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For a variety of reasons, it is often not easily realized that Brazil is home to the largest contingent of people of African descent in the African diaspora. Indeed, estimates sometimes suggest that, today Brazilians are close to 50%, made up of people of African descent. Sometimes this statistic is denied by some who do not want to be identified as people of African descent or possibly associated with Africa. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century there began at Bahia extensive and prolonged Negro importation from Africa, and the Bay of All Saints in Bahia became for all intents and purposes the principal port of entry into Brazil for this trade in black skins from the African coast. Bahia was and continued to be the preeminent commercial city of Brazil till the beginning of the 1830s. Certainly, during the colonial period, lasting almost three centuries (1549-1822), Bahia was the focus of wealth production in Brazil. The forced African population transfer to Brazil eventually became what is, probably, “the greatest intercontinental displacement of Negro peoples which ever occurred.” African slave resistance mounted with frequency during the early part of the 19^th century. In 1807, 1809, 1813, 1816, 1826, 1827, 1828 and 1830, slave revolts broke out in Bahia, culminating in the major Malê rebellion of 1835. A good part of the rebels were Muslim. The 1835 rebellion marked an important watershed and triggered the beginning of the repatriation process for some freed slaves and also those suspected of instigating or provoking resistance by the slave community. However, long before this period, some returnee cases had occurred.