Just how literate were the slaves of the Americas?

[Bawon Samedi]

Not just Muslim Africans. The Kongo Kingdom which was a Kingdom practicing a hybrid of Christianity adapted from Portuguese Catholicism, also had a culture of literacy restricted mostly to nobles. The area was a major source of slaves.

Considering the anarchy, chaos and infighting eventually caused by the slave trade, how possible was it for educated or literate Kongolese to end up in New World Slave plantations?

Also IMO I don't think there is really anything far-fetched about Muslim Africans or Africans from Muslim areas being taken to the New World. IMO early African American culture has a strong Sahel upper West African influence. But that's another topic I might make for another time.

Also this Muslim Prince from west Africa knew how to read an write in Arabic, he was taken as a slave to America and freed since he sent a letter in Arabic to Morocco and the Sultan asked for him to be released.
Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Another African Muslim slave named Omar ibn Said was also literate in Arabic.
Highlights:

As early as 1441 the Portuguese captured some Africans from west Africa who could speak Arabic (since Arabic is not a native language of the people there, it it most likely that it was learned and that they must have been literate in it)
Africans in America/Part 1/Prince Henry the Navigator


It is likely that if any upper class African Muslims were sent as slaves to America that they had some knowledge of Arabic. There were Quranic schools teaching Classical Arabic in West Africa, especially in Timbuktu.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Again there is nothing far fetched about significant numbers of literate moslems being transported into the New World. As far as I am aware the popular Jihadist movements of Senegambia between the 17th and 19th centuries was inspired by the injustice of corrupt African Kings, some of them Moslem, but most of them pagan, selling their own moslem subjects into slavery. Futah Djallon which is the empire where Abdul Rahman, featured in one of the above post as the Slave Prince, came from was established as a rssult of an Islamic revolution. Here is an article on the subject:

"This article is an effort to examine the way in which events during and, in some cases, before the nineteenth century shaped modern Senegambian society. It concludes:
(1) That the slave trade contributed to the development of military structures and to the polarization of Senegambian societies between a warrior élite and an industrious Muslim peasant population.


(2) That the change from the slave trade to legitimate commerce weakened the élites while strengthening the Muslim agriculturalists, who were able to accumulate guns and horses.


(3) That tensions between the two conflicting groups go back at least to the seventeenth century, and that after 1860 they led to a series of revolutionary struggles. The agents of this revolution were a series of charismatic religious leaders.


(4) That the course of this revolution was shaped by the involvement of European interests, and after 1854 increasingly by the incorporation of Senegambia in European spheres of influence.


(5) That this merely postponed certain changes. By the beginning of the colonial period, Islam was clearly dominant, and Senegambia's rural populations were heavily involved in the money economy."
Cambridge Journals Online - The Journal of African History - Abstract - Social and Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolution in Senegambia

Now if I read correctly the warrior elite referred to in the first point were pagan or nominally Muslim elites preying on a vulnerable Muslim rural population. The Marabout system of Islam that these rural folk depended on had nothing to do with elitist Islam revolving around Royal courts, but in some ways is comparable to modern day Islamic schools in places like Rural Pakistan taking the place of ineffective government incapable of providing for the educational needs of the rural masses.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

@Blackking

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Islamic propoganda, yawn

Out.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

I've often read that many slave rebellions in the Americas especially in Brazil were led by literate Muslim Africans, mainly Fulani's and Hausa's.

 

[Marvel]

I've often read that many slave rebellions in the Americas especially in Brazil were led by literate Muslim Africans, mainly Fulani's and Hausa's.

Fulanis conquered the Hausas and brought islam to them and enslaved some under the Sokoto Caliphate, they did the same to some Yorubas in the northern part of Yorubaland but were met with fierce resistance which led to some being traded as slaves. I doubt that Fulanis and Hausas were sent through the Atlantic Slave Trade since they converted to Islam. Fulanis and Hausas lack the skills to work the fields of plantations because they stayed in mostly grassland and deserts. It was Angolans, Mozambicans and Yorubas that were primarily sent in large number to Brazil by the Portuguese.

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Fulanis conquered the Hausas and brought islam to them and enslaved some under the Sokoto Caliphate, they did the same to some Yorubas in the northern part of Yorubaland but were met with fierce resistance which led to some being traded as slaves. I doubt that Fulanis and Hausas were sent through the Atlantic Slave Trade since they converted to Islam. Fulanis and Hausas lack the skills to work the fields of plantations because they stayed in mostly grassland and deserts. It was Angolans, Mozambicans and Yorubas that were primarily sent in large number to Brazil by the Portuguese.

Source?


"Over the course of three centuries, nearly 20 million slaves were brought to the island for transport to the Americas. Slightly more than 20 million others were transported directly from Benin, Dahomey, Ghana, Guinea, Mozambique, and Angola. Yorubas from Nigeria, Mandinkas, Fulani, Wolofs and other ethnic groups were sold in large numbers".- Race and Fantasy in Brazil (1999)

I also read about Fulanis being taken as slaves to the new world mainly to work as house slaves. I also heard American Cowboy culture is influenced by the Fulani with their cattle herding culture.

"...The annual north-south migratory pattern followed by the cowboy is unlike the cattle-keeping patterns in Europe but analogous to the migratory patterns of the Fulani cattle herders who live scattered from the Senegambia through Nigeria and Niger to the Sudan. Early descriptions of Senegambian patterns strikingly resemble later descriptions of cattle herding in the South Carolina hinterland. Texas longhorns and African cattle were brought to America with Fulani slaves. Many details of cowboy life work, and even material culture can be traced to Fulani antecedents, but there has been little work on the question by historians of the west."
Researched by Maurice Mitchell and Carrie Solages, Interns-
TransAfrica Forum
November 1999

From,http://www.afrigeneas.com/forum-west/index.cgi/md/read/id/107/sbj/black-cowboy-african-culture/

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Fulanis conquered the Hausas and brought islam to them and enslaved some under the Sokoto Caliphate, they did the same to some Yorubas in the northern part of Yorubaland but were met with fierce resistance which led to some being traded as slaves. I doubt that Fulanis and Hausas were sent through the Atlantic Slave Trade since they converted to Islam. Fulanis and Hausas lack the skills to work the fields of plantations because they stayed in mostly grassland and deserts. It was Angolans, Mozambicans and Yorubas that were primarily sent in large number to Brazil by the Portuguese.

There were Fulani slaves in the Americas but the ones that are well documented weren't made to do fieldwork.They were often field overseers.

 

[thekingsmen]

Arab-Islamic Imperialism was the absolute WORST thing to happen to Africa.​

 

[Bawon Samedi]

@Brooklynzson @cook

Move to the Root please.

 

[JahFocus CS]

Also IMO I don't think there is really anything far-fetched about Muslim Africans or Africans from Muslim areas being taken to the New World.

I mean, it is fact anyone disputing that has no clue what they're talking about

 

[Apollo Creed]

What ever happened to @Marvel ?

 

[MajorVitaman]

@KidStranglehold putting in work in these coli streets. dropping gems since 2014

 

[Bawon Samedi]

I mean, it is fact anyone disputing that has no clue what they're talking about

You still have some people for some strange reason that find it hard to believe some slaves were Muslim.

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

Fulanis conquered the Hausas and brought islam to them and enslaved some under the Sokoto Caliphate, they did the same to some Yorubas in the northern part of Yorubaland but were met with fierce resistance which led to some being traded as slaves. I doubt that Fulanis and Hausas were sent through the Atlantic Slave Trade since they converted to Islam. Fulanis and Hausas lack the skills to work the fields of plantations because they stayed in mostly grassland and deserts. It was Angolans, Mozambicans and Yorubas that were primarily sent in large number to Brazil by the Portuguese.

Hausas were sent to Brazil.