12323: Re: 12314: Re: 12313: Mohammed's Religion Finds a Place in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: LeGrace Benson <legrace@twcny.rr.com>

Grounds for the hypotheses regarding the Muslim presence in St.-Domingue and
in particular of the conjecture that both Makandal and Boukman were Muslim
or at least educated in the Qur'an school tradition are being drawn from
historians such as Thomas Madiou (Histoire d'Haiti) in the nineteenth
century and Jean Fouchard  in the twentieth century( several items in the
series of monographs on various aspects of Haitian history, see especially
Les Marrons du Syllabaire).  The demographic studies now available (see
websites on slave trade) regarding the slave trade support a supposition
that the first slaves to enter were largely Islamic or Islamicised, and that
some were surely advanced practioners and teachers. The work of Roger
Bastide clearly supports a strong Islamic influence on the uprisings for
liberty in Brazil, and more recent scholarship indicates that such aspects
of plantation life as rice planting and harvest, as well as sugarcane
planting and harvest depended in part on Africans who had a background not
only in the practicum of agriculture but also the theoretical basis derived
from the Islamic kitabs on agriculture in use from the 13th century to the
present.  Print documentary evidence of the first order has not yet been
found to firmly substantiate Boukman's Islamic faith or indeed the Islamic
elements reported from Bois Caiman by eyewitnesses interviewed long after
the event.  The revisions of St.-Domingue/Haiti revolutionary history now
taking place are more attentive to the Muslim presence clearly there but
needing much disinterested field work to be fully substantiated and
described in richer detail.  To some who have been engaged in this search,
it will be surprising if Boukman  turns out NOT to have been Muslim, and NOT
to have been engaged specifically in jihad.  The available evidence is
currently at the state of hypotheses (pl) and one should keep all paths
open.
        legrace@twcny.rr.com