic, while they were breaking it down as part of renovations.

“Researchers believe that Imam Abdullah ibn Qadi Abdus Salaam, affectionately known as Tuan Guru, or Master Teacher, wrote the Quran from memory at some point after he was shipped to Cape Town as a political prisoner, from Tidore island in Indonesia in 1780, as punishment for joining the resistance movement against Dutch colonisers,” Abdullah said.

“It was extremely dusty, it looked like no-one had been in that attic for more than 100 years. The builders also found a box of religious texts written by Tuan Guru,” he said.

The unbound Quran, comprising loose pages that were unnumbered, was in surprisingly good condition, with the exception of the first few pages that were frayed at the edges, he further explained.

“The black and red ink used for the clearly legible calligraphic writing in Arabic script was, and still is, in very good condition.”

“The big challenge for the local Muslim community in their quest to preserve one of the most valuable artefacts in their rich heritage, which dates back to 1694, is to ensure that all the pages containing the Quran’s more than 6,000 verses were placed in the correct sequence.

“The Quran has since been displayed in the Auwal Mosque, which was established by Tuan Guru in 1794 as the first mosque in what is now South Africa.”

A Tuan Guru biographer, Shafiq Morton, believes that the scholar in all likelihood started writing the first of five copies while being held on Robben Island—where anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela was also imprisoned from the 1960s to the 1980s —and continued doing so after his release.

“Most of these copies are believed to have been written when he was between 80 and 90 years old, and his achievement is seen as all the more remarkable as Arabic was not his first language,” Morton noted.

According to Morton, Tuan Guru was jailed on Robben Island twice—first from 1780 to 1781 when he was 69 years old, and again between 1786 and 1791.

“I believe one of the reasons he wrote the Quran was to lift the spirits of the slaves around him. He realised that if he were to write a copy of the Quran he could educate his people from it and teach them dignity at the same time,” Morton says.

“If you go to the archives and look at the paper that the Dutch used it’s very similar to that used by Tuan Guru. It’s probably the same paper.

“His pens he would have made himself from bamboo and the black and red ink would have been easy to obtain from the colonial authorities,” he added.

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Culture

Collabo with Burna Boy enabled me buy house for my mum— Mozambican DJ Tarico

Published

16 hours ago

April 27, 2024

Akanimoh Etim

Mozambican disc jockey and sound-producer, DJ Tarico, has credited Nigeria’s Afrobeats sensation, Burna Boy, with his sudden wealth which enabled him buy a house for his mother.

DJ Tarico attributed a collaboration with the Grammy Awards winning “African Giant” as the turning point in his story and said he would forever be grateful to the Nigerian star.

Speaking with the BBC African Voice on Saturday, DH Tarico said when he came up
with a particularly energetic beat one day, he couldn’t have predicted how it would change his life and that of his two friends.

He said one of his friends, Nelson Tivane, a songwriter and vocalist, came up with the lyric “Yaba Buluku” which was “inspired by the sound of coins jangling in a pocket”, while the other friend, Preck, “belted out that lyric with his gravelly, powerful voice,” with the song becoming an instant hit in their country.

“After we concluded the song, we went to a rural zone and we put a car with a big sound there, and we connected the song on the car and we saw many people dancing and ask ‘who is the owner of this song?’ Then we knew this song was going to be big!” Tarico recalls.

He said he was surprised that
none other than Burna Boy, realised the strength of “Yaba Buluku” and jumped on the remix, a move which had a massive impact on Tarico, Tivane and Preck.

“We were travelling all over Africa. Too many big artists were asking us for features. People started to know our face outside of Mozambique. We became internationals.

“And money! I bought a car, land and a house for my mother.”

The trio who now call themselves “Yaba Buluku Boyz”, have dropped their debut album, “Donsa”, on Friday, and are hoping to ride on the success of the collaboration to reach greatet heights in Africa and globally.

“Donsa”, according to DJ Tarico, “is high-energy, danceable amapiano, and features big African names including Ghana’s dancehall King Shatta Wale, Timaya from Nigeria and Harmonize from Tanzania,” he said.

Culture

African men run away from single mothers— Joselyn Dumas

Published

2 days ago

April 26, 2024

Akanimoh Etim

Veteran Ghanaian actress and media personality, Joselyn Dumas, has lamented the fact that most African men shy away from getting married to single mothers due to the added responsibilities they will be saddled with.

The actress who made the assertion in her recent podcast, “Keeping it Real with Joselyn Dumas, The Perfect Picture”, opened up on the challenges of many single mothers who are struggling to find a partner because of societal biases.

In the podcast, Dumas who shared a personal story of a male friend whom she said refused to settle down with a lady because she had a child.

According to her, the friend named Anthony, firmly stated that it wasn’t his thing to be with a ‘born one’ or ‘born two’.

“He said B1, B2, I’m not in and I said to myself, ‘this is the reason why a lot of single mothers are single with their children.

“Now his reason was, why am I going to raise somebody’s child? That’s not my bloodline. He doesn’t have my DNA in him. Why am I now going to help someone’s bloodline grow? What about mine?” she said.

Dumas who is a single mother, noted that Anthony’s mindset is a “reflection of the views of a larger majority of people who don’t want to have meaningful relationship with single mothers.”

She also criticised what she termed as the double standard in society’s views on raising non-biological children, arguing that it should not be seen differently from adoption.

“I have a child but these men won’t even ask you, they don’t even care why you have a child. You’ve had seven miscarriages when you got married. You meet a guy, you were dating and you got pregnant, are you going to abort the baby because you aren’t married?

“He doesn’t want the child, are you going to throw the child away? No! You can raise the child. It takes a village to raise the child, so even if you don’t have a job, you will get support. This is part of the sacrifice you have to make regardless of what has happened,” she said.