Teaching Islam to African Muslims in Brazil: an Ottoman's Nineteenth-Century Travel Account

This essay contextualizes and analyzes the Arabic manuscript Musalliyat al-Gharib, which narrates the experiences of the Ottoman imam 'Abd al-Rahman al-Baghdadi in mid-nineteenth-century Brazil. Al-Baghdadi arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1866 and, to his surprise, met a group of freed and enslaved African Muslims. When the imam realized they practiced what he deemed an "incorrect " form of Islam, he decided to stay in the Brazilian Empire and reform their beliefs. I propose a two-fold interpretation of al-Baghdadi's passage through Brazil. First, his manuscript reflects an Ottoman practice of "civilizing " Muslim subjects that became popular, though not dominant, during the nineteenth century as part of the state's broader centralization and modernization policies. Second, the interaction between the imam and his interlocutors evidences the centrality of race to their understanding of religion. Few scholars have engaged with Musalliyat al-Gharib, and those who approached it sidelined religion, missing the opportunity of exploring how Africans practiced Islam in Brazil. This essay forefronts religion and race when examining the manuscript, underscoring the diversity of Islam in the Americas. Moreover, it showcases a rare non-European, non-Christian account of nineteenth-century Brazil.