Djamil جمال🇯🇲🇮🇳

Jamaican cultural historian and archivist. Social history, heritage preservation, intergenerational memory.

[Djamil جمال🇯🇲🇮🇳 @douglabwoy_]

🚨 Exciting news! 🚨 Join me for the book launch of "ABC's for the Jamerican Child"! 🎉 📚
🗓 Date: Nov 22, 2025
⏰ Time: 5:00 PM
📍 Location: Island SPACE Caribbean Museum, Plantation, FL

https://t.co/T60rFx6fmE

[Manny Snicket🌚 @mannylams]

Lmao 😂

[Kerry Sinanan @kerry_sinanan]

Chattel slavery & indentureship in the Caribbean are distinct legally, materially, and ontologically. I am a descendant of indentured Indians. It is not about degree of suffering or even coercion: it is about the designation of labour within racial capitalism & its legal systems.

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

It’s hard to imagine many people having a bigger impact than Dolly Parton. Born in a one-room cabin, she earned 11 Grammys and an Emmy, built a business empire, helped millions of kids learn to read, and — as if that wasn’t enough — helped accelerate the research that led to the Moderna COVID vaccine. What a life. Michelle and I are thinking of Dolly’s family and her many, many fans.

[Imagination Library @dollyslibrary]

She was always proud that her little program grew into what it is today. She was proudest of what it meant to her Dad. In her own words: "My Daddy told me the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing I had ever done." (cont)

[Imagination Library @dollyslibrary]

Our team, our local program partners, and every operational partner who helps make this program possible each month are heartbroken at the loss of our founder, Dolly Parton. (cont.)

[Djamil جمال🇯🇲🇮🇳 @douglabwoy_]

Why my little cousin in JA call us on the bawling to say Dolly passed. All I gotta say is dude knows ball. Forever a blessed memory, Dolly P.🤍🤲🏾

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

Yesterday, communities in Clarendon gathered once again for Hoosay, one of Jamaica’s most distinctive Indo-Jamaican traditions.
But what is Hoosay and how did a Muharram observance brought from India become part of Jamaica’s cultural inheritance?
#NinsooCentre #Hoosay

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

Hoosay is Jamaica’s distinctive form of the Muharram tradition commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, at Karbala in 680 CE. Indian indentured migrants carried the tradition to Jamaica in the 19th century.
#NinsooCentre #Hoosay

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

When the first indentured Indians arrived in Jamaica in 1845, they carried more than their labour.
Across the kala pani came languages, religions, music, foodways and traditions including the Muharram observances that would become known in Jamaica as Hoosay.
#NinsooCentre #Hoosay

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

At the centre of Jamaican Hoosay is the tajah: an elaborate temporary structure associated with the tomb of Imam Husayn.
Built, blessed and carried in procession, tajahs were traditionally taken to the sea, harbour or river and committed to the water.
#NinsooCentre #Hoosay

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

Hoosay was not always confined to Clarendon.
In 1894, The Gleaner reported six decorated tajahs processing through Port Maria, St. Mary, before being carried to the Outram River and immersed.
The geography of Indo-Jamaican tradition was once much wider.
#NinsooCentre #Hoosay

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

Hoosay was both religious observance and public spectacle.
In 1917, hundreds of Indians participated at Alley, Clarendon but the newspaper estimated that more than 1,000 people gathered to watch.
#NinsooCentre #Hoosay

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

Colonial records often reduced Jamaica’s Indians to a single racial category.
Rooted in Shi‘a Muharram traditions, Hoosay was reshaped through participation by Sunni Muslims, Hindus, Christians and eventually Afro-Jamaicans.
#NinsooCentre #Hoosay

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

Hoosay was once documented across Jamaica, but many local observances disappeared during the 20th century.
Southern Clarendon became one of its principal surviving centres—preserving a tradition whose Jamaican history stretches back generations.
#NinsooCentre #Hoosay

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

Hoosay survived because it changed.
What crossed the kala pani was neither frozen nor simply reproduced. Generations of Jamaicans adapted it to new communities, landscapes and identities.
#NinsooCentre #Hoosay

[The Cutlass Magazine®️ @cutlassmagazine]

Today and tomorrow Jamaica will host the festival of Hussay. 181 years after the arrival of the Caribbean island’s first indentured labourers onboard the Blundell Hunter on May 10th, 1845: https://t.co/V5H9JOZzCj

[Chenae ᥫ᭡ @chenae876]

Funny how reggae gets a visa-free pass, but Jamaicans don’t.

[The Cutlass Magazine®️ @cutlassmagazine]

Being Caribbean is using terms like “month-end” and “fortnight” in the year of our Lord 2026.

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

@cutlassmagazine Agnes Bowler nee Calyasa (1896-1946) the daughter of Calyasa and Sittalee in Saint Mary, Jamaica survived the loss of her first husband by becoming a seamstress raising nine children before ultimately passing away as a shopkeeper.

[Ninsoo Centre for Indo Jamaica Studies @ninsoocentre]

As Jamaica observes Eid ul-Adha, archives remind us that Muslim life has long formed part of the island’s social fabric.
From namaz in Kingston to Qurbani in Westmoreland, these moments reflect generations of faith, sacrifice, and belonging.
🌙✨
#EidMubarak #IndoJamaican