Black Muslims want Harvard to return skull of Revolt of Males character

A small object housed at Harvard University, one of the most prestigious in the USA, has rekindled interest in one of the great episodes in Brazilian history, the Malês Revolt. It is a skull to which, symbolically, the debate on racism in scientific production is also intertwined.

The head theoretically belonged to one of the members of the revolt, which took place in Salvador in 1835. Led by Muslims, it was the largest insurrection of enslaved people in Brazil. The following year, the object was sent to the US, at a time when scientists were appropriating the bodies of people considered inferior and using them for research and teaching.

The skull had gone largely unnoticed until Harvard last year began discussing its collection of human remains, which includes enslaved blacks and indigenous people. The first mention of the head appeared only in June, in a report in a student newspaper at the university. Until then, researchers did not even know of its existence. Then Harvard published an official report apologizing and committing to study devolution. In addition to the malê, the skull of another enslaved man appears on the list, probably collected in Rio de Janeiro in 1865 or 1866.

The information reached Salvador’s black and Islamic community through Brazilian researchers, for which the Revolta dos Malês is one of the cornerstones. They are now asking Harvard to return the skull to them so that it can be buried following Islamic precepts.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s just a part of the body, a head, a hand, a foot. It needs to be buried”, says Sheikh Ahmad Abdul Hameed, leader of the Islamic Cultural Center of Bahia. “Islam does not allow a person to be exhibited in a museum; you have to respect the human body.”

Born in Nigeria, Hameed arrived in Brazil in 1992. He moved there at the invitation of the Islamic community, which was looking for a leader. The idea was to stay for a few years, but he never left. The memory of the Malês Revolt anchored him in Salvador. “The history of the Malê is the history of Brazil”, he says. It is also your own. Like many of the participants in that 19th-century uprising, Hameed is an ethnic Yoruba Muslim. “I stayed here to preserve the struggle of my people”, he says.

“Malê” was the name given to Muslim slaves in Bahia. The word probably comes from the Yoruba “imale”, which denotes a follower of Islam. They revolted by the hundreds against the slave regime in 1835, shaking the empire more than half a century before formal abolition. By the end of the clashes, more than 70 had been killed.

Despite its impact on history, the Malês Revolt is still little studied and debated. The reference work continues to be the book “Rebelião Escrava no Brasil”, published in 1986 by the Brazilian João José Reis —who was a professor at Harvard— and republished in 2003 in an expanded edition.

Interest, however, has increased in recent years. “It is part of a search by the black population for its history, above all its resistance against slavery”, says Reis to Sheet🇧🇷 “The Malian movement became a key to memory, identity reinforcement and black protest in Brazil.”

For the expert, there is a relationship between the debate around this malê skull and a broader reparations movement. “This community has every right, and almost an obligation, to demand the repatriation of this relic to be properly buried in Bahia following Islamic protocol.”

Salvador’s black and Islamic community has yet to make formal contact with Harvard to ask for the return of the object. Reis suggests that, before that, a DNA test be carried out to determine the ethnic origin of its owner. The idea is to confirm that the skull belonged to a man from one of the African nations with a Muslim population that were in Bahia, like the Yoruba.

Misbah Akanni says that if the origin of the skull is confirmed, it really has to be returned. Like Hameed, Akanni is Yoruba and Muslim. He heads the Casa da Nigeria in Salvador, an entity linked to the government of his country. “The Malese Revolt was a very important event for us, and Harvard has an obligation to return the skull to us. It doesn’t belong to them.”

Akanni arrived in Brazil in 1988 as an exchange student interested in the uprising. He returned to Nigeria and, in 1990, settled on Brazilian soil for good. “I wanted to recover our past, the history of the Malians, and use it as a basis for spreading our Islamic religion,” he says.

Brazilian researcher Hannah Bellini, who does ethnographic work with this community, is involved in the process of returning the skull. She says one of the first steps is to ensure that Harvard honors its commitment “to redress its contribution to scientific racism.”

It will also be necessary to claim a space in Salvador for the burial. “It’s no use bringing the skull to be exposed in a museum. It would be betraying the purpose of the campaign. We want to offer a funeral ritual, which was denied to the body at that time”, ponders Bellini. The fact that Harvard kept the skull in a museum, says the researcher, reveals not only its scientific racism but also its cultural prejudice. “The notion of exposing human remains is, in itself, violent.”

Harvard does not deny the violence of its collection. The gesture of recognizing its role in scientific racism and slavery came from the university itself. “It was clear from the beginning that the only ethical way out was to return these objects,” says Jane Pickering, director of the Peabody Museum, the house that houses the skull within the institution. “It’s extremely important to us.”

Pickering confirms that she has not yet been contacted by the African and Muslim community in Salvador. She insists, however, that she is on hand to begin negotiations. The university is even willing to support — and perhaps fund — DNA tests that could help determine the skull’s origin. “Now our challenge is to figure out the best way to return these remains. We can’t erase what happened in the past.”