Abstract

GONZALEZ, Antonio de Diego. The imales' shadow. Esoteric knowledge and resistance as Islamic contribution to Latin America afro-epistemology. Rev. colomb. antropol. [online]. 2023, vol.59, n.1, pp.83-106.  Epub Jan 01, 2023. ISSN 0486-6525.  https://doi.org/10.22380/2539472x.2411.

This article contributes to-and rethinks-studies on the epistemology of Islam in the region by exploring how Islam transfused elements of esoteric knowledge and resistance, symbolic and practical, into diverse groups of the Afro-descendant community. To show it, we will start from Intellectual History through the contributions of enslaved Muslims from present-day Nigeria, of Hausa and Yoruba ethnicity, during the final stage of the European colonial era. The imales, a yorubization of the Arabic word 'alim (wise), were a very complex and, today, almost forgotten part of the silent resistance of Afro-descendants in the Americas. To illustrate this issue, we will take two examples: the survival of the Islamic memory in the oracle of Ifá, and the revolta dos males, that took place in 1835, where a group of Afro-Muslims started a jihad, exoteric and esoteric, against their masters.

Keywords : islam; slavery; afro-epistemology; Yoruba; West Africa.

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