Brief Inventory of Manuscripts in Arabic Script Produced by Black Muslims in 19th Century Brazil

Abstract

Despite recent advances in recovering the Afro-Islamic legacy in Brazil, through different initiatives to revisit the Malês Revolt, the manuscript production in Arabic script produced by the black Islamic community in nineteenth-century Brazil is still scarce and superficially known in the country. This textual set is usually approached in a fragmentary way and, in general, associated with the magical amulets that black people hung around their necks, which, although extremely important, represent only part of this collection. Even less known is the content of these manuscripts which, in addition to prayers and Qur'anic suras, also contains quotations from renowned works of classical Arabic literature. Aiming to contribute to the recovery of this culture, this article outlines an inventory of this invaluable heritage, as a testimony to the existence of literate African and slave culture in Brazil and, also, the history of the use of the Arabic language and the practice of islamic rituals in the country.