Dwight York - Descent

Descent

York claims to have been born in Omdurman, Sudan. His mother is Mary C. York née Williams, now also known as Faatimah Maryam, who at the time was married to David Piper York. York claims that his biological father was Al Haadi Abdur Rahman Al Mahdi, whom Williams is said to have met while she was a student in the Sudan.

York claims that the name he was given at birth was "Isa Al Haadi Al Mahdi" and that he only acquired the name "York" (without a first name) a month later when the family returned to Boston. David and Mary York have four other children: David, Dale, Debra and Dennis. David Piper York is said to be a descendant of "Ben" York of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

In one telling, Ben York is the son of Old York, also known as Yusuf Ben Ali, and these Yorks were named after Black-A-Moors from the English House of York. In another telling, Ben York’s mother is said to have been Warda Saliym "Rose" Idriys, "a Yamassee Native American Moor," whose father is Old York/Yusuf Ben Ali, which would make Ben York the grandson of Old York. Idriys was also the "daughter of Sharufa Salim Idriys, of the Idrisid Dynasty"

A grandfather on York’s father’s side (Al Haadi Abdur Rahman Al Mahdi’s) was As Sayyid Abdur Rahman Al Mahdi. This would make York also a descendant of Muhammad Ahmad.

On his mother’s side, Clarence Daniel "Bobby" Williams, Mary C. York’s father, is described as "an Egyptian Moor named Salah Hailak Al Ghala, a merchant seaman from a little village called Beluwla, in Nubia of Ancient Egypt" but another genealogical tree shows Bobby Williams’s father as unknown and his mother as "Madam Decontee" of the Bassa tribe of Liberia.

York variously claimed to be simultaneously a Yamassee Native American chief, a Celtic Moor from the house of York, a Nubian Egyptian, a Liberian yet with royal Sudanese blood and so forth.