A short memo on Guar (or Cluster Bean)

By Amin Osman

(13 October 2021)

 

Guar (Tamil Nadu, India).
Credit: By த*உழவன் - Own work,
Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7924074

 

Guar, cymoposis tetragonoloba, is known as Cluster Bean is well known mainly in North India and Pakistan and grows extensively in the semi arid regions. It is used a vegetable, green manure, etc. and for the production of seeds from which the guar gum is extracted. The plant resembles an upright garden bean but grows upright to some one metre high.

The tender seedpods are used as a vegetable, the mature plants are used as fodder and green manure. The seeds extracted from the dry seedpods industrially are used to extract a well known gum, oil, etc.

The guar gum is used mainly in the following food industries: ice cream,yogurt, salad dressing and also in the pharmaceutical industry and is used to control diarrhea, obesity, cholesterol, etc. The crop cycle varies from 60 to 90 days, the bean is 3 to 10 cm, height of the mature plant is about one metre. It is an annual legume.

These are some notes compiled from the internet after a hint from my youngest daughter who met a British Lord of Pakistani origin, Aamer Sarfraz, at a lunch in London lately in company of her husband and her eldest daughter who is studying at Trinity Hall, Cambridge University (UK). He is a most succesful businessman trading in guar.

A brief overview of the life of Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab

By Amin Osman

(October 2021, Mauritius)

 

The interior courtyard of the Jummah Masjid, Port Louis, Mauritius
(Picture: Karsten Ratzke via Wikimedia Commons)

Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab was born in Mecca, in today's Saudi Arabia, in 1883. He went to India to study Islam for some years and married a Muslim Indian girl before coming to Mauritius to work as Imam of the Jummah Masjid in 1915 at the age of 32 years. After working for a number of years, he went back to India to seek help for the Muslim community. He was partially successful and in 1924, he returned to Mauritius. He was so concerned about the poor education of the Muslims generally that he left the Jummah Mosque to devote himself totally to improve their education.

The Maulana had two sons: Mohammud Abid and Abdul Hamid. They went to Saudi Arabia later and his nephew Ismail Nawwab came to stay with him to attend college at Port Louis.

Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab founded the Muslim Educational Society in 1924 and opened the Muslim High School. His close collaborators at that time were Abdool Gaffoor Abdool Raman, Goolab Malleck Amode, Dr. Hassenjee Joomye and Osman Aumeeruddy. 

The building housing the Muslim High School was the property of the Surtee Sunnee Musalman Society (SSMS) which kindly put it at the Maulana's disposal by Goolam M .Dawjee Atchia, the then president of the SSMS. The property was located in Port Louis at corner Dauphine Street and Corderie Street. The Maulana was conveniently lodged in a house belonging to the Noordally family which was living next at Dauphine Street, where now stands the Muslim Girls College in a new building.

 

Close to Haroun Nahaboo and Abdoollatif Osman

In 1951, Haroun Nahaboo accompanied Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab to the World Islamic Conference in Karachi, Pakistan. Unfortunately, soon after his return, the Maulana fell ill and peacefully passed away in July, during the month of Ramadan, at the age of 68 years. He was buried at the Riche Terre Muslim Cemetery. He was a respected scholar of Urdu and Arabic languages and he reorganized the teaching of Urdu. He got some students to study Urdu and Islam and they were housed in a Boarding School in the same building of the Muslim High School. That was a successful project.
 

Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab wrote a poem in Urdu sounding the alarm against the spread of Ahmadiyyat and Les croyances obligatoires was translated into French from English by Gaffoor Raman. It is worth mentioning that while he was Imam of the Jummah Mosque, he appeared in the Supreme Court in Frebuary1919 in the case which lasted two years, Hanafi Sunnis v/s Ahmaddiyas, as the main witness and finally, the Sunnis won the case.

On a personal note, I wish to say that he was a friend of my brother Abdoollatif Mahomed Osman and he was present at the funeral of my father, Mahomed Osman, in 1948 at 12 Hyderabad Street, Plaine Verte, Port Louis. I was a friend of Yousouf Noordally who was the Maulana's neighbour and we went to visit him quite often. He had an outstanding personality which I admired.

 

Ismail Nawwab

The Muslim Educational Society which built the new Madrassah near the Citadelle Hill (Port Louis) a few years ago, invited the son of the late Maulana and I had the privilege to meet him at the Inauguration Ceremony. I was in contact,thro' email these last years until his demise with the Maulana's nephew Ismail who had Mohamad Vayid as friend at Edinburgh University.

Ismail Nawwab stayed in Mauritius, after coming from Arabia, until the demise of his uncle. Ismail passed the General Certificate of Education (GCE) A-level and worked at the Islamic College for some time. Then, three benefactors (Abdool Rawoof Joomye, Cajee Mahmood and Hakeem Abdool Razaqque) generously financed his university studies at Edinburgh. Unfortunately, Ismail did not come back to Mauritius after Scotland but went to Malaysia for postgraduate studies. He then went back to Saudi Arabia, got married and begot two daughters: Nimah and Nesreen. I kept contact with his daughter Nimah, a world renown poetess of English language ...

In 1926, Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab set up in Port Louis the Free Tuition Muslim High School catering up to the Seventh Standard. According to Aunuth Beejadhur, with 600 pupils, of whom 200 girls, it was the biggest and most important of the country’s then 60 such private institutions. His closest collaborators included his former students as A. Gaffoor A. Rahman, Goolab Malleck Goolab Ahmad, Tayyab Tegally and Osman Aumeeruddy. “As subsidiary languages, Urdu, Arabic and Persian are taught. The girls, besides embroidery and sewing, are taught English, French and Oriental languages.”

In the early 1900s, Maulana Abdullah Rashid Nawab (1883-1951), of Saudi Arabia, who was the Imam of the Jummah Mosque (1915-1921), promoted Islamic teaching and learning in Mauritius. Versed in religion, Arabic, Urdu and Persian as well as a writer and educationist, who was also hakim (traditional medical doctor), he conceived the Muslim Educational Society (MES) in the 1940s. He is remembered for preparing for the madrassas a curriculum of studies which he left after his death in Mauritius itself.

(Chit Dukhira, Indians in India, Mauritius and South Africa, Osman Publishing, Mauritius, 2013, p. 341, p. 346 )

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Amin Osman is the son of Mahomed Osman.

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My first attempt to propagate the Magnolia Flowering Tree

 By Amin Osman

 

Bees foraging on a magnolia flower on the family's former property in Balfour, Beau Bassin.
Photo (c): Shafick Osman, 29 December 2007.

I had worked at the Barkly Experiment Station of the Ministry of Agriculture in Beau Bassin for a few years, and I never heard of the Magnolia Flowering Tree. My elder brother Sir Raman Osman, a keen amateur horticulturist who had moved from Quatre Bornes to Baie du Tombeau where he had had a bungalow built to spend his retirement as a Senior Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court, challenged me to provide him with a young Magnolia tree in 1970 or so.

He told me that there were two beautiful Magnolia grandiflora trees in the grounds of the Vacoas Headquarters where the former Colonial Secretaries were residing. I visited the gardens and as they were covered with large showy flowers, I decided to have a go. 

 

My elder brother Sir Raman Osman, a keen amateur horticulturist who had moved from Quatre Bornes to Baie du Tombeau where he had had a bungalow built to spend his retirement as a Senior Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court, challenged me to provide him with a young Magnolia tree in 1970 or so.

I consulted the textbooks and after some research in locally published magazines, I read the article written by Sydney Moutia, a qualified Horticulturist, in the then Revue Agricole. There was a girls’ secondary school of the Catholic Diocese at Curepipe Road. It was in an old wooden house and the main alley was planted with Magnolia trees which did not resist a very severe cyclone and all the trees were blown down. Sydney Moutia who was working at Barkly well before me in the 60s was contacted and he succeeded to propagate a dozen saplings using stems of the blown down trees which he placed in the Mist Propagator where they rooted after some weeks and he produced saplings which he gave to the Manager of the school and these were eventually planted to replace the blown down trees.

In the meantime, I collected seeds and air layered (provin) some mature stems just as we were doing for the propagation of litchis. At the same time, I cut a dozen stems and placed in our Mist Propagator at Barkly. Both methods of propagation gave good results and we then started to sell saplings. I bought some saplings and gave Mot (Raman Osman’s nickname in the family) a few. He planted one in his big garden at Baie du Tombeau and donated the others, I remember he gave one to Haroun Fakim, husband of our niece Gori and they planted it in front of their newly built house at Abdoollatiff Osman Avenue, Quatre Bornes.

I planted one in my garden at Volcy de la Faye Street, Beau Bassin, next to the Plaines Wilhems Irrigation Canal, which crossed our property. It is still there and have been flowering regularly since. Everybody coming for the first time was admiring the large white flowers during the flowering season. I am proud of this achievement which reminded both of Mot and the period which I spent at Barkly as a Senior Technical Officer in charge of Plant Propagation.

 

Coromandel (Mauritius),
12 November 2021

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Amin Osman is the son of Mahomed Osman.

 

The early days of Abdool Amin Osman

By Amin Osman 

(Beau Bassin, 16 October 2011)

Abdool Amin Osman, August 1974,
Brookside, Beau Bassin, Mauritius.
Picture: (c) Shafick Osman.

I was born on 3 October 1936 at Morcellement Saint André, a small village in the North [of Mauritius] between the villages of Triolet and Plaine des Papayes and next to Bon Air Sugar Estate. I was registered as Abdool Amin Tejally at the Civil Status Office but on 28 October 1948, my name was changed to Abdool Amin Osman. Parcelling of marginal agricultural lands belonging to the sugar estates (morcellement) started in 1870 and Bon Air Sugar Estate created Morcellement Saint André.

My father, Mahomed Osman Tejally was born in 1876 in Jungipore, a village in Gazipore in Uttar Pradesh, British India. He arrived at Port Louis on 16 February 1879 at the age of three on board MV Canada No 1274 embarking at Calcutta and was given Immigrant No 387456. He accompanied his father, Tejally Immigrant No 387276 aged 40 years, his mother Mooleea aged 30 years, his sisters Roheemun aged 14 years and Soheemun aged 12 years [and infant Nuzeebun, 11 months' old]. 

 

"Some years later, the family moved to Bon Air Sugar Estate where father was recruited as a ‘Marquère’ or Timekeeper as he could read and write English, French, and Hindi as he had attended primary school."

 

Grandfather Tejally was recruited as an indentured labourer by Duhamel Frères and the family settled at Petite Rosalie, a small village in Pamplemousses District. Grandmother Mooleea passed away on 28 June 1883, i.e., 4 years after her arrival in Mauritius. Some years later, the family moved to Bon Air Sugar Estate where father was recruited as a ‘Marquère’ or Timekeeper as he could read and write English, French, and Hindi as he had attended primary school. Grandfather passed away on 15 May 1913 at Morcellement Saint André.

Father first married Saheerah Sheik Joomun of Montagne Blanche in 1896 while working at Bon Air S.E. and three sons were born from that union: Abdoollatif (1898), Abdool Raman (1902) and Coorbane (1906). Some years later Saheerah passed away and he married a second wife who later passed away without having borne any child. Then he married Aniffa Dilmahamood of Bel Ombre, and Ayesha was born on 14 January 1917 surviving Dawood and Bibi Hawan who died during their early childhood. Unfortunately, Aniffa also passed away and Father married my mother, Sarifamouzana bint Houssean-Patmah and eleven children were born out of that union: Hossen, Ayoub,Taherah aka Choti, Moussa, Asmat, Mouslim, Rasoulbee, Shafoorah aka Madinah, Amin, Jaheda aka Swalehah and Hapsah.

 

 "Grandfather was of Yemenite origin and was living in Singapore before coming here."

 

My mother was born on 12 May 1900 in a house situated at 11 Madras Street, Port Louis. Her father Sidi Housean-Patmah and her mother was Bibi Jugurally of Port Louis. Grandfather was employed by the British Army as an Engine Driver at Electricity Generating Plant of Fort George and lived by the beach in quarters provided by the army. He spoke Arabic, English amongst other languages. Grandfather was of Yemenite origin and was living in Singapore before coming here. Mother had three brothers: Ali, Osman and Abdul Rahman and a sister. The latter two passed away at an early age.

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Amin Osman is the son of Mahomed Osman.

Mosquée Bait-ul-Muqaddas : Ayoub et Amin Osman parmi les fondateurs

C'est un fait connu parmi les fidèles des années 80 et 90 de la mosquée Bait-ul-Muqaddas, à Beau Bassin (Ile Maurice) : Ayoub Mahomed Osman et Abdool Amin Osman sont parmi les fondateurs de la mosquée de la rue Barkly. L'hebdomadaire musulman mauricien Star le mentionne dans un papier sur la mosquée le 5 janvier 2018.

 

Lien du papier : Masjid Bait-ul-Muqaddas à Beau-Bassin – Priorité : construire la maison de l’imam.

Nous reproduisons le paragraphe où les noms des deux frères Osman sont mentionnés :

"Nous sommes alors dans les années 70. C’étaient Hajee Hosman Mohung,  Haroon  Mohung, Wahab Mohung, Ayoob Osman, Amine Osman, Ayoob Peerally, Abdool Rahim Nooraully, Swadeck Nooraully, Hasssam Nanhuck, Saïd Buxoo, H. Goomany et autres, qui furent les premiers à mettre leur projet à exécution. Les initiateurs du projet ont procédé à une collecte à travers le pays pour récolter les fonds nécessaires  pour la construction de la masjid."

 

 

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Ayoub and Amin Osman are the sons of Mahomed Osman.