Afro-Palestinians and the story of a shared struggle

At every turn the Palestinian cause takes, African solidarity with it and with its people is present in many forms, rivaling in intensity and force Arab and Palestinian solidarity itself. This is especially so because it goes deeper, historically and emotionally, than the moment of African states’ independence from colonialism, or their formal support for Palestine at the United Nations, or even the speeches of their revolutionary leaders whose echoes still reverberate across the continent.

This solidarity begins with the scent of incense loaded at the ports of Massawa, with the clatter of Islamic commercial traditions in Zanzibar, and with the movement of dhow ships carrying spices and textiles from the port of Alexandria to Jaffa and Gaza. These vessels transported pilgrims, traders, and goods, arriving from the port of Mogadishu and moving onward to the Nile Valley and the Levant.

This intense commercial and human movement between African ports and trade routes, and the ports of the Levant and the Hijaz, supplied Palestine and its surroundings with migrants who were soldiers, pilgrims, scholars, and merchants. Most of them settled in Jerusalem, Gaza, and Jaffa. Over the decades, they helped shape a distinctive form of solidarity with a land under dispossession, one that went beyond formal political expressions and became an African collective consciousness fused with the Palestinian concern in a single crucible.

According to a range of historical studies, the last non-Jewish African migration to Palestine occurred in the late Ottoman period, specifically at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. African pilgrims settled in Jerusalem after performing the Hajj in Mecca, alongside convoys of soldiers and civil servants within the Ottoman administration and its formations, as well as individuals, particularly from Sudan and Ethiopia, who arrived through Red Sea trade networks.

From 1831 onward, the region of Greater Syria witnessed its largest African presence as a result of major economic developments. Among these were the encouragement of trade by Ottoman rulers through the construction of modern infrastructure such as paved roads, railways, ports, and telegraph lines. Commercial agriculture began to expand, including wheat and citrus cultivation, the Ottoman administration established a public education system, and entrepreneurs founded banks and financial institutions. This coincided with the arrival of soldiers of Nubian origin and an increase in the number of Sufi adherents from North Africa, many of whom found in Jerusalem a retreat for spiritual devotion. During this period, neighborhoods associated with these migrations emerged, such as the African Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem and the Moroccan Quarter adjacent to Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The German historian Philip Baldensperger noted during his travels in Palestine in 1913 the existence of entire villages of African migrants across the Palestinian plains. He attributed their presence to ancestors who had migrated in 1831, estimating their number at more than six thousand soldiers and farmers, and described their migration, in his terms, as an “invasion.”

Contrary to this observation – which was later used in a Zionist context to cast doubt on the indigenous roots of Palestinians and to claim that a “Palestinian minority” rejected new migrants, leading to their isolation in separate villages – British Mandate records and censuses from 1922 to 1931 indicate that the African presence was integrated within the Muslim population and included entire families, some of whom moved from Dongola and Darfur during their service in the Ottoman army or through maritime trade waves. In many cases, the motives for movement went beyond commerce and social ties to include the spread of Sufi orders in the Levant, especially the Qadiriyya and Tijaniyya, a phenomenon that came to be known as “religious migration.”

Furthermore, Studies show that these migrants varied in their places of origin. Some came from Morocco, others from Sudan, Abyssinia, and Eritrea, and a small number from Central and Southern Africa. These families often retained surnames linking them to their homelands, explaining the presence in Palestine of families named al-Maghribi, al-Jaza’iri, al-Tunisi, al-Sudani, and others. Also, most migrants were men who established new lineages through marriage with Palestinians.

Their settlement patterns initially concentrated around ports such as Jaffa, Acre, Gaza, and Lydda, then moved inland, particularly to Jerusalem. For African pilgrims crossing the Red Sea, Jerusalem was the spiritual station following Mecca. This geographical route that connected Africa to the Hijaz and Jerusalem created a network of human ties that transcended borders and unified Islamic causes, whose features would later appear in diverse forms.

Egypt, meanwhile, served as key center in their journey before entering Palestine. This particular route led European orientalists and Zionist historians to classify African migrants as Egyptian in origin, framing their arrival as part of an Ottoman strategy to bring in Muslims to counter the influx of European settlers at a time when Jewish immigration projects to Palestine were gaining increasing appeal in Western countries.

All of this reveals the role of trade and travel networks linking East African ports to southern Arabia and onward to the Levant, producing what might be called Islamic–African globalism. Sailors and workers who moved between the historic port of Haifa and the ports of Port Sudan and Djibouti did not only transport goods. They carried Sufi religious paths, Islamic affiliations, news of liberation movements and revolts against local rulers, and stories of resistance to colonizers and feudal lords, creating a shared awareness of injustice.

The historian Edward Alpers captures this in his book The Indian Ocean in World History when he writes that these trade networks made “any assault on Jerusalem or Aden felt in Zanzibar as if it were a local attack.” The human fabric produced by these migrations consistently rejected colonial borders and became a cultural vessel in which values of shared suffering against the outsider took root.

Memory of solidarity

During the current genocidal war on Gaza, there have been attempts to explain the reasons behind African–Palestinian solidarity and to understand the sources of its strength. At times, African positions have been viewed as political reactions; at others, as extensions of a liberationist memory rooted in anti-colonial struggle. Yet this is not the whole story. The legacy of ports and ships that once linked Gaza to Massawa and Djibouti produced a transgenerational memory of solidarity, allowing ports to move beyond their role as mere harbors and become arteries of memory.

Perhaps the clearest evidence that African–Palestinian solidarity is an organic, inherited continuum rather than a temporary alliance lies in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City and in African institutions in Palestine that serve the African community. This institutional pattern of communal organization is not new; it dates back to the earliest historical roots of African migration.

In the Old City, African families trace their origins primarily to four African countries: Chad, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan. Most arrived through movements of the Ottoman army and were allocated an area near one of the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque, settling with their families in the Ribāṭ al-Mansūrī and the Ribāṭ of ‘Alā’ al-Dīn al-Baṣīr.

Over time, this group of soldiers and custodians became known as the African Jerusalemites. They acquired a distinct status compared to other African groupings, particularly because they managed to endure the wars of 1948 and 1967 and maintain their presence alongside Jerusalem’s walls near Bab al-Nāẓir. Today, around 750 individuals remain in that area.

With the outbreak of the 1967 war, many members of the African Jerusalemite community were forced to leave the city, marking the second African–Palestinian displacement after 1948. Despite this, the community remains youthful in its demographic structure, with the majority under the age of twenty and a male-to-female ratio exceeding females by four percent, according to the statistics of the African Community Society.

Despite their small numbers, their contribution to Palestinian life drew the attention of Palestinian historians early on. In his 1961 book The Comprehensive History of Jerusalem, the historian ‘Arif al-‘Arif refers to them as al-Takārina and describes them as one of the main families of Jerusalem. He writes that they came from Darfur and its surroundings, with claims that their origins trace back to Tikrit and that they belong to the Zuba‘ branch of the Shammar tribe. They were tasked with guarding schools held in homes and sanctuaries around the Haram (the great mosque in Mecca) , owing to their height and physical strength.

Elsewhere, ‘Arif al-‘Arif and Ali Kalibo agree on the term Takrūrī, referring to African Muslims who worked as guards of holy sites in Jerusalem and Mecca, a role that became a recognized privilege during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. The Palestinian researcher Husni Shahin later revisited their history in his 1984 book African Muslims in Jerusalem, noting that they descended from diverse Arab-African tribes including the Hausa, Salamat, Barqawi, Zaghawa, Bornu, Kanembu, and Bulala, after which the term Takrūrī became widely used.

According to the Zionist journalist Ilan Ben-Zion, African men who joined the Arab Liberation Army during the 1948 war and remained in East Jerusalem under Jordanian rule had arrived through British Mandate efforts during the period of General Edmund Allenby in the First World War, when African laborers were brought in to build the city’s infrastructure.

The Jerusalemite African community refutes these claims by pointing to the accounts of ‘Arif al-‘Arif and asserting that most of their men came to Jerusalem to work as servants, guards, and custodians in the Noble Sanctuary. They emphasize that the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini trusted them and appointed some as his personal guards. One of them, Jibril Taharuri, or Takruri, was martyred while protecting the Mufti during a Zionist assassination attempt.

Ultimately, it becomes clear that the constant passage from ports to Jerusalem was not merely the movement of traders. It created what could be called a geography of steadfastness, as the African migrant shifted from pilgrim, merchant, and soldier to a steadfast guardian at the gates of Al-Aqsa and its religious complexes. This social and political transformation, alongside their settlement next to the mosque based on their trustworthiness and resilience, fused commercial memory with spatial duty. Defending Jerusalem became, for them, the defense of a home in which they had lived for centuries. The African body moved from being a tool of labor and trade in ports to a shield in the alleys of Jerusalem.

Countering this, Israeli claims frequently target the African presence in Palestine, including allegations of Palestinian racism against them. Much Israeli journalistic writing revolves around this narrative, with journalist Sharmeen Sittez claiming that the African Jerusalemite community is “strangely branded with numerous racist labels and subjected to Arab and Islamic discrimination.”

In reality, the clearest rebuttal to this Israeli narrative lies in the demographic growth of the African Palestinian community through marriage to Palestinian women. This is articulated by Yasser Quss, a Palestinian of African origin, who says that he was born in mid-1970s Jerusalem into a family of seven and was the eighth child. His father was African, from the city of Massina in Chad, while his mother was a fair-skinned Palestinian from Jericho in the Jordan Valley. He describes growing up as a Molato child in the African Quarter, a term used for the first generation of African migrants to Jerusalem, and emphasizes that they are the children of mixed marriages between Africans and Palestinians.

According to Mahmoud Jidda, the African community in Palestine faces challenges distinct from racism, foremost among them the need for economic, educational, and social support, as well as maintaining ties with their original homeland, language, and traditions. For this reason, members of the community moved early on to establish the Sudanese Club in Jerusalem, which operated from 1935 until 1967.

As the community’s needs evolved and its members became increasingly involved in resistance movements, representation became necessary. The African Youth Club was established in 1978, followed by the African Community Society in 1983, which provides educational, psychological, and social support services, without any diminishing of African solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

This solidarity is reinforced by the community’s resistance roles. The Jerusalemite Grassroots Network notes repeated arrests by the occupation, confiscation of property, constant surveillance, revocation of residency permits, severe restrictions on living near Al-Aqsa Mosque, and ongoing harassment. These measures steadily shrink the space available for the community to live, flourish, and remain, rendering its existence as threatened as that of other Palestinians more broadly.

Ironically, the same Israeli journalist who claims Palestinian racism against the African Community asserts that many of its members are “terrorists,” framing their resistance activities as attacks on Israeli existence. On the other hand, the Jidda family and other African families openly take pride in their members’ involvement in resistance. Among them are individuals who planted four hand grenades in central Jerusalem, injuring nine occupiers and spending seventeen years in prison, others who participated in the Knife Intifada, and many others who joined resistance ranks.

The community also takes pride in Fatima Bernawi, the first female Palestinian prisoner of the revolution. A Palestinian of Nigerian origin, Fatima joined Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), and planted a bomb in the Zion Cinema in October 1967. When the bomb failed to detonate, she was arrested and sentenced to thirty years in prison, serving ten before being exiled. She later returned to Gaza with the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and was appointed head of the Palestinian women’s police.

They also honor Osama Jidda, the first Palestinian martyr of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The struggles of Fatima Bernawi, Jibril Takruri, and Osama Jidda were not isolated acts. They formed a foundation for broader African solidarity with Palestine. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa notes that political relations between the Palestine Liberation Organization and African organizations and leaders in the mid-1960s were built upon this very legacy. Leaders such as Julius Nyerere in Tanzania and Ahmed Sékou Touré in Guinea grounded their solidarity with Palestine in popular bases shaped by pilgrims’ stories and migrants’ lineages.

Here it becomes possible to say that African–Palestinian alliances are not sudden products of war, but deeply rooted human relationships that have endured for centuries, surviving colonialism and modern geographic divisions.

On the website of the African Community Society in Palestine, the organization defines itself as a non-governmental, non-profit Palestinian organization founded by the Afro-Palestinian community in Jerusalem, and as a continuation of the Sudanese Welfare Club that was active between 1951 and 1967. The society refers to 1967 as the year Israel “occupied Jerusalem” and affirms that the reason its ancestors came to Palestine was pilgrimage to Al-Aqsa Mosque and later the defense of Jerusalem against the Zionist colonial project.

Its slogan quotes Nelson Mandela:

“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”