uprising of 1835, and also the consolidation of Yoruba influence in Cuba. Implicitly, I am raising questions about the scope of the age of revolutions and revolutionary action among enslaved populations in the Americas, and I am challenging Atlantic studies to broaden the conception of the Atlantic world to include events in Atlantic Africa and its interior. Hobsbawm’s interest in the transformation of government in the age of revolutions, with the challenge to despotic monarchy and the emergence of more democratic regimes, might lead us to a consideration of how the jihād movement transformed government in West Africa at the same time. In parallel with the changing nature of slave resistance in the Americas and the emergence of a “second slavery” in the Americas in the nineteenth century, moreover, the jihād movement resulted in a great increase in the number of slaves in West Africa that can be placed alongside the increase in slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States.
Specifically, João José Reis has demonstrated the complex nature of the Muslim uprising in Bahia in 1835 in terms of the identification of participants along class lines (slave/free), on the basis of ethnicity (Yoruba, i.e., Nagô, Hausa, and so on), and according to religious divisions (Islam, oriṣa worship, and so on). Stuart Schwartz earlier drew attention to the various Hausa revolts and conspiracies in Bahia from 1807 onward.38 Admittedly, Michael Gomez has recognized the importance of Islamic influence in the Americas. Moreover, Sylviane Diouf has examined resistance and revolution in the context of African influences on events in the Americas, but Gomez and Diouf do not base their works on the Sokoto Caliphate and its role in West Africa, which is the focus here.39 It is my contention that these contributions fall short of placing the events of the Americas during the age of revolutions in the context of the jihād movement and specifically events that created the Sokoto Caliphate. In fact, Diouf contends that the conditions for jihād were not present in Bahia in the 1830s, an interpretation that Reis has accepted.40 Similarly, Manuel Barcia has drawn attention to the presence of Muslims in Cuba as a result of the traffic from the Bight of Benin to Cuba and has correctly recognized the role of jihād in their enslavement and the enslavement of many non-Muslims as a result of the jihād. Barcia has identified fifteen revolts and conspiracies in Cuba between 1832 and 1844 that were associated with Yoruba who had been enslaved in the context of the jihād, although most of the participants, if not all, were not Muslims.41
The fact that Muslim slaves were common along the routes stretching through Yorubaland to Bahia by the early nineteenth century has prompted Humphrey Fisher to argue that the jihād erupted “precisely because Muslim slaves were arriving in Yorubaland and Bahia, torn from Hausaland and dar al-Islam. . . . The shock waves, flowing into Hausaland, helped ignite the jihād; then, flowing out again, spread that example.”42 Fisher’s conclusion is supported by the writings of Muhammad Bello and the analysis that the enslavement of Muslims was a major factor that prompted the outbreak of jihād in 1804. Although the role of Hausa and other Muslims in the uprising of 1835 is subject to different interpretations, my understanding of the Malês uprising places a heavy emphasis on the role of Islam as a unifying force. The uprising and, even more threatening, the possible appeal to the population outside Salvador rested on its appeal to Islam, in which Yoruba was used as the common language of communication because most Muslims were Yoruba or at least spoke the language. However, the historic importance of the Hausa cities and their mosques, such as the Gobarau Mosque in Katsina, has to be emphasized (plate 3). Individuals originally from Borno or one of the Hausa centers most certainly would have spoken Yoruba as well and in some contexts would have been identified as such. The odyssey of ʿAlī Eisami demonstrates this complexity. ʿAlī was from Borno, had been sold as a slave because he was captured in the jihād, and had been taken south through the Hausa towns, ending up in the capital of Oyo. On the outbreak of the Ilorin uprising in 1817, ʿAlī was sold south because it was feared that he would flee to the cause of Islam. Instead, ʿAlī became a Christian in Sierra Leone and took the name William Harding. Depending on context, ʿAlī would have been considered Yoruba if language was the determining factor, since he was fluent in Yoruba. Nonetheless, he was Kanuri by origin, was a Muslim, could also speak Hausa, and became a principal informant for Sigismund Koelle in his linguistic studies in Sierra Leone in the late 1840s.
Although Barcia has correctly noticed the presence of Muslims in Cuba, his study also shows that the number of Muslims was actually very small.43 In Cuba people whom we now refer to as Yoruba were known as “Lucumí,” while in Brazil they were known as “Nagô.” In both cases their presence was closely associated with the jihād movement.44 As Henry B. Lovejoy has demonstrated, those identified as Lucumí in Cuba very largely came from Oyo and its dependencies, and most were not Muslims, a profile that is the reverse of the demography of Bahia, where Muslims were heavily concentrated.45 Lovejoy contends that there was a conscious attempt to reconstitute elements of the Oyo state in Cuba, including the promotion of Shango as the principal oriṣa in the Yoruba pantheon and the identification of Shango with Saint Barbara among the Catholic saints. Because of the timing of the Yoruba influx into Cuba, Oyo Yoruba were predominant in both rural and urban communities and therefore were involved in uprisings, conspiracies, and disturbances that have been associated with their presence in Cuba.46 By comparison with Bahia, it seems that very few Muslims were sent to Cuba.47 Although Atlantic merchants may have consciously directed enslaved Muslims and non-Muslims toward different destinations in the Americas, it also seems clear that the distribution reflected different migration patterns. Muslims were sent to Bahia in disproportionate numbers during the 1820s, while the overwhelming majority of arrivals in Cuba occurred in the 1830s, when relatively few enslaved Muslims left from Lagos. Oyo Yoruba emerged as dominant among the Yoruba population in Cuba, which was reflected in membership in religious brotherhoods (cabildo) and the importance of Shango as a deity of reverence. All the oriṣa, including Shango, were important in Bahia, too, but so was the concentration of Muslims. A comparison of Cuba and Bahia within the framework of black Atlantic history shows different forms of political and religious mobilization in response to slave society.
How does the question of slavery in the jihād movement in West Africa inform the comparison of resistance among the different European colonies in the Americas? What similarities and differences characterized revolt in St. Domingue in the 1790s, the establishment of the revolutionary state of Haiti in 1804, and the revolutionary movement of jihād in West Africa in the same years? How did the influences of these two movements affect subsequent events of resistance in the Americas and the consolidation of Islam in West Africa? When the history of West Africa and, by extension, of west central Africa and southeastern Africa is included in an analysis of the Atlantic world, the history of people of African descent assumes a more influential role in the history of the modern world. The demography of transatlantic migration and the influences emanating from Africa on modern culture, particularly music and art, are obvious examples.
Slavery was a factor in the jihād movement, specifically in regard to complaints that freeborn Muslims were being enslaved and that such enslavement was illegal under Islamic law and was condemned as a violation of the rights of Muslims. The concern was directed at protecting Muslims, not at opposing slavery, which became a core institution underpinning the society and economy of the Sokoto Caliphate as it expanded in the course of the first half of the nineteenth century. Hence the revolutionary movement of jihād that swept West Africa in the period of the age of revolutions in Europe and the Atlantic world had a far different impact on the course of slavery, but nonetheless the revolutionary dimensions of the jihād were profound and require analysis of it as a parallel movement to the forces with which Hobsbawm and Genovese were concerned. The jihād movement served further to impose a level of autonomy on West Africa at the same time at which the incidence of slavery in the region expanded enormously, most especially in the central Bilād al-Sūdān and Oyo, from where many of the enslaved who went to Cuba and Brazil actually came. The interconnectedness and contradictions that emerged require fuller treatment than they have been given by most scholars who have examined slave resistance during the age of revolutions. Other topics of considerable importance include the debate within Muslim circles over the legitimacy of enslavement, as revealed in the diplomatic exchanges between Muhammad Bello and Muhammad al-Kānimī, the heads of state
