veiled4allah: glimpses of Muslims in England in the 1700s

Jonathan Edelstein found an excellent legal research site, Proceedings of the Old Bailey. The Old Bailey is London's central criminal court and has records of its proceedings going back several centuries. The online database currently contains records from 1714 to 1799 and is ultimately intended to contain all records between 1674 and 1834.

Jonathan was looking for information about Jews in London during the eighteenth century; I decided to look for reports of Muslims.

So far I've found two trials that involved Muslims. The first is the prosecution of John Ryan, Jeremiah Ryan, and Mary Ryan by John Morgan, who was from Bengal in India. This case is from 1765. Morgan worked as a servant for the former governor of Madras and accompanied him back to England along with another Muslim servant.

Morgan alleged that the Ryans had stolen some money and clothes from him. At that time in England, there was no public prosecutor's office. The victim of the crime had to prosecute the case himself. David Friedman has a useful article Making Sense of English Law Enforcement in the 18th Century that provides some historical context.

So Morgan had to prosecute the Ryans himself and present evidence at the trial. This led to a dilemma for the judge: how to swear Morgan in? After some debate among the judges of Old Bailey, Morgan got to swear on the Quran.

The second case I found is from 1787. It involves the prosecution of John M'Nally and Nicholas Ellicot by Mahomet Mustapha Blabas and Hasbrahim Ben Aga Soderati, again for theft.

Blabas and Soderati had come from Amsterdam. The record doesn't mention where they had been before that. Blabas only spoke Arabic and there was no interpreter, so his testimony could not be taken. However, Soderati was able to serve as prosecutor. Soderati swore on the Quran and apparently this was now considered standard procedure for Muslim witnesses since no dispute is mentioned concerning it.

Reading the cases is interesting inasmuch as it gives a glimpse into Muslims that were present in London in the eighteenth century and what types of lives they led.

You'll also see very archaic terminology used. For instance, Muslims are referred to as "Mahometans", an older spelling of Mohammedans (i.e., followers of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him). The Quran is referred to as "the Alcoran". This appears to be an anglicized version of al-Qur'an, the name of the scripture in Arabic. Referring to the Alcoran is redundant since "Al" or "al-" is the definite article in Arabic; what you're really saying is "the the Quran".