NPO. No: 043-346

Tuan Nuruman 15

An equally prominent Wali and a contemporary of Tuan Sayeed Alawie who lies buried in the Tuan Baru cemetry, is Paay Shaapie de Oude. He is also known as Imam Norman. Though his real name is Tuan Nuruman.

Tuan Nuruman is the only Wali whom we definitely know was a slave. He arrived in Cape Town in 1779. He was housed in the slave lodge, the present Cultural History Museum at the top end of Adderly Street.

 In 1786, he was approached for an azeemat by group of slaves who planned to escape. He eagerly consented. Unfortunately, the slaves were captured and the azemat found on them. The authorities used this as evidence to implicate him the crime of assisting slaves runaway slaves. He was incarcerated on Robben Island.

On his release, he did not take up lodgings in the slave lodge, but settled among the free blacks in the city. As a free man, he again became involved in religious activities, offering as Iman at all communal functions.

At the age of 80, Imam Nuruman still repaired the roads of Cape Town. His chief occupation was the sinking is pits along the rump of Lion Head from Greenpoint to Cape Town. These wells and dams were for collecting rain water and serve as a source of drinking water for the animals.. As a token of this friendship Imam Nuruman accepted the piece of land known as the Tuan Baru offered to him by General Janssens, the Commander of the Cape, as a burial site for him and his family

Here he was buried when he died in about 1810

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