The slave rebellions that happened in the first half of nineteenth-century Bahia counted with a significant number of Africans brought from the Central Sudan, a region that had been the scenario of religion-based political conflicts since the 1804 Jihad led by Usuman dan Fodio. Thousands of victims of such wars supplied slave ships that left the Slave Coast bound to Bahia. Africans brought from this region, mainly Hausas adept to various forms of Islam, promoted several conspiracies and revolts between 1807 and 1816, the most serious of which occurred in February 1814, and involved slaves in Salvador and its coastal suburbs. Based on the final court decision and other documents, the article discusses the role of religion (particularly Islam), ethnicity (namely Hausa), and other African experiences on both sides of the Atlantic, in terms of leadership, organization, mobilization, tactics, and goals of the 1814 revolt.
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