An Early Encounter in the Global South

This article examines the Arab-Ottoman scholar ‘Abd al-Rahman Al-Baghdadi’s late-nineteenth-century journey to Brazil as an early encounter in the global South. Arriving at Rio de Janeiro in 1866, Al-Baghdadi established contact with Muslim enslaved and freed men of West African descent (malês). At their request, he stayed for three years in the country, guiding malê communities in Rio, Salvador, and Recife. Recently, the Summit of South American-Arab Countries (ASPA) sponsored a trilingual edition of Al-Baghdadi’s 1871 travelogue Musalliyat al-garib bi-kull amr ‘ağib (Deleite do estrangeiro em tudo o que é espantoso e maravilhoso / El deleite del extranjero en todo lo que es asombroso y maravilloso), which presents his journey as an early example of collaboration between Brazil and the Arab world and of solidarity in the global South. This article revisits Al-Baghdadi’s travelogue to critically evaluate this reading and to outline the possibilities and limitations of South-South encounters. After an overview of late-Ottoman views on slavery and Blackness as well as the tumultuous history of Islam in Brazil, I examine the travelogue to lay out four aspects of such encounters: the difficulty of recognition, the traveler’s conflicting solidarities, the presence of local allies, and the tension between orthodoxy and adaptation. I conclude that while encounters in the global South are obstructed by several difficulties because of their unsystematic nature, they allow for unexpected affects and solidarities.