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.