Christian-Muslim Marriage and Cohabitation: An Aspect of Identity and Family Formation in Nineteenth-Century Cape Town

Nineteenth century Cape Town – Mother City of a ‘Christian’ colony within the British Empire – became the home of an expanding Muslim community which, at its peak, numbered a third of the town's population. Islam had arrived at the Cape by a variety of means. Most of those who were attracted by that faith were slaves or, post-emancipation (1834) and apprenticeship (till 1838), the descendants of slaves. The slaves' exclusion from legal marriage until shortly before abolition had profound consequences for family life – notably, respecting out-of-wedlock births – which the state and the Christian churches attempted to address. In that environment the Muslim family, though on religious terms a thing apart, was often perceived as a model of stability; less acceptable were Christian-Muslim interactions when they entailed the formers' apostasy. This article investigates Cape Town's post-emancipation underclass through the lens of Christian-Muslim unions. It focuses on family life and the status of children born of marriages which, though binding on the parties thereto, did not legitimise their offspring. Equally it traces steps whereby an urban populace, which had been deracinated by slavery, forged new identities. In that development, the manner in which Muslims and Christians mingled, yet remained discrete, played an important part.