“His Excellency,
The school established by Abu Bakr Effendi for the Cape Muslim girls is about to close down because of the financial issue. The current administrators, Hasene and Velite, employed some women teachers, paying their wages from their own purses. Poor parents cannot afford the school fees for the education of their daughters. We fear that the school will close if you do not help,” wrote 98 Muslims of Cape Town to the Ottoman Caliph in 1894.
The Ottoman State Archives in Istanbul offer a sizeable collection of documents for South African historians. The documents are not only written in Ottoman Turkish, but also in French, English and Arabic languages, which indicate the variety of correspondence across the continents.
Here are some examples of the events they record: In 1857, Angora goats arrived at the Cape Harbour all the way from Türkiye.
In 1862, Cape Muslims asked for a theology professor from the Ottoman Caliphate in Istanbul. Abu Bakr Effendi arrived at the Cape and wrote a religious catechism in ArabicAfrikaans.
A letter of Abu Bakr Effendi from Bree Street stated that his student Abdulrakip would be sent to Istanbul for further education. The mutual concern was the flourishing of Islamic education in the Cape Muslim community.
Overall, three Ottoman scholars served in the Cape Muslim society, and were buried in the Tana Baru Cemetery. Their graves serve as evidence for the sincere relations between Türkiye and the Cape inhabitants.
In 1878, with the encouragement of Abdulrauf Abdurrahman, Cape Muslims gathered donations, which they sent to Istanbul in order to help the family of Turkish martyrs in the Turko-Russian War.
A letter from the resident on 71 Wale Street indicates that Professor Mahmud Effendi was the one who took over the educational mission which was initiated by Abu Bakr Effendi in1863. Mahmud Effendi died in his residence, which is, in fact, the Bo-Kaap Museum at present.
Mahmud Effendi taught many students at the Arabic School in Castle Street and left many letters and correspondence with the Istanbul government.
In 1908, prominent Cape Muslims received gold and silver medals due to their contribution to the Hejaz railway project in Mecca.
The Ottoman Sultan had received a letter from another local person in the Bo-Kaap quarter, requesting his support for the Muslim female school in Buitengracht Street.
When Ahmet Ataullah, son of Abu Bakr Effendi died in Singapore in 1903, the Ottoman caliphate asked for information from an imam in Bo-Kaap regarding his wife, Muhsine Ataullah and his children.
Muhsine’s daughter, Havva Khayrunnisa, studied in London and became the first black female doctor in South Africa.
Hamidia Islamic Society, named after Sultan Abdulhamid II, supported the Ottoman Army, which was fighting against Italians in Libya in 1912.
Interestingly, a well-known businessman, Haim Galanti, also gathered some aid from the Sephardim Jewish community in South Africa and sent donations to the Ottoman Army, which was protecting the Jewish people against the radical Christians in the region.
The Imam of Chiappini Street Mosque was praying for the success of the Ottoman State in World War I. Flying Turkish flags on South African mosques became a sensational issue during WWI.
A Palestinian war prisoner, Ahmed Zein, from Napier Camp was writing to Istanbul seeking help to be freed from the prison in 1916. As an Ottoman citizen, Ahmet Zein was released and later died in Cape Town.
Strangely enough, an Indian businessman bequeathed all his money to the Republic of Türkiye in 1948 after the fall of the Ottoman State, which highlighted the remarkable relationship between the two countries in history.
As an Asian source, Ottoman State Archives help us decolonise historiography, which is a solid response to the predominance of Western archives in the postapartheid South Africa.
* Dr Halim Gencoglu, University of Cape Town.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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