Tana Baru Cemetery

Tana Baru is the oldest Muslim cemetery in Cape Town, defined by its steep, terraced hillside slopes overlooking the city. When the Dutch East India Company prohibited Islamic burials within town limits in the mid-eighteenth century, the community claimed this land to bury their dead according to religious law. Tuan Guru, an exiled prince from Tidore who arrived as a prisoner, spent his later years teaching here. He lies buried on this slope, marked by a stone wall that still holds the earth.