BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : " THE MUSLIM UPRISING OF 1835 " THE MALE REVOLT - THE MUSLIM SLAVES THAT WERE BROUGHT TO THE NEW WORLD FOUGHT VERY HARD TO UPHO;D THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS : THEY GO INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK HEROES "

BLACK               SOCIAL                HISTORY                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The Muslim Uprising of 1835

Malê Revolt

The largest and most significant of these uprisings occurred in 1835 in Salvador, called the Muslim Uprising of 1835. It was planned by an African-born Muslim ethnic group of slaves, the Malês, as a revolt that would free all of the slaves in Bahia. While organized by the Malês, all of the African ethnic groups were represented in the participants, both Muslim and non-Muslim.^[5] However, there is a conspicuous absence of Brazilian-born slaves who participated in the rebellion. An estimated 300 rebels were arrested, of which nearly 250 were African slaves and freedmen.^[26] Brazilian-born slaves and ex-slaves represented 40% of the population of Bahia, but a total of two mulattoes and three Brazilian-born blacks were arrested during the revolt.^[25] What's more, the uprising was efficiently quelled by mulatto troops by the following day of its instigation.

The fact that Africans were not joined in the 1835 revolt by mulattoes was far from unusual, in fact, no Brazilian blacks had participated in the 20 previous revolts in Bahia during that time period. Masters played a large role in creating tense relations between Africans and Afro-Brazilians, for they generally favoured mulattoes and native Brazilian slaves, who consequently experienced better manumission rates. Masters were aware of the importance of tension between groups to maintain the repressive status quo, as stated by Luis dos Santos Vilhema, circa 1798, "...if African slaves are treacherous, and mulattoes are even more so; and if not for the rivalry between the former and the latter, all the political power and social order would crumble before a servile revolt..." The master class was able to put mulatto troops to use controlling slaves with little backlash, thus, the freed black and mulatto population was considered as much an enemy to slaves as the white population.^[25]

Slaves mine for diamonds inMinas Gerais (ca. 1770s).

Not only was a unified rebellion effort against the oppressive regime of slavery prevented in Bahia by the tensions between Africans and Brazilian-born African descendants, but ethnic tensions within the African-born slave population itself prevented formation of a common slave identity.^[25]