Hiba Fombo
Contrary to common narratives, the first Africans to cross the Atlantic were not enslaved but were free explorers from the Mali Empire. In fact they were quite free and carried with them a sovereign power.
Mali Empire, 1311. A mighty Muslim empire in West Africa; which was one of the greatest empires in the world, known for its vast size, wealth and influence on the region’s culture. Abu Bakr, who had become the leader of the great empire in 1300, among a long line of Mansa’s, sought to increase the power and influence of Mali further.
Contrary to other rulers, who wished to expand their border to the East, Abu Bakr sought to explore the Western hemisphere by exploring the waters to the west of his kingdom. The journey was seen as possible due to many Muslim geographers at the time concluding that the Atlantic ocean wasn’t the western edge of the world- over 100 years before Columbus set sail on his journey to colonize and subjugate.
Unlike European colonial ambitions, Mansa Abu Bakr’s mission was guided by a divine purpose to forge alliances and spread the message of Islam:
He is the one who has made the Earth a cradle for you, and has traced out for you ways therein. [20:53]
After a failed attempt at sending a fleet on their own, Mansa Abu Bakr decided to set out with his own fleet down the Senegal river. Building two thousand ships to command, he headed west down the Atlantic. He had told his brother, the famous Mansa Musa, who went on to be the richest man in history, that if he didn’t come back after a reasonable amount of time, he should inherit the throne. Mansa Abu Bakr never returned to Mali, and his brother assumed the throne in 1312.
There is not much known of Abu Bakr’s journey after he had set sail. However, it is widely believed that he succeeded in reaching the Americas due to the strong currents that were present in the Atlantic ocean. Recent archaeological, linguistic and cultural finds have shown evidence of the presence of these Mandinka Muslims firstly in Brazil ,due to it being the closest mass to the West African Guinea Coast. It is believed that they went on to travel along the rivers in the dense jungles of South America, and overland into Central America. It is believed that over 100 million indigenous people were on the continent at the time, which Abu Bakr and his fleet would come into contact with.
The remnants of early African presence in the Americas would have an everlasting impact: from the African head sculptures from the Olmec civilization found in Mexico to the African gold found on the tips of the spears of the inhabitants of Turtle Island; who would go on to use those very spears to later clash with their European invaders.
The next time Africans would arrive in the Western hemisphere would be during the Atlantic slave trade which would see up to 12.5 million enslaved Africans, many who died in the middle passage, forcibly taken to the Americas. What is not commonly known, is that a third of the slaves taken to the Americas were Muslim.
When Europeans, namely the Spanish and Portuguese came across the shores of Africa and, they were surprised to see, to their utter dismay, that Islam was not only restricted to Arabia and Andalusia, no, it had stretched much farther than that: all the way to the shores of West Africa, where it had grown from a minority faith of a few adherents to the state adherents to the state religion of several West African empires, most prominently amongst the Mali Empire, which had adopted Islam as its official religion in 1324.
The ‘discovery’ of Muslims in West Africa in the fifteenth century led to European viewing all Africans, regardless of religion as Muslim, as it further deepened the belief among European Crusaders that their Chistian faith as sclerotic, was surrounded by the forces of Islam, as they were experiencing already at the time during their Reconquista of the region of Andalusia, then ruled by the Muslim Moors. Hence, they saw all Africans as Muslims, whether pagan or Muslim, as from the Muslim faith, because it was through this categorization that they would dehumanize them and justify their enslavement. This categorization was carried out through the Papal Bull signed by the head of the Catholic Church, Saint Nicholas V in 1492, titled Dim Diversas, which bestowed upon Portugal ‘official dominion’ over West Africa. This legalized King Henry of Castille’s territorial gains as part of Portugal’s empire and stated that they had the right to enslave the ‘Saracens’ [another term for Muslims] and Pagans living in a military disputed African territory.
Despite the repression of Islamic practice, many Muslims still held onto their Islamic faith and used it as a source of resistance against their slave masters. Once such a poignant example, was the example of enslaved African leader Dutty Boukman, who is known to have begun the spirit of resistance in the Americas, due to his prominent leadership in the Haitian revolution. Boukman was born to a Senegambian Muslim family in 1767 and later became a Muslim cleric. He was captured in Senegambia and forced into slavery in the Caribbean, first to Jamaica, then eventually taken to the Island of Saint Domingue, modern day Haiti. Boukman is known to have sparked the main catalyst of the 1791 slave revolt, which is believed to have been the beginning of the Haitian revolution. Resistance in Saint Domingue was sparked alight when in 1791 at the famous Bois Caiman ceremony, which saw the first major meetings of slaves, where Boukman proclaimed that the ‘The god of the white man inspires cruelty, ours wants liberty for many people.’
Believers fight for the cause of Allah, whereas disbelievers fight for the cause of the Devil. So fight against Satan’s ˹evil˺ forces. Indeed, Satan’s schemes are ever weak. [4:76]
That same night, the whole of the Northern plain of the colony was in flames, with slaves demanding liberation from the French. Years of revolting forced France to abolish slavery in 1794. Despite this, the Africans of Haiti still demanded freedom, leading them to fight many wars against the French, including Napoleon’s army who suffered a decisive defeat in 1803, leading to the creation of America’s first free Black republic. Boukman was a key figure of the slave revolt in the Le Cap-Francais region in the north of the colony, and was later killed by French slave owners and colonial troops on the 7th of November, 1791.
Allah has indeed purchased from the believers their lives and wealth in exchange for Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah and kill or are killed. This is a true promise binding on Him in the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran. And whose promise is truer than Allah’s? So rejoice in the exchange you have made with Him. That is ˹truly˺ the ultimate triumph. [9:11]
Another poignant example of Islamic resistance against slavery, are those of the West African Muslims of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. A third of all African slaves sent to the Americas, were forcibly taken to Brazil, with these Muslims being mainly of Mandinka, Yoruba and Hausa origin, who despite being of various West African origin, were united by their Islamic faith. In Bahia, African slaves were usually established in ‘nations,’ where all tribal members were of the same ethnic group. Despite their oppression under the Portuguese empire, in the slave huts of plantations, these Muslims constructed mosques and established Quran schools, and slaves were able to keep up with Islamic duties such as fasting. Not oblivious to the shackles that chained them, they saw it as their duty to rise up and resist their oppressors. They would go on to lead the largest urban slave revolt in the Americas, most famously known as the Male revolt, a term derived from the African- born Yoruba speakers and followers of Islam.
Between 1816 and 1830, Bahias enslaved community organized 17 uprisings. Of these uprisings, the uprising of the 15th of January 1835 was most significant, which saw over 600 enslaved people rise up against their Portuguese enslavers. This revolt was strategically placed to take place on the last ten days of Ramadan as it’s a month of immense spiritual significance- but particularly on the 27th night, which is widely believed to be one of the more probable nights of Laylatul qadr [‘the night of power.’]
The Night of Glory is better than a thousand months.That night the angels and the ˹holy˺ spirit descend, by the permission of their Lord, for every ˹decreed˺ matter. [97:3-4]
On the 24th of January, rumours were spreading that African slaves were planning a revolt started circulating in Salvador. The news quickly reached the city’s enslaved and free Black people, then the majority of the city’s population. As slave owners panicked, police responded to the threat by frantically searching the houses of African- born formerly enslaved men and women, whom they suspected of participating in the plot. With the light of resistance smoldering, the enslaved and formerly enslaved descended onto the streets of Salvador armed with swords, pistols and other weapons, turning the streets into a battleground, leading to several hours of fighting against Portuguese soldiers. The rebels later attempted to raid the city’s barracks in an attempt to free their religious leader, Pacifico Lucatan, however outnumbered and poorly armed; they were defeated, with many later being tried, some executed or subjected to floggings, and nearly 200 being deported back to Africa.
Despite the apparent failure of the revolt, it caused great international repercussions and created a dying panic from within slaveholders who feared that the slave insurrection would even spread to the capital Rio De Janeiro, and could end slavery and lead to another Haiti. As a result of this frenzy, Portuguese slave owners were given six months to baptise enslaved people in an effort to Christianize them, or would otherwise face fines. Following the revolt, the main Brazilian newspaper in Rio De Janeiro, reproduced a report by Bahia’s police chief office who narrated the events of 24-24 January, 1835. The report concluded that most of the insurgents were Muslim familiar with the Quran who could read and write Arabic. Insurgents were recorded to have been wearing white gowns [abadas], that only Muslims wore in private spaces in Bahia.It is also recorded that many insurgents were carrying handwritten prayers and quranic verses.
Drawing on the report by Bahia’s report chief police officer, British, French, Spanish, US and German reported on the Male revolt, with British newspapers commenting on the papers carried by prisoners which had ‘verses from the Alcoran, which African Mohametans are accustomed to wear about the person as personal charms.’ Many rebels were owned by British slave owners residing in Brazil, with many British newspapers falsely reporting the Africans owned by the British slave owners were ‘their favorite of their masters and had always been particularly well-treated.’
However, as slavery had been abolished in the colonies by 1835, British newspapers denounced slavery in Brazil, while also depicting British residents of Brazil as benevolent slave owners, therefore promoting themselves as saviors.
International newspapers continued to report on the anxieties felt by the white man as a result of the insurrection, with French newspaper Le Spectateur and the Spanish newspaper El Guerrero y el compilador reporting persistent fears of new rebellions in other parts of Brazil.
By the 1850s, the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil had begun to decline. The 1871 ‘Womb law’ later declared children born to enslaved mothers free, and slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888.
What the colonised saw of Islam was not simply a vaguely spiritual religion of a simple internal belief and rituals, it was not simply a veneer which someone could simply adopt nor copy. What they saw was an eternal belief, an ideology, where a Supreme Creator was at its centre and which called on the believer to resist, to sacrifice everything, to sacrifice for the sake of God whether it be for yourself or others.
This was the dilemma which shook the mind and soul of the coloniser. They recognised the power of this ideology, that if they didn’t snuff it out completely, it would grow, it would fester, and spread so vast it would take over the world and rival its own. And worse; force man to recognise the internal and external shackles which enslaved him and cause him struggling to break free. This struggle is one we continue to see play worldwide today; a spiritual fueled resistance which we have seen in Libya, Algeria and most poignantly, in Palestine.
The resistance to being shackled- by both body and mind. The power of the divine and His holy book fueled noble resistance in the Americas and continues worldwide. The colonized rise up against the pointed rifle which seeks to kill the spirit, which seeks to not only wear them out physically, but mentally, and spiritually. But what they will not know is that this spirit, this faith, cannot be crushed.
The light of faith-based resistance continues to burn brightly, growing from a small flame, threatening to envelope everything it touches. But will we stare and watch, or will we take part in its blaze?
Hiba Fombo writes for youth-led organisations such as The Student Intifada and The Tarim network. She is an award winning screenwriter due to her participation in the Young Muslim Writers Awards 2021.
