Ibrahima Abd ar-Rahman Jallo
By Ronald L. F. Davis and Dawn Dennis

It happened on a sunny afternoon in 1807 at a market crossroads a few miles outside the town of Natchez, Mississippi. This bustling river town on the great Mississippi River halfway between Memphis and New Orleans was just emerging as the center of a wealthy plantation and slave economy. In 1807, it was in the frontier stage of its history, a place notorious for its waterfront saloons and rough life as well as the wealth of its plantation slave-holding elite.

A few miles from this place, a tall majestic looking black man and his African-born friend were selling some vegetables from their garden in a market commonly used by Natchez town folk to buy pumpkins from Native Americans and fresh produce from slaves in the neighborhood. Both men were the slaves of Thomas Foster, one of the many planters in the area who owned at least 20 slaves. Most people in the Natchez vicinity knew about this tall African because he claimed to be the son of an African king. Everyone called him Prince. He had been enslaved since 1794, when he was brought from Africa to the then-Spanish port city of New Orleans.

Although raised and educated as a Muslim in Africa, ar-Rahman probably attended local church gatherings for the enslaved. Whether he kept up his personal prayers to Allah before that eventful day in 1807 is unknown. He had married a devout Christian woman, Isabella, the enslaved mother of his nine children--she is remembered in history as one of the first black Baptists in the Natchez District. This tall, dark-skinned and wooly-haired African spoke and read Arabic and probably understood several other African languages or dialects as well (Bambara, Mandingo or Mandika, and Jallonke languages, at least). We know that he spoke to Thomas Foster through a Mandingo-speaking interpreter upon their first meeting.

Foster greatly valued ar-Rahman because of the respect other slaves accorded him, his loyalty and trustworthiness, his skill in tending cattle, and his managerial abilities in supervising slaves in the cultivation of cotton. Since his purchase from a New Orleans slave trader in 1794, ar-Rahman had become, perhaps, the most trusted slave on the Foster plantation. His full Muslim name was Ibrahima Abd ar-Rahman Jallo.

Because of his loyalty, Ibrahima (which translates literally as Abraham) Abd ar-Rahman occasionally walked to this rural market place a few miles north of Natchez to sell vegetables from the garden that his owner allowed him to keep. Slaveholders often encouraged their most trusted slaves to keep gardens because the produce cut down on the costs of supplies. It was not a common practice, however, for slaveholders to allow slaves to sell the produce and keep the money for themselves. This was a special privilege enjoyed by only a few enslaved people--usually the most trusted.

The event at the marketplace that day caught ar-Rahman by surprise. A white man passing by looked familiar to the observant prince. When the tall African asked the white stranger if he wanted to buy some vegetables, the white man spoke Prince’s Arabic name to him--Ibrahima. Prince was utterly astounded, and that moment began one of the most incredible stories in the history of American slavery. For the next 20 years, the white man, Dr. John Cox, and his own son, William, worked to obtain ar-Rahman’s freedom. It was a long and arduous struggle that made Abd ar-Rahman into a national celebrity--indeed, the most famous black person in America in 1828.

The white man in the carriage had met ar-Rahman quite by accident while Cox was stranded sick in Africa in the early 1780s. Abd ar-Rahman’s father had taken Cox into his care, nursing him back to health. Cox, an Irish doctor employed on an English slave ship, was the first white man ever seen in the home vicinity of ar-Rahman, which lay inland a good distance from the coast. The doctor lived with this royal African family for nearly a year before returning to the coastal region of West Africa under full escort, sailing then to England, and eventually immigrating to America. It was quite by chance that he was in the Natchez neighborhood that day when he came upon the man he had known years ago in Africa.

Within days of their meeting, the whole community of Natchez had heard the story. Most everyone knew that there must have been some truth to the legend surrounding Prince, but no one was sure. Apparently, in 1762, ar-Rahman had been born into the royal family of the Fula nation in Timbo, a city in Futa Jallon, Guinea, a region in West-Central Africa. He was the second or third son (among 33 sons) of a Fula King, who was also and a devout Muslim. Abd ar-Rahman was educated in the Muslim cities of Jenne and Timbuktu, thriving centers of Muslim culture. Jenne, a town of 30,000 people, was located 1,000 miles to the East on the middle Niger River. The city of Timbuktu, about the same size and even more respected as a center of Muslim learning, lay about 12 day’s travel beyond Jenne. In those days, chiefs frequently sent their sons to Muslim cities like Timbuktu to receive a princely education before returning home to assume government duties.

After completing his education, ar-Rahman returned to his father’s kingdom and served as an officer in the military. He achieved several notable victories as a young captain and was given the rank of colonel at the age of 26. In 1788, ar-Rahman led a troop of 2,000 warriors against a group of non-Muslim Africans (called Hebohs) who were disrupting his father’s successful slave trade with Europeans on the coast of West Africa. Ironically, Abd ar-Rahman’s war with these non-Muslim, African opponents to slavery resulted in his own capture and transport down the Gambia River to the coast, where he was sold to British slavers for “two flasks of powder, a few trade muskets, eight hands of tobacco, and two bottles of rum.” Unable to find any fellow Muslims on the coast willing to ransom him, ar-Rahman was then transported nearly 3,000 miles to the Caribbean island of Dominica. After a brief period of being “seasoned” in the islands, he was taken by ship some 1,600 miles to the large slave market town of Spanish New Orleans, located at the mouth of the Mississippi River. From New Orleans, ar-Rahman was loaded onto a barge and transported (pulled) upriver, along with other slaves, to the town of Natchez. There, a young planter named Thomas Foster purchased ar-Rahman and his friend Samba, a fellow Fulaman captured with ar-Rahman, for around $950.00.

Within weeks of his arrival in Natchez, the young prince ran away, humiliated by having his long, royal locks of hair cut short and by being forced to work at menial labor--something this noble cavalry officer had never done in his life. After several weeks wandering alone in the swamps and forest while evading slave-catchers, he realized the futility of his plight and returned to the Foster plantation. In a gesture of submission or perhaps a plea for clemency, the enslaved prince placed the foot of Foster’s astonished wife upon his neck, as if to say that he would henceforth be loyal to his white owners should his life be spared. And, from that day until he was freed in 1828, the Muslim warrior-prince kept his word.

As hard as John Cox tried to win ar-Rahman’s freedom, nothing could budge Foster to give up his most valuable slave and his equally valuable wife, who served as the skilled midwife and doctor on the Foster plantation. Foster was not convinced that ar-Rahman would be better off as a freed slave in Mississippi, especially with his large family still enslaved. Probably, too, Foster valued ar-Rahman and knew that he would be difficult to replace. And, freeing slaves was a highly controversial issue in the slave South. Also, it is likely that Foster did not put too much stock in the idea of ar-Rahman’s special status. For most Americans, even an African prince was still considered little more than a savage. African cities like Timbuktu were depicted as villages with mud houses and mud castles, and they were not valued generally as places of advanced civilization.

Things began to change for the better, however, in the 1820s. The growing opposition to slavery on moral grounds began spreading across the nation like a wildfire. Among the voices of opposition was the American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816. This organization, which included a Mississippi branch in the late 1820s, favored sending free blacks to colonies in Africa, where they could thrive as independent and free people. England established a colony in Sierra Leone on the coast of West Africa for just that purpose, and the ACS followed suite with the U.S. supported colony of Liberia.

These so-called colonizers included a variety of individuals, who did not all oppose slavery. Among them were a small but growing number of slaveholders who endorsed sending freed slaves and freeborn blacks to Africa. Supporters of slavery as an institution, they feared that the growing number of free blacks who lived largely beyond the control of slaveholders would subvert and undermine the institution of slavery. In their minds, sending freed blacks to Africa was the best safeguard for the institution itself.

Other slaveholders, who favored freeing some of their slaves as a reward for good and faithful service, also thought that colonization might be the best option available. These men and women were even willing to pay for their favored slaves’ passage to Africa. And, some of those slaveholders who fathered children with enslaved women supported colonization as a means of providing for and removing their mulatto offspring from public view.

Still other colonizers who were opposed to slavery altogether on moral grounds or for political reasons supported colonization as the first step toward ending slavery. This group included many free African Americans in northern states. Eventually, most free African American and white abolitionists moved away from colonization, seeing it as a means of sending the most talented blacks out of the country while retaining the rest in slavery. This break did not happen fully, however, until the 1830s.

In a story that reads more like fiction than fact, Cox’s son, William, in partnership with Andrew Marschalk, the editor of a local Natchez newspaper and a man of significant influence in the State who had a nose for a good story, joined forces in the 1820s to call national attention to ar-Rahman’s plight. Both men knew ar-Rahman personally, respected his character, and admired him as a person. Marschalk began printing articles on ar-Rahman, alerting the American Colonization Society to the story. Eventually, the Federal Government got involved when Henry Clay, Secretary of State in the administration of President John Quincy Adams who was a leading opponent of slavery, personally intervened to persuade the Foster family to free ar-Rahman. Clay, a founding member of the ACS, probably supported the move in hopes of establishing better relations with Morocco, the only African nation with which the U. S. had some diplomatic ties. (It seems that Marschalk had convinced Clay that ar-Rahman was a Moorish prince.)

Finally, Thomas Foster agreed to sell ar-Rahman for the low sum of $200 with the condition that his esteemed slave be sent immediately back to Africa. Unwilling to leave his wife behind, ar-Rahman, with Marschalk, persuaded local whites, some who were members of the Mississippi Colonization Society, to buy and emancipate ar-Rahman’s wife, Isabella, in 1828.

But what about his children, nine youngsters ranging in age from seven to 27, and ar-Rahman’s numerous grandchildren, who were all still enslaved? For the next year, ar-Rahman was feted and celebrated in northern cities from Cincinnati to Boston in a campaign to raise funds to buy his children’s freedom. He even met with President John Quincy Adams. Often dressed as a Moorish prince, ar-Rahman thrilled audiences by his remarkable story. Becoming something of a showman, ar-Rahman talked to anyone who would listen, hoping to raise money to free his family. He spoke with members of the American Colonization Society (ACS), many who supported slavery, as well as with abolitionists and African Americans in the northern states, who mostly opposed colonization.

To increase donations, ar-Rahman told his supporters that he would move first to Liberia on the West Coast of Africa, a place established by the ACS as a homeland for freed slaves from America. He promised to use that base to spread Christianity to the African pagans and to help establish trading relations between Liberia and other African nations. He explained his willingness to move first to Liberia by saying that, once in Africa, he would be able to raise the required funds from his African relatives to purchase the his American family’s freedom. His supporters included noted abolitionists, such as some northern merchants who hoped to partner with him in trading ventures, as well as African Americans, including John Russwurm, the editor of the nation’s first African-American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal. Clearly, ar-Rahman was willing to tell his audiences whatever they wished to hear to raise enough money to ransom his family.

His willingness to seek the support of abolitionists alienated ar-Rahman’s Natchez based supporters, especially Marschalk, who accused him of betraying his promise to leave immediately for Africa. In Marschalk’s opinion, ar-Rahman had become a dupe of the abolitionists, and the prince’s once avid supporter turned on him with a vengeance by attacking him at every opportunity in his paper and in articles published in the national press. The agitation against the celebrated prince even played into national politics when supporters of Andrew Jackson, a pro-slavery candidate for President, attacked the Adams administration for using ar-Rahman to undermine slavery as an institution.

Having raised about half the purchase money he needed to buy his four sons, ar-Rahman, aged 67, and his beloved wife, Isabella, set sail for Africa, along with around 150 other black immigrants. After a difficult journey, they arrived in Liberia. Now, the story takes an ironic and tragic twist. Soon after reaching Liberia, and before he could contact his African family in Guinea, Abd ar-Rahman contacted a serious illness and died. The Muslim prince had reached his home continent but not his homeland. Left alone with neither her husband nor her children was Isabella, the woman who had stood by her African prince from the very beginning. All of her children and grandchildren were still back in Mississippi as enslaved people.

In the following years, ar-Rahman’s New York supporters purchased two of his sons and their families. They were reunited with their mother in Liberia while the remaining children (two other sons and five daughters) and grandchildren remained enslaved in America. Legend has it that a caravan was on its way to Liberia from his homeland bringing $6,000 in gold dust for ar-Rahman to use to ransom his family out of slavery. With the news of his death, the caravan turned back.

It is not known what happened to all of the offspring of ar-Rahman and Isabella, or if any of ar-Rahman’s Liberian family converted to Islam or ever returned to the homeland of their princely father in the land of Fula. The senior Foster died in 1828, and ar-Rahman’s remaining family in America was distributed among the Foster’s nine daughters and four sons. Today, the Liberian descendents of ar-Rahman and Isabella are mainly Christians, following in the tradition of Isabella. And, only recently have their American descendants, also Christians, made contact with their Liberian relatives.

This incredible story of the enslaved Muslim prince Ibrahima Abd ar-Rhaman Jallo offers significant insight into the complexity of the slave experience in the American South.

• By the 1700s, much of North Africa and West Africa had been converted to Islam, which spread across Africa from Arabia, usually due to the influence of Muslim merchants and clerics. For the most part, African leaders embraced Islam first and then pressed it upon their peoples. Some scholars estimate that perhaps as many as 40,000 Muslim Africans were among the enslaved brought to North America before the trade was abolished in 1808. Yet, by the time of the Civil War, the Muslim faith among enslaved Africans and their descendants had virtually disappeared in the American South. What do you make of this? How can you explain the disappearance of the Islam among the African enslaved?



• Why do you think that ar-Rahman’s owner refused to free the old man’s children or to assist him in taking his family back to Africa? This seems at first glance to have been the actions of a very hard-hearted man. Yet, Abd ar-Rahman was allowed great freedom to come and go almost as he wished, which suggests a more complex story about the relationship between the two men. How would your perspective on the story change if you knew this additional piece of information? In addition, one of ar-Rahman’s daughters was the enslaved lover of one of Foster’s sons, who abandoned his white wife and children for her. What is the importance of knowing that Ibrahima’s wife, Isabella, was valued as a midwife on the Foster plantation, and that she was one of the first blacks to be baptized in the Baptist denomination in the area? Do these facts matter in explaining the story of Ibrahima Abd ar-Rahman?



• What do you think of the effort to send freed blacks back to Africa? Would you have supported this action by joining the American Colonization Society? Do you think it was a good idea? Why did the American Colonization Society include slaveholders as well as abolitionists in its ranks? Why not, as an alternative solution, send instead the white owners of the enslaved back to their European homelands and give their lands in America to the enslaved people who had labored on them as slaves? Have other undesirable people in the eyes of the white majority in this nation’s history ever been shipped back to the homelands from which they had come? How do you think American history would be different today if all the enslaved people had been returned to Africa?



• Why do you think that Secretary of State Henry Clay got involved in freeing an enslaved black man? What about President John Quincy Adams? Why do you think that he was interested in the case? Research the history of these two men and speculate on their motives and interests. Can you think of any other incident in the U.S. history of slavery that involved John Quincy Adams? Look at his career after he was defeated for a second term as President in 1828.



• What do you think happened to ar-Rahman’s children and grandchildren? Additional research might turn up some clues about what happened to the children who stayed in Mississippi. Do you think that the ones who were sent to African stayed in Liberia? Do you think they ever made it home to their father’s land in the region of Timbo? Do you think that they made contact with their American brothers and sisters? How might that have happened? And if they did not, how might their descendants be put in touch with each other today.

Alford, Terry. Prince Among Slaves: the True Story of an African Prince Sold into Slavery in the American South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, 1986.

Austin, Allen D. African Muslim Slaves in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook. New York: Garland Press, 1984, pp. 121-263.

Austin, Allen D. African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles. New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 65-85.

Diouf, Sylviane A. Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

Staudenraus, P.J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.

Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.