Mar 01, 2012 - Sale 2271

Sale 2271 - Lot 345

Price Realized: $ 2,880
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
NO COPY AT AUCTION IN 25 YEARS (ISLAM--ISLAM IN AMERICA.) HODGSON, WILLIAM B. The Gospels Written in the Negro Patois of English, with Arabic Characters, By a Mandingo Slave. 16 pages. Tall 8vo, original printed self-wrappers, sewn; front cover nearly detached, outer leaves a trifle dusty; enclosed in a cloth chemise. Accompanied by a letter addressed to American philologist George Phillip Krapp regarding this paper. (Np, Ethnological Society of New York: 1857)
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

first edition, exceedingly scarce. While oclc locates 18 copies (most in southern institutions), no copy has been at auction in the last 25 years. This pamphlet includes a talk given at the Ethnological Society of New York in 1857 by William B. Hodgson, one of the world's leading philologists. He had come into possession of a unique manuscript, written by a Mandingo slave named "London," the property of the Maxwell family of Savannah. (they later removed to Florida where London died.) London had written a phonetic transliteration of the Gospel of Saint John into English, using Arabic characters--the only systemic try at writing English in Arabic letters up to that point. "The manuscript of London is remarkable for precision in the use of the vowel points-harchat of the Arabic grammar. . . I infer from this, that as London was accustomed [to the use of them], in making copies of the Koran with the same reverential sentiment he used the vowel points in copying the Bible of his adopted religion." London's phonetic rendering of the Gospel of St. John begins
"Fas Chapta ob Jon. Inde Beginnen wasde wad; ande Wad waswid Gad, ande wad was Gad."
Hodgson's paper touches on many other Africans in the Americas practicing Islam, some of them supposedly converting to Christianity. The noted Omar ibn Said, whose manuscript narrative was sold in these rooms in 1996, is cited, as is the Fulah slave Bul-ali (Ben Ali) Muhammad, a slave in the possession of a Mr. Spelling of Sapelo Island, who wrote the only extant book of Islamic Law written in America and contributed several Islamic terms to the Gullah dialect of English.
Provenance: This pamphlet was given to the noted philologist Dr. George Phillip Krapp by William Harden of the Georgia Historical Society in 1919. Dr. Krapp then wrote an entire paper on it, published in 1924, a Xerox copy of which we include here, together with the original letter from Dr. Hayden transferring this paper to Dr. Krapp. A very important paper with a fine provenance from the grandson of Dr. Krapp.