The Auwal Mosque of the Cape

The Auwal Mosque, in the Bo-Kaap quarter of Cape Town beneath the great flat-topped Table Mountain at the southern tip of Africa, founded in 1794, is honoured as the first mosque in all of South Africa and the cradle of Islam at the Cape. Its community were the Cape Muslims, often called the Cape Malays, descended from the slaves, exiles and political prisoners whom the Dutch East India Company had carried to its colony at the Cape over the previous century and more from the East Indies, from South and Southeast Asia, and elsewhere; many of them were Muslims, and among the exiles were learned men and princes banished for resisting Dutch rule in their homelands. The most revered of these was the man known as Tuan Guru (rahimahu Allah), a scholar and prince from the island of Tidore in the Moluccas, who had been imprisoned by the Dutch on Robben Island, where, by tradition, he wrote out the entire Qur'an from memory; freed at last, he established at the Cape the first Muslim school and, in 1794, the Auwal Mosque. Under a colonial regime that had long forbidden the public practice of Islam, the Cape Muslims had kept their faith first in secret, in homes and quarries and at the graves of their holy men, and now at last in a mosque of their own; and from this beginning grew the enduring and distinctive Muslim community of the Cape, which has remained a vital part of the life of the city to this day. This scene imagines the mosque's early community through neighbours, an open prayer room and a mat carrier. Its plaster, shutters and arch draw on the supplied modern photograph, while the later minaret is omitted. The exact 1794 facade and mountain sightline are not established by that photograph; the people and viewpoint are interpretive.