Abu Bakr Effendi

Sheikh Abu Bakr Effendi
Bayānu ddīn by Abu Bakr Effendi, published 1869 was one of the first books translated into Afrikaans
Born	c. 1814
Died	1880
Religion	Islam
Jurisprudence	Osmanli Qadi

Sheikh Abu Bakr Effendi (1814–1880) was an Osmanli qadi who was sent in 1862 by the Ottoman sultan Abdülmecid I at the request of the British Queen Victoria to the Cape of Good Hope, in order to teach and assist the Muslim community of the Cape Malays. His birth date has often been mistaken to be in the year 1835.

Effendi was from an Arab Sayyid family which originated from Mecca and migrated into Abbasid then Sejuk ruled Iraq and Southern Turkey. Abubakr was born in the Ottoman Turkish Province of Shehrizur. He is often confused with Mulla Effendi, the famous Iraqi Kurdish Scholar. He is a Sayyid, direct descendant of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad through Emir Zaid, son of Imam Zayn al-Abidin. Other imams in the Cape were mostly teaching the Shafi`i school of Islamic jurisprudence; he was a follower and the first teacher of Hanafi school, for which he also established a madrassa in Cape Town. He gained notoriety in 1869 after ruling that rock lobster and snoek, two staple foods in the Cape, were sinful (haraam). He has often been mistaken for being a Shafi'i on the basis of him being a Scholar of the 4 schools of Sunni Islam, and being able to issue religious edicts according to each one. His ancestors and children practised the Hanafi school of thought.

He died after contracting malaria from reportedly travelling to Dera Mozambique, after having made several major contributions to Islam in South Africa. He introduced the fez for men, as well as reinstating the hijab for women. More importantly, besides his role as teacher he also published the Arabic Afrikaans "Uiteensetting van die godsdiens" ("Bayan ad-Din", or "The Exposition of the Religion") in 1877.