Cape Muslim Heritage
Klein Constantia is the site of the kramat or grave of a revered Cape Muslim teacher and cleric, Sheik Abdurachman Matebe Shah, who is said to have been one of the three teachers who brought Islam to southern Africa in the seventeenth century.
After being captured during the Dutch conquest of Sumatra, Sheik Abdurachman was banished to the Cape Colony in 1661, only ten years after it was founded.
He is thought to have died on the site that the kramat now stands in either 1681 or 1682.
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