Records posted by: EMHAI

Caxton Hall

Caxton Hall is a location in which many momentous events occurred, including the assassination of Sir Michael O'Dwyer, the campaign...

Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born 2nd of October 1869, more commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was born in Porbandar, Kanthiawar, India....

Claridge's Hotel

The history of Bangladesh's independence can be traced to the 1947 Partition of British India, and to the history of...

Allama Iqbal

Allama Iqbal is widely considered one of the ideological founding figures of Pakistan and also holds the status of national...

National Liberal Club

The National Liberal Club (NLC) was established by William Gladstone in 1882, to provide club facilities for Liberal Party campaigners. ...

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), also revered as Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader), was a barrister and politician who played a pivotal role...

EMBS was founded in 1988 as a self-help business service for racialised minority groups in Oxford. One of its founders...

Balliol College

In trying to identify some of the earliest Muslim students to matriculate at the University after the enactment of the...

Founded in 1921, City of Oxford Motor Services Limited was an important site of employment in the 1950s and 1960s...

Al Shami

Al Shami restaurant was the site of Oxford's first halal butchers, and was established in the 1960s. Prior to its...

Trinity College

Brothers Wasif Ali and Naseer Ali Mirza became the first racialised minority and Indian students to be enrolled at Trinity...

Somerville College

Somerville College houses archival materials related to the Oxford Majlis, which was a student society modeled after the Cambridge Majlis...

Oxford Union

On 3 December 1964, Malcolm X addressed the Oxford Union when he partook in the 'Queen and Country' debate. He...

Oxford Martin School

The Oxford Martin School was the sity of of the Oxford Indian Institute, which provided training to Indian civil servants....

Site of the first mixed congregational prayer led by a woman (Prof Amina Wadud) in the UK, 18th October 2008....

A major site of employment which attracted Pakistani Muslims from Sheffield and Bradford. According to the newsreel source linked to...

The UK’s first halal farm, located in Cherwell. In 2002, Lutfi Radwan, a lecturer at the University of Oxford, and...

1960

Al Shami

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Building

Author:

EMHAI

Al Shami restaurant was the site of Oxford's first halal butchers, and was established in the 1960s. Prior to its opening, Muslim residents of the city had to travel widely to find halal products, or butcher their own meat. An interviewee - one of the first Pakistanis to settle in Oxford - remembered the difficulty of transporting chickens from local farms to his home in East Oxford, with one escaping on the bus. These businesses highlighted the embedded presence of Muslims in Oxford, as Muslim entrepreneurs navigated the local economy to create services which would support a more comfortable long-term settlement.

Notice that the earliest Muslim migration to the city was in Jericho. Until 1960s, this was where many immigrants and working-class people settled. Council-sponsored slum clearances in the late 1960s, however, pushed families into the East End of Oxford – various migratory trajectories, so to speak.

Tags

Sources and Attribution

Interview with Mr Khuja, A Muslim History of Oxford (4 September 2024)

Shaw, A., A Pakistani Community in Britain (Oxford: Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).  

Aleena Din - Aleena is a historian of gender, class and race in modern Britain. Her DPhil research, which was completed at Balliol College and the Faculty of History in 2022, focuses on the migration, settlement and labour experiences of working-class British-Pakistani women who settled in Middlesbrough and Oldham between 1962 and 2002. Aleena is the co-investigator of the community history project 'A Muslim History of Oxford', in collaboration with the national heritage organisation 'Everyday Muslim'. In addition, she is a postdoctoral research associate for the digital humanities project, 'Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830 to the Present' at the University of Bristol (2025).

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