Brazilian Muslims demand Harvard return skull of slave who fought in uprising

The Islamic community of Salvador, in Brazil’s Bahia state, has pushed Harvard University to repatriate the skull of an enslaved man who allegedly took part in a famous uprising of African Muslims in the city in 1835. 

The skull is part of a Harvard collection of human remains of 19 people of African origin likely enslaved in the Americas.

Bahia’s Muslim community, which began its campaign in September, now plans to make direct contact with Harvard through the Islamic Centre and House of Nigeria in Salvador.

In 1835, 600 African Muslims – some freed people, but mostly enslaved men – took to the streets of Salvador and fought soldiers to try to take control of the city and the surrounding countryside.

The night of fighting resulted in the deaths of at least 70 Males – a word used to designate African Muslims in 19th-century Bahia, which probably comes from imale, a Yoruba term for Muslim. Some 500 others were imprisoned, flogged and deported.

The skull supposedly belongs to a man who was wounded in the fighting and died in hospital.