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MuslimCapoeira
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has added a new journalIt's been a while since I've had a chance to get in the roda... how about everyone else here?
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has added a new journalI use to break dance alot when I was younger, but now I am looking to start up capoeira....anyone know any places in Chicago?
shamil786
SalaamWell Capoeira may look similar but its nothing to do with B-Boying (so called Breakdance) :) ;) remember its a martial art disguised as a dance... try here bro capoeira.uchicago.edu
Wa Salaam Shamil
aim786
thanks kazmio.....hey murtaza
yeah, here are a few places you can find capoeira close to where you live (bolingbrook)... well actually, here's an
easy way to find just about anything anywhere
maps.google.com
click on the 'find businesses' link
enter capoeira in the 'what' text box
enter 'bolingbrook, il' in the 'where textbox'
you're good to go
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has added a new journalCan anyone tell me more about the history of Muslim Africans in Brazil and their tactics for revolt?
shamil786
Salaam SisterCheck out this excellent book
Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture)
by Joao Jose Reis, Arthur Brakel
ISBN: 0801852501
KillerCapoeira
Wow sis, this is quite a subject. The article I posted gives a brief overview, but the subject is alot deeper and broader than is covered in this piece. The problem is that Muslim African culture became subsumed into the broader Afro-Brazilian culture. This means that there are many manifestations of Muslim culture that are alive even today, but they are not known even by everyday Brazilians as anything more than Brazilian culture. As well the keeping of history has been subject to the colonial interpretation which tends to leave out the stories of those who were most successful at subverting them. It may or may not have mentioned it in the article, but A good deal of the African slaves, and almost all of the Muslim slaves were better educated and more literate than thier captors. Combined with a very typical resistance to subjugation as has been demonstrated by Muslims world wide (Philipines, Indonesia, Brazil, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) Most of the slave revolts in Brazil were organized and led by Muslims. However, our biggest failure was one that all colonized peoples have tended to fall to, including Muslims: internal division and disunity planted by the colonizers. We all need to hang our heads in shame on this one. Africans were pitted against Africans by giving privelage to certain of them over others. There were also wealthy free Africans who moved to the Americas (Both North and South) who owned slaves and understood their languages and were just as inhumane as European slavers.In any case, the tactics for revolt were on multiple levels including linguistic, organisational, martial. I would suggest doing web searches first. Most literature will be in Portugese, but you'll find alot of English web pages on the subject. There is still alot of re-researching that needs to be done on the subject. Very few of us in the states (or Brazil), myself included, have enough knowledge to speak on the subject in a way that would do it justice. Wassalaam,
~Nasr
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has added a new journalnasr and all of his code names is a great professor. i recommend his class to everyone in the la area. i am really quite awful. some may goes as far as to say i am nothing short of a desecrator of the art, and still he allows me to take part. jazaax killercapoeria.
-hm
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has added a new journalCourtesy of Bahia Online. Documentary source:
Rebelião Escrava no Brasil: A História do Levante dos Malês (1835), by João José Reis (available in English as Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia)
"Abadá" is a word familiar both to people who do capoeira and to people who've marched in Bahian Carnival blocos. In capoeira it refers to the pants worn (and to an organization named for those pants), and in Carnival terms it refers to the shirt/shorts combination which marks one as a member of a particular bloco. The word is derived from the Yoruban "agbada", which in Africa meant a long robe of the type worn in Islamic countries (or areas).
In Bahia, "abadá" had assumed its present linguistic form by the early 19th century, but its association with capoeira and Carnival still lay a century in the future. It denoted at that particular point in the past a long, flowing, white robe, a manner of dress expressly forbidden on the streets of Salvador and which would not be seen in public until the Malês were to rise up in revolt against their enslavement.
Mali Empire
Another short digression: The Mali of today is an impoverished African republic, one of the poorest countries in the world. But at one time there was a vast Mali empire sustained by commerce in gold and salt, with Timbuktu as its principal city. "Mali" is derived from the Yoruban "imale", or "Muslim", a reference to the empire's religion. The part of the empire encompassing part of what is now northern Nigeria was the provenance of the Malês of Bahia.
And yet another digression: The Lavagem de Bonfim is a huge yearly festa which takes place in Salvador during the month of January, but in 1835 it was only one in a cycle of religious festas, and it was during the early morning hours of January 25th, during the festival of Nossa Senhora da Guia (Our Lady of the Guide), that the Malês planned to attack.
Maybe there was confidence born of language, a feeling that loose talk in Nagô (a dialect of Yoruban) was safe. This was a mistake. Talk of the insurrection down at the pier, and of its leader Ahuna, reached the ears of a freed Nagô by the name of Domingos Fortunato. Domingos engaged someone to write down what he'd heard and had the letter immediately delivered to his ex-master, Fortunato José da Cunha. Sr. da Cunha apparently didn't take the threat seriously.
Shortly later Domingos's wife Guilhermina -- also a freed Nagô -- was standing at the window of their home on Rua do Bispo (a side street which runs into Praça da Sé) when she gathered from the talk of several passing Nagôs that at the sound of the 5 a.m. alvorada (a wake-up chant sung in the street, when slaves were to rise and fetch water from the fountains) the revolt would begin. Guilhermina went straight to her ex-master -- Souza Velho -- and told him what she'd heard. And she wasn't finished.
On her way home she was met by her friend Sabina da Cruz. Sabina had had an ugly fight with her husband -- Vitório Sule -- that morning, and upon arriving home after work (she sold food in the lower city) she saw that Vitório, together with his clothes, was gone.
The distraught woman set out to find the father of her children, finally managing to locate him in the basement of a house on the Ladeira da Praça where he was crowded in together with 50 or 60 other men and some sort of leader (basements of this sort were referred to as armazens -- storage areas; they were the undivided, unfurnished, and poorly ventilated living quarters of city slaves, the master and his family living on the floors above).
Guilhermina passed this new development on to her neighbor André Pinto da Silveira, who had in his salon at that very moment two important visitors with government connections. The government palace was informed and at one a.m. a team of armed men entered the house on the Ladeira da Praça. The revolt was off to an early start. Vitório Sule was one of the first to die.
The crux of the matter now was to unite forces, and Malês ran from house to house, beating on doors to wake up and alert their colleagues. As this was happening the main contingent moved up the street to the Câmara Municipal (city hall), where esteemed Malê leader Pacífico Licutan was being held prisoner in the jail beneath the building. Caught in crossfire from the câmara itself and from the governor's palace across the street (now the Palácio Rio Branco), the Malês were forced to retreat.
They moved on, skirmishing along the way, moving to reinforce their numbers with a sizable contingent of Malês coming from the neighborhood of Vitória. Their trajectory eventually took them past the Largo da Lapa (Salvador's Colégio Central is located on this spot now) where another skirmish took place, and eventually down to the cidade baixa (lower city). The idea was to make their way to an area called Cabrito (today a poor neighborhood; "cabrito" denotes a small goat or -- perjoratively in Brazil -- the offspring of a mulatto and a negra, or vice versa).
Here in Cabrito the Malês of Salvador were to meet up with Malês of the Recôncovo region (the land surrounding the bay) and together they would establish themselves somewhere on the bay's far side. It's not clear what their intentions were after this; a couple of marginal participants are on record as having said the the Malês intended to take Salvador. But the Malê leaders were intelligent men, some of whom almost certainly had experience with military campaigns in Africa before being apprehended and shipped off to Brazil, and they undoubtedly would have wanted to know what kind of force and organization they would be facing before launching what could be futile attack.
This now was the most dangerous part of their trajectory -- with the sea to the left and high cliffs to the right -- the men had to pass the Quartel of the Calvary -- and the calvary was ready. The Malês were charged, scattered, chased and hunted down down by a superior force of mounted soldiers, and this effectively was the end of the Malê Revolt. It was also the beginning of the repercussions.
It's important to note that during the three hours of the revolt itself, not a single citizen who was not a part of the constabulary or armed forces was harmed. There was no looting, no wanton violence. With the exception of one house set fire to by the slaves escaping it, nothing was damaged.
But in the aftermath of the revolt, violence, beatings, hysteria and murder -- directed against innocent Africans -- ruled. Much, although not all of it, was at the hands of soldiers, so much so that commanding officers were afraid of a serious breakdown of order in the ranks.
On May 14th, 1835, four leaders of the uprising were shot dead by firing squad in Campo da Pólvora (in front of where Salvador's forum, or courthouse, stands today). Sixteen participants were sentence to between 5 and 20 years of prison. Eight participants were sentenced to perpeptual forced labor (although some sentences were eventually remanded at the requests of the slaves' masters). Thirty-four participants (all freed slaves) were deported to Africa, probably Nigeria or Dahomey. And forty-five participants were sentenced to be whipped at the post (Pacífico Lutan received a sentence of 1,000 lashes).
These whippings were not like the movies, where a person is flogged maybe ten or twelve times. The number of lashes meted out ranged from 250 to 1,250 - at a rate of 50 per day until the total was met. As one might imagine, wounds and sores became infected, ulcering and festering, and the beatings went on nevertheless, day after day, until the lesions became life-threatening. Only then was punishment was temporarily halted in order to give the castigated time to recuperate, before the lashing would again be renewed. Sometimes the slaves never did recuperate.
In any event, the uprising of 1835 was the last in Brazil, but it wasn't the end of the resistance.
SingleWfemale
Jazak'Allah kheir for your translation Ismail,May Allah make our people aware of the varying methods of enslavement that we have today, and may he make us strong enough to revolt and uprise, Ameen.
Kareema Crawford.