The wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including the jihad and the conflicts that followed, produced many captives. Paul Lovejoy’s Transformations in Slavery (1983) shows that in this period the number of enslaved people grew inside the Sokoto Caliphate, and that others were sold to the Atlantic trade through ports of the Bight of Benin.
Some of them reached Brazil. In his study of the Muslim uprising of 1835 in Bahia, João José Reis writes that Hausa Muslims were active in earlier revolts in Bahia in 1807, 1809 and 1813, and that the 1835 uprising was led mainly by Yoruba-speaking Muslims, with Hausa and others also taking part. These revolts are remembered as examples of resistance by enslaved Muslims who could read Arabic and carried amulets with Qur’anic writing.
The picture is not complete. The Hausa were one group among many African captives, and records often use the name “Hausa” loosely for people from the interior. Historians therefore speak with caution about numbers.
Sources for this article
- Lovejoy 1983, chapters on the nineteenth century
- Reis 1993, chapters on earlier Hausa revolts and the 1835 uprising