Fourah Bay is a neighbourhood in

Freetown Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and po ...

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

. It is located in the East end of Freetown.

Ethnicity and religion

Fourah Bay is an overwhelmingly Muslim majority neighborhood. The

Oku people The Oku people or the Aku Marabout or Aku Mohammedans are an ethnic group in Sierra Leone and the Gambia, primarily the descendants of marabout, liberated Yoruba people who were released from slave ships and resettled in Sierra Leone as Libera ...

, an ethnic group predominantly of

Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...

descent, make up the majority of the population of Fourah Bay. The Oku are virtually all

Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

based on the Sunni tradition of Islam. Fourah Bay is widely known for its conservative Muslim population. Fourah Bay is also home to a prominent minority of Salafi Muslims, a deeply conservative branch within Sunni Islam. The Jamiatul Atiq Masjid is the main

mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...

that serves the local Muslim community; it is one of the most prominent mosques in Sierra Leone. The community at Fourah Bay has been a source of many expert Muslim scholars, including renowned Salafi Sunni Islamic scholar Sheikh Alhaji Sulaiman Alpha Carew. Many contemporary Muslim scholars from here were once students of Carew, including such men as Sheikh Mohamed Sanusi Tejan, Sheikh Muhammad Alpha Macauley, Sheikh Alpha Musa Nabie, Sheikh Muhammad Sanusi Savage, Sheikh Alpha Teslim Williams, and Sheikh Nasim Sahid. Fourah Bay Muslim scholars are widely known for maintaining neutrality in Sierra Leonean politics and its rare for Fourah Bay Muslim leadership to publicly criticize Sierra Leonean government. There is a small Christian minority community here. They maintain a couple of churches. The

Pentecostal Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement

Church of Fourah Bay serves part of the community. Muslims and Christians have had an amicable history here.

Fourah Bay College Fourah Bay College is a public university in the neighbourhood of Mount Aureol in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Founded on 18 February 1827, it is the first western-style university built in Sub-Saharan Africa and, furthermore, the first university-l ...

was founded here in the nineteenth century by the British and settlers, to serve the new communities of Freetown and others. It was started as a kind of seminary or boys' academy, and gradually developed with a full academic curriculum.

Politics

Since independence in 1961 to present, Fourah Bay has traditionally been a stronghold of the

Sierra Leone People's Party The Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) is one of the two major political parties in Sierra Leone, along with its main political rival the All People's Congress (APC). It has been the ruling party in Sierra Leone since April 4, 2018. The SLPP d ...

(SLPP), the current ruling party. The SLPP is popular in Fourah Bay, and maintains majority support among its residents. Mohammed Sanusi Mustapha (widely known as M.S. Mustapha) is known as one of the founding fathers who led Sierra Leone to Independence. He was also a prominent member of the Sierra Leone People's Party. He was a very close ally and personal friend of

Sir ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as ...

Milton Margai Sir Milton Augustus Strieby Margai (7 December 1895 – 28 April 1964) was a Sierra Leonean medical doctor and politician who served as the country's head of government from 1954 until his death in 1964. He was titled chief minister from 1954 ...

, Sierra Leone's first prime minister after independence. Mustapha was highly popular here. Other notable politicians from Fourah Bay include Abdul Tejan Cole, Haja Afsatu Kabba and Madina Rahman. The current president, Juda Bio is popular in Fourah Bay. Some notable

Oku Oku or OKU may refer to: *Oku, Cameroon, subdivision in the Northwest Region of Cameroon ** Lake Oku, a crater lake on the Bamenda Plateau in the Northwest Region of Cameroon ** Mount Oku, the largest volcano in the Oku Massif, in the Cameroon Volc ...

families in Fourah Bay include the Alharazim, Ibrahim, Macauley, Alghali, Deen, Mahdi, Lewally, Cole, Rahman, Bakarr, Savage, Sahid, and Carew families.

References

Populated places in Sierra Leone Oku people {{SierraLeone-geo-stub