This presentation was given in The Gambia on January 31st, 2010 by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Chairman of the Board & Scholar-in-Residence at the Nawawi Foundation.
The title is “African Muslim Roots in Ancient America: Historical Vestiges of the Great Sea Journey of Mansa Kankan Abu Bakr II (ca. 712 H/1312 CE)”.
Alexander Marchant, a historian of Brazil, who observed that regarding the Humboldt Current of the equatorial Atlantic that “once cast into the mid-Atlantic, it is almost impossible to avoid the South American coast.
Crossing the Western Ocean [the Atlantic]: The Fleets of the African Muslim King Abu Bakr II (early 1300s) The Historical Account: I would like to read to you a translation of part of the story that the great West African King, King Abu Bakr II of Mali. His younger brother, the famous King Mansa Kankan Musa, reported to a well-known Arab historian the following story about his brother. Al-Umari, the historian, reports it in his famous history, Routes toward Insight into the Capital Empires [of the World]. Mansa Kankan Musa tells of how his brother fell in love with the idea that he could cross the Atlantic—which broke on the western shores of his empire of Ancient Mali—and how he sent two large fleets of ships to cross the sea. The Empire of Mali never heard of him again, but clay statues of West African Muslims appear in the art of Ancient Mexico and Incan Peru around that same time. The heads we just saw are also excellent examples of possible remnants of the fleets of Abu Bakr II.