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Publicly Available Published by De Gruyter 2017

Seven Gravestones at the Muslim Tana Baru Cemetery in Cape Town: A Descriptive Note

From the book The Arts and Crafts of Literacy

  • Alessandro Gori

Abstract

The present paper deals with a small corpus of seven funerary inscriptions in Arabic and in mixed Arabic/Malay found in the Tana Baru Islamic cemetery in Cape Town. The article contains a description of the gravestones, as well as a translation and critical analysis of the text of the epitaphs. The items are studied from both a linguistic and a historical perspective with the aim of improving our knowledge of Islamic epigraphy in South Africa. At the same time, the inscriptions offer new information on the prosopography of the Muslim community of the Western Cape region, information which, it is hoped, will trigger further research on Islamic culture and history in South Africa.

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
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