The Story of Rufino: Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic by João José Reis, Flávio dos Santos Gomes, Marcus J. M. de Carvalho, translated by Sabrina Gledhill
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 15.9 MB
Overview: Winner of the Casa de las Américas Prize for Brazilian Literature, The Story of Rufino reconstructs the lively biography of Rufino José Maria, set against the historical context of Brazil and Africa in the nineteenth century.
The book tells the story of Rufino or Abuncare, a Yoruba Muslim from the kingdom of Oyo, in present-day Nigeria. Enslaved as an adolescent by a rival ethnic group, he was captured by Brazilian slave traders and taken to Brazil as a slave sometime in the early 1820s. In 1835, after being enslaved in Salvador and Rio Grande do Sul, Rufino bought his freedom with money he made as a hired-out slave and perhaps from making Islamic amulets. He found work in Rio de Janeiro as a cook on a slave ship bound for Luanda in Angola, despite the trans-Atlantic slave trade having been illegal in Brazil since 1831. Rufino himself became a petty slave trader. He made a few voyages before his ship was captured by the British and taken to Sierra Leone in 1841 for trial by the Anglo-Brazilian Mixed Commission to determine if it was equipped for the slave trade, since there were no slaves on board. During the three months awaiting the court’s decision, Rufino lived among Yoruba Muslims, his people, and attended Quranic and Arabic classes. He later returned to Sierra Leone as a witnes.
Genre: Non-Fiction > History
Download Instructions:
https://ouo.io/9BGJmJa
https://ouo.io/aIA3DT
