It is significant that these individuals were male. The enslaved population from the interior of West Africa sent to the Americas was predominantly male, which conformed to the pattern of trade: individuals from the interior were more likely to be male. Virtually all females who left West Africa as slaves came from near the coast, not from the distant interior, and the absence of Muslim women was almost certainly a factor in the eventual decline of Islam in the Americas. The collapse of social identities occurred for reasons relating to the imposed isolation from Islamic networks in Africa and the Middle East - not because the Middle Passage erased memory as posited by Stanley Elkins (1959), nor because the crossing amounted to a form of social death as argued  
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[^0]:    1 For a discussion of Kaba's life, see Daddi Addoun and Lovejoy, 2004; Warner-Lewis, 2009.  
by Orlando Patterson (1982), but for reasons relating to the internal history of West Africa. The notion of the Middle Passage, as it is frequently used, does not usually take into account the complexities revealed in the biographical profiles examined here. As demonstrated in many studies, the Middle Passage was a complex experience that varied greatly depending upon where people went and what happened to them. Generalized accounts of the 'crossing' usually fail to take into consideration these differences.