ABSTRACT
Slaves had more than oral culture to rely on to transmit their heritage and beliefs. Actually, literacy among slaves in Jamaica included those familiar with Arabic script and those who used this literacy to preserve their cultural heritage. In fact, recently discovered Arabic manuscripts written by Muslim slaves working on Jamaican plantations demonstrate that some used Arabic and creolized writing to resist cultural assimilation, maintain historical memory, and share Islamic learning. In this way, they preserved their original (West African) spiritual culture as well as transmitted Muslim learning to slaves from a variety of ethnic and geographical regions. In this chapter, I discuss the presence, performance, and importance of Arabic literacy and the transmission of Islamic practices and culture among this population on Caribbean slave plantations. I also provide two case studies of this process. The first is as documented in the writings of Irish colonial administrator R. R. Madden, a known abolitionist sent in 1833 to prepare the Jamaican plantation owners for the apprenticeship period. His papers document how enslaved Africans in Jamaica used Arabic literacy to correspond, write short autobiographies, and share Islamic creed and rituals. Second, I explore the process of creolization as documented in the Arabic address of Muhammad Saghanughu Kabā and its role in enabling the emergence and enactment of a transnational Muslim form of belonging and the role of translingual creolization in sustaining liberationist identity. Seen together, these works illustrate key aspects of the role of first-generation Muslim slaves in maintaining Muslim learning by drawing on their original West African culture and Arabic proficiency.
