Klein Constantia - Cape Muslim Heritage

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.

Read more about this topic:  Klein Constantia

Famous quotes containing the words cape, muslim and/or heritage:

    The Great South Beach of Long Island,... though wild and desolate, as it wants the bold bank,... possesses but half the grandeur of Cape Cod in my eyes, nor is the imagination contented with its southern aspect.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace.
    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)

    Flowers ... that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their colouring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children—honoured as the jewellery of God only by them—when suddenly the voice of Christianity, counter-signing the voice of infancy, raised them to a grandeur transcending the Hebrew throne, although founded by God himself, and pronounced Solomon in all his glory not to be arrayed like one of these.
    Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859)