When Brazil’s African Muslims scared the world

Taking place 190 years ago, the Malê Revolt in Bahia, led by African Muslim slaves, shook Brazil's foundations and echoed global fears of a new Haiti.

Maculele dance at the Tororó Dike in the city of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil © Joa Souza via Shutterstock.

On January 24, 1835, rumors that Africans were planning a revolt for early the following day started circulating in Salvador, the capital of the then province of Bahia, in Brazil. The news quickly reached the city’s enslaved and free Black people, then the majority of the city’s population. As slave owners panicked, the police quickly 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.

But the police couldn’t stop the conspiracy right away. As the hunt for suspects continued, groups of Africans armed with swords, spears, pistols, and other weapons took to the streets of Salvador, which quickly became a battleground. Led by a group of Yoruba-speaking enslaved and formerly enslaved Muslim men, the insurrection was the largest urban slave uprising in the Americas. It became known as the Malê Revolt, after the term used in Bahia to refer to African-born Yoruba speakers and followers of Islam.

The revolt’s international repercussions and the panic it provoked derived from slaveholders’ persisting fear that a slave insurrection could end slavery and lead to another Haiti, the first Black independent nation free of slavery in the Americas. My book Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery shows how several international newspapers reported the news about Brazil’s African Muslim uprising. The Malê Revolt evolved from a series of smaller revolts that took place in Bahia during the first three decades of the 19th century.

Brazil became independent from Portugal in 1822, but the negotiated process of independence maintained the monarchy as the form of government. The post-independence period was marked by divisions and instability. Droughts provoked food shortages, therefore causing an economic crisis that affected Bahia.

After the Portuguese court escaped the invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte to relocate in Brazil in 1808, Britain put pressure on Portugal to end the slave trade to Brazil, therefore signing several treaties to stop the trade in enslaved Africans. This process increased the prices of enslaved Africans, and eventually culminated with the passage of new legislation, which prohibited transporting enslaved Africans to Brazil in 1831. As the Bahia sugar economy was growing, slave owners increased the workload of the scarcer enslaved workforce, thereby worsening their working conditions. Enslaved people resisted by escaping, joining runaway slave communities, and organizing revolts.

In the 15 years before the 1835 rebellion, nearly 60 percent of Bahia’s and Salvador’s African-born population was composed of individuals enslaved in the Bight of Benin, the coastal area stretching along what is today Togo, the Republic of Benin, and Nigeria.

Most of these Africans were Yoruba speakers (called nagôs in Brazil) captured during the wars opposing the Muslim Fulani and the states subjugated by the Oyo Empire. Others were made prisoners by the Kingdom of Dahomey army that waged war against its Yoruba-speaking neighbors, including Oyo. In other words, the West African context—especially the wars that led to the disintegration of the Oyo Empire and the concentration of Yoruba speakers in Bahia—is central to understanding the revolt.

“Bahia,” by Jules Marie Vincent de Sinety, 1838. From Coleção Brasiliana, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (via Wikimedia Commons).

Several of these Africans were warriors, war prisoners, or captured as byproducts of warfare, which is why some scholars see the Malê Revolt as the continuation of the African jihad begun on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Most Yoruba speakers adopted the Orisha religion. Whereas some were already Muslims in West Africa, others may have converted to Islam after reaching Brazilian soil. However, we can assume that most of these West African–born individuals of various ethnic groups, especially those living in Salvador, had been baptized in the Roman Catholic Church and, therefore, received Catholic names.

Even when these enslaved Africans purchased their freedom, their social position remained precarious. The Brazilian Constitution of 1824 established that only Brazilian-born freedpeople became citizens after manumission. Therefore, freed Africans were considered aliens, as acquiring Brazilian citizenship was impossible despite an existing procedure.

After a series of rebellions in the early 19th century, Brazilian authorities strictly controlled freed Africans. An 1830 decree restricted the mobility of African-born men and women, even in their own cities, where they had to carry a passport issued by Brazilian authorities confirming their good conduct.

In this context of increasingly anti-African repressive measures, Islam became a shelter and offered them a tool to resist slavery and anti-African discrimination. Ultimately, through the leadership of a small number of Muslim Yoruba speakers, many dozens of non-Muslim Yoruba-speaking enslaved men and freedmen joined the Malê Revolt.

The Malê Revolt was planned to start at dawn on Sunday, January 25, 1835, during a festival day commemorating a Catholic saint, when both enslaved people and slave owners were distracted. In addition, in the Arabic or Hijri calendar, January 25, 1835, was the date 25-Ramadan-1250 AH, a few days before the end of Muslims’ fasting for Ramadan.

The revolt’s goal was to wage war against white people or all people in the white man’s land, including mixed-race and Black Brazilian-born enslaved, freed, and free individuals.

The city’s insurgents hoped that the slaves in the neighboring plantations would join them, but as the rumors about the conspiracy spread, the police quickly started an operation to arrest the suspects. Still, 600 men took to the streets and fought for several hours.

“Vista da cidade de Salvador,” by Anonymous, 1860. From Coleção Brasiliana Iconográfica, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (via Wikimedia Commons).

Eventually, the Malê Revolt was defeated on Sunday.

Bahian authorities interrogated and arrested hundreds of suspects. The main Brazilian newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of the Brazilian Empire, reproduced a report by Bahia’s chief police officer narrating in detail the events of January 24–25, 1835.

This report estimated that 50 insurgents were killed, and many others were wounded. Both the report and the investigation that followed concluded that most African insurgents were Muslims familiar with the Koran, who could read and write in Arabic. Insurgents were wearing the white gowns (abadás) that only Muslims wore in private spaces in Bahia. The police also found rebels carrying amulets, prayers, devotional manuscripts, and other items written in Arabic.

Newspaper articles in Rio de Janeiro complained about Brazil’s large population of enslaved Africans, due to the continuing illegal slave trade from Africa. They demanded Brazilian authorities deport to the African continent those Africans who, having been introduced to Brazil after the 1831 legal ban on the slave trade, were subsequently emancipated and acquired the status of “Free Africans.”

Reporting rumors of new African conspiracies and calling for increasing surveillance of African-born men and women, some newspapers even warned about the influence of “Haitian doctrines preached with impunity.” These claims were not based on a direct connection but rather expressed slave owners’ fears of a broader revolt that, as happened in Haiti, would lead to the end of slavery. Brazilian slave owners and government authorities were terrified that Africans would lead other rebellions in Bahia and even in Rio de Janeiro.

Drawing on the report by Bahia’s chief police officer from mid-March to the end of August 1835, British, French, Spanish, US, and German newspapers reported on the Malê Revolt. One British newspaper said that “some of the prisoners were found with little Arabic books and folded papers, inscribed with verses from the Alcoran, which African Mahometans are accustomed to wear about the person as charms.” As the original Brazilian report stated that some rebels were owned by British nationals residing in Salvador, British newspapers falsely reported that “the insurgents consisted almost entirely of negroes who were the favorites of their masters and had always been particularly well-treated.” As slavery had already been abolished in British colonies by 1835, British newspapers presented the rebellion as a warning against the horrors of slavery. While denouncing the illegal slave trade to Brazil, they also depicted British residents of Brazil as benevolent slave owners, therefore promoting themselves as saviors.

In the next months, international newspapers continued reporting slave owners’ anxieties that new insurrections would follow. In May 1835, the French newspaper Le Spectateur and the Spanish newspaper El Guerrero y el compilador reported persisting fears of new rebellions in other parts of the country, especially in the capital Rio de Janeiro.

In the revolt’s aftermath, 231 people were tried. Of the 135 documented sentences, 28 enslaved people were acquitted, 4 African-born men were executed, and 12 death sentences were commuted to prison and whippings. Sixteen freed people were sentenced to prison, 8 to forced labor, 40 enslaved individuals were flogged, and 34 freedmen were deported. Later, more than 150 additional freed Africans were added to the deportation list.

The Malê Revolt was the most important slave rebellion staged in Brazil. It remains, 190 years later, a symbol of resistance against slavery and the fight against anti–Black African racism both in Brazil and across the Americas.

Further Reading