Category: Early History

When America entered World War I in 1917, thousands of young men were drafted into the U.S. Army. Among them were a handful of Muslim immigrants who had made Maryland their new home. For these men, service was complicated. They had left behind homelands under Ottoman rule, places still entangled in the politics of empire, yet here they were, wearing the uniform of the United States, fighting for a country that barely understood their names, let alone their faith.

One such soldier was remembered by his family as Abdul Rahman, a Syrian immigrant who had arrived in Baltimore just a few years before the war. He spoke broken English, worked long hours in a factory, and sent back to his relatives overseas what little money he could afford. When the draft came, he was called to serve.

In training, his accent made him stand out. Fellow soldiers often mistook him for Italian or Greek, but he would quietly correct them: “I am Syrian. I am Muslim.” Few understood what that meant. Some made fun of him for refusing pork in the mess hall; others grew curious. Abdul never preached, never argued. Instead, he lived his faith with quiet dignity, surviving on bread and beans, and stepping aside for a few minutes of prayer whenever he could.

He was sent to France with the American Expeditionary Forces. Letters home were rare, censored, and brief. But in one surviving note, preserved by his descendants, he wrote: “I bow my head to God even here. Pray for me.” That single line speaks volumes about the resilience of a man who carried his Islam into the trenches of Europe.

When the war ended, Abdul returned to Baltimore. He didn’t receive medals or honors, and his name was never written in any history books. He went back to the factory, raised a family, and built a modest life. Yet in the quiet corners of his home, he told his children about the war, and about the prayers he whispered while bullets flew overhead.

For his children, the lesson was clear: being Muslim in America was not separate from being American. Their father had worn the uniform, fought for the country, and kept his faith intact.

Abdul Rahman’s story is just one among many forgotten Muslim servicemen in Maryland during that era. However, they remind us that Muslim loyalty, sacrifice, and patriotism in this land are not a new phenomenon. They stretch back more than a century, to men who carried both the Qur’an and the flag, who endured both suspicion and acceptance, and who quietly laid the foundation for the generations of Muslim Americans who would follow.

In the first half of the 1900s, Baltimore was a city of neighborhoods, tight-knit, working-class communities where every corner seemed to have its own small shop. In one of those corners, a Lebanese immigrant opened a tiny grocery store. His shelves were modest, stocked with flour, sugar, beans, and spices. But for the few Muslim families who lived nearby, that shop became more than a place to buy food, it became a lifeline.

The grocer was known simply as “Hajj,” though his full name has been lost to time. He was one of the first to quietly provide halal meat in Maryland, way before there were halal butchers or specialty markets. He would purchase lamb or goat, slaughter it himself according to Islamic tradition, and set aside portions for Muslim families who came to him in trust. Word spread quietly, one family told another, and soon Muslims from across the city made their way to his store, sometimes traveling miles just to buy a piece of meat that allowed them to hold onto their faith.

To his non-Muslim neighbors, he was simply the friendly shopkeeper with an accent, always willing to extend credit when times were tough. But to Muslim families, he was something more: a guardian of tradition in a place where tradition felt fragile. His store turned into an informal gathering place where men would meet to sip coffee, share stories, and news from Lebanon, Syria, or Palestine. Women exchanged recipes, advice, and comfort in a land that often felt like a foreign place. Children ran between the aisles, tasting candies and hearing Arabic words mixed with English.

Hajj never built a mosque, never gave a sermon, never appeared in any newspaper. Yet, in his own quiet way, he sustained a piece of Muslim life in Baltimore. His shop wasn’t just about food, it was about belonging. It was about giving scattered families the sense that they were not alone.

Decades later, when Maryland’s Muslim community had grown into thousands, some elders would still remember him: the Lebanese grocer who slaughtered halal meat in his tiny shop, who made his store a safe haven, and who, without knowing it, helped keep faith alive in a city where Islam was barely visible.

In every community’s story, there are figures like him, people who leave no monuments, no titles, no institutions, but whose quiet service ensures that the next generation has something to hold onto. In Maryland’s Muslim history, the Lebanese grocer was one of those unsung heroes.

By the late 1800s, Maryland’s ports were bustling with merchants from around the world. Among them were the first voluntary Muslim immigrants. These men came from Greater Syria, then under Ottoman rule, they arrived with little more than a suitcase and a dream.

One of these men, remembered in scattered family records, stepped off a ship at Baltimore Harbor sometime around 1890. He was young, restless, and determined. His name is now lost, though some descendants recall it sounding like “Khalil” or “Hamid.” What is certain is that he was among the earliest known Muslims to set foot in Maryland, not as a captive, but as a seeker of opportunity.

He began as a peddler, walking door to door with cloth, spices, and trinkets. The work was hard, knocking on unfamiliar doors, trying to sell to families who had never heard his language before. But he persevered. In time, he saved enough to rent a small shop near Fell’s Point, where sailors and immigrants crowded the streets.

For him, faith was a private matter. There was no mosque, no imam, no community to gather with. Still, he kept a small Qur’an tucked into his belongings, a quiet reminder of the home he had left behind. On Fridays, he would close his shop early and find a quiet corner near the docks to bow his head in prayer. His neighbors may have considered him strange, but to him, those prayers anchored his soul in an unfamiliar land.

Other traders soon followed, Syrians, Lebanese, and Turks, some Christian, some Muslim. Together, they formed small pockets of immigrant life in Baltimore. Though few in number, the Muslim families held onto their traditions as best they could, fasting Ramadan quietly, celebrating Eid in their homes, and teaching their children bits of Arabic.

Looking back, their presence may seem small, almost invisible. But they were pioneers. They were the bridge between the enslaved African Muslims whose faith survived in quiet murmurs and the organized immigrant communities that would later establish Maryland’s first mosques.

That unnamed Syrian trader at Baltimore Harbor could not have imagined that, a century later, thousands of Muslims would gather just miles away to celebrate Eid in convention centers and mosques across Maryland. But in his quiet prayers, his honest trade, and his determination to build a life here, he helped lay the first stones of that future.

For many enslaved Africans in Maryland, Islam survived not in mosques or books, but in whispers.

They had no libraries to preserve their knowledge, no pulpits from which to teach, no schools to guide their children. What they carried instead was memory, verses from the Qur’an etched into their hearts, prayers murmured in stolen moments, fragments of language spoken softly so the overseer wouldn’t hear.

One woman, remembered in the oral histories of a family near Annapolis, was known to recite strange words to her children at night. Generations later, when her descendants embraced Islam, they recognized those “strange words” as Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, “In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.” What once sounded like meaningless syllables was, in truth, the echo of a prayer that had crossed the Atlantic in her memory.

There are stories of enslaved men drawing shapes in the dirt, curved lines and flowing letters that puzzled those who saw them. Today, scholars believe these were fragments of Arabic script, remnants of Qur’anic verses. To those men, each line in the sand was an act of devotion, a quiet way to remember what was forbidden to forget.

These whispers of Islam rarely survived beyond a generation. The system of slavery was built to erase language, culture, and religion. And yet, the fact that some fragments endured speaks to a remarkable resilience. Even without books, teachers, or mosques, enslaved Muslims in Maryland found ways to preserve the faith of their ancestors.

Their stories are incomplete. We do not know all their names, their full prayers, or how many held their faith until the end of their lives. But we do know this: these whispers existed. And in them lies a powerful truth, Islam’s presence in Maryland is not a modern arrival. It is centuries old.

So when we, today, recite the Qur’an freely in mosques across Maryland, we do so on the shoulders of those who once had to whisper it under the weight of chains.

The first Muslims to set foot in Maryland did not arrive by their own will. They came in chains.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, enslaved Africans were sold in Baltimore’s markets, their languages, faiths, and identities stripped from them. Among them were men and women who carried Islam quietly in their hearts. Records are sparse, slaveholders rarely documented the religions of those they enslaved, but in pieces of oral history, scattered letters, and memories preserved by later generations, we find traces of Muslims who endured.

One such figure was a man known only as Yarrow, believed to be of West African origin, possibly Fulani or Mandinka. He had memorized portions of the Qur’an before being captured. On Maryland plantations, he was forced into backbreaking labor, yet those who knew him said he never abandoned his prayers. Without a mosque, without a community, he made the soil his prayer rug and whispered the words of Al-Fatiha under his breath.

He was just another slave to his enslavers. But to those who watched closely, he was something more: a man of quiet dignity, bowing and prostrating in ways they could not understand. Some mocked him. Others grew curious. For Yarrow, those small acts of devotion were not only prayers, they were resistance. He reclaimed a piece of his stolen humanity every time he whispered “Allahu Akbar.”

We do not know if Yarrow ever met another Muslim in Maryland. We do not know if he passed his faith to his children, or if his lineage was scattered and lost. But we do know this: he represents the first generation of Muslims in this land. Brought here in shackles, yet held on strong to their faith when everything else had been taken.

His story, and the countless untold stories like his, remind us that Islam in Maryland did not begin with immigrants in the 20th century. It began with the chained footsteps of enslaved Africans, who carried their faith across an ocean of pain and anchored it in the soil of America.

Yarrow’s prayer may have gone unseen. But it was a seed.
And from seeds like his, a community would one day grow.