South Africa · a Light

He wrote the Qur'an from memory on Robben Island

Tuan Guru, born Abdullah ibn Qadi Abd al-Salam, was a prince from Tidore in the Indonesian archipelago, exiled by the Dutch and held on Robben Island off Cape Town from 1780. In prison he wrote out the Qur'an from memory, and also compiled a book of belief in Malay and Arabic. Copies survive. Released in 1793, he founded a school and then, in 1794, the Auwal Mosque in the Bo-Kaap, the first mosque in South Africa, in a property made available by Saartjie van de Kaap, a freed slave woman who owned it. The mosque is still in use, and much of the Cape Muslim community traces itself to those exiles.

Bo-Kaap, Cape Town · 1794