Abdul Injai or Abdoul Ndaiye was a Senegalese mercenary in colonial Portuguese Guinea[1] at the turn of the 20th century.
A Muslim Wolof, Abdul Injai initially came to notice while assisting in the punitive military missions of Portuguese colonialists Oliveira Musanty and Teixeira Pinto, from 1905 to 1915.[2] This era was the beginning of a Portuguese campaign against the animist tribes of the interior, with the help of the indigenous coastal Islamic population. It would not be until 1936 that areas like the Bijagos Islands would be under complete government control. Tenuous alliances, like those between Abdul Injai and the Portuguese during the Scramble for Africa, reflect the overwhelming tendency for European colonial powers to attempt to divide native African populations based on religious affiliations - particularly the idea that, although racially inferior to Europeans, Muslim Africans possessed higher levels of education and culture and were preferential associates compared to followers of animist or tribal religions.[3]
An outraged Portuguese lawyer later published a damning report on the atrocities committed by African mercenaries under the command of Abdul Injai and Pinto:
"Numerous bands, in which were also found the old, the crippled, women and children, fled, terrorized in the face of the triumphant march of the force of the irregulars [the mercenaries]. And in the disorderly flight, numerous natives, men, women, old people, children and the crippled, perished, drowned in the river, and ... mercilessly killed by the same irregulars. Then followed assaults on the tabancas [villages], these being sacked and burned; their undefended inhabitants were slaughtered; the fields were devastated totally destroyed.... Today, the rich and extensive territory inhabited by Pepels is in the greatest desolation and misery."[4]
Notes
- ^ Portuguese Guinea was the name for what is today Guinea-Bissau from 1446 to September 10, 1974
- ^ Bowman, Joye L. Abdul Njai: Ally and Enemy of the Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau, 1895-1919, Journal of African History 27 (3); 463-479, 1986
- ^ Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies 2nd Ed. Cambridge University Press 2005
- ^ Mendy, Peter Karibe (2003). "Portugal's Civilizing Mission in Colonial Guinea-Bissau: Rhetoric and Reality". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 36 (1): 35–58. doi:10.2307/3559318. ISSN 0361-7882.
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This page was last edited on 6 November 2023, at 20:22