African Muslims

in Antebellum America
In the name of God, the merciful! the com-
passionate! God bless our Lord Mohammed his
prophet, and his descendants, and his followers,
and prosper them exceedingly. Praise be to God
the Lord of all creatures! the merciful, the com-
passionate king of the day of judgment !
Thee we adore, and of thee we implore assistance
! Guide us in the right way, the way of those with
whom thou art well pleased, and not of those with
whom thou art angry, nor of those who are in
error. Amen!

The Fatiha, the Opening Surah of the Quran, Islam's First Prayer, of Chamo [Chiemo}
and Translation, Georgia, c. 1830.
 African Muslims
in Antebellum America
Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles

Allan D. Austin

ROVTLEDCjE
New York and London
This edition published 2011 by Routledge

Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
711 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10017

Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
2 Park Square, Milton Park
Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
 Contents

Acknowledgments Vll

Preface IX

List of Maps and Illustrations Xl

1. "There Are Good Men in America, 3

but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa"-
and Its Muslims
2. Glimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 31
in Antebellum North America
3. Job Ben Solomon: 51
African Nobleman and a Father
of African American Literature
4. Abd ar-Rahman and His Two Amazing 65
American Journeys
5. Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali: 85
Almaamys on Georgia's Sapelo and St. Simon's Islands
6. Lamine Kebe, Educator 115
7. Vmar ibn Said's Legend(s), Life, and Letters 129
8. The Transatlantic Trials of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua 159
9. Mohammed Ali ben Said, or Nicholas Said: 173
His Travels on Five Continents
Index 187
 Acknowledgments

Early on in the original version of this project-the one I began in the late 1970s
thinking it might lead to an article-my mentor and the collector of the widest
range of information on African Americans, the late Prof. Sidney Kaplan of the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, introduced me to several of the minor
African Muslim figures to add to those with whom I was already familiar. The
most productive and generous correspondent was Prof. Thomas C. Parramore of
Raleigh, North Carolina, who knew more about Umar ibn Said and his writings
than anyone else. Parramore also introduced me to papers on Osman and S'Quash.
Mary C. Beaty, the reference librarian at the Davidson College Library in Davidson,
North Carolina, provided further documents on and a portrait of Umar. Sylvia
Lara of the University of Cantinas in Sao Paulo, Brazil, told me about Mahommah
Baquaqua making it to England.
Original translations of manuscripts in Arabic were provided by three busy
men: Dr. Elias Saad, scholar interested in fellow scholars from Timbuktu to
Baghdad and beyond, Wellesley, Massachusetts; my good friend and Muslim
source of inspiration, Dr. Kamal Ali, Westfield State University, Westfield,
Massachusetts; and Dr. Abdullah Basabrian, graduate student at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, in the early 1980s, now somewhere in Saudi Arabia. The
recent polisher of these early translations, Muhammad al-Ahari, Chicago, an inde-
fatigable tracer of lost Muslims, has brought several corrections and additions to
this book.
Because I submitted an acknowledgments page too early to the first version of
viii Acknowledgments

the stories that follow, my African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (New
York: Garland, 1984), I herewith want to belatedly thank my staff-a sort of
revolving one, as I remember-of copyeditors eventually under the eye of Phyllis
Korper, who made my first collection of old papers, notes, introductions, and
photographs into a book.
I want now to thank Marlie Wasserman, who brought my manuscript to
Routledge and gave me some much-needed early guidance, and Connie Oehring,
whose precise copyediting has corrected and streamlined my ponderous prose.
I thank you one and all.
Finally, I want also to express my appreciation first to my Humanities
Department and the faculty members who approved and Vice President Malvina
Rau who authorized a sabbatical year from my academic home, Springfield College,
Springfield, Massachusetts; and second to those enthusiastic and wide-ranging
scholars Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Richard Newman, and Randall Burkett at the
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University,
where I spent 1994-1995; and, most emphatically, to my wife, Joyce, for financ-
ing out of her business that sabbatical year and for staying with me through my
several announcements that I was just about finished with the sometimes tortuous
extracting and bridging of the original African Muslims in Antebellum America.
 Preface

This book is a radical condensation of my African Muslims in Antebellum America: A

Sourcebook (New York: Garland, 1984), an illustrated collection of the majority of
then-available documents accompanied by introductions and extensive notes. It
is also an update including short notices of about forty more people, four manu-
scripts in Arabic, a portrait, and scholarship discovered since 1984. It reprints five
of six maps but has thirteen fewer illustrations. Instead of notes and a bibliography,
I have provided a Selected Reading list at the end of each chapter. In nearly all
cases, the original documents and citations from obscure sources may be found in
my earlier book.
Some names of major figures are changed here. I continue to use the familiar
Job Ben Solomon, but I have changed Abdul Rahahman to Abd ar-Rahman,
because this is the way he pronounced his name to his earliest interviewers and it
is closer to an Arabic standard; Lamen Kebe to Lamine Kebe, because contempo-
rary writers were not sure how to pronounce the name and the latter pronunciation
better approaches the Serahule standard; and Omar to Vmar, because contempo-
raries heard different pronunciations and Vmar is closer to the Arabic standard. I
discuss the pronunciation of Bilali in Chapter 5.
 Maps and Illustrations

Map 1. The Homelands.

Map II. Known American Homes and Travels.
Map III. Travels in Africa and to Asia of Mohammed Ali ben Said.
Map IV. European and Asian Travels of Mohammed Ali ben Said.
Map V. The American Travels of Mohammed Ali ben Said.

Fig. l. Frontispiece: The Fatiha, the Opening Surah of the Quran, Islam's
First Prayer, ofCharno [Chierno} and Translation, Georgia, c. 1830.
Fig. 2. View of the City of Timbuktu by Visitor Rene Caillie, from Caillie,
Travels Through Central Africa to Timbuktu, 1830.
Fig. 3. Muslim Soldier and Chief in Sangara or Kankan (Guinea), from
Alexander Laing, Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko, and Soolima Countries
in Western Africa, 1825.
Fig. 4. Three Muslims in Ghana, from J. Dupuis, Journal of a Residence in
Ashanti, 1824.
Fig. 5. A Muslim of Kong (now Ivory Coast) in a Military Costume, from
Dupuis, Journal, 1824.
Fig. 6. Yarrow Mamout of Georgetown, D.C., from Oil Painting by Charles
Willson Peale, 1819; courtesy of Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Fig. 7. Fatiha, Surahs ll4-the Last, ll3, ll2, llO by "a Negro Slave of Capt.
David Anderson," Sourh Carolina, 1768. Savannah Historical Society.
xii Maps and Illustrations

Fig. 8. Osman [Usuman?}, Runaway in Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina,

1852, Porte Crayon (pseud. David H. Strother), The Old South Illustrated,
1856, p. 148.
Fig. 9. Job Ben Solomon, Oil Painting by William Hoare, England, 1733,
photo courtesy of Sidney Kaplan.
Fig. 10. Ibrahim Abd ar-Rahman, Engraving of Crayon Drawing by Henry
Inman, New York, 1828, from The Colonizationist andJournal of Freedom,
Boston, 1834, frontispiece, photo courtesy of Amherst College.
Fig. 11. Ibrahim Abd ar-Rahman, Variation on the Fatiha Presented as an
Autobiographical Sketch and ar-Rahman's "Translation," October 10,
1828, from John Trumbull Papers, Yale University.
Fig. 12. Abd ar-Rahman, Variation on the Fatiha Presented as the Lord's Prayer,
Philadelphia, December 1828, courtesy of American Philosophical
Society, Philadelphia.
Fig. 13. Pages 11 and 10 of Bilali's Book, Sapelo Island, Georgia, c. 1840.
Georgia State Library, Atlanta.
Fig. 14. Thomas Spalding, from E. Merton Coulter, Thomas Spalding of Sapelo,
frontispiece.
Fig. 15 Bilali Descendant Shad Hall of Sapelo, late 1930s, from Drums and
Shadows, 1940.
Fig. 16. Bilali Descendant Katie Brown of Sapelo, late 1930s, from Drums and
Shadows, 1940.
Fig. 17. Salih Bilali Look-alike-According to James H. Couper, 1842, "Native
of Hausa" from James C. Prichard, Illustrations to the Researches into the
Physical History of Mankind, 1844.
Fig. 18. Descendant Ben Sullivan, St. Simon's Island, 1938, from Margaret
Davis Cate, Early Days in Coastal Georgia, 1955, p. 154.
19 & 20. John Couper and James Hamilton Couper, Photos of oil portraits, cour-
tesy of Mrs. Mary Thiesen, a direct descendant.
Fig.21. Umar ibn Said, Photograph from a Daguerreotype, 1850s or 1860s,
Davidson College Library, Davidson, North Carolina.
22 & 23. The Earliest Known Ms. (two pages) by Umar, the "inclosed letter"
from John Louis Taylor to Francis S. Key, 1819. Franklin Trask Library,
Andover Newton Theological Seminary, Newton, Mass.
Fig. 24 Only Annotated Page (the final p. of Revelation) in Umar's Bible,
Davidson College.
Fig. 25. Umar's Lord's Prayer (mismarked "23rd Psalm"), 1828? John Owen
Papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
Fig. 26. List of Owen Family Names (mismarked "The Lord's Prayer"), John
Owen Papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.
 Maps and Illustrations xiii

Fig. 27. The Lord's Prayer, 1840?, Davidson College.

Fig. 28. The Lord's Prayer, signed by Umar, Davidson College.
Fig. 29. The 23rd Psalm, 1855,John Frederick Foard, North America and Africa:
Their Past, Present and Future and Key to the Negro Problem, 1904.
Fig. 30. Umar's Latest Known Extant Writing: Surah 1lO, 1857, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Fig. 3l. List of Owen Family Names, Eliza H. Owen Scrapbook owned by Mrs.
Trammell, Atlanta, photo courtesy of Thomas C. Parramore.
Fig. 32. The Bismillah, 23rd Psalm, and Quranic phrase "All good is from
Allah, and no other. "
Fig. 33. The Bismillah and "This is How You Pray, You .... " Both from Eliza
H. Owen Scrapbook.
34 & 35. Cover Page and First Page ofUmar's "Life." Photos courtesy of Derrick
Joshua Beard.
Fig. 36. Cover of Mahommah G. Baquaqua's Biography, Detroit, 1854, Burton
Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
Fig. 37. Mahommah Baquaqua and Missionary W. 1. Judd, c. 1848, from
Andrew T. Foss and E. Mathews, Facts for Baptist Churches, 1850. Miller
Library, Colby College, Waterville, Maine.
Fig. 38. Mohammed Ali or Nicholas Said, Carte de Visite, 1863? Massachusetts
Historical Society, Boston.
Fig. 39. Mohammed el Amin el Kanemy, Bornu's George Washington, from
Dixon Denham and Hugh Clapperton, Narrative of Travels and Discoveries
in Northern and Central Africa in ... 1822, 23, and 24, 1826.
Fig. 40. "Entrance of the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts (Colored) Regiment into
Charleston, Feb. 21, 1865" from Thomas Nast Engraving for Harper's
Weekly.
 African Muslims
in Antebellum America
 LlJU ~UIJ ()UU /SUU
I I I , I l-+-------f I M,dilmanean Sea ~
100 'l.l\fl t:.fV\ 100 )
Scale of Miles L Tripoli·
..,
, Coutries - HAUSA
I
Towns = Katsina I
LIBYA
f-. Modern Natiolls = NIGERIA )
1 "- Geo!!:raphic F£lIh.1l'c ~ = Lake Chad
I
r----.J " Individuals = Mohammed Ali boeR Sa!d )
I "- , (
N1 I ,
I
,-':I.... ) • Murzuk
I " '-~'\
r--' ... >- - , .,
, I"
""
.ALGERIA ,, '<
Taoudeni-
" '-.. .....
, ,.
Ariamie- Ocean
"The, Sahara
\
MAURITANIA MALI ... -. \
",
ArouHn_ \
1--1" Bilma ..
, CHAD
Timbuldu (Abu B.kr as Slddlq)
NIGER
]
~ ,-
::f r
I
~
~,.._ <Ie ~.a".
Kat,'n••'>, ~ 0:.tk Lake Chad
,.'~~ (., K",a'
.r-- ~obBmmed I ,

HAUSA AU ben Said) I

,I I \ '
r ,- - ~
EAST OF FUTA JALLON
-.:,p (Mohammed K.u NIGERIA
~-::. Lamlne Kebe) ,\\t'f."oJ.e\l·
,
9<- \
~ \
"'~ /
/ I
I'
I
CAMEROON \
r I
I \
Wil1dwurd Coast Bi¥ht of Benil1

Map L The Homelands.

 1
IIThere Are Ciood Men in America,
but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa ll

-and Its Muslims

"There are good men in America, but all are very ignorant of Africa," declared
the African-born Lamine Kebe in 1835, after forty years of American slavery in
three Southern states. Kebe might also have said, "and very ignorant of Islam
in both Africa and America. " Criticisms, recollections, and stories by and about
Old World immigrants and the ways they reacted to and changed the New
World after 1492 have been told and retold throughout the centuries. Stories
have differed, of course, with the teller, beginning with the Native Americans,
Spanish, French, British, Dutch, or the Africans these four European nations
brought with them. Stories told by those who arrived later-Swedes, Irish,
Germans, Italians, Chinese, Jews, Arabs, Latin Americans, and Southeast
Asians-have also varied considerably, as do those by males and females, rich
and poor, free and indentured or enslaved, and Christians and non-Christians.
Stories by African immigrants, including those who were, like Kebe, Muslims,
have been fewer for many reasons that I will explore later. Here the emphasis
is on stories by African Muslims-a proud people, influential beyond their
numbers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean-who until very recently had
been almost completely neglected by modern America's eagle-eyed historians
and storytellers.
It is a fact, of course, that most African Muslims, like the great majority of
the first Africans in America, remain anonymous or are little more than names
 Job Be. SololllOo
Laml.nJay

Um"" Lbn Said

OUall

ToWll. ad Cities = Boston

Individual. = YalTo.. Mamout

JAMAICA

~Kingston

Abu Bakr aJ-Slddlq. Mohammod Kaha, "Beaj... la Coebraue,"

"WUJtam R.a"ord," and uCbarles Lartco"

Map II. Known American Homes and Travels.

4
 "There Are Cjood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 5

in slave-property lists. Their individual arrivals appeared in no public records,

and no accounts of sales from slave ships have survived. Very few were allowed
to go to school, to own property, to marry, to go to court, or to have their deaths
legally recorded or probated. Mricans and their children in America have always
been of interest, of course, as laboring property, strangers, exotics, threats, and,
in the Constitution, as discounted, disenfranchised persons-each three-fifths
of a white male-used in yet another way to strengthen the voting power of
slaveholders. But those who wanted African slaves could not or dared not
concern themselves with Muslim or non-Muslim cultural and moral acquisi-
tions over their need to get a return on their investments, to get their crops in,
or to get their parlor doors open or closed. Few could look into such moral
contradictions as the enslavement of literate people who were monotheistic
and familiar with Biblical figures, even though such knowledge was supposed
to be honored by Christians above all others except, perhaps, making money.
Most slaveholders had to suppress manifestations of non-Christian religious
practices that might be used to unite or direct their slaves. If necessary, they
found some way to accommodate the proudest people by recognizing and
rewarding a supposedly exceptional slave with limited power over others. All
masters had to oppose the distribution of letters in a language they could not
read. Accordingly, those who wrote about the people considered in this book
were very careful about how much they told and whom they told.
Despite such practical considerations, however, much evidence of the
Muslim presence has survived. Lists of slaves include Muslim names. Some
family and church documents, including birth and death notices of slaves, add
an occasional informative note; runaway advertisements provide useful descrip-
tive information; and some slaves became worthy of notice in print for a vari-
ety of reasons. Seventy-five African-born Muslims who were brought to North
America between 1730 and 1860-severalliterate in Arabic-are discussed in
this book. Maps I and II point out African homelands and American homes
respectively.
Stories about some of these African Muslims may appear to be fantastic, but
collateral sources corroborate each narrative. The protagonists were often the
tellers; their stories are instructive and touching on several levels. Eight inspired
respectable attention from people with access to printers.
Chapter 3 discusses the earliest known "life and thoughts" of an African
who had been a slave in the New World. The fifty-four-page Some Memoirs a/the
Life a/lob Ben Solomon (1734), the oldest text in African American literature, is
about a runaway in Maryland, a proud historian of his religion and country to
6 African Muslims in Antebellum America

the nobility and intelligentsia in England, and a wealthy returnee to the coun-
try now called Senegal. It is a very respectable and self-respecting piece writ-
ten by an English friend. Summary notices of Job's remarkable experiences
have appeared regularly over the past two and a half centuries but have seldom
been related to stories of his peers.
The dramatic history, travel, and letters of Ibrahim Abd ar-Rahman,
captured as a cavalry officer in Guinea, later a runaway, and then a plantation
manager in Natchez, Mississippi, who was freed as an old man and who
campaigned to raise money to free his children; whose sense of self and digni-
ty impressed many American leaders, black and white, across the Northern
states; and who scared newspaper editors in the Old Southwest before he and his
wife gained passage to Liberia, Africa, in 1828, are worthy of a feature movie.
Limited versions of his wonderful story have been retold often. Ar-Rahman
said he received some education in Timbuktu. The city, as seen in 1828, appears
in Fig. 2. For an early depiction of Muslims from Guinea see Fig. 3.
Another strong African and American, Bilali, originally from Guinea but
taken to the Bahamas and then to the North American mainland, was a plan-
tation manager supervising 500 to 1,000 slaves-without white overseership.
He was also a religious father, an imam (Arabic) or almaamy (Fulfulde) who in
the 1840s began to write a thirteen-page manual in Arabic for his Sapelo Island,
Georgia, umma-the only known antebellum African Muslim community in
the United States. His reticent purchaser, Thomas Spalding-a contributor
to some local newspapers-remained mum about his prized slave's accom-
plishments and acquirements. In the 1930s, however, descendants recalled
Bilali and his Muslim daughters for modern interviewers. His "manual"-for
years thought to be a diary-still awaits a complete translation.
On the neighboring island of St. Simon's, a comparably competent figure,
Salih Bilali, Bilali's friend, had a similarly reticent master. But the latter did
write a revealing letter to the most knowledgeable American student of North
African languages and culture, William Brown Hodgson-whose name appears
often in this book-on his African Muslim's intelligence, leadership skills,
and homeland of Mali.
Only fragments of Lamine Kebe's remarks on Africa and his Guinean
homeland have been found so far. But his comments on teaching were printed
in an American educational journal in 1836-a year after Kebe had returned
to Liberia. Kebe and Umar corresponded in Arabic in 1835. The Christian
New Yorker who introduced them to one another, Theodore Dwight, Jr., was
a professional writer who seems to have sincerely believed that at least some
Fig. 2. View of the City of Timbuktu by Visitor Rene Caillie, from Caillie, Travels Through
Central A/rica to Timbuktu, 1830.

Fig. 3. Muslim Soldier and Chief in Sangara or Kankan (Guinea), from Alexander Laing,
Travels in the Timanee, Kooranko, and Sooli177a Countries in Western Africa, 1825.

7
8 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Africans were worthy of intellectual respect, but he was also a colonizationist

intent on shipping them back to Africa.
Vmar ibn Said, captured in a battle between rival armies in Senegal and
transported to Charleston, South Carolina, from which he fled to Fayetteville,
North Carolina, has also been the subject of several articles over the years.
These narratives often create a distance between Vmar's life and the legends
about him. Vmar was a writer, according to several visitors who solicited
evidence from him. From at least thirty such mentions, thirteen manuscript
pages from the Quran or the Bible, in Arabic, were known to exist before late
1995. Then the manuscript of his sixteen-page "Life," composed in 1831-
one of two known autobiographies of slaves written in Arabic in the New
World-reappeared. This discovery is significant because only translations by
missionaries had been available previously. In these early translations Vmar
rejects Islam for Christianity-hence the many memorial articles. The origi-
nal, rediscovered, is being translated now. Preliminary readings, however,
suggest that Vmar did not deny Islam, but did add Christian prayers to his spir-
itual stock-a not uncommon practice for religious Muslims among Christians,
pleasing to the latter and consistent with the Quran that honors Jesus as an
early prophet. Nothing indicates that he started to believe that Jesus was the
final prophet or that there were three gods or a three-part God, as Christians
suggest in prayers to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Mahommah G. Baquaqua, an indulged child and near-alcoholic adult in
Benin-and later in Brazil and Haiti-collaborated with a naive but sympa-
thetic British-born editor on an entertaining sixty-five-page biography-auto-
biography (Detroit, Michigan,1854) that includes the only known narrative
by a one-time slave in Brazil and by an African in an antebellum American
college (Central in upstate New York) that had black professors. This source
remained completely untapped by historians until the 1970s. Fig. 4 shows
three Muslims from areas familiar to Baquaqua before he was taken away.
Mohammed Ali ben Said, who was kidnapped in northern Nigeria and
marched across the Sahara Desert, eventually made his way to the Vnited States
by way of Russia and Europe. Apparently a quick learner with at least eight
languages at his command, Said became a schoolteacher in Detroit around
1860. He wrote, in English, the only known autobiography of an African-born
soldier in the Vnion Army. His Odyssean tale was published in the Atlantic
Monthly in 1867. That fact did not help him to become better known; the arti-
cle and he remained out of sight until the 1980s.
About seventy-five other African Muslims who were in America at the same
 "There Are Ciood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 9

Fig. 4. Three Muslims in Ghana, from J. Dupuis,Journal of a Residence in Ashanti, 1824.

time are introduced in Chapter 2. Much less has been discovered about these
potentially interesting stories and instructive informants on unfamiliar peoples,
conditions, religions, and cultures. Perhaps they did not meet responsive and
trustworthy interviewers with access to presses; perhaps they did not find
sufficient encouragement or sufficient reasons to tell their tales. European,
American, and Christian interviewers, amanuenses, editors, translators, print-
ers, and observers were impressed with the evident pride, dignity, and intelli-
gence of these people, but during an age when little respect was given to Africans
or Muslims, they were usually timid about advertising such reactions, as was the
case with those mentioned earlier except within circumscribed areas or according
to certain agendas. Job was treated well by humane Englishmen; Abd ar-
Rahman was part of a campaign aimed at sending intelligent, self-respecting
African Americans away from America, and, perhaps, at stirring Southern guilt
and Northern senses of superiority over the matter of slavery. Umar was
promoted as a convert to Christianity. The others were made known to a few
friends and ethnological specialists. None was taken up by an American
abolitionist.
It is undoubtedly true that those Africans who did talk were not in full
10 African Muslims in Antebellum America

control over what whites printed. But it is also true that many of these narra-
tors were aware of the agendas of their listeners, and some expressed their own
purposes and managed to fulfill them to varying extents. Several of these people
left their marks on descendants in the lower Mississippi River valley, in Georgia,
and who knows where else? Scholars have only recently begun to investigate
possible connections between these early Muslims and Muslim movements
that rose in the 1920s in the American North.
Still, together and apart, these eight long stories and shorter glimpses of
African Muslims in antebellum America provide valuable contributions to a
truly comprehensive story of Americans and tell more about first-generation
African Americans than any other single source. These narratives often include

Fig. 5. A Muslim of Kong (now Ivory Coast) in a Military

Costume, from Dupuis ,J ottrnal, 1824.
 'There Are (jood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 11

unique first-person accounts of West African communities, religions, cultures,

and troubles at a time when few white people were allowed by African rulers
to venture inland from coastal ports or riverbanks. Only three of the narrators
had seen whites before they arrived at debarkation points on the coast or on
African rivers. None were captured by Europeans or Americans. None were
Moors or Arabs; all were Africans from below the Sahara Desert who had been
caprured in wars or in kidnappings by non-Muslim or Muslim enemies.
Map 1 shows the locations of their homelands in the area Arabs called the
bilad as-Sudan, or land of the blacks. All of their stories began 200 to 800 miles
from any coast. They also began where Islam was strong, in Dar aI-Islam, where
believers were in political control, or where they were gaining strength or
comfort or security in Dar al-kufr, lands of struggle with unbelievers. Their
families were prominent politically, religiously, professionally, commercially, or
militarily. Job was in training to be a local imam, or religious leader; Bilali
probably was too. Abd ar-Rahman was a cavalry officer; Vmar was a teacher and
trader; Kebe was a schoolteacher. Others were in training for such offices. Job,
Abd ar-Rahman, and Kebe had begun their own families in Africa.
They were trained so well in the tenets of their faith that nearly all adhered
to the religion of their parents despite years of blandishments by Christian
missionaries in the New World. Nearly all wished to return to Africa, despite
witnessing the wonders of the Western world and despite what must have been
traumatic experiences in the Old. The majority of those discussed in this book
had impressive models back home and did not-as some latter-day theorists
have presumed-feel the need to adopt white role models.
It may be argued that these people were elite Africans. It is true that they
were not from peasant, laboring classes, although some were herders, rice
planters, and blacksmiths. It may also be argued that they enjoyed a more
established religion, culture, and sense of self than did non-Muslims. But other
West African individuals who got caught up in the Atlantic slave trade-
Akan, Ashanti, Bambaras, Dahomeans, Ibos, Wolofs, and Yorubas, for notable
examples-were equally impressive on this side of the Middle or Bitter Passage,
over the "bitter water," as Lamine Kebe called the ocean. Nothing written here
should be construed as saying that African Muslims were innately superior to
fellow Africans who were not Muslims.
Strong practitioners of indigenous religions appear to have been no more
likely than Muslims or those who mixed the two to become "Sambos"-
psychologically dulled, culturally deprived creatures, according to one modern
theory-because of the trauma of capture, of being torn out of Africa, and of
12 African Muslims in Antebellum America

being thrown into the foul slave ships plying the Bitter Passage to the New
World. In fact, several Muslims, non-Muslims, and non-Christians earned
names such as King, Prince, Queen, or Cleopatra by the proud bur politic ways
in which they carried themselves. The strongest people found ways to balance
accommodations they made to their purchasers against accommodations they
wrested from the latter. The stories of non-Muslim individuals brought to the
New World also deserve attention; here, however, the focus is on African
Muslims, who have been peculiarly slighted in American history and literature.
Perhaps I ought to add that all of the leading figures in this book are men.
These stories were gathered by men in an era when women were only beginning
to be writers who could follow their own agendas. Still, we do hear something
about Job's wives; about Isabella, obstetric practitioner and gynecologist and
Baptist wife of Abd ar-Rahman; about female teachers in Africa known by
Kebe; about the wives and daughters ofBilali Muhammad and his friend Salih
Bilali and female descendants of both in the 1930s; and about some abused
and some angelic women known to Mahommah Baquaqua.
Considered together, the stories collected here also involve-not always in
a positive light-prominent American figures: statesmen, ethnologists, colo-
nizationists, novelists, historians, and racial propagandists of several sorts.
These include James Oglethorpe, founder of the colony of Georgia, who helped
Job escape American slavery; President John Quincy Adams, whom Abd ar-
Rahman called the best piece of furniture in the White House; Mark Twain,
whose irrepressible racism led him to imagine a cannibal in a portrait of Abd
ar-Rahman; and the still-popular historical novelist James A. Michener, who
thought that novelist Alex Haley erred when he made his ancestral African
hero of Roots (1976) a Muslim. Michener declared that Haley had not given a
"true reflection of the past," and no American or European historians disagreed.
That a "true reflection of the past" including African Muslims had to wait
until the nation's bicentennial, when Haley transformed himself into a latter-day
griot or jelli (West African family praise-singers and historians), is due to sever-
al causes that will be explored later. Suffice it to say that the oldest is the ancient
struggle between Christianity and Islam that began in the seventh century of the
Common Era (CE), when the advent of the latter led to spiritual, intellectual,
economic, and military conflict and enslavement by each of the other's follow-
ers into the nineteenth century. From Columbus's day through the thirteen
colonies' declaration of independence on July 4, 1776, and into the early days
of U.S. history, the struggle against Muslims was one of the most significant
 "There Are C/ood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 13

issues in Christendom. Muslims occasionally appeared in political and literary

works by Europeans and sometimes in those by Americans. The first treaty of the
new nation was made with Morocco; one of its first international military adven-
tures, on "the shores of Tripoli," North Africa, is memorialized in "The Marine's
Hymn"; and a number of stories were told of Christians-especially women-
enslaved by Muslims around the Mediterranean. The most trustworthy novel on
the latter subject was Royall Tyler's The Algerine Captive (1797).
African Muslim individuals, however, were largely unnoticed. In the nine-
teenth century Europeans gained industrial and technological superiority over
Muslims, making the latter as unthreatening as other Africans. The most influ-
ential European philosophers, David Hume (1746), Immanuel Kant (1764),
and G.W.F. Hegel (1813) declared-admittedly without sufficient evidence-
that Africans had not and could not become self-governing, rational, spiritu-
al, or literate and, according to Hegel, could only approach "civilization" with
Muslim or Christian help. American philosophers such as Thomas Jefferson
(1785) and Noah Webster (1843) overlooked any examples Gob, poet Phillis
Wheatley, autobiographer Olaudah Equiano, and others) that suggested a differ-
ent perspective, though Job was noticed as a Moorish African.
Trends in the treatment of African Muslims in our national story have
been closely related to the treatment of Africans and African Americans in
our lives and literature, of course. Abd ar-Rahman gained some fame in 1828,
as did Vmar in the 1840s and 1850s. Novelist William A. Caruthers includ-
ed short recognitions of African Muslims in his work in the 1830s; single
novel writer David Brown included one in his book in 1850. In the 1850s
there was a sudden burst of writing-essays, biographies, histories, poetry,
and novels-by African Americans and some European American allies and
enemies. Not long thereafter, however, the enemies prevailed, and nearly every-
thing in print about Africans became condescending or negative. A few African
Muslim individuals were noticed shortly around our Civil War, before a kind
of suppression of information about such people that lasted into the 1980s. But
in his controversial novella "Benito Cereno" (1856), Herman Melville did not
clearly admit that his major African characters, literate and rebellious slaves,
were Muslims, despite calling attention to his historical source, which did
recognize that they were believers in Allah. Harriet Beecher Stowe's titular
hero of her novel Dred, A Tale a/the Great Dismal Swamp (1856) was the son of
Mandingoes-usually Muslim in her time-but she did not suggest any such
religious heritage.
14 African Muslims in Antebellum America

One effect of such propaganda and suppression was an early disidentification

between antebellum African Americans and Muslims. For example, leading
black abolitionists Henry Highland Garnet and Martin R. Delany prided them-
selves on having Mandingo grandparents, but neither publicly expressed any
Muslim influence. This misapprehension lasted until the 1920s and the rise of the
Nation ofIslam, although there were some African Americans who maintained
that they were not wholly or only African or black. Several small populations, Free
Moors of the Carolinas, Malungeons in Tennessee, Delaware Moors, and Virginia
Maroons, have insisted upon Muslim beginnings from colonial times.
After the Civil War, three prominent Southern writers did recognize, in
their fashions, African Muslims in America. In 1867, Mark Twain saw a portrait
of a "dignified old darkey" in Hartford, Connecticut, and was told the story of
the subject, Abd ar-Rahman. As was his usual way, Twain began a reasonable
retelling of the black person's story but could not refrain from marring it at the
end by declaring that he hoped the old man was happily back in Africa eating
"niggers he could not sell." Twain's friend George Washington Cable wrote
several times of the presence of what he was pleased to call "Arab-Africans" in
Louisiana. He and another of Twain's friends, Joel Chandler Harris, creator of the
black Uncle Remus who told stories about Brer Rabbit to a white boy but not
to a black, shared the notion that some slaves were superior to the majority
because they were Arabs and not Africans. Harris perversely, it seems, based an
Mrican-despising, enslaved Arab Muslim character he called Aaron on the histor-
ical Bilali, who despised Christians, not Africans.
For a long time thereafter, no African Muslims appeared in American texts
or novels, although there were some local newspaper recollections ofUmar, the
"convert" to Christianity, and a translation of his "Life" did get published in
1925. But Africans generally were still treated as if they were uncivilizable until
the 1950s. White accounts of Africa told about European and American heroes
attempting to save Africans from themselves; Muslims in Africa were reportedly
only slightly more enlightened but were still taking slaves long after Europeans
had stopped. Seldom did anything respectable come out of any Africans. Indeed,
late in this period, a very popular novel (Kyle Onstott's Mandingo, 1957) was
preceded by an erroneous but authoritatively presented one-page assertion that
Mandingoes were Muslims but "distinctly not Negroes."
Finally, however, in the 1950s, serious histories and studies of Africans,
African Americans, and Muslims began to appear. Scholars were responding, at
first timidly, to a three-part assault on European religious, social, political, and
 'There Are Ciood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 15

philosophical presumptions in the decade when, starting with Ghana in 1957,

Africans were beginning to regain their independence after some eighty years of
European rule; in the same year the Montgomery, Alabama, civil rights move-
ment was joined by Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mrican Americans were begin-
ning to gain constitutional rights that European Americans had long enjoyed.
Meanwhile Muslim people were beginning to rise again in Egypt and elsewhere
after a century of decreasing power-except in Africa where numbers were
increasing.
The first study ofIslam in West Africa-where more than half of all North
American slaves came from-appeared in 1959. Still, Muslims in Africa
inspired no more than a sentence in any history of America or slavery until
1968. Even then a book onJob, Douglas Grant's Fortunate Slave, and another on
Job and nine other Africans caught up in the Atlantic slave trade, Africa
Remembered, edited by Philip D. Curtin and others, emphasized the African
aspects of their narratives. A mint-julep-and-magnolia-scented third book,
James Register'sJallon: Arabic Prince of Old Natchez, followed earlier leads and
de-Africanized Abd ar-Rahman. A year after Haley's Roots, in 1977, Terry Alford
published an admirably researched and beautifully told biography of Abd ar-
Rahman-but the title, Prince Among Slaves, sets his hero, who married a black
and Baptist woman, above other African Americans. In that same year, Toni
Morrison was curiously coy as she borrowed Muslim names (Solomon, Balaly,
Medina, Omar, Ryna, and Muhammet) and stories about flying Africans from
the Georgia Writers Project's Drums and Shadows without acknowledging their
religious provenance that brought a Muslim spin to her novel Song of Solomon.
My 1984 book, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook, was the
first to bring all the then available stories and references together. Since then, a
cameo appearance by a Muslim elder in a movie, Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust
(1992); a full-length philosophical-linguistic study of contexts for the writings
of Job, Bilali, Kebe, and Vmar by Ronald A. T.Judy in 1993; relevant articles
by B. G. Martin, Muhammad al-Ahari, and Michael A. Gomez and part of a
chapter by William S. McFeely in 1994; and some reprints of shorter biograph-
ical pieces have brought these stories forward again. But the same few names are
always raised. Too many others are still being forgotten.
Before elaborating further on these issues, listen to some hints of what has
been omitted from our national story and understanding of Africa and Africans.
Nine of our narrators, including Lamine Kebe, express themselves carefully and
boldly.
16 African Muslims in Antebellum America

I was desired by Uob}, ... to draw up an Account of him agreeable to the

Information he had given me at different Times, and to the Truth of the Facts,
which I had either been a Witness to, or [was} personally concerned in upon
his Account.
-Thomas Bluett, English friend of Job Ben Solomon, London, 1734

I will answer for every Negro of the true faith [Islam} but not for these
Christian dogs of yours.
-Bilali Muhammad to his master, as he prepared defenses
against a possible British raid on Sapelo Island, Georgia, 1815

He will not allow that the Americans are as polite and hospitable a people
as the Moors [Muslims}-nor that they enjoy a tenth part of the comfort
they do-and that for learning and talents [Americans} are far behind
them.
-From a Quaker merchant's diary on an unnamed,
literate "Moorish" slave met on the Mississippi River, 1822

I tell you, the Testament very good law; you no follow it; you [Mississippians}
no pray often enough; you greedy after money.... See, you want more land,
more neegurs; you make neegur work hard, make more cotton. Where you
find dat in your law?
-Ibrahim Abd ar-Rahman, Natchez, Mississippi, 1828

When I came to the Christian country, my religion was the religion of

"Mohammed, the Apostle of God - may God have mercy upon him and give
him peace. " ... And now I pray "Our Father, etc.," in the words of Jesus the
Messiah.
-from a translation of the autobiography
in Arabic by Vmar ibn Said, Fayetteville, North Carolina, 1831

There are good men in America, but all are very ignorant of Africa. Write
down what I tell you exactly as I say it, and be careful to distinguish between
what I have seen and what I have only heard other people speak of. They
may have made some mistakes; but if you put down exactly what I say, by and
by, when good men go to Africa, they will say, Paul told the truth.
-"Old Paul," or Lamine Kebe, New York City, 1835
 "There Are Ciood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 17

I had never seen white people before; and they appeared to me the ugliest
creatures in the world.
-from "the man who prayed five times a day,"
in Charles Ball's slave narrative, Pittsburgh, 1854

The [drunken, abusive sailor] sat down and ate like a christian, but this was
not till I had let him see a little of my own ugliness, and had threatened to
beat him.
-from Mahommah Baquaqua's Biography, Detroit, 1854

I cannot help thinking that the way I was baptized was not right, for I think
that I ought to have known perfectly well the nature of the thing before-
hand.
-Nicholas Said, on a Russian experience, Boston, 1867

There is not much comfort here for those who would presume that all
Africans who might be induced to reveal their feelings would sound defeat-
ed or detached and ashamed of their homelands or people or culture and
eager to please American saviors. On the contrary, these are proud and crit-
ical voices, emanating from possessors of extraordinarily strong identities and
an obviously powerful faith. Here they speak for many individuals once
thought to be lost forever: many thousands who were carried from Africa to
America and reduced to slavery but not silence in the era of the internation-
al slave trade.
Each of these speakers is discussed further in later chapters. As noted
above, six appear in chapters devoted exclusively to their stories; two share a
chapter, and almost seventy-five others-about whom less information has
been found-are brought together in Chapter 2. The following pages also
comprise five maps; eight portraits of seven African Muslims who came to
America (and four portraits of descendants who in the late 1930s recalled
Muslim parents and grandparents); eighteen documents in Arabic that were
composed in America plus translations or references to fourteen more; and
biographies, autobiographies, and notes of various lengths and purposes on
the other African Muslims who were caught up in the Atlantic slave trade
between 1730 and 1860. This introductory chapter concludes with relevant,
highly compressed background material.
Centuries of Christian-Muslim confrontations, condescensions, presump-
18 African Muslims in Antebellum America

tions, prejudices, misrepresentations, and mistreatment made Kebe's conclu-

sion about Western ignorance of Africa inevitable for his own time and ours.
Less than a century after 622 CE, the traditional date of the founding of Islam
in Arabia by the Prophet Muhammad, previously Christian Egypt and North
Africa had become Muslim territory. Shortly thereafter, Christian Spain and
Palestine and Eastern Europe were conquered by Muslims. Christians consid-
ered Muhammad an upstart schismatic who was dividing their spiritual and
political world order-such as it was after the slow fall of Rome between 453
and 600 CE-into three religions celebrating one God as found in early Jewish
writings, their own New Testament, and the Quran. Muslims, those who
followed Islam ("submission" to God or Allah-a compassionate but just
creator), understood the message in the Quran as a recitation from God to
Muhammad that built upon and corrected the messages of the respected Jewish
prophets: Adam, Noah, Moses, and Abraham as well as the Christians' Jesus.
Muhammad, believed by Muslims to be the last of the creator's prophets, recit-
ed Allah's words to his creatures on the latter's obligations to believe in the
one God-unlike Christians, who prayed not only to God bur also to a son
and mother of God-to pray publicly, to give alms to the poor, to fast and
follow dietary codes, to dress modestly, to become one with the community of
believers, and to exerr themselves on behalf of the principles of this faith.
Some sharing and a lot of competition between Christians and Muslims on
several levels led to confrontational military struggles, particularly the Crusades
against Muslims in Palestine and Muslim counterattacks in the eleventh,
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. When the Crusades were halted around a
few captured cities in the Holy Land, Europeans attempted to sail around Africa
and Muslim lands in order to get to the riches of Asia. These ventures eventu-
ally led to the "discovery" of America in 1492; a continuing enslavement by
Christians and Muslims of each other whenever possible; and the adoption and
refinement of ways to grow Asian and African crops such as sugar, rice, indigo,
and cotton that Europeans wanted but did not grow in their own countries.
African knowledge and experience and labor were needed; Europeans tried
Native American labor, but those people died from unfamiliar diseases and
harsh treatment. Africans had been exposed to many European diseases and
could do nothing about their treatment in America, so their expertise turned
into labor for themselves and profit for their masters.
But these are long and complex side issues. My present focus is more limit-
ed. The story of Islam's spread below the Sahara Desert, from about 1100 CE,
by Berbers from the north and Arabs from the east into the bilad as-SuMn-the
 "There Are Ciood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 19

land of the blacks-has recently inspired a number of books. This spread was
mostly peaceful and was propagated by way of Muslim visitors with appealing
spiritual, political, military, medical, technical, and commercial powers.
Sometimes local rulers took on Muslim advisers; some studied, then adopted,
Muslim ways and imposed them on their courts or people; sometimes Muslim
visitors settled down and intermarried as they provided services or became
local representatives of distant trading networks. Others started Quranic schools
for children of Muslims and interested non-Muslims.
Attempts to impose the new religion led to various responses, of course.
Formerly Christian people or those practicing indigenous religions and their
leaders across North Africa sometimes joined in or gave in and adjusted;
others-Berbers and Tuaregs-incorporated some elements and rejected others.
On the side of the Sahara Desert, other people further south, such as the Wolofs
of Senegal and the Bambaras of Mali , rejected Islam until late in the nineteenth
century; and the Mossi of Burkina Faso have done so into our own time. In
much of West Africa Islam has been modified according to indigenous needs,
as it has been by other peoples in its spread to the Pacific Ocean, and as West
Africans and others have modified Christianity. There have been and continue
to be significant military, political, cultural, and spiritual struggles and accom-
modations between Muslims and Saharan and sub-Saharan people not influ-
enced by Christians. This has been a long and complicated history; some parts
of it will be told as they relate to individuals discussed in this book.
Another reason for so long and complicated a history has to do with racial
attitudes. Muslim Arabs-like Christians-brought their prejudices with
them. Both presumed that indigenous African religions and the people who
protected them were not worthy of respect or tolerance. Both brought scriptural
support for enslaving the latter. And many of both presumed that black
people-so unlike themselves-might make better workers in hot climes than
themselves. In the Quran Allah praises all the colors of people he has creat-
ed-so color difference was not supposed to lead to a total dehumanization,
though it often led to enslavement. The Quran offers rules and humane advice
on the treatment of non-Muslims and slaves. These rules include teaching the
religion to slaves and the children of slaves, treating slaves as valuable depen-
dents by not overworking or underfeeding them, and adopting and freeing the
children of slave mothers. Muhammad and other leaders set the example by
freeing slaves who joined the religion. The Prophet's first convert, after his
wife, was the Ethiopian Bilali, whom he freed and honored further by appoint-
ing him as the first muezzin, or summoner to prayer. This tale explains the
20 African Muslims in Antebellum America

popularity of the name Bilali in West Africa; four people in the following
stories enjoyed it.
Arab Muslims and African converts were, however, members of nonpeas-
ant, trading, teaching, and traveling classes living among Muslim, non-
Muslim-or, indeed, anti-Muslim-people with whom they farmed, herded,
traded, fought, and intermarried. The willingness of Muslims to intermarry
with local people and to live like them contrasted favorably with the attitudes
of Christian missionaries. The children of such Muslims soon became African
and black as well as Muslim. Much of their lives and cultures were shared with
their neighbors, who had their own religions, cultures, and politics, which
powerfully influenced regional and local Islamic practices. Muslim treatment
of slaves in West Africa during the slave trade era also seems to have been more
respectful of West African practices and religious teachings than that of
Christians. Ideally, wherever Muslims gained power, they offered freedom to
nonbelievers who accepted Islam. Those people of the book (Christians and
Jews) who paid a tax, or jizya, were allowed to practice their own religions
unmolested. In practice, however, some Muslims were no better than other
religious or ethnic groups in their obedience to the higher dictates. The taking
of slaves and marching them off to distant lands was brutal whenever and wher-
ever and by whomever it happened. Several narrators of tales in this book
describe how they fell into captivity. Muslims were both captors of and liable
to be captives of non-Muslim rivals at various times. Sometimes Muslims were
taken prisoner and sold by rival Muslims who disagreed with their captives'
principles and practices.
As European travelers in Africa noted, Mandingo and Fulbe people were
prominent in the slave trade, as they were in all trade. But they were not all
slavers, and they had their codes for the business, as we shall see. Nor may
these two Muslim peoples be singled our in any simplistic way as is common
in histories of Africa. Non-Muslim peoples such as the Bambaras, Ashanti,
Dahomeans, Yorubans, and Ibos also captured and sold thousands of Africans
who were sent to the New World. Each of these peoples was ethnocentric, and
all had leaders who were sure that their accomplishments naturally set them
above others. These attitudes of Muslim and non-Muslim slave traders were
similar to those of European and American slave-takers-surely one reason
why native slavers were publicized by the latter as peculiarly admirable
Africans, although they were undoubtedly dangerous competitors.
At least thirteen of the individuals discussed in this book came from the
 "There Are Ciood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 21

more prominent peoples involved in the spread of Islam in West Africa above
the Gulf of Guinea: Ten were Fulbe or Tukolor, two were Mande or Mandingo,
and Lamine Kebe was a Serahule or Soninke schoolteacher. Others were in
training to be qadis (lawyers) or imams (religious-political leaders-Islam does
not differentiate between the two). Three were military officers; another was a
prominent trader. Several were students. The majority were from large towns
where local practice regularly divided the community into sections based on
ethnicity and religion. From 1725 to the middle of the nineteenth century,
military jihads were led by Fulbe against economic, political, and religious
enemies in FutaJallon, Futa Toro, Massina, and what is now northern Nigeria.
At least three of the Fulbe considered here were caught up in wars with Muslims
who were somehow disagreeable to other Muslims. Others were involved in
struggles against or allied with non-Muslim powers which led to their trans-
portation to the New World. Anti-Muslim Mande, Bambaras, Ashanti,
Dahomeans, and Yorubans made some of the captures in war or in kidnappings
described in these stories.
Much, then, can be learned about Muslim political training, long-distance
trade, internal troubles, and religious preparation and literacy wherever our
narrators went. The Tukolor, a sedentary, darker branch of the Fulbe whose
origins are still debated (who also included the nomadic, lighter, "red" Fulbe who
were slow to become Muslim), thought other Muslims were less devout. Perhaps
this notion was true because the Tukolor proved to be the most likely to adhere
to Islam in the New World. The Fulbe were also the most proud, as on both
continents they announced their superiority to all non-Fulbe, whether black or
white. This air of superiority was often marked by white Americans, who conve-
niently presumed that it applied only to other black people.
Those who traded over long routes learned a lot about other peoples and
their geography. A freeman from Jamaica, Abu Bakr as-Siddik, supplied a long
list of African place names and related them to one another geographically in
1836. He referred to sites in an area larger than the portion of the United States
between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean. Several of these narra-
tors learned more abour West Africa when they were marched from home, or
wherever they were caprured, to distant coasts. Clearly, a number of those in this
book-had they been encouraged and seen any value to themselves in doing
so-could have been very informative about what was called for far too long an
unknown continent filled with ignorant people.
The geographical origins shown in Map 1 place some of these people in Dar
aI-Islam, among believers who had been Muslims in Senegal, Timbuktu, or
22 African Muslims in Antebellum America

near Lake Chad since 1100 CE; or among those in southern Mali, the Gambia,
and Guinea who had become Muslims in the era of both peaceful and military
expansion from 1725 into the middle of the nineteenth century; or among the
ku/r (unbelievers) in Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, and Benin.
None of the Africans described herein were taken by white men, who,
through most of the period from 1700 to 1860, were restricted by West Mrican
rulers to tiny footholds on the coast or along riverbanks. Only three had seen
white men before they arrived at the baracoons, or holding pens, where prisoners
awaited slave ships. Two of them presumed that they might be eaten by these
strangers. Africans often told Europeans tales of cannibals just beyond the
boundaries within which they restricted whites and the European goods they
wanted to monopolize. Apparently, they also told such tales about European
slavers. Some Muslim rulers complained that European, and later American,
slavers wanted only people rather than gold, gum, ivory, skins, palm oil, wood,
or other trade products. However, none of these rulers, or non-Muslim rulers
for that matter, wanted to give up to other Africans the European products
they imported and traded inland in exchange for slaves.
Most European and American reports on West Africa emphasized conflicts
rather than cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims. Some Muslims,
including the Fulbe-known as slave catchers and traders-were at times
peaceable and alternately strange and useful neighbors who traded, translated,
transcribed, advised, and accommodated themselves to varying degrees to
indigenous and Christian people. It is not yet possible to tell how many
Muslims were in West Africa or were taken out of it in the era of the interna-
tional slave trade. In my previous book, taking into consideration available
figures related to Africans sent from ports serving hinterland areas from which
Muslims might have been taken, figures on arrivals from the Senegambia-the
source for the most sought-after slaves, especially by American slavers working
fast between the end of the Revolutionary War and January 1, 1808, when the
trade was supposed to be legally ended-and relevant details from the stories
herein, I boldly estimated that between 5 and 10 percent of all slaves from
ports between Senegal and the Bight of Benin, from which half of all Africans
were sent to North America, were Muslims. If the total number of arrivals was
eleven million, as scholars have concluded, then there may have been about
forty thousand African Muslims in the colonial and pre-Civil War territory
making up the United States before 1860. In the near furure, the systematic
gathering of records on slave trading ports on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean
and studies by David Eltis, David Richardson, and others of the trade as it
 "There Are Ciood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 23

touched on several British, French, Dutch, Spanish, and American cities and
towns will lead to better figures and descriptions.
Today, Muslims are the majority in Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Mali, and
Niger; number more than twenty million in Nigeria; and are respectably repre-
sented in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and
Benin. In the United States, Muslims amount to some six or seven million, a
number equal to the number of other non-Christian religionists in the country.
A third of these may be African and African American. They and their role in
our history and their relations with and effect on Islam elsewhere cannot be
neglected any longer.
Finally, a few words about the literacy of these people. The Fulbe were
proud of their Quranic schools and their ability to read and write for the greater
glory of God-and of the Fulbe, perhaps. Their literacy included writing
Arabic and their own language using the phonetic Arabic letters. At least six
of the Fulbe mentioned in this book wrote in Arabic in America-and they
usually wrote what they chose to write: assertions of their faith in the words of
Allah. Job, who authorized a friend to write his Memoirs in English, was
supposed to have written a letter to his father from Maryland in 1733, in
Arabic, of course. Unfortunately, this significant manuscript has not yet been
found. There are copies ofletters in Arabic from Job to English friends, written
from Africa, that do not agree with what Job dictated to his secretaries as trans-
lations. In the Arabic, he appears to be praising Allah for his good fortune; in
the English, he praises an earthly benefactor. He may have known how to write
only religious, and perhaps commercial formulae-as he was a trader-or he
may not have seen the necessity to write more elaborately for people who knew
no Arabic. Probably he could read better than he could write; when he was in
London, he helped some Englishmen translate Arabic writings.
Ar-Rahman also wrote a letter to his father in Arabic that was sent to Morocco
by the U.S. government. Later he wrote variations on the first chapter of the
Quran (the Fatiha, or Opening) for a number of people he met in the Northeast.
This limited range of writing suggests a limited literacy, but again, it may have
been clear that he had no readers of Arabic and thus need not bother. That a Rev.
John F. Shroeder was pleased by ar-Rahman's writing Arabic "with correctness and
fluency, ... neatness and rapidity"-after thirty years of being out of Africa-
could mean that he was better educated than extant manuscripts suggest. But it
could also mean that he could do more in the presence of a reader of Arabic.
Shroeder said that ar-Rahman "has read and written for me a great deal of Arabic."
Unfortunately, these manuscripts have not been found either.
24 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Bilali's single known literary effort has survived. Clearly he struggled, as

he seems to have made three or four tries to write rules for his Muslim commu-
nity in Georgia. His work, discussed in Chapter 5, is incomplete and difficult
to decipher. Vmar ibn Said, however, wrote often, and fourteen of his manu-
scripts are extant; thirteen others are referred to or are quoted from by interested
parties. A beautifully written two-page-and there may have been more-
manuscript includes a large design enclosing some words, part of a long chap-
ter from the Quran, and some pieces most likely from commentators on the
Quran. Vmar wrote an informative sixteen-page autobiography preceded by
part of the chapter of the Quran also found in the earlier manuscript, three
Lord's Prayers, two Twenty-third Psalms, two lists of his master's family names,
a kind of commentary on Christian prayers, and parts of three short chapters of
the Quran. Most of these followed traditional invocations to Allah and
Muhammad. Charno or Chierno supplied our frontispiece, the first Surah or
chapter of the Quran, for a nosy traveler. It is likely, from his proud attitude,
that the "Moor on the Mississippi" was also a Fulbe. He also wrote the Fatiha
for a wandering white man.
As a Mandingo slave in Jamaica, Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, who kept plantation
records in English using Arabic letters, also wrote a heartfelt autobiography in
Arabic. A second Mandingo in Jamaica, known only by his Christian name
"William Rainsford," wrote excerpts from the Quran. Another, "Charles
Larten," was said to have written out a complete Quran from memory. Yet
another, Mohammed Kaba, corresponded with Abu Bakr about the faith.
A Mandingo in South Carolina, slave of a Captain Anderson, also wrote
passages from the Quran. Another Mandingo, London, attempted an exercise
that-had we more than the five lines provided by a quite respectable trans-
lator-must be a linguistic treasure, as he transcribed in Arabic letters the
Gospel of John and some hymns in the black English he heard in Georgia.
Perhaps he was a convert, or perhaps he saw nothing absolutely anti-Muslim in
what he was transcribing.
Some Muslims could read and not write. Salih Bilali was one. Mahommah
Baquaqua from Benin forgot nearly all of his Arabic. He had not liked school;
there is, however an "Allah" written in Arabic on one of Baquaqua's seven
surviving letters written in English. Nicholas Said said he had learned to read
Arabic and was learning Turkish when he was kidnapped. Obviously they, and
several non-Fulbe and non-Mandingo peers such as Kebe, a Serahule, had not
forgotten the Quranic school lessons they had learned in Africa. Vmar and ar-
Rahman wrote Arabic after being away from it for thirty years or more. Writing,
 'There Are Ciood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 25

to a Muslim, is believing and worshipping. These men undoubtedly found

solace and guidance in their memories of Allah's words as recorded by the
Prophet in the Quran, and in the traditions they had brought with them.
Writing had set them apart as commercially and spiritually useful magical men
at home. It gave them some standing in the New World, particularly among
those who decided that the literate slaves must be Moors or Arabs because they
would not credit such a possibility as literacy in an African. One wonders how
these Muslims must have felt when they were among illiterate slaveholders, or
among white Americans who strove desperately to de-Africanize them.
Chapter 2 introduces the remaining African Muslims about whom less has
been found, including two of those quoted above. Following introductions to
each of them, I draw some generalizations about African Muslims in antebel-
lum America. As more students look into relevant records, these people will
undoubtedly become less exotic.

SELECTED READINCiS
African Muslims in America
Morroe Berger, the first historian to attempt to relate America's early and late
African Muslims, has concluded that the American black Muslims of today
owe little to black Muslim predecessors such as those mentioned in this text;
see "The Black Muslims," Horizon 6 (Winter 1964), 53-54, n. 5. See also Clyde-
Ahmad Winters, "Roots and Islam in Slave America," AI-Ittihad (October-
November 1976), 19. But several scholars, including Aminah McCloud at
Depaul University, Muhammad al-Ahari in Chicago, and Prince-A-Cuba (E. D.
Beynon and Prince-A-Cuba, "Master Fard Muhammad: Detroit History,"
[l938} [reprinted Newport News, Va.: United Brothers & United Sisters
Communications Systems, 1990}), are finding evidence on the rise of the
Nation ofIslam and other American Muslim movements that challenges that
presumption.
For examples of antebellum Muslim manifestations recalled almost a centu-
ry later, see chapters on Sapelo and St. Simon's islands in Savannah Unit of the
Georgia Writers Project of the Works Projects Administration, Drums and
Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (1940) (reprinted
Athens: University of Georgia, 1986).
More information on these Georgia Muslims and others may be found in
Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (New
York: Garland, 1984); and "Islamic Identities in Africans in North America in
26 African Muslims in Antebellum America

the Days of Slavery, 1731-1865," Islam et Societes au Sud du Sahara 7 (November

1993),205-219.
A work that needs to be revisited is Alex Haley, Roots (Garden City, N.Y:
Doubleday, 1976); compare James A. Michener, "Roots, Unique in Its Time,"
New York Times Book Review, February 26, 1977, 41.

See also the following works

Robert). Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim
World, 1776-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Michael A. Gomez, "Muslims in Early America, "Journal of Southern History
60 (November 1994), 671-709.
Yvonne Haddad, "A Century of Islam in America," The Muslim World
Today: Occasional Paper no. 4, Washington, D. c.: Middle East Institute, 1986.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of
Afro-Creole Culture in the 18th Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1992).
Ronald T. Judy, (Dis)Forming the American Canon: African-Arabic Slave
Narratives and the Vernacular (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993).
Michael A. Koszegi and). Gordon Melton, eds., Islam in North America: A
Sourcebook. (New York: Garland, 1993).
William S. McFeely, Sapelo's People: A Long Walk to Freedom (New York:
Norton, 1994).

On the African Slave Trade

George E. Brooks, Jr., Yankee Traders, Old Coasters, and African Middlemen
(Boston: Boston University Press, 1970).
Philip D. Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africansfrom the
Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967).
Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1964).
Basil Davidson, Black Mother: The Years of the African Slave Trade (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1961).
James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York:
Norton, 1981).
Walter Rodney, "Upper Guinea and the Significance of the Origins of
Africans Enslaved in the New World," Journal of Negro History, 4 (October
1969),327-345.
 'There Are Cjood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 2.7

Slavery in Africa
David Brion Davis's otherwise impressive Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966) fails to impress in areas relevant
to this collection. Davis opined, "Moslems ... were inclined to think of black
Africans as a race who were born to be slaves" (citing only the Encyclopedia of
Islam and Edwin William Lane's translation of the Arabian Nights) . Davis appar-
ently sees no "problem of slavery" in Muslim culture. This will not do as an
explanation of the variety of Islamic societies in Africa, nor of the advances Islam
has made in Africa largely because of the efforts of black proselytizers such as
the Serahules. He does add a footnote about Job Ben Solomon, who he says was
patronized by the English and "offered no criticism of the slave system" (pp. 50,
479, n. 78). Davis knows no one was criticizing slavery as a system in 1734. His
discussions ofIslam and slavery leap from the thirteenth century to the late nine-
teenth in Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).
Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1977).
Basil Davidson, "Slaves or Captives? Some Notes on Fantasy and Fact," in
Nathan I. Huggins et al., eds., Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, vol. 1
(New York: Harcourt, 1971).
Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley 1. Engerman, eds. , The Atlantic Slave Trade:
Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1992).
Martin A. Klein, "Servitude Among the Wolof and Serers of Senegambia,"
in Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical and
Anthropological Perspectives (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977).
Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African
Slave Trades (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Barbara 1. Solow, ed., Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Africa and Islam

Ahmed Ali, trans. Al-Qur'an: A Contemporary Translation (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1984).
J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, eds., History of West Africa, 2 vols.
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1976, 1974).
28 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Edward W. Blyden, Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race (1888) (reprint-
ed Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1994).
Peter B. Clarke, West Africa and Islam: A Study of Religious Development from
the18th to the 20th Century (London: Edward Arnold, 1984).
Frederick Mathewson Denny, An Introduction to Islam (New York:
Macmillan, 1985).
Mervyn Hiskett, The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman
Dan Fodio (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973); and The Development of
Islam in West Africa (New York: Longman, 1984).
1. M. Lewis, ed., Islam in Tropical Africa, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana
University and International African Institute, 1980).
Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast: 1545-1800 (London:
Oxford University Press, 1970).
Lamin O. Sanneh, TheJakhanke: The History of an Islamic Clerical People of
the Senegambia (London: International African Institute, 1979).
J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in West Africa (1959) and A History of Islam
in West Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1962).
John Ralph Willis, ed. Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, vol. I: Islam and
the Ideology of Slavery (London: Cass, 1985).
- - - . Studies in West African Islamic History, vol. I: The Cultivators of
Islam (London: Cass, 1979).

African Muslim Literacy and Literature

Birago Diop, Tales of Amadou Koumba, trans. Dorothy S. Blair. (London:
Oxford University Press, 1966). Senegal Wolof Muslim indigenous folktales.
Jack Goody, "Restricted Literacy in Northern Ghana," and Ivor Wilks,
"The Transmission ofIslamic Learning in the Western Sudan," in Jack Goody,
ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1968).
Kenneth W. Harrow, ed., Faces of Islam in African Literature (Portsmouth,
N.H.: Heinemann, 1991). A wide-ranging, useful look at Islam(s) in West
Africa.
Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure (1963) (reprinted New York:
Collier, 1969). Novel's hero is given early Quranic training by Tukolor Fula
teacher.
Camara Laye, The African Child, trans. James Kirkup (London: Fontana,
1965). Novel's hero is born into a preliterate Guinean Malinke Muslim world-
but is pushed to read the Qutan.
 "There Are Ciood Men in America, but All Are Very Ignorant of Africa" 29

Conde Maryse, Segu (New York: Viking, 1987). Novel re-creates Malian
Muslim-Bambara conflicts in the nineteenth century.
Mildred Mortimer,Journeys Through the French African Novel (Poftsmourh,
N. H.: Heinemann, 1990).
See also Judy, cited earlier.
Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge UP, 1998)
Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants ofAllah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas
(New York: New York UP, 1998)
Michael Gomez, Exchanging our Country Marks: The Transformation ofAfrican
Identitites in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North
Carolina, 1998)
Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the Afrian-American Experience (Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1997)
Fig. 6. Yarrow Mamout of Georgetown, D.C., from Oil Painting by Charles Willson
Peale, 1819; couttesy of Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
 2
Cjlimpses of Seventy-Five
African Muslims
in Antebellum North America

This chapter brings together short glimpses-all that is now available-of

more than seventy-five African Muslims who were brought to North America
in the pre-Civil War period. I will add narratives of and notes on people
brought to the islands of the Caribbean and glance at others brought to Spanish
and Portuguese America to round out my introduction to this dispersal of
Africans. Each adds, of course, to what is known about these early immigrants.
First, a mostly chronological list for those about whom we have dates and
information beyond names alone.
When Job Ben Solomon was brought to the British colony of Maryland in
1730 he was accompanied by his translator, Lamine Ndiaye or Jay, who would
eventually be returned to Africa. His story makes up a small part of the next
chapter. They probably arrived at the same time as Yarrow Mamout. A wonder-
ful oil portrait was painted in 1819 by one of this country's first great artists,
Charles Willson Peale. Peale was interested in his sitter's longevity-Mamout
claimed to be 133 years old at the time. But the artist's diary, one of only two
available recognizable descriptions of Mamout, shows that Peale became quite
interested in the man for other reasons as well. He had him sit two days, longer
than he had planned, was pleased with their conversation, and talked to the
white family that knew Mamout's history. The husband of Mrs. Bell freed him
in April 1807. She said Mamout was about fourteen when purchased, not thirty
five as he claimed. She admitted, however, that she could have been mistaken.
32 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Mamout was always a good worker, she said, and after he made the bricks for
the Bells' large house in Georgetown, Maryland, he was set free. Ever enter-
prising, he twice survived losses of his earnings to whites but eventually bought
a house and lot and was a kind of character around town. He enjoyed a "good
temper" even when local boys teased him and was known for his "sobriety and
a cheerful conduct," his Muslim prayers in the streets, and his jocular way with
local businessmen. After about a century in America, he still adhered to the reli-
gion of his youth and to its dietary restrictions, saying, "It is no good to eat
hog-& drink whiskey is very bad." The religion had preserved the man,
apparently. He seems to have been illiterate; no writings have been passed on.
There are also no indications that he chose to have a family in America. The few

Fig. 7. Fatiha, Surahs 114-the Last, 113, 112, 110 by "a Negro Slave of Capt. David
Anderson," South Carolina, 1768. Savannah Hisrorical Society.
 Cilimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 33

quotations Peale provides suggest that Mamout did not strive to learn the
language of the unbelievers around him. Perhaps he was not as happy as he
appeared to be.
Most of those Africans who were brought to New Orleans in the eighteenth
century-the period studied by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall in her book Africans in
Colonial Louisiana-recognized that they were brought from ports in Senegal
and the Gambia. These people would all later be called, lazily, Mandingoes by
such writers on that city as George Washington Cable. Hall lists in Appendix
D twenty-eight names that appear to be Muslim. It is possible that a few of
these people were not Muslims; it is also undoubtedly true that many slaves
listed by non-Muslim names given to them by their masters had had Muslim
names given to them by their parents. Hall wrote that the French paid attention
to the populations they brought to America. They were after people familiar
with rice and indigo raising, and, apparently, they wanted people with Muslim
training as they presumed their belief in one god, in prayer, in the powers of
those who could read, and in the dignity conveyed with their covering their
bodies made them superior to non-Muslims as managers. When Americans
began to carry slaves themselves at the end of the century, they continued to
prefer Senegambians to all others for Louisiana and other colonies-undoubt-
edly for similar reasons. More recognition of African Muslims will come from
present and future studies of peculiarly American post independence slave-
carrying and -importing practices from the 1780s to the 1860s.
In 1768, a "negro slave of Capt. David Anderson" (hereafter Anderson's
Negro), somewhere in South Carolina, otherwise unidentified, wrote selections
from the Quran. His two-page manuscript in Arabic includes, in the following
order, Surahs (chapters) 1, 114 (the last), 113, 112-the most important, worth
a third of the Quran, as translator William Brown Hodgson said in 1838-and
110 (the first half; another page or more has been lost). Essentially, these pages
reassert the faith of the writer.
Jupiter Dowda, a Hausa, probably from present-day Nigeria, worked on the
Mississippi River for a slave trader but died a freeman in Philadelphia, where
his owners wrote in 1800 that in twenty years of working for them, "he never
did a base thing, told a falsehood, got intoxicated or swore an oath." He took
a wife in America, bur there is no mention of her religion or of children.
Big Jack, called a Mandingo, was used as an overseer by a slave trader from
Natchez, Mississippi at about the same time.
Abd ar-Rahman came across a handful of Muslims near Natchez; he also
met one in Hartford, Connecticut.
34 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Sambo, probably originally Samba-a second son-who wrote "the Arabic

language," absconded with three other "new Negroes" in 1805. Obviously a
Muslim, he may have been trying to run back to Africa. Historian Michael A.
Gomez has found a dozen Muslim names from around the last turn of the centu-
ry in fugitive slave advertisements. Two fled from the plantation of Bilali's
master, Thomas Spalding of Sapelo Island, Georgia. Gomez has also found as
many Muslim names in slave lists in an ongoing investigation.
In December 1807, the last month Americans were able to legally import
Africans, a massive man was allowed to come out of the filthy hold of a slave
ship in Charleston, South Carolina, but hog-tied and under heavy guard.
S'Quash, as he was called, was, according to descendants of his purchasers, a
superior type; an excellent horseman; a slave trader; literate in Arabic; an even-
tual plantation manager; and, though "extremely dark," "obviously not a
Negro." White reporters, faced with intelligent, self-respecting blacks, often
found it necessary to deny the latters' Africanness, as is illustrated often in
this book, especially in the cases of Abd ar-Rahman, Umar ibn Said, and other
people met by Joel Chandler Harris. Adhering to such myths, whites assert-
ed that S'Quash held himself aloof from "Negroes" and did not marry until a
Dinka (Sudanese-very unlikely) woman was found whom he thought fitting
despite her brown color-again according to descendants of his masters. The
more likely reason is that he wanted a Muslim wife. Their children, as wonder-
ful as their parents, were the property of Joseph Graham. After Graham's
death, S'Quash helped other Grahams to settle slaves in distant Mississippi. A
portrait was made of this pleasing slave, but its present whereabouts are
unknown.
The quote in Chapter 1 of a slave declaring that the first whites the speak-
er ever saw were ugly-showing a healthy ethnocentrism-issued from a "man
who prayed five times a day," though he was in South Carolina. This man was
the only one of the narrators to provide details on the horrors of his Atlantic
crossing. He was also the only one to have an African American interviewer.
Surely there is a connection. European American interviewers usually chose
not to ask about this experience or to skip rapidly over it with sentimental
remarks. This man's nineteen-page story comes from the slave narrative of
Charles Ball, who appears to be the only American slave autobiographer who
came across a Muslim and recognized him. In fact, Ball was so impressed with
this man's heartfelt praying that he was moved to contrast it to what he called
the superstitions, including Christian ones, that his fellow slaves were victims
of in South Carolina, where masters had "a strong repugnance against their
 Cjlimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 35

slaves becoming members of any religious society." They feared that slaves
might learn something about "equality and liberty."
This man (hereafter Ball's Muslim), a Tuareg, perhaps, and a Muslim, told
of desert wandering and warfare in what is probably now Mali, "a country,
which had no trees, nor grass upon it," and of being enslaved by enemy Muslims
who made him take care of camels and goats. He then told of a long adventure
with two lions, occurring not long before his capture by non-Muslims, prob-
ably Bambaras. He was marched to the Gambia River, where he wirnessed the
casting overboard of three babies whose mothers leaped after them, and told of
many suffering and many dying from the heat in the ship on the river and of
its tight-packed load. Food was carelessly distributed, and one-third of those
aboard died before their arrival in Charleston, South Carolina, probably in
1807. He was not able to stand or straighten his limbs for a week after this terri-
ble voyage. Ball's Muslim could tell a story, and it is unfortunate that nothing
more has been discovered about him.
Another proud, self-respecting Muslim quoted in Chapter 1 was the
unnamed, outspoken "Moorish slave" (hereafter the "Moor"), who was inter-
viewed in 1822, ten years after being brought illegally to work on the
Mississippi River. He declared that his homeland was more comfortable and his
people more learned than what he had seen in America. He wrote the Fatiha
(opening chapter of the Quran) in Arabic for his white interviewer-and who
knows what else he might have written had he been urged and had he seen
any benefit in doing so?-and told some of his history. Before being taken
away, he had been the son of a Muslim prince on the Niger River. With a
"small body of men," he had made an incursion into enemy territory and was
captured, taken to the coast, and put on a Spanish ship that took him to New
Orleans. "He has one wife"-presumably in America. His sympathetic inter-
viewer-a trader in pork, by the way-said the man "lamented in terms of
bitter regret, that his situation as a slave in America, prevents him from obey-
ing the dictates of his religion. He is under the necessity of eating pork, but
denies ever tasting any kind of spirits." Clearly the "Moor" strove to adhere to
his religion, and ten years of American slavery had not made him think worse
of Africa and Islam.
Charno and Tombo are African Muslim slaves in a semiautobiographical
novel The Kentuckian in New York (1834), and Sylvia, a female Muslim, appears
in the same author's Knights 0/ the Golden Horseshoe, by William A. Caruthers.
They appear to be based on real people. "Charno" sounds very much like chier-
no or thierno, pronunciations of a title designating a literate Fula. Charno wrote
36 African Muslims in Antebellum America

the Fatiha, or opening chapter of the Quran (see this book's frontispiece), for the
narrator, who had it properly translated. Caruthers told a little of the writer's
history.
The document was gained in the following way:

"I asked if any of those present could write; they replied that there was one man
in the quarter who could write in his own language, and several of them went
out and brought in a tall, bald-headed old fellow, who seemed to come with
great reluctance. After being told what was desired, he acknowledged to me
that he could write when he last tried, which was many years previous. I took
out my pocket-book, tore out a blank leaf, and handing him a pen from my
pocket inkstand, requested him to give me a specimen. He took the head of the
barrel on his lap, and began, in recollect right, on the right side of the page."

Caruthers provided "a facsimile of his performance" and "a liberal transla-
tion into English"-it is a decent one:

"In the name of God the merciful! the compassionate! God bless our Lord
Mohammed his prophet, and his descendants, and his followers, and pros-
per them exceedingly. Praise be to God the Lord of all creatures! the merci-
ful, the compassionate king of the day of judgment! Thee we adore, and of
thee we implore assistance! Guide us in the right way, the way of those with
whom thou art well pleased, and not of those with whom thou art angry, nor
of those who are in error. Amen!" The original is written in Arabic. The old
fellow's name is Charoo, which it seems he has retained, after being enslaved,
contrary to their general custom in that respect. I became quite affected and
melancholy in talking to this venerable old man, and you may judge from that
rare circumstance that he is no common character.

But Caruthers did not take this too seriously: "I now fixed my saddle under
my head in a cotton shed to rest for the night; but, weary as I was, I could not
directly get to sleep for thinking of sandy deserts, old Chamo, chicken suppers,
negro quarters, and Virginia Bell! You see she is still the heroine, let my wander-
ings lay the scenes where they will. "
The author's wife had a Muslim slave called Bullutah (Bilali?).
In 1825 the secretary of the American Colonization Society (ACS), R. R.
Gurley writing in its journal, The African Repository, recalled having heard of a
number of Muslims in American slavery.
 Cjlimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 37

Very little has been found on other Muslim slaves. Southerner Joseph
LeConte remembered

an old African, named Philip, who was a very intelligent man. He used to tell
us about the customs and religion of the country from which he came. He was
not a pagan, but a Mohammedan [Muslim}. He greatly interested us by going
through all the prayers and prostrations of his native country. He also gave us
the numerals up to twenty: These were, of course, native African, not Arabic.
They were "go, dede, tata, nigh, ja, jago, jadal, jatata, ja nigh, suppe, suppe
ja, suppa jago, suppa ja dede, suppa ja tata, suppa ja nigh." It is seen that they
count by fives and not by tens as we do.

It would be interesting to know how LeConte knew as much as he thought he

did, and why he did not learn more from Philip. The numerals identify Philip
as another Fula.
After years of slavery in Tennessee, Hamet Abdul-obviously a man who
had insisted on his Muslim name-sought money to return to Africa. He was
noticed in 1834.
A character named King, who seems to be based upon a real person, appears
in another semiautobiographical novel, The Planter, or Thirteen Years in the South
by one David Brown (1853). King is described as having the "dignity of a
retired field marshall and the authority of a patriarch," and locals liked to say
that he had converted from Islam to Christianity. But there is some question in
the mind of the narrator about this conversion. There is none, however, about
using King's virtues to disparage by comparison the "uncivilizable purely negro
race" of other slaves on the plantation. African Muslims, to the narrator, were
mingled breeds, only a little further advanced than the "purely negro" slaves.
He was echoing, of course, the philosophic-scientific thinkers of his day-a
day whose sun has not completely set even in 1996.
I am assuming an Islamic identity for the runaway Osman (probably
Usuman) whose dramatic portrait follows. Encountered in the 1850s, he quick-
ly slid back into his Virginia swamp after being visible only for a moment.
But the artist, David H. Strother, had clearly been moved:

About thirty paces from me I saw a gigantic negro, with a tattered blanket
wrapped about his shoulders, and a gun in his hand. His head was bare, and
he had little other clothing than a pair of ragged breeches and boots. His
hair and beard were tipped with gray, and his purely African features were cast
Fig. 8. Osman (Usumanl}, Runaway in Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina, 1852,
Porte Crayon (pseud. David H. Strother), The Old South Illustrated, 1856, p. 148.

38
 qlimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 39

in a mould betokening, in the highest degree, strength and energy. The

expression of the face was of mingled fear and fetocity, and every movement
betrayed a life of habitual caution and watchfulness. He reached forward his
iron hand to clear away the brier screen that half concealed him while it inter-
rupted his scrutinizing glance, fortunately, he did not discover me, but
presently turned and disappeared.

A later article in the Raleigh News and Observer (August 3, 1913) attempt-
ed to tell more. Written ftom Edenton, it said Osman was "a famous African
chief, who was sold into slavery but escaped" into the Great Dismal Swamp. He
there "led a reign of terror during the early fifties. He obtained firearms,"
became "half wild, and was credited with the power of speech with snakes and
animals of the forest and cypress swamps." Posses were sent to find him bur
failed. Tradition "is fast fixed in the minds of the negroes and swamp settlers
that Osman accidentally stepped upon a coiled body of a cottonmouth moccasin
and died a few minutes later in dreadful agony. " Negroes claim still to hear "the
scream of Osman's ghost re-enacting the death struggle."
This tale's hero seems to share the animal-speaking talent of Joel Chandler
Harris's Aaron. But Osman, unlike Aaron, is hostile to whites and slavery.
A Georgia slave, London, removed to Florida in the 1850s shortly before
he died, deserves recognition for his truly extraordinary efforts in Arabic. His
manuscripts provided problems to the translator, William Brown Hodgson,
until he discovered that London had done what thousands of West Africans
had done before him: written the local language with Arabic characters. Once
he gave up looking for Arabic vocabulary and transliterated London's letters into
sounds, he came up with the following:

Fas chapta ob jon.

Inde be ginnen wasde wad;
ande Wad waswid Gad,
ande wad was Gad.

This slave was purting the Gospel into his American language. He had
also done the same for some hymns, according to Hodgson. Thus far, unhappily,
the originals of these potential linguistic treasures have not been found . It is also
impossible to know whether London was doing this writing our of a broad
spiritual interest or because he had converted to Christianity. Hodgson owned
a Muslim slave, bur that man could not write Arabic.
40 African Muslims in Antebellum America

One might wonder whether London was trying to meld the two religions.
According to the Georgia preacher-historian Charles ColcockJones, who offered
no numbers, some slaves were "known to accommodate Christianity to
Mohammedanism." '''God,' say they, 'is Allah, and Jesus Christ is Mohammed-
the religion is the same, but different countries have different names.''' Perhaps
this merging occurred, but as we shall see, few Muslims appear to have done it.
There is, however, a pronouncement by the lone Muslim woman to be quoted
in that period that supports Jones's conclusion. "Old Lizzy Gray," recently dead
in South Carolina according to a report in 1860, had been educated in
"Mahomedan tenets," and though she had latterly been considered a Methodist,
"she ever said that Christ built the first church in Mecca and he grave was da."
She had done some wild combining. Muhammad made Mecca the chief city in
Islam, and his tomb is in Jerusalem.
This is not the only such combination, however; a similar accommodation
emerged in 1913 when a black North Carolinian named Timothy Drew-
whose origins are obscure-founded the Moorish Science Temple, in which
Allah was God, Jesus his prophet.
It is also true, of course, that some Africans were Muslimized to varying
degrees. To say, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet,"
was enough to save one from slavery in some Old World times and places.
A post-Civil War incident of an African Muslim in antebellum America
was recalled in the 1890s. A Miss Leach wrote to Joel Chandler Harris (who
once wrote that "Arabic-Africans" along the coast of Georgia were "not the
most numerous, but the most noticeable" type) to tell him about her great-
grandfather's one-time slave Aaron. He was an Arab (she said) with a person-
ality that cowed black and white alike. At some point, Aaron had boldly
declared that he wanted no more of slavery and was allowed, even helped with
his master's money, to walk away from it to Canada. From there, from time to
time, he wrote properly respectful yet independent letters to his former owner.
Nothing more has been discovered abour this man.
Let me widen the picrure at this point. Since "American" may be under-
stood as naming all the nations in the New World, available glimpses of African
Muslims on nearby shores are also informative. An unnamed Mandingo servant
who could write the Arabic language "with great beauty and exactness" was
owned by a historian of the West Indies, Bryan Edwards, who knew of at least
one other such servant nearby in Jamaica near the turn of the eighteenth centu-
ry. A fortunate Mohammed, enslaved in 1798, was freed in 1811 and returned
to Africa by his master in Antigua precisely because of his attachment to Islam.
 Cilimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 41

Mohammed Kaba, once a merchant in Africa; William Rainsford, a force-

ful preacher from Kankan (present-day Guinea); Charles Larten, a Quranic expert;
Anna Mousa, or Benjamin Cochrane, a medical doctor from Mali; and the
geographically knowledgeable Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, all literate, all forced into
unwanted baptisms in Jamaica (where half the imports may have been from the
Senegambia to the Gold Coast and hinterlands from which Muslims would have
been drawn), told significant and touching stories about their lives and their
shared religion. Unfortunately, only Richard Robert Madden, an Irish aboli-
tionist who in 1833 was one of six special magistrates mandated to oversee the
ultimate liberation of the newly freed slaves in Jamaica, seems to have paid atten-
tion to these Muslims. Having had some experience with the Arabic language in
Arabia, he became interested in the authors of Arabic writings on the island.
Once he gained their trust, they told about a turn-of-the-cenrury circu-
lating letter in Arabic that was an exhortation to remain pure and faithful.
Rainsford wrote a sermon, concluding with a declaration that the rich had a
duty to not oppress the poor; Larten wrote out the Quran from memory; Mousa
wrote one or two short autobiographies; and Abu Bakr composed a wonderful
autobiography and list of trade routes in West Africa-all in Arabic. Madden
did his best to translate them.
Abu Bakr was from a sophisticated, wealthy, and extensive Mandingo trad-
ing family. Born in Timbuktu around 1794, he was a student-and apparent-
ly a good one-until sometime in 1807, when he was captured because he was
on the losing side in a war. The autobiography is very informative about his
family, their trading ventures, and the conflict that led to his enslavement in
what is now Ghana. A second translator of his autobiography, George C.
Renouard, who spent time with Abu Bakr in London in 1835, was very
impressed by the man's intelligence and geographical knowledge. Abu Bakr
reported that he had visited or heard about towns from Sin near the mouth of
the Gambia to Katsina in Nigeria, more than 1,600 miles to the east, and from
Timbuktu to the Guinea coast, about 900 miles to the south. He went further
and told Renouard of their geographical relationships to one another. He was
laying out an area comparable in size to the United States east of the Mississippi.
Not many Americans would have been able to layout similar lists. Abu Bakr
also described a vast and apparently active network of communities reaching
through and beyond many different peoples. There were undoubtedly Muslims
in each community.
Renouard was also impressed with Abu Bakr's faith, which is concisely
and touchingly expressed in the conclusion to his autobiography:
42 African Muslims in Antebellum America

The faith of our families is the faith of Ishim. They circumcise the foreskin;
say the five prayers; fast every year in the month of Ramadan; give alms as
ordained in the law; marry (only) four free women-(others are} forbidden to
them except she be their slave; they fight for the faith of God; perform the
pilgrimage (to Mecca)-i.e. such as are able to do so; eat the flesh of no beast
but what they have slain for themselves; drink no wine-or whatever intox-
icates is forbidden unto them; they do not keep company with those whose
faith is contrary to theirs,-such as worshippers of idols, men who swear
falsely by the name of the Lord, who dishonour their parents, commit murder
or robbery, bear false witness, are covetous, proud, insolent hypocrites, unclean
in their discourse, or do any other thing that is forbidden; they teach their
children to read, and (instruct them in) the different parts of knowledge;
their minds are perfect and blameless according to the measure of their faith.

Abu Bakr added the poignant note: "Verily, I have erred and done wicked-
ly, but I entreat God to guide my heart in the right path, for He knoweth what
is in my heart, and whatever (can be pleaded) in my behalf."
A few months later, Abu Bakr was chosen by a self-proclaimed explorer,
John Davidson, to guide a private expedition from Morocco's Atlantic port of
Wadi Nun to Timbukru. Davidson and his men were killed before they got far,
but two years later a report said that Abu Bakr had returned to the famous city
of Jenne and to some part of his family.
(Hereafter these Jamaican Africans will be referred to as Kaba, Rainsford,
Cochrane, and Abu Bakr.)
Renouard, Abu Bakr's British translator, was also to find that the famous
Amistad slave ship rebels led by Cinque in 1839 were familiar with Muslim
salutations, and one claimed to be the son of a marabout, or Muslim "priest."
Recent studies by Joao Jose Reis of the major slave revolt in Bahia, Brazil
(1835), put Muslims back in the forefront. Paul E. Lovejoy found rebels who
were active both in their Nigerian homelands and in Brazil, providing more
specifics about the presence and prestige of Muslims that appear to support
the controversial arguments of Gilberto Freyre that Muslims were politically
and culturally influential in Brazil. Lovejoy is also studying the nineteenth-
century trade of Muslims between Brazil and Africa.
Though his work has a less broad scale than Freyre's, Carlton R. Ottley
dedicated his history Slavery Days in Trinidad to "Mandingo Africans" who
banded together in a Free Mandingo Society to ransom fellow Muslims from
slavery in his island country. Ottley reported that in a petition to King William
some of the members stated their unhappiness over the way their own non-
 Cjlimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 43

Muslim slaves were acting, but they also told of keeping up their African
custom of treating their slaves as working wards: They ate at the same tables
and slept in the same houses. Here is a picture not of American but of African
slavery. Further, Ottley mentioned that in 1816 about one thousand West
Indian regimentals who had been "recruited" in the American South during the
War of 1812 went to the West Indies and that about 240 were converted to
Islam by members of the society; some of these may have come from Salih
Bilali 's St. Simon's Island-see Chapter 5.
One of the members of this society was the subject of a biography.
Mohamedu Sisei was kidnapped from the banks of the Gambia, but his ship was
caught by a craft from a British anti-slavery squadron. Along with other able-
bodied Africans, he was "released" and signed up by the British for seven, then
fourteen, years of service in H.M. West Indian Regiments. There he naturally
met Africans from many nations who were converting to Islam in the early nine-
teenth century. He mentions a regiment's conversion and a successful petition
requesting a return to Africa. I have not been able to corroborate this story yet.
Finally, on Cuba, the Swedish novelist and traveler Fredrika Bremer decid-
ed that Mandingoes were the "preachers and fortune tellers" of the blacks.
The roll call of known African Muslims goes this far to date. I am confident
other names and stories will reappear to further fill out the picture.
We may begin here to sketch a composite.
Except for Baquaqua and Ball's Muslim, who were servants of non-Muslim
and of Muslim chiefs, respectively, each of the narrators had been in Africa a
professional or learned man or student. One may have been an heir to a "king-
dom" (ar-Rahman); he and at least one other (Cochrane) were also soldiers with
extensive campaigning experience. A possible future imam or religious-politi-
cal leader was also a trader (Job), as were two others who were also teachers
(Kebe and Umar-and possibly the Moor from the Mississippi River); often the
three professions went together. (For a modern description of a Muslim teacher,
see Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 1963.) Also represented here
are a "linguister," or translator (Jay), a medical doctor (Cochrane), a student of
law (Bilali), and at least four other students who had been moving up to
advanced studies (Abu Bakr, Rainsford, Benjamin Larten, Said, and probably
the Moor on the Mississippi). The professions of the others are not known, but
each apparently received some special training. Only one admitted to not being
interested in studying or in blacksmithing-Baquaqua again. All appear to
have come from prominent families, and all seem to have been preparing to
lead lives in which their communities might take pride.
These men were all Africans. Represented here are five who identified
44 African Muslims in Antebellum America

themselves as Fulbe because they had Fulbe fathers: Job, ar-Rahman, Bilali,
Salih Bilali (whose master's description fits the classic Mandingo), and Umar (a
Tukolor-as is novelist Kane). Philip's numbers and Charno's name suggest
they were Fulbe. They came from the darker side of this ethnically interesting
people-and, contrary to white ethnologists' common assumptions, usually
the more scholarly and urban, "civilized" side. Five of the men were identified
as being "Mandingoes": Mohammed Kaba; Rainsford; Abu Bakr (whose moth-
er was a Hausa); and, according to their master's guesses, Anderson's Negro,
King, and London. Baquaqua had a Songhai father and a Hausa mother;
Cochrane was a Kassonke; Kebe was a Soninke or Serahule who had a "Manenca"
(Mandingo) mother; and Said had a Kanuri father and a Mandara mother.
Portraits exist of Job, Yarrow Mamout, ar-Rahman, Umar, Baquaqua, Said,
and Osman. Images of Mamout and Osman are reproduced in this chapter;
others are included in relevant chapters. Photographs of some of the grand-
children of Bilali and Salih Bilali also exist, and two are reproduced below.
The experiences of these people offer glimpses of ten African homelands,
their commerce, and the influence and depth of West African Islam during
more than a century of the trade in African lives. But with their captures, their
power, family connections, and hopes were cut forever-with the exception of
Job and Jay, perhaps, who returned to Africa within a decade of being taken
away. However, these people's intellectual, spiritual, and psychological acquire-
ments were not cut off, as we have seen.
The travels of these men as captives from two hundred to one thousand
miles inland to the shores of Africa varied, of course. Job, Jay, ar-Rahman, and
Ball 's Muslim were shipped from the Gambia River. Umar and probably
Yarrow, King, and Cochrane were sent down the Senegal River. Bilali, Kebe,
and Rainsford were probably shipped out of the Kaba River of Guinea. Salih
Bilali passed through Mali and the Ivory Coast via powerful empire-building
Bambarans and Ashanti; Baquaqua was passed on by slave-hustling Dahomeans
of Benin. Abu Bakr was taken from the land of the independent Mossi of
Burkina Faso, south through Ghana. Said was taken in the other direction,
across the Sahara, through the Tuareg-Arabic lands of Niger and Libya.
Apparently only Baquaqua and Ball's Muslim were asked about, or cared
to tell of, their Middle Passage experiences. This is a disappointing omission,
of course. However, ar-Rahman's modern biographer, Terry Alford, was able
to find out a great deal about the very ships in which his subject was trans-
ported across the Atlantic to Dominica and thence to New Orleans.
The qualities these men brought with them presented problems to buyers:
 Cilimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 45

People from educated, professional, and once free classes had to be handled
with care. They had special antipathies toward physical labor and, naturally,
toward their enslavement, as is clear from the narratives of Abu Bakr, Job Ben
Solomon, ar-Rahman, Umar ibn Said, and Mohammed Ali ben Said, or
Nicholas Said. Across America they posed distinct problems and dangers. In the
folklore of Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Argentina, "mandinga" meant
"sorcerer.
In these narratives and notes there are barely tapped sources for modern
historians interested in African adjustments to the New World's callous
demands. They do not need to wonder about the first responses and experi-
ences of several of these narrators in America. We know that eleven were sent
out to work in the fields, as one might expect: Job, Jay, and Yarrow Mamout in
Maryland; Bilali and Salih Bilali in the Bahamas and then to Georgia; ar-
Rahman in Spanish Mississippi; Umar for a short time in South Carolina before
he was purchased by a man who saved him from manual labor in North
Carolina; Kebe in three states in the South; Kaba and Abu Bakr in Jamaica; and
Baquaqua in Brazil. Cochrane fought for British West India regiments and on
British battleships, and Baquaqua was put to work on a ship to New York.
At least three were wholly or partly successful runaways. Job and Umar
were caught and imprisoned; Job was returned to a chastened master after
being promised lighter labor because he had proved to be literate. Umar
persuaded someone other than his distant, mean second purchaser to ransom
him and to treat him gently for the rest of his long life. Ar-Rahman stayed
away for a while but eventually turned himself in for reasons he seems to have
kept to himself. Others, including Osman and people referred to in fugitive
slave ads ran away often. Each seems to have been treated somewhat better
after having run, if he had to return.
Six became longtime plantation managers: ar-Rahman was a power from
around 1800 to 1818 near Natchez. Bilali was often the sole manager for his
master, who ultimately owned Sapelo Island; his friend, Salih Bilali, held a
similar position on St. Simon's Island, Georgia, after 1816. Some time later,
King managed a plantation in Georgia, S'Quash one in South Carolina. Abu
Bakr was manager of a Jamaican plantation. Perhaps the prestige they enjoyed,
or the fear they inspired-stories abound of both-or their authoritative ways
as former members of elites helped them gain such positions. Ar-Rahman had
been a leader of men on the battlefield. Kebe, Umar, and perhaps Bilali were
used to ordering students around, and a few of these men may have been over-
seers of agricultural slave gangs at home. They had to assert themselves in
46 African Muslims in Antebellum America

certain ways to get these positions, of course, and some of the accommodations
made by their American masters are discussed later. Bilali and Salih Bilali
became at least locally famous for their efforts at keeping their slaves from
running to the British during the War of 1812 and for saving them in the
notorious hurricane of 1824.
Surely the literacy of many, outlined on pages 23 and 24 above, helped
them keep the faith. Their writings were listed at the end of Chapter 1.
Apparently only Nicholas Said ever learned to write English well. Seven
letters in English in Baquaqua's hand show that he was trying-and that he was
beginning late. Several narrators told about another kind of writing, about
Africans using Arabic script for local-language documents, like london and
Abu Bakr.
The records show that four of the narrators-Job, Mamout, Bilali, and
Salih Bilali-practiced their public praying according to Quranic obligations
despite ridicule and other pressures. The Moor on the Mississippi regretted that
he was forced to eat pork, but he said he kept up with other Muslim rules. Ar-
Rahman, Kebe, and Baquaqua promised to preach Christianity if they could
return to Africa, but in each case it is clear that their serious goals were only to
return. Ar-Rahman reverted to Islam as soon as he saw the coast of Africa again;
the same may be assumed about Kebe, as his statements herein suggest;
Baquaqua's reputed conversion is barely mentioned in his biography-autobi-
ography. Five Muslims were obliged to undergo baptism in Jamaica, but each
declared that the act had been involuntary. Their true faiths were discovered
easily by their common amanuensis. Indeed, Abu Bakr's autobiography declares
his chagrin at not being a perfect Muslim. Nicholas Said had not understood the
meaning of his baptism in Russia. Only london, in his writing of the Gospel of
John, and King, Vmar, Baquaqua, and Said, in statements that Christians took
to be conclusive and any Muslim would take to be political-or wise, as some
Christian prayers such as the lord's Prayer or the Twenty-third Psalm are no
more Christian than Muslim-seem to have seriously suggested conversion.
There were other ways to accommodate themselves. Mamout worked out
his freedom and became a small landowner and local character in Georgetown,
D.C. Vmar became a pampered slave by convincing his new master that he
was unhealthy. The poor fellow then managed to survive for more than half a
century as a storyteller and apparent Oriental saint to neighbors and visitors
from near and far. Cochrane became a respected doctor in Jamaica. Baquaqua
studied to become a missionary. Seven at least, including two of the runaways
(Job and ar-Rahman), gained passage to Africa.
 Cilimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 47

Where anything is known about the immediate families of these men, we

know that Job and Jay's persistence paid off: They went home to their African
families-although one of Job's wives had remarried. As far as American fami-
lies are concerned, Rahman probably had some struggles with his Baptist wife
over the religious upbringing of their children, but she and five children did go
to Africa. Bilali and Salih Bilali-who had several wives-bequeathed Muslim
names and traditions to their American offspring that their descendants recalled
late in the 1930s. It appears that Mamout, Kebe, and Vmar decided against
bringing children into the world as they found it; there is no record that they
had American children.
Like other Africans in the New World, African American Muslim chil-
dren probably had to adapt to their new religious and sociopolitical environ-
ments, as have other hyphenated Americans. Little is known about the children
of these Muslims. But there are two known examples, and both are impres-
sive, of second-generation Muslim families. Both are in Georgia's Sea Islands
and related to Bilali and Salih Bilali. It is possible there were more.
Too few were noticed by too many. Information about Captain Anderson's
literate servant and London was found only in the papers of the slaveholder-
scholar William Brown Hodgson, to whom the biography of Salih Bilali was
sent. The self-sustaining Yarrow Mamout, the outspoken Moor on the
Mississippi, the stern King, the quiet Charno, Kebe, Ball's Muslim who persis-
tently prayed five times a day, and others each had only one or two whites who
thought them worthy of written attention, and usually not in widely dissemi-
nated papers. Accordingly, no one advertised the considerable managerial capa-
bilities or the heroic activities in the War of 1812 of Bilali and Salih Bilali,
and no one elaborated on the Muslim communities these two created in
Georgia's Sea Islands. There was no virtue in going far afield, of coutse, to recog-
nize the impressively literate and informed Jamaican or Trinidadian Muslim
communi ties.
It is difficult to tell what the relations of these people were to non-Muslims
because most of the commentators were white. Nearly all of these whites liked
to think that they despised so-called animists and nappy-haired, presumably
blacker Africans. Such writers tried hard to depict Job, ar-Rahman, S'Quash,
Vmar, King, and others as antiblack. These Muslims undoubtedly did feel
superior to non-Muslims, but this attitude included whites too. Ibrahim Abd
ar-Rahman married a black woman, as did S'Quash. Black Charles Ball did not
tell that his Muslim acquaintance stayed aloof from blacks. Quite daringly, ar-
Rahman, dependent on the kindness of white strangers from whom he was
48 African Muslims in Antebellum America

seeking money from Washington, D.C., to Boston, Massachusetts, met with

African Americans in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Those blacks who
spoke of him did not find him someone who despised them. In North Carolina
there were blacks who may have understood Umar better than white Christians.
They knew him as a religious man and as a "pray-god to the king"-a Muslim
religious adviser to a non-Muslim. Umar may have played a comparable role
with his American neighbors.
As noted above, several of these narrators felt free to offer opinions on
America and Christianity. Undoubtedly, few available reports say exactly what
the narrator would have said had he composed his story on his own or with a
wholly trusted editor-therefore, these reports are not to be considered
complete or final. Many contemporary sources of information on these people
come from reports of meetings of and writings by American Colonization
Society members and sympathizers-many of whom were primitive ethnolo-
gists and one a gifted linguist-in various issues of colonization newspapers,
pamphlets, letters, and an occasional book. Other sources are important city,
state, and federal officials: two mayors, a congressman, a secretary of state, and
President John Quincy Adams; ministers hoping to convert Muslims into
Christians; two travelers' accounts; three novelists' pages; a magazine editor;
several newspaper editors-including one African American; Thomas
Gallaudet, the founder of the first school for the hearing impaired; the writings
of only one active abolitionist-an Irishman in Jamaica; an autobiography by
an eventual Civil War soldier published in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly in
1867; the diary of a great American painter, Charles Willson Peale; and one
excerpt from a slave narrative. Nor are all the documents available. Further
documents remain to be found, and more information remains to be discovered
about these figures as individuals, as representatives of their African and Afro-
American peers, as informants on their times and places and conditions, and as
storytellers speaking for otherwise unrecorded millions.

SELECTED READINCiS

For the "man who prayed five times a day," see Slavery in the United States: A
Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, 3rd ed. (1st ed.
1836; Pittsburgh: Shyrock, 1854), 142-161.
For S'Quash, see The Natural Bent: The Memoirs of Dr. Paul B. Barringer.
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949). Brought to my atten-
tion by Thomas Parramore.
 Cilimpses of Seventy-Five African Muslims 49

For King, see [David Brown}, The Planter, or Thirteen Years in the South-
by a Northern Man (Philadelphia: Hooker, 1853), 100-128, 141.
For Osman, see Porte Crayon (pseudonym for David H. Strother), The Old
South Illustrated (1856) (reprinted Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1959), 146-148.
For Chamo and other Muslim characters in Caruthers, see Curtis Carroll
Davis, Chronicler of the Cavaliers: A Life of the Virginia Novelist, Dr. William A.
Caruthers (Richmond, Va.: Dietz, 1953), 50, 344-347, 504-505,92-104.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of
Afro-Creole Culture in the 18th Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1992.
For London, see William Brown Hodgson (1801-1879), "The Gospels,
Written in the Negro Patois of English, with Arabic Characters, by a Mandingo
Slave in Georgia" (New York: [American Ethnological Society?}, 1857), 5, lO.
Hodgson also referred to Muslims writing Spanish with Arabic characters, p. 4.
For David Anderson's literate "Negro," see William Brown Hodgson,
"Letter to John Vaughan," Philadelphia, November 3, 1838, W. B. Hodgson
Papers, Savannah Historical Society, Mise. Oriental Mss. Brought to my atten-
tion by Muhammad al-Ahari.
For Yarrow Mamout, see Sidney and Emma N. Kaplan, The Black Presence
in the Era of the American Revolution, 1770-1800 (Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1993). A second portrait exists, by James Alexander
Simpson, Georgetown Branch, D.C. Public Library.
For Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, Mohammed Kaba, William Rainsford, Benjamin
Larten, and Anna Mousa, see Richard Robert Madden, A Twelve Month's Residence
in the West Indies During the Transition from Slavery to Apprenticeship, with Incidental
Notices of the State of Society, Prospects, and Natural Resources ofJamaica and Other
Islands (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1835). T[homas} Davidson, ed.
Notes Taken During Travels in Africa (London: privately printed, 1839). "Routes
in North Africa by Abu Baker es Siddik," trans. G[eorge} C. Renouard, Journal
of the Royal Geographical Society VI (1836), 99-113.
Carlton Ottley, Slavery Days in Trinidad: A Social History of the Island from
1797-1838 (Trinidad: the author, 1974).
For the "Moor on the Mississippi," see Thomas A. Teas, "A Trading Trip
to Natchez and New Orleans, 1822 (Diary), "Journal ofSouthern History 7 (1941),
378-399. Brought to my attention by Sidney Kaplan.
Fig. 9. Job Ben Solomon, Oil Painting by William Hoare, England, 17 33, photo cour-
tesy of Sidney Kaplan.
 3
Job Ben Solomon:
African Nobleman and a Father
of African American Literature

Job Ben Solomon Jallo (the most common version of his name in English and
American publications) was no more deserving or extraordinary than many
other Africans enslaved in the New World-including other Fulbes such as
Yarrow (Jallo?) Mamout (Mohammed) and Charno (Chierno) from Chapter 2,
Ibrahim Abd ar-Rahman Jallo from Chapter 4, Bilali Muhammad and Salih
Bilali from Chapter 5, and Vmar ibn Said of Chapter 7. But he was more fortu-
nate because he was freed after less than three years of slavery in America.
When Job appeared before surprised and sympathetic Europeans, prior to
the rise of both antislavery and antiblack theories, his impressive manner and
mind and his strong African and Muslim identity attracted the serious atten-
tion of a number of colonial Marylanders and old-country Englishmen. One of
the latter was his future friend and biographer Thomas Bluett, whom he met
in 1732, the year George Washington was born. By 1734, about the same time
the English were becoming the leading carriers of Africans into New World
slavery, Job gained the enthusiastic assistance of several of England's wealthi-
est, most sophisticated, and most influential leaders, who arranged and eased
with gifts and money his unusual return to Africa as a free man. Further, he
became an important commercial agent as a Royal African Company (RAC)
trader and a protector of his own people because he was given the right to
ransom fellow Muslims brought to the Company for sale.
Though telling his story was no longer crucial to his own well-being, but
52 African Muslims in Antebellum America

potentially valuable to others like him and to those "ignorant of Africa" then
and now, Job authorized a memoir by his English friend Thomas Bluett that
was published the year he returned to Africa. This work was the first "life and
thoughts" of a sub-Saharan African in a European language. Retellings of Job's
story from that time to ours, in fact, have helped keep Job relatively famous
internationally. Few books on Africa in the slave trade era fail to mention this
reportedly well-mannered, even courtly, monotheistic, and literate human
being. But few have explored his significance and many have transformed him,
because of his literacy in Arabic and their author's antiblack prejudices, into a
Moor or Arab. Neither his amazing history nor his book, despite the primacy
of the latter, had the healthy effect they might have had on images of Africans.
Instead of reading his life and his memoir as the history of a representative,
intelligent, clearly civilized man trained in Africa, many writers have retold his
adventures as the history of an unusual, not quite African individual saved by
English generosity. Instead of one of Africa's noblemen, Job was transformed
into one of Nature's noblemen. Instead of serving as a contradiction to prevail-
ing theories, Job's obvious civilized and educated traits were overlooked by
influential philosopher-scientists of the slave era, cited in Chapter 1, who
preferred to believe that there was no "civilization" in Africa. Further, his as-
told-to-Bluett account of the experiences, feelings, and observations of an
African transported into American slavery has not been considered represen-
tative of the experience of thousands of other Africans as discussed in American
histories that tend to say there are no records of such matters. His memoirs do
not appear in any collection of African American literature. This is a point I
shall discuss later.
Job's full story has seldom been told, and the complete text of his book
has seldom been reprinted. Perhaps because it is a proud affirmation of native
African culture, religion, and family rather than an unsophisticated tale of the
trials faced by a pitiable black person fleeing, alone, from cruel slaveholders
and crushed slaves-the common fare of the once and again popular "slave
narratives"-it has been underplayed where it might count. In addition, it has
been overlooked when it might have provided a model, in part at least, for
later African and African American memoirs or freedom narratives.
Job's life story is dramatic, ironic, and informative; so is his book. Its hero
is energetic; daring; clever; politic; and, like most real people, less than perfect;
its author, writing for Job, is well meaning in every sense of the term. The
book's title was almost an outline: Some MEMOIRS 0/ the LIFE 0/JOB, the SON
o/SOLOMON the High Priest 0/ Boontla in A/rica; Who was a Slave about two Years
 Job Ben Solomon 53

in Maryland; and afterwards being brought to England, was set free, and sent to his
native Land in the Year 1734. On the title page, the amanuensis author identi-
fies himself as "THOMAS BLUETT, Gent. who was Intimately acquainted with
him Uob} in America, and came over to England with him." Its obligatory
flattering dedication to the Duke of Montague declares that Job "requested
me to write an Account of him, and to lay the same before YOU, as an
Acknowledgment of YOut GRACE 's great Humanity and Goodness to an unfor-
tunate Stranger. " Bluett added that he hoped that his having "not been us'd to
such Matters as these" would pardon any literary shortcomings. He also want-
ed to be pardoned for any factual errors: "The Facts I have inserted, are what I
had by JOB's particular information, or from my own Knowledge . " Bluett
insisted on this last point at length in an introduction to Some Memoirs; he
intended "to advance nothing as Fact, but what I either knew to be such, or have
had from JOB's own Mouth, whose Veracity I have no reason to doubt of."
Bluett's Section 1 offers "An Account of the Family of JOB; his Education;
and the more remarkable Circumstances of his Life, before he was taken
Captive." Job had been a freeman in a respectable community. Job's African
name was Hyuba (Ayuba), boon Salumena, boon Hibrahema (Ibrahima), hence
anglicized as Job, the son of Solomon, the son of Abraham, of the major Fulbe
clan of Jallo. He said he was about thirty-one or thirty-two, which places his
birth around 1702. His country's boundaries were unclear to Bluett and perhaps
to Job, whose people did not mark off territory as the English did, and in fact
the history of Bundu, the easternmost region of present-day Senegal, involves
complicated territorial changes related to the rise and fall of princes and powers.
What is known of his country's history today is close to that given by
Bluett: that a settlement was organized about fifty years earlier as a safety zone
for every Muslim (all who could "read and know God") fleeing slavery. Job's
family filled religious offices (alja), and Job had been expected to do the same.
He studied under his father, who had another student whom Job says became
king. In fact, this Samba Geladio Jegi never got to be king but did become
the subject of several epic song cycles still sung today. When Job was fifteen
years old, he assisted his father as imam. At about the same age, he married the
daughter of the Alfa of Tombut (Bambuk-gold country). They had three
sons: Abdullah, Ibrahim, and Samba. He married a second wife around 1729,
the daughter of the Alfa of Tomga (Damga), who gave him a daughter.
Obviously, Job was doing well in Bundu. But he did himself little good when
he set off on a trading venture toward the Atlantic Ocean, some two hundred
miles from home.
54 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Bluett's Section 2 offers the tale "Of the Manner of his being taken Captive;
and what followed upon it, till his Return." This "slave narrative" section takes
up only one and a half pages out of fifty-fout. Job, with two servants, was sent
to the distant Gambia River by his father to sell "two Negroes" (probably not
Muslim and not Fulbe) and to buy paper and other items from an English
ship; his father warned him against crossing the river into enemy Mandingo
territory. Such trading ventures to dispose of criminals or enemies were not
uncommon.
But Job seems to have had his own mind. He disagreed with Captain Pike's
price for the two men; sent two personal servants home; engaged a translator,
Loumein Yoai (Lamine Jay), and crossed the river. There he traded his two
captives for some cows. While he was resting, having removed his "Gold hilt-
ed Sword, a Gold Knife, which they wear by their Side, and a rich Quiver of
Arrows," seven or eight men took him and Jay captive. Their heads were shaved
so they would appear to be prisoners of war, and they were then sold to the
same Captain Pike to whom Job had tried to sell other men only days earlier.
Pike allowed Job to try to get friends to ransom him, but a week passed, and
Job and Jay were then taken across the sea to Annapolis, Maryland. (Exactly the
same journey was made in 1750 by Kunta Kinte, Alex Haley's farthest-back
ancestor in his novel and teleplay Roots.) Later Job heard that his father had
sent slaves to be traded for Job and that his friend Samba had made a success-
ful war on the Mandingoes, but they were too late to help Job.
The slaving agent in Annapolis, Vachell Denton, sold Job to a Mr. Tolsey
in Kent Island, Maryland, who put him to work preparing tobacco for market.
Job malingered and was sent to take care of cattle-a task that a Fula would
have been pleased to have. However, Job's unhappiness and his faith led to
much praying. At least once a white boy threw mud in his face as Job prostrated
himself in the manner of Muslims everywhere. Job ran away in hopes of find-
ing a better master or situation. Getting as far as southeastern Pennsylvania, he
was taken up by the local sheriff, as both black and white servants were who
could not prove that they were free or unindentured, if they had no pass and no
excuse for being where they were. Job was put in prison.
Bluett and others, having heard something of Job, visited him in June
1731. They discovered Job could speak no English, but they encouraged the
affable, calm man to write ifhe could. He wrote, pronounced the words "Allah"
and "Muhammad," and refused wine, so they concluded that Job was a Muslim.
Bluett and others called him a "Mahometan," a term that Muslims, including
Job, find offensive because it suggests worship of a man rather than of God or
 Job Ben Solomon 55

Allah. It appears that Job's objection was not understood by Bluett. No one at
that time knew what to do about Job.
A slave who could speak Wolof, a language of Senegal that Job under-
stood, discovered who Job's master was and what Job's problems with him
were. The jailer returned Job and explained that Job thought he deserved to be
treated better. As a result, Job was given a place to pray. But he was not recon-
ciled to being a slave and wrote a letter in Arabic to his father. He had it taken
to the man who had received him in Annapolis, who eventually got it to
England. On the way, however, the philanthropist James Oglethorpe-founder,
in the originally antislavery colony of Georgia, of an asylum for many British
people who were imprisoned victims of a court system as arbitrary as some in
Africa saw the letter and helped arrange a bond to release Job on a promise to
pay his happy-to-sell master.
Several Annapolis gentlemen (ministers and lawyers) helped take care of
Job, were taught some Arabic, and recommended him to London friends for his
good nature and obvious spirituality. They might have recommended him for
his Muslim faith, had it occurred to them, because that was what was clearly
sustaining him. Finally, in March 1733,Job and Bluett set sail for England. On
this passage, Job impressed Bluett and others by writing out the Quran from
memory; by his religious devotion, praying publicly five times a day; his adher-
ence to Muslim dietary tules; and by his pleasant way with the officers and
crew. Bluett and the captain took it upon themselves to teach Job English. In
about twenty days he had learned to write single syllables. Then Job and Bluett
both became ill, but by the time another month had passed and they had arrived
in England, Job was able to take part in common conversations.
For some time this Muslim pilgrim's progress was threatened; Job was
still property, though in England. Bluett had become his friend and, as a lawyer,
strove to make Job comfortable and his freedom secure through several useful
contacts. Job was eventually introduced to a number of powerful people who
were sympathetic to his cause. But a high price had been set on Job, and for a
while it appeared that a proposed subscription might not raise enough to buy
his freedom. Eventually the Royal African Company, Job's owner at the time,
was paid and began preparations for sending Job back to the Gambia. Job was
relieved to hear that there would be no ransom to pay once he arrived.
Already Job had gained extraordinary encouragement and treatment above
nearly everyone's expectations. Job's impressive ways brought him invitations,
friendships, and gifts through a period of more than a year in England. The man
was busy. Significant intellectual and political gentry took him in; he met the
56 African Muslims in Antebellum America

royal family, his curiosity about and ability to handle agricultural and other
tools led to gifts worth more than five hundred English pounds, and he gath-
ered more money and enough other valuables to make his return to the Gambia
luxurious by any standards. Further, along his way Job politely disputed with
Christian divines; wrote three Qurans from memory; and translated Arabic for
Sir Hans Sloane (one of the founders of the British Museum) and others, prob-
ably including George Sale, whose translation of the Quran in English in 1734
was hailed as the best to date. (Job sent greetings to someone his English secre-
tary called "Mista Sail" in a letter written from the Gambia in 1736. It is possi-
ble that he contributed something to that translation.) Job was also elected to
the prestigious and intellectual Spalding Gentlemen's Society, which may have
put him in the company of philosopher-physicist Sir Isaac Newton and poet
Alexander Pope.
Bluett's Section 3, "Some Observations, as related by JOB, concerning the
Manners and Opinions of his Countrymen," gives further hints about the man
and the cultute that so impressed the English nobility. Bluett began by reiter-
ating the prevailing opinion of his day on the generally "hard and low life" of
most Africans because of the lack of European conveniences. His description of
African farming, milling, transportation, and construction by the laboring
classes is grim; his sympathies for members of the higher classes having to read
without candles in dark, hot houses is touching. But Bluett felt better because
nearly every helpful item Job's people might need was sent along with Job.
Bluett was wonderfully ignorant of Africa. He was gullible too, of coutse.
But his retelling, to give him due credit, is not the usual series of negative
pictures. Indeed, it is quite romantic and refined in an expected Anglocentric
way. Bluett passed on stories from Job about lions and elephants that he may
or may not have misheard. He was fascinated by Job's descriptions of poisoned
arrows used in hunting-as were other Englishmen who pestered Job for
samples after his return to the Gambia. Job also described Fulbe customs of
courtship, dowries, marriage, multiple wives, and divorce. Bluett does seem to
have completely misunderstood the wives' wearing of the veil as being constant
in the house as well as out. The naming of children on the seventh day, a kind
of baptism, and circumcision are mentioned, as are prayers for the relatives of
the dead. Here too Bluett seems to have tried to respect and to report honest-
ly, though he barely understood what he was told about these customs.
Undoubtedly Job had impressed Bluett with the idea that such facts were
to be emphasized in his book and seems also to have insisted on passing on his
deeper observations. Accordingly, Bluett began in this section to try to char-
 Job Ben Solomon 57

acterize Job's religion. Bluett thought Job's religious thinking was less gross and
material than what he had heard from Turks; he also felt Job's aversion to
images was an improvement over Catholic ways.
Bluett's Section 4, "Of JOB's Person and Character," is more interesting
because it is more detailed. We begin to see the man, if not the African, that
Bluett and other English people saw: "JOB was abour five Feet ten Inches high,
straight limb'd, and naturally of a good Constitution; altho' the religious
Abstinence which he observed, and the Fatigues he lately underwent, made
him appear something lean and weakly. His Countenance was exceeding pleas-
ant, yet grave and composed; his Hair long, black, and curled, being very differ-
ent from that of the Negroes commonly brought from Africa." Notice there is
no mention of his color. The same kind of de-Africanizing happened to others
described later in this book.
Job had often been ingenious in conversation, showing a "solid judgment,
a ready memory, and a clear head." He had also been able to argue his own
religious principles with "much Temper and Impartiality," wit, "innocent
simplicity"-which seems to have meant, to Bluett, the opposite of duplicity-
and agreeably entertaining honesty. And he was able to do so in his only recent-
ly learned English. Job surprised many when he quickly took apart and put
together several "ordinary instruments" (a plow, a grist mill, and a clock). And,
Bluett says, he often wrote in Arabic-the Quran, for instance. No copies of
these writings have yet been discovered, although a Quran was reported to be
in the hands of a Mr. Smith around 1800. Letters from Job that have been
discovered, written after his return to Africa, have not been impressive; that is,
none of those extant reveals a facility beyond basic Arabic-the accompanying
texts are not translations. Job may have decided that it mattered little what he
wrote in Arabic because the rest of the page included his dictation in English.
And who could read the Arabic, anyway?
Job appeared to everyone, Bluett thought, to be mild-tempered, compas-
sionate toward the distressed, cheerful, never irreligious, and unfailingly well-
mannered. Fearing, perhaps that this picture might make his man out to be a
wimp, he added that he thought Job could also be brave, citing Job's tale of
fighting robbers in Africa who attempted but failed to take away four "Negroes"
Job was trying to sell. Further, regarding his religion, Job relaxed in one area:
he modified his opposition to having a portrait of himself made as a remem-
brance for his English friends. But he did not yield on another. After reading
carefully in the New Testament (in Arabic) he could not find anything about the
Trinity, or three gods, that Christians worshipped. He found no reason to change
58 African Muslims in Antebellum America

his ideas in that regard. Bluett, a Christian missionary, conceded that though
a Muslim, Job held "just and reasonable" beliefs about God and the next life.
Finally, Bluett decided that Job was quite learned despite the latter's refer-
ring to the existence of only thirty handwritten manuscripts as texts he had
studied in his education; added his own misunderstandings of Job's discus-
sions of the original transcription of the Quran and of how Arabic was taught;
and gave Job's conclusion that Job respected Jesus Christ but that Muhammad
had had to perfect the earlier prophet's message.
Of course, Bluett had to elevate Job above other Africans that the Royal
African Company was exporting to America. Most later readers followed his
lead, to the further detriment of images of Africans.
Bluett's "CONCLUSION; Containing some Reflections upon the Whole"
reaffirms his belief that the providence of God-including Job's-shone
brightly in the case of Job and that his trials, followed by the hospitality and
kindness to strangers of good Englishmen-as well as their helpful gifts-
would ultimately be beneficial to Job's countrymen. Then he let himself go:
"Considering the singular Obligations he is under to the English, Uob} may
possibly, in good time, be of considerable Service to us also; and that we have
reason to hope this, from the repeated Assurances we had from JOB, that he
would, upon all occasions, use his best Endeavours to promote the English
Trade before any other. "
This passage reveals a side of Bluett and a rationale for his pamphlet that
were not admitted earlier. Instead of presenting Job as an example or repre-
sentative of countless Africans with intellectual and spiritual acquirements and
qualities that should have discouraged trading in their bodies and encouraged
developing humane relations, Bluett represented Job as being nearly an English
gentleman in mind, manners, religion, and love for things English-espe-
cially commerce and profits.
Job would probably have approved of the commercial promise anticipat-
ed by Bluett. He might also have liked to read or hear about how well he had
negotiated his release, invitations to high places, and the charitable tenden-
cies he cultivated so well. But he surely would have wanted his amanuensis to
express more respect for his culture and people, Muslims generally, and their
right to be as free as the English were. As we shall see later, Job acted imme-
diately on the opening his reception in England had made.
Nonetheless, in his "Conclusion" Bluett introduced a warning deeper
perhaps than he knew, and one that Hume, Kant, Hegel, Jefferson, Webster,
 Job Ben Solomon 59

and their followers should have taken to heart and head: "Tis true, neither the
Extent of our Lives nor Capacities will permit us to view any very great Part of
the Works of God; and what we do see, we are too apt to put a wrong
Construction upon. "
Surely, in this conclusion, Bluett pronounced a profound warning to all
those philosophers and others who dared offer opinions on that "Part of the
Works of God" called Africans, despite never having visited or conversed with
any of them. In Some Memoirs there was ample evidence that this representative
African displayed a rational and critical intelligence, wit, self-consciousness,
self-respect, apprehension of a godhead, debating skills, and manners-learned
in his homeland and among fellow Muslims-to contradict such benighted
Western theories. Had Some Memoirs been given the attention it deserved, it
might have also been recognized as the first text in African American literature;
been reprinted regularly; and provided a conceptual model, in part at least, for
overlooked aspects oflater African and African American memoirs or narratives.
But let us finish Job's post-Bluett story. Job's return voyage to Africa, a
seven-week trip, was smoothed considerably by a very helpful letter dated July
4, 1734, signed by twelve officers of the RAC, and directed to the "Chief
Merchants" in the Gambia. In it the RAC recommended good treatment for
Job, requested care in returning him and his property to his own country, and
described an agreement between him and the RAC that any Muslim sent as a
slave to its agents should be freed upon offering two good non-Muslim slaves
in exchange. Clearly Job had power-but clearly also, he had a lack of sympa-
thy for those who had not accepted Islam.
This general letter was accompanied by a private letter emphasizing the
company's interest inJob and saying the king and queen had also taken notice
of him. It went on to urge the RAC officials in Africa to send someone with him
to his own country in order to open "a trade and correspondence between the
Nations of those parts and our highest factory" ("factory" being the RAC term
for a trading post).
The most complete source of information on Job after he returned to Africa
is Francis Moore, who was an RAC officer when Job was taken away and when
he returned. Moore was as pleased with Job as any Englishman at home had
been. He lived and traveled with Job for a year before leaving Africa for England
in May 1735. He dedicated his Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa . .. with a
Particular Account ofJob Ben Solomon . .. to the Duke of Montague, a mutual
acquaintance. Moore was one of the least racist of West African observers, and
60 African Muslims in Antebellum America

his Travels offers a clear picture of the Gambia people and Royal African
Company operations. His book indicates that the Gambia trade at this time did
not consist of slaves alone, although some captains, such as Pike, seemed to
want nothing else. Moore strove to increase trade in ivory; gold; and gum,
which had many industrial uses.
Moore's notes tell where Job and Lamine Jay were taken prisoner on the
south shore of the Gambia River before being dragged off to Captain Pike.
They also date Job's return as August 8, 1734. Moore appreciated Job's extra-
ordinary good luck and politically astute progress from Annapolis through
England and the gifts Job received from "her most Gracious Majesty Queen
Caroline, his Highness the Duke of Cumberland, his Grace the Duke of
Montague, the Earl of Pembroke, several Ladies of Quality, Mr Holden, and the
Royal African Company. "
Often during the rainy season they first shared, there were exciting
moments. On August 26, Moore said he and his friend Job were peacefully
sitting upriver when "there came by us six or seven of the very People who
robb'd and made a slave of Job, about thirty Miles from hence, about three
Years ago; Job, tho' a very even-temper'd Man at other times, could not contain
himself when he saw them, but fell into a most terrible Passion, and was for
killing them with his broad Sword and Pistols, which he always took care to
have about him. "
Moore claimed that he talked Job out of attacking them and persuaded
him to ask questions of them instead. Job was delighted when he heard that a
pistol received as part of the barter for Job had accidentally killed the king of
the robbers' country.
Job sent messengers to Bundu; locals knew of only one other person sold
to Europeans who had returned to Africa instead of being murdered or eaten as

Africans often presumed was the fate of those taken away. Meanwhile, he talked
and traded, prayed, gave away valuable sheets of paper, bought a woman slave
and two horses, and waited to hear from home, about a week's journey away. The
rainy season was not a good time to travel. There was another reason he had not
heard anything: An intrafamily war was raging in a small country between the
Gambia and Bundu.
Finally, however, early in February 1735, friends came from Bundu. They
did not have good news. His respected father had died, although not until he
had heard from Job, then in England. There had been a terrible war between
rival factions, one of which included Job's fellow student Samba Geladio Jegi,
 Job Ben Solomon 61

and his first wife had remarried. Perhaps a bit doubtful about his African future,
Job sent several letters with Moore, who was leaving Africa for England. In
them Job promised to learn English and to increase English trade and influence
while he remained in Africa. He also asked for help in finding and freeing
Lamine Jay. In June Job managed to return to Bundu, where there had been
doubts about the truth of Job's being free and relatively nearby. After a lively
welcome-back party, Job and his dull English companion stayed in Bundu for
five months, renewing old acquaintances and arranging trade.
Job had a few more adventures that were heard of in England. It was prob-
ably easy in those years traveling back and forth between Bundu and the
Gambia. For a year Job was a prisoner or parolee of French powers trying to
control the trade in gum and gold on either side of Bundu. The British were
unable to protect Job, but his release was gained by Africans themselves when
Muslim traders diverted all trade to the British on the Gambia River and away
from the French on the Senegal.
From 1738 to 1740 little seems to have been heard from Job. In that last
year Job requested passage to London, but gifts were sent instead. In 1750 the
failing Royal African Company folded. Only a note in the prestigious Spalding
Gentlemen's Society records suggests a continuing correspondence between
one of its more distant members and Job, bur it also indicated Job's death. Job
Ben Solomon Jallo had died in 1773-the year Phillis Wheatley, who may
have also come from Senegal, published her volume of poetry in London and
Boston and three years before the Declaration of Independence blamed England
for most colonial problems, including those related to the presence of African
slaves in the New World.
The English undoubtedly had not gained all they wanted from this friend-
ly investment, but they also seem not to have known how to use Job. It was a
long time before they seriously financed another penetration into the African
interior. Job, on the other hand, must have derived some advantages as well as
some disappointments from his own hopes. But he too seems not to have known
how best to use the English. It is possible, of course, that he could not bring
himself to that pitch of purpose that might have been most useful to both, and
it is also possible that his Muslim faith-almost forgotten in the RAC commer-
cial records-allowed him to take the evil and the good as Allah willed.
Whatever one concludes, this probably unexceptional small trader had shown
for a short time and in a little space that at least one African was no "senseless,
brutish" creature, whether in Maryland, England, or Bundu.
62 African Muslims in Antebellum America

SELECTED READINCiS
Stephen Belcher, "Constructing a Hero: Samba Geladio Djegui," Research
in African Literatures 25 (Spring 1994), 75ff.
Philip D. Curtin, "Ayuba Suleiman Diallo ofBondu," in Philip D. Curtin,
ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967).
Frances Smith Foster, The Development of Ante-Bellum Slave Narratives
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979).
Michael A. Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age ofJihad: The PreColonial State of
Bundu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Douglas Grant, The Fortunate Slave: An Illustration of African Slavery in the
Early Eighteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1968).
Ronald A. T. Judy, (Dis)Forming the American Canon: African-Arabic Slave
Narratives and the Vernacular (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993)
149-161.
Fig. 10. Ibrahim Abd ar-Rahman, Engraving of Crayon Drawing by Henry Inman, New
York, 1828, from The Colonizationist andJournal of Freedom , Boston, 1834, frontispiece,
photo courtesy of Amherst College.
 4
Abd ar-Rahman and His
Two Amazing American Journeys

The year 1828 must have been an exciting one for both the dignified slave
"Prince," of Natchez, Mississippi, and the haughty warrior Ibrahim Abd ar-
Rahman Jallo, formerly of Timbo, FutaJallon, Guinea-for they were one and
the same man. After forty years of slavery on the American frontier, the six-foot-
tall, newly freed sixty-five-year-old was permitted to quit his exile and to begin
to make a long way home with his American-born wife, Isabella. As we shall
see, this journey was almost a triumphant march in regal costume with himself
at the head. Few cities and few dignitaries missed seeing or hearing about the
couple or the man. This amazing trip, conducted on steamboats and stage-
coaches by way of Cincinnati to Washington, D.C., through three New England
states, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and eventually by boat to
Norfolk, Virginia, and then to Liberia, about three hundred miles from his
African hometown and nearly six thousand miles from Natchez, took eleven
months (April 8, 1828 to March 18, 1829).
How much shorter this voyage must have seemed to the old but digni-
fied, brave man than his trip in the other direction at age twenty-six. At that
earlier time, usually in chains, Abd ar-Rahman had been led to the Gambia
River and put into the tight and filthy hold of a small slave ship, the A/rica,
which brought him to Dominica Island in the West Indies, from where he was
transshipped to New Orleans and then sent by riverboat to Natchez-about six
66 African Muslims in Antebellum America

thousand miles altogether and six months of nearly constant imprisonment

during which he was clad in little more than his skin (mid-March into August
1788). This detailed information-more than is available on the journeys of
most Africans brought as slaves to the New World-has been discovered in the
comprehensive statements made by ar-Rahman to numerous contemporaries
and thtough the extraordinary efforts of historian Terry Alford, detailed in his
book Prince Among Slaves (1977). My own investigations, more modest than
Alford's, differ only in giving less emphasis to ar-Rahman's royal pretensions.
In 1828, Abd ar-Rahman was the most famous African in America. This
fame was a result of an unusual and unusually publicized manumission that the
United States government encouraged, leading to his proud passage through
many Northern cities in what a Mississippi sponsor thought was a Moorish
costume: white turban topped with a crescent, blue cloth coat with yellow
buttons, white pantaloons gathered at the ankles, yellow boots-and, some-
times, a scimitar! It was also a result of an extraordinary combination of the
admiration and assistance of powerful and influential and not so powerful
people-black and white-with widely varying agendas, as well as ar-
Rahman's proud but politic words and faith-inspiring demeanor.
Abd ar-Rahman made positive impressions everywhere he went, despite the
fact that he was begging for money to buy his children out of slavery. Each of
those who helped him-several doing so despite prior prejudices against blacks
and Muslims-was impressed by the man's modesty, persistence, and patience.
They were also impressed by his history. As he told them, he had been, after all,
a Muslim who believed in one god; a prince; an African able to read and write;
a cavalry officer; a husband and father back home before suffering an unex-
pected defeat in war; a captive on the water until he was landed in Natchez; a
tunaway and then a steady, serious worker and family man, a model to other
slaves, according to all local accounts; and finally a freeman wanting to save his
whole family. Everyone who met him and left a record-and these were
many-made admiring statements.
In that year of 1828, ar-Rahman saw much of the Northeast by way of
invitations to influential homes and assembly halls in Washingron; Baltimore;
Philadelphia; New York City; Boston; Worcester, Salem, New Bedford, and
Springfield in Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; New Haven and
Hartford, Connecticut; and smaller towns along the way. His seriousness and
literacy led prominent white mercantile, philanthropic, and political people,
including businessmen Charles and Arthur Tappan; colonizationists Francis
Scott Key and Ralph R. Gurley; Rev. Thomas Gallaudet, founder of the first
 Abd ar-Rahman and His Two Amazing American Journeys 67

school for deaf-mutes; Mayor Joseph Watson of Philadelphia; U.S. Rep-

resentative Edward Everett,Jr.; Secretary of State Henry Clay; and a helpful but,
as usual, reserved President John Quincy Adams, to positively respond in some
way. African American leaders responded the same way, in Boston-including
David Walker, who would soon fire the first meaningful shot in the war against
American slavery with his bold Appeal . .. To the Colored Citizens of the World
(1829); New York-including the two editors of the first black newspaper in
America, Freedom's Journal, one of whom, John Russwurm (Bowdoin 1827)
would follow ar-Rahman to Africa; and Philadelphia. The general public and
the artist Henry Inman, who limned ar-Rahman's "quite black" features for
posterity, were also touched. Forty years later, Inman's crayon portrait elicited
a particularly unguarded reaction from a less than comic Mark Twain mentioned
earlier, which I will return to later in this chapter.
Furthermore, "Prince's" progress, at least from the time he arrived in
Cincinnati on April 19, 1828, to the time he left for Liberia on February 7,
1829, was described fully by the Northern press, which emphasized his
attempts to raise money to ransom his children and grandchildren still enslaved
near Natchez. His ten-month passage was also described by a segment of the
Southern press, but fearfully, even insanely, as it claimed that the "red-eyed"
freeman was inspiring anti-Southern, antislavery sentiments in the North and
bloody insurrection in the South. More on this later.
Sometime lawyer Cyrus Griffin, who had helped free ar-Rahman, probably
had been, a year earlier, the only Southern newspaper editor to publish four
biographical articles on a single slave-ar-Rahman, of course. Griffin appar-
ently thought he had to make the literate African into something more
presentable, so he titled his series "The Unfortunate Moor." To make that
misrepresentation more reasonable, he argued that the man had been lighter
skinned when he came to America and that his hair had grown woolly only as
it had grown whiter. The very man who was most responsible for his freedom,
another editor, Andrew Marschalk, later became one of ar-Rahman's sudden
Southern enemies on the grounds that those who encouraged his lengthy
campaign were acting contrary to the condition Abd ar-Rahman's master had
set on his being freed, that he "should only enjoy liberty in his native country."
That is, that the couple was to have been sent immediately to Africa. This
condition did exist, but Marschalk had known that a year earlier when he was
among those who encouraged ar-Rahman to ask for help in buying his children.
Through it all-not aware, of course, of the vicious extremes reached by
some Southern newspaper attacks-the elderly African kept his composure.
68 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Though with what must have been wonder-inspiring vistas and close-ups of the
most populous, busy, and technologically advanced part of the then youthful
United States and almost constantly a focus of variously motivated personal
attention, ar-Rahman did not become distracted or befuddled. In hopes of help-
ing his family, he promised ministers he would preach Christianity, promised
merchants he would promote trade, and showed promise of being very helpful
to the American Colonization Society (ACS) in its goal of exporting black freed

people to Liberia. Yet to his great credit, despite all these uses whites wanted
to make of him, he also joined the ACS's African American opposition not just
once but in galas arranged in three of the major cities named earlier.
Abd ar-Rahman was, to a great extent, personally successful. He and his
wife did get to Liberia, and a year later the $3,500 he had raised in the
Northeast was used to purchase the freedom and passage to Africa of eight of
his descendants. That he seemed to have done little to advance Christianity or
trade, having openly reverted to Islam immediately upon his ship's dropping
anchor and having been at odds with the colony's manager, undoubtedly did not
indicate a lack of success to him. But surely he must have been less than happy
when the negotiations for the release of his children dragged on and when,
later, he felt too ill to make the fifteen-day journey from Monrovia, the capital
of Liberia, home to Timbo in the mountainous FutaJallon. Whatever his feel-
ings were, death ended them less than five months after he had returned to the
Old World, and ar-Rahman did not get to see either his American children or
his African homeland again.
This brief outline of Abd ar-Rahman's last two years barely suggests how
interesting, valuable, and dramatic his full story is. There are numerous contem-
porary documents from friends and foes: dozens of newspaper articles and
personal letters, U.S. government papers, a biographical pamphlet, and at least
five manuscripts in Arabic by Abd ar-Rahman. Nearly all of these documents
appear in my book African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook.
There have been several retellings of his story, and, recently, growing atten-
tion to his particular adventures. As well as Alford's 1977 book, mentioned
earlier, ar-Rahman was the subject of "The Biography of a Slave" by Charles
Sydnor (1937); a few pages in The African Colonization Movement, 1811-1865 by
P. J. Staudenraus (1961); a book-length, romantic, and racist life story with
possible folkloric value, James Register's Jallon: Arabic Prince of Old Natchez
[l968}); and some short biographical and autobiographical statements have
been reprinted elsewhere. The essential records had been available for some
time, of course, but they appeared together in my previous book for the first
 Abd ar-Rahman and His Two Amazing American Journeys 69

time. Many come from that last year of ar-Rahman's life, but several of these and
other documents refer to his earlier years on either side of the Atlantic.
The reasons for this man's remarkable self-possession may be presumed
from his African history. He claimed to be the son of a Fula, the second almaamy
(or religious and military leader) in the Futa Jallon region of present-day
Guinea. His father was Ibrahima Yoro Pate Sori of the Jallo clan. He was even-
tually called Maudo, or the Great, because he was chiefly responsible for the
success of a Fulbe-Ied series of wars of liberation and conquest against local
non-Muslims that began in the late 1720s. Traditional stories abound concern-
ing this earliest and most influential West African Fulbe jihad and its two lead-
ers, the orthodoxly religious Karamoko Alfa and the warlike and commercially
oriented Ibrahima Sori. As these legends do not differ much the main outlines
of the history of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century FutaJallon are also
easy to come by.
Abd ar-Rahman's more particular place in Futa Jallon, as is to be expect-
ed of a man who disappeared in his midtwenties, is not readily discoverable. But
there is sufficient information in his autobiographical statements relative to
what is known about his country's history to offer the following sketch.
Abd ar-Rahman was born around 1762 and was well educated in centers
of Islamic training-at home in Timbo, where Bilali also hailed from (see
Chapter 5); in Jenne of Masin a, the home ofSalih Bilali (see Chapter 5); and in
Timbuktu, birthplace of Abu Bakr (see Chapter 2)-cities and areas that
witnessed Fulbe-led jihads in the early nineteenth century. Ar-Rahman was
not an Arab or Moor, as several reporters claimed; he was "quite dark" and had
curly hair and African features, as Inman's portrait shows. He did cherish a
Fulbe sense of superiority to all other people, black and white-a sentiment
reduced to anti-Africanism by earlier writers. Not being a first son-hence
not especially assigned to advanced intellectual pursuits-he assumed military
training and duties. His father needed all the help he could get. From long
before ar-Rahman's birth, the Fulbe and their sometime allies had been
constantly at war, usually on the defensive. Finally, however, in years that would
be similarly significant in North America, 1776 to 1778, Sori managed to
consolidate his then victorious armies and power and to create not only the
strongest nation of its time in that area but a safe haven for some of the most
influential Islamic scholars in West Africa. With a basis in trade and agricul-
ture, including capturing, utilizing, and selling slaves, this political and
economic empire was closely related to the Atlantic trade in Africans.
By the time Abd ar-Rahman was twenty-two, literate in Arabic and able
70 African Muslims in Antebellum America

to speak the Bambara, Mandingo, and Jallonke languages, at the very least, he
had already seen a large part of West Africa and its people and had successful-
ly led sizable military forces. Four years later, in 1788, more experienced mili-
tarily, married, and a father, ar-Rahman led an army of two thousand west-in
defense, he said, of his country's trade with Europeans on the coast. This trade
included exporting enemies during the years of the jihad, which had both reli-
gious and political ends, and later outright captures and sales of non-Muslims
into the Atlantic slave trade because Europeans were not interested in any other
items, according to ar-Rahman's half-brother, ruler Abdul Qadiri, in 182l.
Altogether, in this expedition ar-Rahman would cover more ground than he
would later traverse in his trip from Natchez to Boston. As he set out, he had
no way of knowing that someday he would also be in a position to compare two
quite different Atlantic-bound overland journeys and overseas voyages.
In this last of his African wars, he and his army of more or less recent
converts were immediately successful. Since they could not capture the enemy's
soldiers, however, they retired after inflicting what punishment they could.
On the way home, the will of Allah turned against him. The prince and his
cavalry troop were ambushed in a narrow mountain pass, and he and about
fifty of his men were captured by the regrouped enemy called by Abd ar-
Rahman the Houbous or Hebos, probably non-Muslims or lukewarm Muslims
but not as yet identified beyond question. The captives were taken to the very
distant Gambia River, where ar-Rahman was not able to find fellow Muslims
to ransom him as was often done. Surely already sick in heart and spirit, he
was sold to the captain of a waiting British ship. Ar-Rahman's long life in
foreign slavery was about to begin.
As his modern biographer, Terry Alford, discovered, ar-Rahman experi-
enced enough hardship for one lifetime before he was able to rest on land again.
For half a year he was almost continually shipbound. He rode the Gambia River
for a week; suffered the three-thousand-mile, six-week sail across the Atlantic
to Dominica in the Caribbean; and then had to undergo another 2,200 miles
and six more weeks' passage across the Caribbean to the Mississippi River.
There he remained ship bound for another week before landing in Spanish New
Orleans, a city then only two-thirds the size of Timbo. His waterborne ordeal
was not yet over. After a month's stay there, he was finally carried three hundred
miles upriver, and in another thirty days he had arrived at what was to be his
home away from home, Natchez.
It is a wonder anyone survived such a journey. But ar-Rahman had been a
warrior; survive he did. Ill, weak, and wrapped with rope, he was sold, shorn
 Abd ar-Rahman and His Two Amazing American Journeys 71

of his long hair, and named-by his purchaser, Thomas Foster-"Prince"

because of his still proud ways and his attempt to tell of his African position
through a Mandingo translator. Abd ar-Rahman, born to command and trained
to despise agricultural labor, suffered whippings and field work, bided his time,
grew well, and ran away. After some weeks in the woods of what was then
Spanish Mississippi, however, he returned, disheartened, perhaps, in not discov-
ering companies of fugitives he cared to join. In fact, a fellow Fula and Muslim
had been sold with him, and he did meet others around Natchez. But they
arranged no action together, as far as we know. Rahman became resigned to his
fate and showed it in his behavior. His mistress, to whom he first reappeared,
attributed his new attitude to the "power of [her} smile and [her} touch." The
runaway may have been desperate for a human relationship of any kind, but it
is more likely that he hoped that faithful service might be repaid with fair
treatment, his own house, fields, free time, and some private life. Such was the
treatment loyal slaves of the Fulbe received in FutaJallon.
Within unavoidable bounds, Abd ar-Rahman distinguished himself
further. The former commander became an overseer in practice, if not in name.
Perhaps, too, as any Fula of his class would-particularly a cavalryman like
him-he found familiar pleasures in caring for the horses and the cattle that
his master bought regularly as time passed. He apparently strove to impress.
His master declared that he had never known Abd ar-Rahman to be intoxicat-
ed, dishonest, mean, or lazy; fellow slaves and neighbors had few or no
complaints against him. Abd ar-Rahman tried a show of conversion to the reli-
gion of his master and a show of disidentifying with the majority of American
slaves. But he was not given his freedom in his prime years. His "marriage" to
an American-born, and dark-skinned, Baptist in 1794 or 1795-a contradic-
tion of his supposed religious and racial stance-was a personal success. And
his daily life eventually became easier as he did finally get his own garden plot
and release time.
In the midst of that struggle he had high and then dashed hopes. One day,
perhaps in 1807, a very unlikely and nearly providential meeting took place.
"Prince," relieved of some field duties, was selling vegetables his family had
grown in Natchez town when he was seen by and reintroduced to the only
white man ever to have resided in Timbo before or during his father's rule there
in the early 1780s. John Coates Cox had wandered away from a ship on the
coast of Africa, had grown terribly ill, and had eventually ended up in Timbo.
After being restored to health and given a guard to the Gambia River by Abd
ar-Rahman's father, he came to America and eventually emigrated to the
72 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Mississippi territory. Cox and the vegetable seller recognized each other at
once. Cox notified the governor and tried to arrange for the purchase and free-
ing of the man he had known on such different terms nearly thirty years earli-
er. But Foster would not sell ar-Rahman, and Cox's, and later his son's, attempts
to buy him were unsuccessful.
Still, it is probable that Abd ar-Rahman became something of a local
celebrity because of Cox's story and efforts on his behalf. Not long thereafter,
ar-Rahman, now a father of five sons and four daughters, was relieved of all
field duty, and his greater leisure led to his becoming even better known.
Sometime in the early 1820s, he spent enough time with a local newspaper
editor, Andrew Marschalk, who was impressed with Abd ar-Rahman's literacy
and knowledge of West Africa, for Marschalk to suggest that he might be able
to send a letter to Africa in ar-Rahman 's Arabic. For some reason, perhaps
because he had not seen any Arabic writing for thirty years, ar-Rahman did
not take up this suggestion until 1826. Two years after the State Department
received this letter and involved itself in a lengthy correspondence with
Morocco-the only African Muslim nation with which the department was
familiar-followed by some relatively easy negotiations, Secretary of State
Henry Clay (a colonizationist and slaveholder) wrote that the United States
would pay for the transportation of the "Moor" (as he was presumed by
Marschalk to be) to Washington, D.C., ifhis master were agreeable and would
free him. On February 22, Foster agreed on condition that his former proper-
ty would be sent out of the country.
Then arose another snag. Ar-Rahman did not want to go without his wife.
At this point his master balked somewhat. Isabella was, after all, "the planta-
tion's obstetrick practitioner and doctress." Eventually, however, he gave in
and set a low price of $200 for her freedom . In twenty-four hours local citizens
raised $293 by subscription; by mid-March she too was free . Editor Marschalk,
responsible for the freed couple's passage to the nation's capital, provided an
"Arabian" cosrume for the "Moor"; enjoyed the going-away party (but for the
tearful separation of parents and children); and sent them off, via the Mississippi
River, north to Cincinnati. He entertained vague-and dangerous-hopes
that along the way Abd ar-Rahman might be able to raise money to redeem his
children. He did not anticipate, however, that he himself (partially inspired
by Master Foster's anger at his former slaves being at large in America) would
soon be the leading critic of the fund-raising campaign waged by ar-Rahman
in the distant Northern states.
For nearly a year Abd ar-Rahman-then in his mid-sixties-traveled
 Abd ar-Rahman and His Two Amazing American Journeys 73

backward toward home. His overland march was sometimes under the care of
the federal government, with an official "pass" provided by Secretary Clay. He
dictated a letter home about that sponsorship. His amanuensis seems to have
tried to give the true flavor of his words. The letter is appreciative, politic, and
includes a caution about adding to the costs of freeing his progeny:

My Dear Children,
I proceeded to this place to see the President and Mr. Clay; they both received
me very kindly, and I expect from their expressions to me, that they will pay
every attention to my business. In Baltimore the gentlemen took me in a
carriage around the town, and shew me all the beauties thereof. In
Washington I visited the President's house, but I found the President the
best piece of furniture in the house.
My reception by Mr. Clay was very flattering to me; he invited me to
partake of the hospitalities of his house, which I declined, telling him of my
good treatment at Williamson's hotel.
My dear boys, Simeon and Prince, for God's sake dont let Lee get a wife
until you hear from me.

Sometimes he traveled under the care of American Colonization Society

members and sympathizers and sometimes under his own inclinations. It was
he who proposed, on the basis of the scheme that freed his wife, to raise money
by a subscription; it was he who, through some misrepresentation that he
would preach Christianity back in Africa, lured into his service several very
helpful advocates; and it was he who bravely accepted invitations proffered by
relatively poor but free African Americans, who were usually opposed to colo-
nization.
Although he was not used, or did not allow himself to be used, as Job Ben
Solomon had been by British geographers and Arabicists, he often wrote in
Arabic for those who asked. A Rev. John F. Shroeder in New York concluded
that Abd ar-Rahman wrote "with correctness and fluency.... He has read and
written for me a great deal of Arabic." Without seeing these manuscripts, it is
not possible to say whether Shroeder was praising penmanship or a range of
statements. To others who asked for examples of his Arabic, ar-Rahman offered
his version of the Lord's Prayer, which would have been consistent with his
ostensible project of spreading the gospel upon his hoped-for return to Africa
with all his children. What he actually wrote, however, was the Fatiha-the
introductory Surah of the Quran, or part of it-wholly consistent with the
Fig. 11. Ibrahim Abd ar-Rahman, Variation on the Fatiha Presented as an Autobiographical
Sketch and ar-Rahman's "Translation," October 10, 1828, from John Trumbull Papers,
Yale University.

74
Fig. 12. Abd ar-Rahman, Variation on the Fatiha Presented as the Lord 's Pr
Ph'l d 1 h' ayer,
I a e p la, December 1828, courtesy of American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

75
76 African Muslims in Antebellum America

religion of his youth to which he was to return immediately upon re-viewing

African soil and to which he had strictly adhered through 1828, according to
Marschalk. Since only such scraps of his writings have been found so far, it
appears possible that ar-Rahman may not have been capable of writing beyond
the Fatiha. But what he wrote for Shroeder may yet be discovered. On anoth-
er level, ar-Rahman must have been aware that greater exertions would not be
recognized. Who of his readers would have known what he had written?
He had undoubtedly been uninterested in writing any Christian verses-
even after being given a New Testament in Arabic. Abd ar-Rahman had not,
after all, found Christianity to be perfect. He surely balked at believing in the
Trinity and at any notion that Jesus was a final prophet. Muhammad enjoyed
that special relationship to God in his cosmology. But ar-Rahman also offered
specific criticisms. It was wrong that a man should be called good and a
Christian even when he ignored the religion's essential precepts. He argued, "I
tell you the Testament very good law; you no follow it; you no pray often
enough; you greedy after money." "You good man; you join the religion." He
paused, as if to better point out the incongruity. "See, you want more land,
more neegurs; you make neegur work hard, make more cotton .... Where you
find dat in your law?" In Futa Jallon's religion, law and economics were one.
There, slave labor was different: "I tell you, man own slaves-he join the reli-
gion-be very good-he make he slaves work till noon-go to church-then
till he sun go down they work for themselves-they raise cotton, sheep, cattle,
plenty, plenty. " His people's slaves were allowed lives of their own during parts
of each day. A French visitor to FutaJallon in 1817 said that Fulbe slave towns
were "establishments truly honorable to humanity." Later visitors were less
positive, but those captives who persisted in opposing the Fulbe were sent on
to the coasts.
As he had done in the Old Southwest, ar-Rahman did what he had to do
in the Northeast. He rode and walked for miles and sat through lengthy
orations on colonization, on the spread of Christianity, and on the business
opportunities he might originate. Throughout, he maintained the air and
address of a prince as he told his story and suffered through long-winded
rhetoric and well-meaning but ignorant declarations, such as, "He was a barbar-
ian, and a slave; ... man's victim, but nature's nobleman. " He also seems to have
remained his calm, dignified self when he marched and dined in a lively affair
capped by some colorful toasts raised by Boston's black leaders. Abd ar-Rahman
was also feted by blacks in New York's Abyssinian Baptist Church and in
Philadelphia. In the former city he met the editor of the first African American
 Abd ar-Rahman and His Two Amazing American Journeys 77

newspaper, Freedom's Journal, who was very interested in his story. As noted
earlier, John Russwurm followed him to Liberia. What Abd ar-Rahman
thought about these occasions, unfortunately, has not been well recorded. There
exists only his appreciative response to the toasts in Boston, and, by the way, a
letter he wrote to try to talk Russwurm out of going to Liberia because he
thought it would not be healthy for him.
Finally, on February 7, 1829, after having raised $3,500, Abd ar-Rahman
and Isabella left on the first boat available to them, the Harriet, which carried
152 other emigrants-including Joseph J. Roberts, the future first president
of Liberia. They brought an official passport signed by Clay and some supplies
provided by the U.S. government. Thirty-seven days out of Norfolk, Virginia,
land was sighted, and ar-Rahman was soon to find himself back in Africa.
Although he had kept up with some of the history of his people by asking for
information from recently arrived Africans in Mississippi and from Africans
he had met in Hartford and New York City, he must have wondered what he
would find. One btother, Almaamy Saadu (visited by an English exploring
expedition in 1794), had been murdered in 1795; another, Almaamy Abdal, or
Abdul Qadiri, who had been visited by British and French expeditions in 1816
and 1818, respectively, and again in 1821 by the British, had died in 1822 or
1825; and yet another brother, Almaamy Yah Ya, had been replaced in 1827 by
a nephew who was to be ousted by a rival Alfaya family elder, Bubakr, that
same year. This latter ruler was in power when Rene Caillie, the first European
to enter and leave Timbuktu alive, and the slave trader Captain Theophilus
Conneau visited Timbo and its environs in 1828.
As noted earlier, Abd ar-Rahman did not immediately push on to Timbo.
The rains had to end, his health had to improve, and perhaps the news from
home needed to be studied first. Besides, the fifteen-day journey up the moun-
tain trails would be hard on a man his age. He corresponded with Timbo and
America, and promises went back and forth between each. In late June, diarrhea
and fever afflicted him. He left his manuscripts in the traditional Muslim way
to teachers in Timbo before he died on July 6, 1829. Isabella remained to greet
those of their children who were purchased only after the death in that presi-
dential election year of ar-Rahman's former master who was rabidly pro-slave
holding Andrew Jackson, violently anti-Adams, and now anti-"Prince." Eight
of ar-Rahman's descendants arrived in Liberia in December 1830 and at least
part of the family was free and reunited. It is possible that seven others, his
son Prince and Prince's six children, got to Africa, but it is also possible that
some children may have made the voyage in 1835, as a published report said
78 African Muslims in Antebellum America

that "William Foster [a brother of ar-Rahman's former owner} of Natchez,

Miss., manumits by will, twenty slaves on condition of their going to Liberia,
and bequests thirty dollars to each family. "
Unfortunately, it is not known whether ar-Rahman's wife ever met any of
her husband's African family, although one of her husband's countrymen hoped
to bring her to Timbo. There is no indication either that Isabella or any of Abd
ar-Rahman's offspring adopted his religion.
One part of this African's story has been bypassed in most retellings. The
local newspaper editor who was most responsible for securing ar-Rahman's
release, Andrew Marschalk, became embroiled in a heated newspaper war with
several other editors, including Cyrus Griffin, who had given considerable
publicity to "Prince" shortly after his departure for the North. Both men had
been morally bur not politically opposed to slavery, and both had had long and
apparently satisfying conversations with ar-Rahman. Indeed, Griffin had
published four articles in his Natchez newspaper on Abd ar-Rahman's history,
homeland, and opinions. But the news of ar-Rahman's Northern travels and
meetings and the several messages he sent to his family in Mississippi-acting
and speaking as a free man and arousing, it was assumed, antislavery and anti-
Southern sentiment, especially among blacks in Boston who seemed to be
preaching slave solidarity and rebellion-led Griffin to fall silent and the para-
noid and humorless Marschalk to declare that the freeman had become a
weapon, political or worse, of the Clay-Adams party. His editorials prefigure the
worst of the racist Democratic journalism of the post-Reconstruction era.
Marschalk reprinted the itinerary and toasts to Abd ar-Rahman in Boston
and then published a series of inflammatory pro-Jackson articles declaring that
President John Quincy Adams's spokesmen were "actually exciting the slaves
to revolt, by the same species of arguments which produced the massacre of
St. Domingo [Haiti, where all remaining whites were executed by Dessalines
in 1804}." He also attacked and reattacked Griffin and even ar-Rahman as he
tried to shake offhis own responsibility in the latter's redemption. Newspapers
from Natchez to New Orleans-and perhaps farther-reprinted some of these
articles, or took sides for or against them, and were nearly as hysterical as
Marschalk until Jackson's victory at the polls. At least one broadside for the
Democrats offered an argument for voting the Jackson ticket that included
references to Abd ar-Rahman.
Such emotionally primitive behavior and deliberate ignorance exempli-
fied in this way and others by white Christians contrasted sharply with the
impression created by the dignified African. Though apparently lacking in
 Abd ar-Rahman and His Two Amazing American Journeys 79

some of the signs of the civilized man, ar-Rahman equally apparently exhibit-
ed the essentials. Congressman Edward Everett, Jr., who met ar-Rahman in a
committee room in the Capitol, later wrote an article in which he recognized
that "[some} Christians have not done much to recommend their faith." He
might also have added, "or their intelligence, particularly concerning Africans."
He had seen, on the other hand, admirable qualities-"strong sense . .. culti-
vated mind .. . calm courage, Christian [why not Muslim?} patience, and a
genial hope of better times"-in the African Muslim Abd ar-Rahman. Everett
recommended the depiction of such men in the newspapers of the day (1853)
as "lessons of encouragement" to fellow African Americans and as spurs to
doubts as to "whether there is that diversity of intellectual endowments between
the two races, which white men are too apt to take for granted. "
The point-similar to a commentary on Lamine Kebe by his amanuensis
in 1835-was better presented than received, as the ethnographic, historical
and literary record shows. Influential scientific men such as Harvard 's Louis
Agassiz were, in the 1850s, purveying theories of African inferiority not argued
earlier. Probably the least happy retelling of Abd ar-Rahman's American passage
is that by none other than Mark Twain, whose irrepressible cynicism about the
human-or male-species is matched by his irrepressible racism. The racist
attitudes that undermine the dignity ofJim in Huckleberry Finn , the depiction
of the varying fortunes of the twins-one black and one white-in The Tragedy
of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the Mammy's honesty in "A True Story" also appear
in his response to the original of the engraving reproduced as the frontispiece
to this chapter. In 1867, in Hartford, Twain saw in Henry Inman's crayon
portrait a "dignified darkey of patriarchal aspect." But by the time he had
finished relating his host's, or his own, somewhat garbled understanding of ar-
Rahman's trials and return to Africa, Twain had reduced that image about as far
as he could: "I, for one, sincerely hope that after all his trials he is now peace-
fully enjoying the evening of his life and eating and relishing unsaleable niggers
from neighboring tribes who fall into his hands, and making a good thing out
of other niggers from neighboring tribes that are saleable."
Clearly this piece says more about the undignified Missourian in post-Civil
War America than about the dignified Muslim who, in fact, might have
indulged in slave trading but never in cannibalism. Fair retellings that did not
depict the literate Abd ar-Rahman as an Arab or a Moor or a monster and that
provided trustworthy sources had to wait for our own time.
A pattern was set as early as Cyrus Griffin's first letter (to the ACS ,
December 1827) and four articles in his newspaper, the Natchez Southern Galaxy
80 African Muslims in Antebellum America

(May 29, June 5 and 12, and July 5). The information came from ar-Rahman,
and the letter and articles are informative. They tell a great deal about ar-
Rahman's royal family, country, and religion; and show his intelligence and
knowledge. But they are marred by Griffin's attempt to explain away ar-
Rahman's dark skin, thick lips, and woolly hair as noted above. Griffin, a
displaced New Englander, desperately wanted his literate friend to fit the title
of "Moorish Prince," that is, to not be African.
I will close with a version of ar-Rahman's own tale. In Washington, D.C.,
Ralph R. Gurley, the indefatigable secretary of the ACS, was greatly impressed
by the former slave. He had ar-Rahman write an autobiography in Arabic. It
would be interesting to see this manuscript, but it has not yet been found. Ar-
Rahman then translated it orally, and Gurley's transcription of this was print-
ed in the society's journal, The African Repository, in May 1828 (77 -81). Gurley
prefaced this version as follows: "At our request, Prince has written a concise
history of himself, and we have penned a translation of it from his own lips. The
only liberty we have taken, is to correct those grammatical inaccuracies, which
resulted from his imperfect knowledge of our language." Gurley clearly also
polished at several points, but some of what must have been ar-Rahman's
English comes through. It is a dramatic telling:

Abduhl Ar-Rahman's History

I was born in the City of Tombuctoo. My Father had been living in
Tombuctoo, bur removed to be King in Teembo, in FootaJallo. His name was
Almam Abrahim. I was five years old when my father carried me from
Tombuctoo. I lived in Teembo, mostly, until I was twenty-one, and followed
the horsemen. I was made Captain when I was twenty-one-after they put me
to that, and found that I had a very good head, at twenty-four they made me
Colonel. At the age of twenty-six, they sent me to fight the Hebohs, because
they destroyed the vessels that came to the coast, and prevented our trade.
When we fought, I defeated them. But they went back one hundred miles
into the country, and hid themselves in the mountain.-We could not see
them, and did not expect there was any enemy. When we got there, we
dismounted and led our horses, until we were half way up the mountain.
Then they fired upon us. We saw the smoke, we heard the guns, we saw the
people drop down. I told everyone to run until we reached the top of the
hill, then to wait for each other until all came there, and we would fight
them. After I had arrived at the summit, I could see no one except my guard.
They followed us, and we ran and fought. I saw this would not do. I told
 Abd ar-Rahman and His Two Amazing American Journeys 81

every one to run who wished to do so. Every one who wished to run, Red. I said
I will not run for an African [Kufr?]. I got down from my horse and sat down.
One came behind and shot me in the shoulder. One came before and point-
ed his gun to shoot me, but seeing my clothes, (ornamented with gold,) he
cried out, that! the King. Then everyone turned down their guns, and came
and took me. When they came to take me, I had a sword under me, but they
did not see it. The first one that came, I sprang forward and killed. Then one
came behind and knocked me down with a gun, and I fainted. They carried
me to a pond of water, and dipped me in; after I came to myself they bound
me . They pulled off my shoes, and made me go barefoot one hundred miles,
and led my horse before me. After they took me to their own country, they
kept me one week. As soon as my people got home, my father missed me. He
raised a troop, and came after me; and as soon as the Hebohs knew he was
coming, they carried me into the wilderness. After my father came and burnt
the country, they carried me to the Mandingo country, on the Gambia. They
sold me directly, with fifty others, to an English ship. They took me to the
Island of Dominica. After that I was taken to New Orleans. Then they took
me to Natchez, and Colonel F[oster} bought me. I have lived with Colonel F.
40 years. Thirty years I laboured hard. The last ten years I have been indulged
a good deal. I have left five children behind, and eight grand children. I feel
sad, to think of leaving my children behind me. I desire to go back to my own
country again; but when I think of my children, it hurts my feelings. If! go
to my own country, I cannot feel happy, if my children are left. I hope, by
God's assistance, to recover them. Since I have been in Washington, I have
found a good many friends . I hope they will treat me in other cities as they
have treated me in the city of Washington, and then I shall get my children.
I want to go to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and N. York, and then I shall return
hither again.

His Interview With Dr. Cox

Dr. Cox was a surgeon on board a ship. He went ashore in Africa, and got lost.
When he rerurned, he found the vessel gone. He set out to travel, and came
into my country, Foota Jallo-our people saw him, and ran and told my
father, that they saw a white man. My father told them to bring the white man
here, that he might see him. They brought Dr. Cox, and my father asked
him whither he was going. He said he knew not where to go, that the ship had
left him, and that he had a bad sore leg. My father inquired what was the
matter with his leg. He said he had wounded it in travelling. My father told
82 African Muslims in Antebellum America

him he had better go no farther, but stay with him, and he would get a woman
to cure his leg. He was soon cured. My father told him to stay as long as he
chose. He remained six months. One day my father asked him, if he wished
to go to his own country. He said yes. My father said, what makes you desire
to go back-you are treated well here? He answered, that his father and
mother would be anxious, when the vessel returned without him, thinking he
might be dead. My father told him, whenever you wish to go, I will send a
guard to accompany you to the ship. Then fifteen men were sent with him by
my father for a guard, and he gave him gold to pay his passage home. My
father told the guard, that if a vessel was there, to leave the Doctor, but not
to go on board the ship; and if there was no vessel, to bring the Doctor back.
They waited some time, and then found the same vessel in which he came, and
in that he took his passage. After that I was taken prisoner, and sent to
Natchez. When I had been there sixteen years, Dr. Cox removed to Natchez,
and one day I met him in the street. I said to a man who came with me from
Africa, Sambo, that man rides like a white man I saw in my country. See
when he comes by; if he opens but one eye, that is the same man. When he
came up, hating to stop him without reason, I said master, you want to buy
some potatoes? He asked, what potatoes have you? While he looked at the
potatoes, I observed him carefully, and knew him, but he did not know me.
He said boy, where did you come from? I said from Col. F's. He said, he did
not raise you. Then he said, you came from Teembo? I answered, yes, sir. He
said, your name Abduhl Ar-Rahman? I said, yes, sir. Then springing from his
horse, he embraced me, and inquired how I came to this country? Then he
said, dash down your potatoes and come to my house. I said I could not, but
must take the potatoes home. He rode quickly, and called a negro woman ro
take the potatoes from my head. Then he sent for Gov. W[are}. to come and
see me. When Gov. W came, Dr. Cox said, I have been to this boy's father's
house, and they treated me as kindly as my own parents. He told the Gov., if
any money would purchase me, he would buy me, and send me home. The
next morning he inquired how much would purchase me, but my master was
unwilling to sell me. He offered large sums for me, but they were refused.
Then he said to master, if you cannot part with him, use him well. After Dr.
Cox died, his son offered a great price for me.

Ar-Rahman knew how to make his points. After this exercise, the prince
left for cities further north, and his strange story is history worth retelling in
books or on the screen for general audiences.
 Abd ar-Rahman and His Two Amazing American Journeys 83

SELECTED READINGS
Terry Alford, Prince Among Slaves (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977).
For a version of the early rise of Futa (Fula) Jallon, see Jean Bayol, "Futa
Jalon: Traditions of Jihad" (1882), inJohn D. Hargreaves, ed., France and West
Africa (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969), 111-113.
For information about FutaJallon in the 1810s and 1820s, see Theophilus
Conneau (also called Captain Canot). A Slaver's Log Book, or 20 Year's Residence
in Africa (1854, rep.) (New York: Avon, 1976).
James Register, Jallon: Arabic Prince of Old Natchez, 1788-1828
(Shreveport, La.: Mid-South Press, 1968).
P. J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1811-1865 (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1961).
Charles S. Sydnor, "The Biography of a Slave," South Atlantic Quarterly,
XXXVI (January 1937), 59-73.
Mark Twain, "American Travel Letters, Series 2 [the last letter}," Alta
California, August 1,1869.
Fig. 13. Pages 11 and 10 of Bilali's Book, Sapelo Island, Georgia, c. 1840. Georgia State
Library, Atlanta.
 5
Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali:
Almaamys on (jeorgia's Sapelo
and Sf. Simon's Islands

Before the 1980s a few admiring contemporary references; an untranslated,

mysterious manuscript in Arabic; a series of tales for children by the famous Joel
Chandler Harris-creator of Uncle Remus-and a handful of remembrances
by descendents in the 1930s gave Bilali of Sapelo Island, Georgia, a tiny space
in the American cultural record. He should have been hard to miss because he
regularly wore a fez and a long coat (as had Umar), he prayed facing the East
on his carefully preserved prayer rug, and he always observed Muslim fasts and
feast-day celebrations. When the time came, Bilali was buried with his rug
and Quran. There was barely a hint, however, that the Fula from Timbo, Futa
Jallon, compatriot and possible kin to Abd ar-Rahman, had been an almaamy
(Fulfulde for Arabic aI-imam), a leader of a Muslim community, or umma, with-
in the antebellum United States.
Similar introductory notes may be made on his friend, fellow Fula Salih
Bilali, called Tom, on St. Simon's Island-fifteen miles away in Georgia, but
originally from Massina, Mali, nearly one thousand miles inland from Timbo.
A few admiring contemporary references; an ethnography-biography in the
form of a letter by his well-known master, James Hamilton Couper; and a
handful of remembrances by descendants were, until recently, all the informa-
tion to be found on this leader of another flock. Whether he too deserves the
title almaamy is not absolutely settled.
Had extraordinary spirirual personalities and accomplishments in time of
86 African Muslims in Antebellum America

war and natural disasters inspired attention to slaves commensurate with that
given to free whites, these two should have been famous Americans for their
remarkable religious stories alone. The earliest notice includes no names but
refers to both men. In a pamphlet published in IS29, an "enlightened" bur
roguish (he had at least two African wives-one who was a sort of queen in
Florida and whose children did very well as they married whites in America),
self-serving slaveholder and slave trader named Zephaniah Kingsley urged
good treatment of slaves by masters and good treatment of such slave masters
by other citizens of the world. Within the pamphlet's lengthy argument may
be found his recollection of "two instances, to the southward, where gangs of
negroes were prevented from deserting to the enemy {the British between IS12
and ISI5} by drivers, or influential negroes, whose integrity to their masters
and influence over the slaves prevented it; and what is still more remarkable,
in both instances the influential negroes were Africans; and professors of the
Mahomedan religion. "
The second known mention appeared in Couper's almost admiring IS38
letter to his friend William Brown Hodgson, a student of North African
languages and people, that was published by Hodgson six years later. Couper's
subject is his black plantation driver-overseer Tom, or "Sali-Bul-ali." Toward
the close, he mentions Salih Bilali's "intimate" Sapelo Island friend "Bul-ali."
The letter says a great deal about Salih Bilali's homeland and history (some of
which is repeated later in this chapter) bur fails to mention the man's trials as
a slave in America-a common omission in such writings.
Couper had a tradition to uphold. The wealthy, well-organized plantations
of James Hamilton Couper, his father, John Couper, and Thomas Spalding of
Sapelo Island were often visited by travelers. The most prominent were Aaron
Burr shortly after his fatal duel with Alexander Hamilton; Basil and Margaret
Hunter Hall from England, in IS28; John D. Legare, editor of the Southern
Agriculturist, in IS32; Frances (Fanny) Kemble, famous British actress who
married the Gone With the Wind Rhett-like Pierce Butler, in 1839; traveler-
scientist Charles Lyell, another British traveler-scholar, who was interested in
slave regimens and drivers like Salih Bilali, in IS46; Fredrika Bremer from
Sweden, in IS51; and British courtier Amelia M. Murray, in IS55. All were
convinced that their hosts were paragons of kindness and order as far as their
slave people were concerned, although both Kemble and Bremer thought reli-
gious instruction for slaves was neglected and Kemble saw that too little was
done to protect slave women from white overseers-especially on her husband's
plantations.
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 87

Neither the masters, who wrote often for local journals, nor these visitors
wrote about Bilali or Salih Bilali beyond Couper's letter and a somewhat
confused note by Lyell. The latter was amused by the retention of some African
names and appreciated that at least one slave (Salih Bilali) was intelligent and
had a Muslim name, though Lyell insisted that the man's "jet-black children
and grand children" had become Christians. Lyell added one other note: that
during the War of 1812 (in 1815), Salih Bilali had persuaded about half of his
slave people not to run off to waiting British ships whose officers had promised
them freedom, by using the argument that he had lived under the British (in
the Bahamas) and had not been pleased with his treatment there. As a matter
of record, several took off anyway. Some ended up in Nova Scotia; a few seem
to have been taken to Sierra Leone or Trinidad, where they served in British
regiments and where some joined a Muslim Mandingo Society.
Bilali may have been more successful on Sapelo Island. He told Spalding
that he could defend his charges, and Spalding's faith in his promises led him
to give Bilali eighty muskets to defend the island property while his master was
elsewhere. This appears to have been the only instance in which slaves were
given guns in Georgia during the antebellum period. Bilali put his own faith
on the line; he declared to Spalding that in the event of an attack, "I will answer
for every Negro of the true faith, but not for the Christian dogs you own"
(emphasis in original). Reportedly, no Spalding people fled to the British.
However, at least one historian of the islands, Mary Bullard, told me that the
British did not raid that far north.
In a second crisis, the terrible hurricane of September 1824, Bilali saved
"hundreds of slaves" by directing them into cotton and sugar houses made of
an African material called tabby (sand, lime, and oyster shells). There is no
report of what happened on St. Simon's.
Except for a short note on Bilali and his family, who were met in the 1850s
by Georgia Bryan Conrad, a resident of nearby Broughton Island ("They were
tall and well-formed, with good fearures .... The head of the tribe was a very
old man called Bi-la-li. He always wore a cap that resembled a Turkish fez"
(from Reminiscences of a Southern Woman, c. 1901); a remark in an unpublished
letter by Couper's son that Salih Bilali was the most religious man that he had
ever known; and a reference in a history (Charles Spalding Wylly's Seed . .. Sown
in . .. Georgia) from 1910, nothing was said about either man until the 1930s.
In 1933, the son of Francis Goulding, a popular children's writer who had
befriended Bilali before the latter's death in 1859, willed a manuscript in
Arabic that had been given to his father by Bilali to the Georgia State Library.
88 African Muslims in Antebellum America

The son, an unreconstructed Southerner who averred that "Ben Ali"-as he

decided to call him after reading books (discussed below) purportedly about
Bilali's son by Joel Chandler Harris-was a "Negro"-despising slaver, had first
tried to sell the manuscript. Later in the 1930s, the redoubtable Lydia Parrish-
taking cues from the indomitable souls around her on St. Simon's Island, whom
she encouraged to sing their peculiar spirituals after a period of quiet-joined
with the library's Ella May Thornton to get the "Diary," as it was then called,
translated. I will return to this complicated effort later. Perhaps the most impor-
tant occurrence in the decade was a series of interviews of Georgia ex-slaves
that included recollections of Bilali, Salih Bilali, and at least eighteen other
African Muslims. I will return later to these as well.
Georgia Sea Island historians liked to write positively about "Mahom-
metans" or Arab-Africans, whom they preferred to think of as mulattoes rather
than full Africans. These slaves were a substantial presence because slave buyers
preferred people from Senegambia-the closest point in Africa-where the
people supposedly carried themselves with more dignity than elsewhere on the
continent. This notion, of course, was a prejudice rather than a fact . None-
theless, such people were particularly sought after by American slavers during
the period between the end of the Revolutionary War and the end of the "legal"
international slave trade in January 1808-and beyond, as the Moor on the
Mississippi from Chapter 1 and other records show.
A generally misleading prejudice against allowing African American
advances of any kind had taken over the country with the slow disintegration
of Reconstruction in the 1870s. Some amusing-at first glance wholly fiction-
al and wholly racist, that is, anti-African-stories for children by Harris includ-
ed a "son of Ben Ali" (the name by which Harris called Bilali). This son,
"Aaron," and his father-so sweet to little white children-were presented as
nearly white Arabs who found no fault with slavery. Worse yet, they were
depicted as despising blacks, whom, Harris's narrator says, they callously
captured and sold (The Story of Aaron {so named}, the Son of Ben Ali, 1896, and
Aaron in the Wildwoods, 1897). These attitudes followed those laid out by
Harris's very popular and influential character Uncle Remus, who loved slav-
ery times and little white master, who in turn loved his stories ofBrer Rabbit.
Uncle Remus's "Sayings," found in the back of the books about him, admit no
appreciation of schools and political activity for "niggers"-his constant
term-especially for those who thought they were as good as white folks.
Harris might have done better; elsewhere he wrote positively about "Arabic-
Africans" in coastal Georgia, and a Harris reader wrote him in 1890 about an
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 89

impressive "Arab" slave named Aaron who had a personality that cowed black
and white alike. One day this Aaron told his master he wanted no more of slav-
ery and walked away. The impressed master helped him get to Canada, and
the two often corresponded with one another. How different from Harris's
Aaron and his perversion of history's Bilali.
For a while there was relative silence again. Finally, however, a "Balaly" and
other Muslim names sung by Georgia children gave a Muslim spin to Toni
Morrison's novel Song 0/ Solomon (1977); a Bilali Mahomet, Muslim patriarch,
appeared in Julie Dash's movie Daughters 0/ the Dust (1992); cultural theorist
Ronald A. T. Judy surrounded a partial translation of Bilali's thirteen-page
manuscript with a book-length argument that it and Lamine Kebe challenge
modernity {DisJ/orming the American Canon (1993); Africanist Bradford G.
Martin offered a partial translation of and commentary on Bilali's manuscript
"Sapelo Islands Arabic Document," (1994); historian William S. McFeely, the
biographer of Frederick Douglass, finding reason to believe that the latter's
original family name-Bailey-might have derived from Bilali, wrote a warm,
wandering memoir of recent talks and walks with Bilali's descendants on Sapelo
Island, Sapelo's People, (1994); historian Michael A. Gomez made Bilali a center-
piece in a wide-ranging article, Muslims in Early America (1994); and a gather-
er of information related to Islam in America, Muhammad al-Ahari, has been
trying to clear up problems in the translation of Bilali's manuscript, forth-
coming. Salih Bilali, however, has attracted little attention, although Couper's
letter has been reprinted and its African elements annotated by Ivor Wilks
"Sahli Bilali of Mass ina," (1968). There are chapters on each of these men in my
previous book.
The name Bilali reflects the West African popularity of the name of the
Prophet Muhammad's first muezzin, or official summoner to prayer, who was a
sweet-voiced Ethiopian liberated from slavery because of his belief in Islam.
Both his piety and his emancipation were exemplary, as I noted in Chapter 1.
Naturally, this name was popular in West Africa. (Ronald Judy has argued that
Bilali should be called Ben Ali, but on flimsy grounds: that Hodgson correct-
ed "Bul-Ali" to "Ben Ali" in 1859; that Harris called him "Ben Ali" in a series
of fictional tales, and that the son of Francis Goulding, to whom Bilali gave his
manuscript, called him "Ben Ali" in a legal affidavit in 1931. Judy erred in
saying that Hodgson, Theodore Dwight Jr. (see Chapter 6) and the younger
Goulding met or were otherwise close to Bilali. There is no evidence to support
such a conclusion. Couper, who knew both Bilali and Salih Bilali and was care-
ful with his pronunciations, wrote "Sali-bul-Ali" and "Bul-Ali" in 1838;
90 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Georgia Bryan Conrad, who met Bilali and his family in the 1850s-as I noted
above-called him "Bi-la-li"; in the 1930s Lydia Parrish heard him referred to
as "Belali" by descendants, who also called him "Belali" in Works Project
Administration interviews.) Mention of as many as seven Bilalis has been uncov-
ered in records of United States' slaves to date. The Salih in his friend's name
probably refers to an ancient prophet named in the Quran, Surahs 7 and 11.
All that is directly known about Bilali's pre-American life may be found
in a short comment by his friend Salih Bilali, as recorded by Couper: that he was
from Timbo (which I described in Chapter 4), and that Couper thought in the
late 1830s that Bilali was "extremely old and feeble," an assertion that two
decades of subsequent history seem to contradict. It is unfortunate, however,
that no family name or further information about him in Africa was passed on
by any contemporaries-including his master, Thomas Spalding, who did
write for publication.
Some assumptions may be drawn, however, from Bilali's manuscript and
later memories of him. He was probably in the midst of his legal education
when he was captured and forced into slavery; his manuscript (two pages of
which provide the frontispiece to this chapter) shows that he read and wrote
Arabic at a level beyond the basic Quran, but perhaps not far beyond. Once
thought to be either a personal or plantation journal, the manuscript has since
been characterized as something both less and more.
In 1940, linguist Joseph Greenberg (whose studies of African languages led
to his influential reclassification, The Languages of Africa, 1963) was prevailed
upon by Lydia Parrish (who encouraged a revival of black song on Georgia's
"Gullah" islands) and by the leading scholar of African retentions, Melville
Herskovitz, to take Bilali's manuscript to Africa for translation. Hausa schol-
ars in Nigeria declared that it was the work of djinn, or devils. But with some
difficulty, Greenberg concluded that the document consisted of a "title page,
portions of the introduction, and parts of ... chapters dealing with ablutions
and the call to prayer" from the Risala, composed by abu Muhammad Abdullah
bin Zaid al Qairawani before 1011 CEo This is a popular legal commentary of
the Malikite school predominant in Muslim West Africa from Morocco to the
Gulf of Guinea. Further investigation translates the title as "First Fruits of
Happiness," an identification ofIslamic law with healthy daily life that is whol-
ly consistent with the ideals of the religion. It is quite possible that Bilali may
have been asserting in his American effort-if only to himself-a kind of
equality with his American owner, who was a sometime lawyer.
But the manuscript-now in the University of Georgia library-poses
 BHali Mohammed and Salih BHali 91

many problems. Greenberg could not translate beyond fragments because, he

declared, there were too many misspellings. Africanist Bradford Martin,
mentioned earlier, has gone a little further in his article on Bilali, his writing,
and the paper on which he wrote. He is not convinced that Bilali was recalling
Zaid's Risala or treatise; he suggests an elementary school text. Because he
found a number of rewritings, as well as misspellings, and little order, he is not
sure whether this was a schoolboy's effort and therefore composed in Africa or
the recollections of an aged man long removed from scholarly peers. Without
going into all the details, Martin concludes that the first two pages haphazardly
suggest rules about praying. Then there is confusion for about four pages,
followed by two pages of easier-to-read rules on ritual washings before prayer.
The next five pages are repetitive assertions of faith, hope in being accepted as
a servant of God, and comments on times ro pray.
This outline accords with the findings of another translator, Muhammad
al-Ahari, who finds a clearer introduction to the obligation of prayer and the
hopes of the believer. In a yet unpublished effort, he skips from page 2 to page
7, the Bab, or the chapter on ablutions and the required prayers. He then brings
up a suggestion that is implied in the work of Kebe and London: that some of
Bilali's misspellings may be due to his writing Pular or Fulfulde-the language
of the Fulbe-with Arabic characters.
Along with some mechanical notes, Ronald Judy finds at least two hands
at work: one for pages 1 through 4, another for the remaining pages, and
perhaps another (an editor) in the marginalia. He also finds that at least one page
is missing between the present pages 6 and 7. His translation does not go
beyond the pages covered by al-Ahari, but it does suggest in a phrase that the
writer has been ordered or has taken as an order the obligation to write what
follows: "Write me books that are a brief exposition .... " In a roundabout way,
Judy also explores the possibility of Pular-Arabic writing in Bilali's manu-
script. He concludes that the work is a mix of classical Arabic like that found
in writings by Job, Abd ar-Rahman, and Umar: Pular Arabic reflecting Pular
pronunciations; and Pular written with the phonetic Arabic characters.
Unfortunately, Judy does not prove this suggestion in his translation.
A lengthy discourse on several levels of Arabic heterography leads, howev-
er, to an assertion that the manuscript's African-Arabic script is-on a level
where Judy may be taken seriously-the opposite of a self-conscious European
autobiography or slave narrative: it is a sign of authority in the Muslim way
because it reflects spiritual truths passed on to those who can repeat them.
When Judy declares that the work also establishes the writer as being above
92 African Muslims in Antebellum America

other slaves Cas not-being-nigger"), he is surely correct, though the terminol-

ogy is ugly. When Judy tacks on two more chapters to show that Kant and
Western philosophy are made dumb by Bilali's text, he is straining far beyond
the simple point made in Chapter 1 of this book: that there are texts and people
in America that have deserved and will repay attention surpassing the common
presumptions about Africans and African Americans.
Martin traced the paper itself to Venetian producers who exported to North
Africa in the late eighteenth century. This finding that the paper must have been
brought from Africa lends credence to the traditional stories that describe Bilali
as being buried with his Quran and prayer rug, which must also have come
from Africa. These facts suggest that Bilali was an unusually strong individual.
For Bilali, between Africa and Georgia fell the shadows of the Middle
Passage and a stay of indefinite length in the Bahamas. Bilali either brought
with him or there married one or more wives (four are legitimate in Islam).
His purchaser Thomas Spalding seems to have recognized the leader and
perhaps the experienced rice grower in Bilali and brought him to the mainland
with a then-unknown number of sons and seven daughters. There were already
French-speaking slaves on the islands. Muslims did not usually learn European
languages until doing so appeared advantageous, but it is reported that all but
Bilali's daughter could speak English, French, Fulfulde, and perhaps Arabic.
Georgia Bryan Conrad's description of Bilali and his Muslim dress was
followed by the assertion that "They conversed with us in English, but in talk-
ing among themselves they used a foreign tongue that no one else understood."
She added that the whole family "worshipped Mahomet" and that they
"held themselves aloof from the others as if they were conscious of their own
superiority." This last remark demonstrates that most whites saw this attitude
of pride as a sense of being better than other blacks. But "the others" undoubt-
edly included non-Muslim whites as well.
The one who knew Bilali best, perhaps, after Salih Bilali was Bilali's owner.
Slave and master seem to have been fortunate in finding each other. In 1794,
Thomas Spalding (1774-1851) inherited $20,000 from his father, James
Spalding, a pioneer American cotton grower. A year later, at the age of twen-
ty-one, he was admitted to the bar and married a local beauty. Because his
father was a Loyalist, he spent the Revolutionary War years in Scotland and
did not return to Georgia until 1802 after having negotiated a loan of $ 50,000.
With this money Spalding bought four thousand acres on the south end of
Sapelo Island and invested in slaves-including, presumably, Bilali and his
Fig. 14. Thomas Spalding, from E. Merton Coulter, Thomas Spalding of Sapelo,
frontispiece.

93
94 African Muslims in Antebellum America

family, as he bought some slaves in Charleston and some in the West Indies. It
is reported that he neither sold nor purchased any slaves after 1819. Eventually,
his slaves numbered four hundred to one thousand, depending on the source of
information.
It was Spalding's plan to treat his slaves like serfs. Each had his own land
to work; labor for the master was limited to six hours a day; and slaves worked
by the task system-a fairly common practice on the islands off Georgia, where
slaves significantly outnumbered freemen. Slave villages (something Bilali's
people were used to in Africa) were built in several places, with huts plastered
inside and out; each village was placed under a head man; and each ten new
people were placed under seasoned, older slaves. Spalding used no white head
men and apparently did well. As well as cotton, sugar, and rice crops, he and his
people provided timber for ships for the youthful U.S. Navy. By 1832 there were
only two owners of Sapelo Island; shortly after 1843, there was only Spalding.
This very profitable plantation and its regimen attracted some attention.
It was visited and described by John D. Legare, editor of the Southern
Agriculturist, in 1832. Seven years later, Spalding's home was again visited, and
this time it was negatively assessed. The English actress Fanny Kemble Butler
thought Mrs. Spalding, her house, and her life oppressively dull. Legare,
Kemble, and others would describe at greater length and with greater appre-
ciation the similar plantation of John and James Hamilton Couper, owner of
Bilali's friend Salih Bilali. Spalding's intellectual and political life also attract-
ed some attention. He often wrote for the journals of the day, usually on plan-
tation matters; he collected a large library; he helped frame the state
constitution and served in the state Senate and House of Representatives. One
of his last acts was an attempt to keep Georgia's Union sentiment strong in
December 1850-a month before he died.
But all was not well in the Spalding empire. His wife gave birth to sixteen
children, but only seven, all girls, survived infancy. Sarah Spalding apparent-
ly tried to be good to her "people"-as the slaves were called-but the weari-
some, tedious life referred to by Fanny Kemble Butler led to her early death in
1839. The lack of more numerous and vigorous progeny was one matter that
greatly disheartened the dynasty-minded Spalding. But he seems also to have
suffered from some mysterious malady about which he wrote in 1844, calling
it "a painful disease, of ten years standing."
His two most definitive biographers disagree somewhat on his personali-
ty. Caroline Lovell, drawing heavily on an earlier work by one of Spalding's
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 95

descendants, Charles Spalding Wylly, declared that he was a stern man who
disapproved of music, dancing, and card playing-a pen portrait that match-
es the painting reproduced here of a dour gentleman. He was "absolute in his
opinions, domineering even to his children until he went to the point of violat-
ing all custom and became in the end a law unto himself. " This conclusion is
not supported by any examples of tyrannical behavior, but it seems to indicate
a family feeling. On the other hand, a few pages later, Lovell argues that
Spalding was generally a decent man.
Lovell also claimed that Spalding had no sense of humor. At least once,
however, he seems to have wittily united a practical need with thoughts about
his slave foreman. Sugar-processing implements had to be carefully tended, he
said, "for no Mahometan with his seven daily ablutions, is a greater enemy to
dirt than sugar is. " The publisher of this sally, Spalding's latest biographer, E.
Merton Coulter, proffered a predominantly congenial portrait, summing up
his character thus: "stern, quick-tempered, and ardent, yet tender, affectionate
and generous and a most considerate master"-who did, perhaps, prefer to live
in the past. His slaves' opinion was not recorded.
He had no son to take over, and his property shrank. It was not until 1870,
five years after the Civil War ended, that the plantation that had been aban-
doned to Sapelo Island's African Americans-or "runaway Negroes"-was
taken over by "young Tom" (a grandson), and the former slaves were "dislodged
with some difficulty." Some of this history is told in McFeely's book Sapelo'S
People. Even there the story is not complete, but the book does tell how Tom's
lack of success led to the island's being left to Bilali's descendants.
The Savannah Unit of the Georgia Writers Project of the Works Projects
Administration (WPA) interviewed many ex-slaves and published their
responses in 1940 in a book called Drums and Shadows, referred to in Chapter
1. The title refers to the many stories that recall the persistence of drummers
and the fear of shadows, or "hants" (the shades of ancestors), and other native
African beliefs. The book might have been called Dances, Drums, Shadows, and
Flying Africans. Stories like these, including flying Africans and several Muslim
names (Solomon, Balaly, Medina, Omar, Ryna, Muhammet), playa prominent
part in Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon, as noted elsewhere.
This quartet of themes suggests areas where the interests of masters and
slaves might conflict. Bilali's master did not interfere, apparently, with practices
his Africans considered their right. This policy was not always the case in
Georgia, as may be seen in the example of Salih Bilali's St. Simon's Island.
96 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Fig. 15 . Bilali Descendant Shad Hall of Sapelo, late 1930s, from Drums and
Shadows, 1940.

The description in Drums and Shadows of the Sapelo Island of the 1930s
includes the recollections of Katie Brown (Fig. 16), granddaughter of Margaret,
daughter of Bilali, and ofShadrach (Shad) Hall (Fig. 15), grandson of Hester,
Margaret's sister. Bilali sired five other daughters: Charlotte (Cotty), Fatima,
Yoruba (or Nyrubuh), Medina, and Binty. Fatima and Medina are distinctively
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 97

Fig. 16. Bilali Descendant Katie Brown of Sapelo, late 1930s, from Drums and
Shadows, 1940.

Muslim names. Neither of these two descendants gave the name of his or her
father. Katie Brown (born about 1851) said all of Bilali's daughters were born
before he arrived in America. He and one of his wives, Phoebe, from the
Bahamas, prayed with beads, about which they were very particular, at very
specific times: "Bilali he pull back and he say, 'Belambi, Hakebera Mahamadia' "
98 African Muslims in Antebellum America

(a compression of "God is one, great" and "Mohammed is his prophet"). Bilali

had his own prayer rug too. Phoebe made the ceremonial saraka (honey and
rice) cake for the end of fasting at Ramadan and for harvest time. She clearly
knew French and was probably from Senegal. Her supposedly African words,
"deloe" and "diffy," are probably de l'eau (water) and defeu (fire).
Shad Hall, younger than Katie Brown, talked about a man who must have
been Bilali, although Hall seems to say that he himself worked for the Marquis
de Montalet as a boy before working for young Tom and then Mike Spalding
as Hall did. Perhaps both men worked for the Marquis. Hall had been told
that Bilali was "coal-black," very tall, and had small "feechuhs." He named
Bilali's daughters too (one of whom, Fatima, was named for her mother, accord-
ing to another source) and described Bilali's and Hester's praying, the latter's
recollections of houses and food in Africa (or the Bahamas?), and the saraka
she used to make. Hall also spoke of conjuring, shouts, harvest festivals, funer-
als, shadows, working hoes, flying Africans, An Nancy (Anansi, the spider
hero), and an uncle named Bilali Smith (a second-generation Muslim, perhaps).
Reuben Grovernor, another descendant of Bilali, was famous for his un-
Islamic Buzzard Lope dance, which may have originated in Africa. Some others
recalled African Muslim ancestors whose geographical provenance is less certain.
Julia Grovernor recalled Calina and Hannah, her grandparents. Hannah was
caught digging peanuts in Africa, tied up in a sack, and put on a ship to
America. Phoebe Gilbert told of Calina's being taken from a beach to which he
had been enticed by red cloth. Both were called Ibos, but they were probably
not the Ibo people of the land now called Nigeria but "Hebos," or partly
Islamicized people living near the Atlantic Coast south of the Gambia River.
They shared this "nationality" with a people who were remembered for having
flown back to Africa. Gilbert said Calina and Hannah and Bilali Smith were her
grandparents, and Nero Jones recalled that the first pair prayed at particular
times and used Muslim prayer beads: "Duh ole man he say 'Ameela' an An
(Aunt} Hannah she say 'Hakebera.''' These people had probably become full
Muslims under Bilali's tutelage. Muslims apparently married one another on
Sapelo Island at least into a second generation.
Finally, another probable Spalding slave from Africa was remembered by
Ed Thorpe of Harris Neck, on mainland Georgia. Patience Spalding, his grand-
mother, he recalled, was also attracted into slavery by a red cloth. He remem-
beredher praying: "She kneel down on duh flo. She bow uh head down tree time
and she say 'Ameen, Ameen, Ameen' "-as Muslims were taught to do. These
remembrances contradict the tradition that Bilali's children were Christians.
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 99

They also suggest how far his island people became Muslims. Without a second-
generation imam, their spiritual lives probably combined several traditions,
but this theory and these people need to be seriously studied by Muslim as
well as non-Muslim investigators.
More information about Bilali and his family and their Muslim ways may
yet be found. Those Afro-Americans who did recall Bilali and his peculiar
habits remembered them as narrated by women. Here women seem to be the
carriers of their people's traditions, and perhaps this practice was more often the
case among Muslims than has hitherto been recognized. This tradition might
also, of course, be because the interviewers and interviewees were largely female.
The lack of such interviews earlier in time has created a gap in information on
female African Muslims.
One must wonder what happened to Bilali's twelve sons. Where did they
fly to? and why? It may also be noticed that although these former-slave sources
thought of Bilali as a cultural ancestor, none mentioned his having been a
writer. Perhaps they were less impressed with this skill than Euro-Americans,
or, possibly, Bilali himself.

Meanwhile, back on St. Simon's Island in the late 1830s, one of the more famous
Sea Island proprietors, James Hamilton Couper, was urged by his friend, a
fellow plantation owner and earlier sojourner in North Africa, William Brown
Hodgson, to seriously consider his head driver as an ethnological specimen.
Perhaps no other person could have gotten Couper to do so. Their views on
slavery and on the Fulbe-Salih Bilali's and Bilali's people-of whom Hodgson
often wrote admiringly but not always correctly (for example, he assumed their
virtues were attributable to white blood), were similar. It may also have been
Hodgson who suggested that Couper try to find a drawing of someone who
looked like Salih Bilali in an early ethnological study by the avowed aboli-
tionist James C. Prichard. Couper did, and it is reproduced here (see Fig. 17).
The other portrait is a photo of Salih Bilali's grandson, Ben Sullivan, which
nearly perfectly reflects Couper's description of his head driver.
It seems clear that Salih Bilali was a shrewd and self-respecting man. From
1816 to 1846, he directed from three hundred to five hundred workers on plan-
tations where cotton, rice, sweet potatoes, cowpeas, corn, and sugarcane (crops
that were the same as or similar to those grown in his West Africa) and their
rotation (as well as olive trees and date palms) were experimented with under
the supervision of this watchful African-born driver or manager. Couper wrote
100 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Fig. 17. Salih Bilali Look-alike-According to James H. Couper, 1842, "Native of Hausa"
ftom James C. Prichard, Illustrations to the Researches into the Physical History of Mankind,
1844.

that his head man did very well (like Spalding and Bilali) when the master left
for months at a time.
One wonders what kind of driver he was: the unfeeling tyrant who enjoyed
lording it over slaves-as some white overseers did-a merciless African over
other Africans, a type referred to often by Southerners and horrendously imag-
ined by the editors of anti-Abd ar-Rahman newspapers, as we saw in Chapter
4, or the Fula accustomed to ordering around non-Fulbe kufrs, or unbelievers.
If so, he might well have agreed with Bilali's harsh remark about the unrelia-
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 101

Fig. 18. Descendant Ben Sullivan, St. Simon's Island, 1938, from Margaret Davis Cate,
Early Days in Coastal Georgia, 1955, p. 154.

bility of the non-Fulbe slaves. He was undoubtedly a complex figure, working

for master, slaves, and self, as historians Eugene Genovese and Leslie Howard
Owens have attempted to describe in their slave studies. It is clear that his was
a position of authority and responsibility. He probably earned respect through
careful attention to details and possibly aroused fear of various sorts, but there
allegedly was little whipping on this plantation.
Salih Bilali, like Bilali and Abd ar-Rahman, was surely, as one writer aptly
if condescendingly opined about black drivers in general, "a patriarch who held
102 African Muslims in Antebellum America

rule over his tribe"-a tribe that was probably more ethnically diverse on the
American side of the Atlantic than on the other. The Fulbe had slave villages
in Africa for field laborers, personal servants, and military uses, but Salih Bilali
would not have had a difficult time explaining the difference between the
apparently unrequited labor of Massina's nonfree castes and Georgia's chattel
slaves. The former worked in their own fields for part of the week; they had
homes, clothes, and village organizations of their own that were similar to those
of their masters; they had recognized rights to property, wives and children, and
religious and secular education not allowed in Georgia. Some might also gain
their freedom and continue to live in the neighborhood thereafter.
It is possible that both Salih Bilali and Bilali were responsible for a flow-
ering of the Fula language in this part of Georgia, perhaps as a result of their
powerful positions. It was said that several other slaves who knew the language
lived close by. Does this fact not suggest a greater Fula influence in the forma-
tion of the local Gullah culture than has hitherto been recognized? At least
eighteen African Muslims and perhaps Fulbe related to the Couper or Spalding
estates were located for WPA interviewers in the 1930s.
Salih Bilali's masters, first John Couper (1759-1850) and then his son
James Hamilton Couper (1794-1866), were as well known as Bilali's Thomas
Spalding, in their case for their hospitality and mostly successful plantations:
Cannon's Point on St. Simon's Island and Hopeton on the Altamaha River,
Georgia. Thus, they attracted some of the same domestic and foreign sight-
seers. Aaron Burr visited the elder Couper in 1804. A Royal Navy captain and
explorer, Basil Hall, and his not easily impressed wife, Margaret Hunter Hall-
both formidable travelers and writers-visited John and James Couper in 1828.
The captain wrote about the reasonable task system used for growing the supe-
rior Sea Island cotton and added notes on the necessary despotism required on
slave plantations, which he likened to that found in "ships of war, many regi-
ments, and, I fear, I may add, many domestic establishments, to say nothing of
schools." His wife thought that the son's house was "the very smallest that we
have been in, a mere pigeon-hole," but she believed that it had more order and
more books than most larger "enterprises" she had visited. When John D.
Legare, the founder and editor of the Southern Agriculturist-interested in
production and profits-visited the younger Couper, whose careful manage-
ment inspired him to write nine articles on nearly every aspect of coastal
Georgia plantation life, in 1833, he admired Hopeton and saw it as a "large
white mansion." Apparently it had been enlarged. He considered the role of
black overseers several times but did not refer to Salih Bilali directly.
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 103

The British actress and American critic Fanny Kemble Butler was a neigh-
bor for a short while in 1838-1839. She immediately liked the elder Couper
and his treatment of slaves but became disheartened on a second visit when he
expanded on Africans' lack of capacity to be other than slaves. She was even
more upset by the son's absolute control, including such practices as with-
holding meat from slaves to keep them from committing "crimes of a savage
nature." I will discuss other forms of control later. Kemble also alluded to but
did not elaborate upon a matter not discussed by other writers on the Coupers:
"It must not be forgotten that on the estate of this wise and kind master a
formidable conspiracy was organized among his slaves." One wonders what
role Salih Bilali played in that plot.
British geologist Charles Lyell enjoyed the plantation's bounty and its master's
hospitality and culture in 1842. He was also interested in slave-master relations,
but not critically. He concluded that those relations on the Couper plantations
were amiable. He enjoyed the names of some slaves, including "Bullaly," proba-
bly one of Salih Bilali's sons. He did meet Salih Bilali, who was introduced as
head driver "Tom" in his plantation role. He called "Tom" a prince, retold some
of his African history, and stated that he "remained a strict Mahometan." He was
also informed-maybe by Salih Bilali-about the head man's partially success-
ful attempts to keep slaves from running to the British in 1815 by telling them
that slavery in the Bahamas was worse than in America. Nonetheless, half of the
slaves chose to leave the Couper paradise-a decision that later writers attributed
to British force. Lyell also said that Salih Bilali's "jet-black children and grand-
children" had all become Christians. He was probably no more correct in this
matter than he was in others concerning this African. He went on to easy deni-
grations of "Africanians," while contradictorily admiring the skills oflocal black
singers and mechanics and presuming that they were being encouraged to become
more literate and more Christian. That hope was groundless.
Swedish novelist F redrika Bremer visi ted in 1851, liked the younger
Couper, and decided that "the institution of slavery [was} a benefit" to Africans.
The Victorian courtier Amelia M. Murray was also delighted with what she
saw there in 1855, and she essentially repeated Bremer's conclusion.
It is unfortunate, and curious, that only one of these visitors, Lyell, seems
to have been introduced to Salih Bilali or to any other individual slaves.
However, this purportedly enlightened slave master may not have cared to
publicize or to let anyone else publicize his remarkable African.
The most detailed source of information on Salih Bilali was written by his
master to William Brown Hodgson, who had asked for some particulars about
104 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Fig. 19. John Couper. Photo of oil portrait, courtesy of Mrs. Mary Thiesen, a
direct descendant.

Couper's black overseer, or head driver, who was known as a responsible plan-
tation manager and an apparently devout Muslim. The letter emphasizes its
subject's Old World history and, naturally, qualities in the man that were useful
to Couper's needs and temperament. As such, it is important for its nearly unique
descriptions of Niger River social and economic life two hundred miles south-
west ofTimbuktu in the 1770s and 1780s-and its depiction ofSalih Bilali.
 Bilali Mohammed and 5alih Bilali 105

Fig. 20. James Hamilton Couper. Photo of oil portrait, courtesy of Mrs. Mary
Thiesen, a direct descendant.

For his Islamic training to have been as impressive as Couper says before he
was taken away at the age of fourteen, Salih Bilali must have received very good
early schooling in Massina and perhaps some additional training under Muslim
teachers, possibly even Bilali, in the Bahamas. There are undoubtedly stories yet
to be told about Georgia-Bahamas slaveholder and slave connections.
Couper added only a little more of this man's history. He was clearly an
106 African Muslims in Antebellum America

impressive figure, according to Couper, who did not regularly allow things
African much credit. Let me borrow from Couper: Of "about a dozen who spoke
the Foulah [Pular or Fulfulde} language" on Hopeton plantation, only "Tom"
was a native speaker. Others had learned it as slaves of the Fulbe, opined Couper,
even though he later wrote, erroneously, that the Fulbe had had no slaves in
Africa. "Tom [born around 1765}, whose African name was Sali-bul-Ali, was
purchased about the year 1800, by my father, from the Bahama islands, to
which he had been brought [around 1780} from Anamaboo [present-day
Ghana}." (At a later point, Couper described him as being "brownish black"
with "woolly" hair.) Couper continued, "His industry, intelligence, and honesty,
soon brought him into notice, and he was successively advanced, until he was
made head driver of this plantation, in 1816. He has continued in that station
ever since, having under him agang of about four hundred and fifty negroes,
which number, he has shown himself fully competent to manage with advan-
tage. I have several times left him for months, in charge of the plantation,
without an overseer; and on each occasion, he has conducted the place to my
entire satisfaction. "
Couper praised his head man's "quickness of apprehension, strong powers
of combination and calculation, a sound judgment, a singularly tenacious
memory, and what is more rare in a slave, the faculty of forethought. He possess-
es great veracity and honesty. He is a strict Mahometan; abstains from spiritous
liquors, and keeps the various fasts, particularly that of the Rhamadam. " Later
one of Couper's sons said Salih Bilali "was the most religious man that he had
ever known," declaring further that the exiled Salih Bilali on his deathbed
proudly proclaimed: "Allah is God and Mohammed his prophet."
Couper had told enough abour his man's American life, apparently, and
turned to the seventy-three-year-old's reminiscences of Africa. Salih Bilali told
Couper abour the large town of Kianah that was his birthplace, distant from
"Tumbootu" (Timbuktu), near the Niger River-called the Mayo by the
Fula-to the northeast and close to "Jennay" (Jenne) to the southwest. Both
were famous Muslim intellectual centers. Further to the southwest was "Sego"
(Segu), described in 1795 as a grand city by the explorer Mungo Park, through
which Salih Bilali would be marched to the coast after his kidnapping. Houses
were made of dried mud or brick or heavy grass, and those of religious leaders
were not larger than ordinary homes. Salih Bilali was from a well-to-do fami-
ly and had been taught to read Arabic, as he said all Fulbe in Kianah were, but
not to write it. He was undoubtedly taken away before he reached that level.
Arab traders who traveled in forty-boat convoys along the river had
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 107

impressed the youth. They traded salt, "blankets, guns, pistols, cotton cloth,
beads, shell money (cowries} and sometimes horses." The Fulbe raised "horses,
cows, sheep for wool, goats, and some asses. They grew rice, several grains,
beans, gourds, okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, cotton, cocoanuts, pineapples, figs
and indigo for blue dye." Grains, cotton, rice, and indigo were all export crops
in the United States, and Africans with experience growing such crops were
sought after. Most Europeans had not had experience with these crops. This
point has been explored only by the most recent generation of scholars.
Salih Bilali may have been trying to make a point when he declared that
in Africa women did not work in the fields as female slaves were forced to do
in the United States. He may have been trying to say something else when he
led Couper to write that there were no slaves in Massina-perhaps he meant
that there were no Muslim slaves. There certainly were non-Muslim slaves.
Ideally, of course, if a slave converted to Islam he could be freed, like the Prophet
Muhammad's Bilali. This principle mayor may not have been put into practice
at the whim of Muslim leaders, according to Christian historians. However, it
may be pointed out that even on the best of Christian plantations-including
Couper's, according to Fanny Kemble Butler-little attention was paid to the
religion of the slaves, and there was no prospect of conversion leading to their
emancipation.
Couper said that Salih Bilali was captured by Bambaras while riding a
horse back from Jenne and was then marched to the coast some 500 miles away.
After he left Bambara country, which had been influenced by Islam, Salih Bilali
claimed that there were no more religious people and some cannibals near the
coast. It has been common, of course, to call strangers cannibals, as Odysseus
did when he looked across the water to the underdeveloped land of the Cyclops.
Finally, before appending a haphazard list of thirty-five Fulfulde words
and translations, Couper described Salih Bilali as an adult: "In his personal
appearance, Tom is tall, thin, but well made. His features are small, forehead
well developed, mouth well formed, with lips less protruding than is usual
with the negro race, the nose flat, but not thick. His eyes are peculiar, being like
those of a Chinese, without their obliquity. The portrait of a native of'Hausa,'
in Prichard's Natural History of Man, gives the general character of his head
and face, and approaches more nearly to it, than that of any other given of the
African tribes." This portrait is reproduced here (see Figure 17).
Couper seemed to have completed his duty to his friend and to his slave
foreman with the completion of this letter. As far as I have been able to discov-
er, he wrote no more about Salih Bilali.
108 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Couper had nothing to say about the part Salih Bilali may have played in
a slave conspiracy that Fanny Kemble Butler's husband mentioned as taking
place on his plantation, nor about what part his head man may have played in
an unsuccessful experiment that gave some Couper slaves land of their own to
cultivate and profit from. He could not have said anything about how Salih
Bilali died and whether it happened, as one of the latter's descendants recalled,
on his way to or from engineering a slave putchase on a nearby island.
James H. Couper was a methodical man, and, as he wrote in his letter, he
found Salih Bilali to be one also. Couper held to a rigid daily regime. By a
systematic use of his time, he was able to cultivate his scientific tastes, and
correspondence with him was solicited by many learned societies.
Hodgson wrote that Salih Bilali died late in the 1850s, but he may have
confused the two Bilalis. At about the same time, Couper retired from his
management of Hopeton and in 1857 moved to Altama, a smaller tabby home
he had designed and landscaped. The retirement party was announced, we are
told, by "Bulala"-sutely Salih Bilali's son, as may be confirmed from the
memories of his descendants.
All of Couper's six sons volunteered for the war. Two died of sickness during
the war, one became a hermit after it, and another's long imprisonment proved
very damaging. Couper himself contracted large debts during the war. By the
end he had lost his plantation and had nothing left to live for. He died in 1866,
and neither Hopeton nor Altama was successfully cultivated thereafter.
Early in the war, after slaveholders had fled from many of the Georgia Sea
Islands, a military company of African Americans (all that remained after
Lincoln rejected the idea of the colored Hunter Regiment, the unauthorized
First South Carolina Volunteer Regiment) was told to garrison St. Simon's
Island and that it would have to first capture or destroy a group of rebel guer-
rillas. In August 1862, they found that a local but black John Brown-his
real name-and his men had already been fighting against the rebels for ten
days. The leader of the rebel group was later to write, "If you wish to know hell
before your time, go to St. Simon's Island and be hunted ten days by niggers."
Were some of these "hunters" offspring ofSalih Bilali? If so, they may be cred-
ited with being involved in what was the first armed encounter "between the
rebels and their former slaves." This incident was described by Thomas
Wentworth Higginson in his famous book of personal observations, Army Life
in a Black Regiment. At least one other Southerner, William McFeely, also recog-
nized that many Sea Islanders joined the U.S. Army during the war.
After the war, several people remembered something about Salih Bilali
and the "good old days." The recollections of whites tended to smooth over
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 109

any rough spots. Slavery was recalled as being an imperfect but necessary system
for the not-too-healthy land and the supposedly not-too-civilized African labor-
ers who provided the economic basis for the life of the sometime wealthy and
sometime cultured master class. The memories of blacks-when finally elicit-
ed from people who were not sure of the uses whites might make of them-are
more critical. The former slaves remembered James Couper's attempts to place
limits on their predecessors' lives, but they also remembered the passing on of
African names, words, and traditions. Salih Bilali's family did not die out with
the end of slavery. Unfortunately, however, no one seems to have been asked to
recall this ancestor in detail.
The Georgia Writers Project found some ofSalih Bilali's descendants on St.
Simon's Island in the 1930s. Many told the same stories that the Sapelo Island
ex-slaves had told, but it is clear that Couper tried to control more of his slaves'
cultural lives than did Spalding. It is also clear that Couper did not succeed.
More detailed information has been discovered about Salih Bilali than abour
Bilali. His grandson, Ben Sullivan, was a spry eighty-eight years old when the
photograph accompanying this chapter was taken (Fig. 18). Ben recalled his
father, who had apparently been given the Arabic name, Bilali, by his father,
Salih Bilali, and who had been allowed to keep it by master Couper. Bilali was,
Sullivan recalled, Couper's butler at Altama plantation, to which Couper retired
in 1857. He also remembered his father making saraka, or rice cakes (whereas,
it will be recalled, the women did so on Sapelo Island), which were related to
Muslim ceremonies in Africa and then in America. After emancipation for an
as yet undiscovered reason, Bilali took the name Sullivan rather than Couper,
the surname of his master.
About his grandfather Sullivan could only remember-or was only pushed
to remember-that his "fathuh's fathuh wuz a unmarried man," and more
intriguing yet, that he once went to Dungeness on Cumberland Island (south
of St. Simon's) to trade in slaves and was never seen again. Thereby must hang
a tale, but I have not found it. Did Salih Bilali die by the hand of some enemy?
Sullivan seems to have said no more about him.
Ben Sullivan did have several things to say, however, about other Muslims
and about the Coupers. Okra, Gibson, and Israel belonged to James Couper,
"talked funny," and talked about having built their own camp in Africa. At
least one of them, Okra, tried to do the same in America. He wanted "a place
lak he hab in Africa," so he built a hut of mud and palm fronds. Couper made
him pull it down, saying "he ain wahn no African hut on he place." Nor did
Couper want drums. Another slave, Dembo, used to beat a drum for funerals
until he was told to stop. Sullivan remembered that yet another slave, Jesse, and
110 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Okra were both good drum makers. They must have played in the master's
absence. Several of Couper's slaves did not put Africa and Islam completely
behind them. Israel, Sullivan said, prayed, from a book he kept hidden, on a mat
at sunrise and sunset. He had sharp features, a long, pointed beard, was "bery
tall," and tied his head up in a white cloth. Both Daphne, also sharp featured,
but light in color, and Alexander Boyd, Sullivan's mother's father (dark and
sharp featured), used to "tie up" their heads and pray three times a day. With
so many African-oriented people around, it seems likely that wishes for things
African (Islamic?) were a possible cause of the conspiracy on the Couper plan-
tation to which Fanny Kemble Butler's husband referred.
Sullivan also remembered Hettie, mother of his mother, Bella; both women,
he thought, were African. Whether from Africa or the Bahamas, he recalled that
Hettie had said she was glad to leave, although she was bothered by the new
language and worried about relatives left behind. This is the only case I know of
where the obvious forced migrant's anxiety seems to have been mentioned,
though this time experienced by an African. He also remembered Bilali's moth-
er's name: Luna. It is possible that this was the same woman whom another
Couper slave descendant, Charles Hunter (very black of skin and rather small
featured), recalled as Louise, his grandmother, who was from the Bahamas. Or was
this a second wife to Salih Bilali? Hunter also remembered Alexander, a conjur-
er and doctor who could fly, perhaps the Alexander Boyd mentioned elsewhere.
Ryna Johnson (probably the "Rina" who worked for the Coupers and was
found at Cannon's Point by James Couper's son sixteen years after he left the
plantation in 1857), about eighty-five when interviewed, recalled good times
at the Coupers'. She also recalled singing and drums and three Africans:
Alexander, "Jummy," and William, who had all been entrapped by their passion
for red cloth and who used the same African words, "Sojo," "deloe," and "diffy,"
as Margaret, daughter of Spalding's Bilali. Ryna's husband, not coincidentally,
was from Sapelo Island. Rosa Grant-another Salih Bilali descendant-
described a Ryna who seems to have been an older person. This Ryna prayed at
sunup, touching her head to the floor and saying a prayer that included such
expressions as "ashamnegad" and "Ameen, Ameen, Ameen" (Muslim "amen").
Grant also recalled that Ryna prayed on Fridays and celebrated a feast day,
noting, probably, the end of Ramadan. She thought that Ryna had been
captured and sold with her mother.
Finally, near Couper's Altama, Rachel and Alec Anderson recalled harvest
festivals, the Buzzard Lope dance, shouts, and a dance called "come down tuh
duh Myuh"-another name for the Niger. It appears that such dances were
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 111

frowned upon by Fula elders. Rachel Anderson recalled a more sober grand-
mother, Peggy, who prayed every day at sunrise, noon, and sunset, facing the
sun, and who insisted on certain dietary prohibitions.
The Georgia Sea Island informants from St. Simon's and Sapelo Island
mentioned in this chapter seem to have been proud of their predecessors. Like
Bilali, Salih Bilali clearly passed on many of his racial characteristics and,
apparently despite his master's disapproval, African traditions. He and Bilali
may have been more influential in the creation of Gullah culture than has hith-
erto been recognized. Perhaps more might have been discovered about his
"rough and ready" ways had his descendants felt free to tell all of what they
remembered. Even so, it appears that at least twenty midcentury African
Muslims were readily recalled as late in time as the World War II era on these
two islands alone.
There was one character described in the WPA studies who might link
past and present Muslims. One preacher-and we need to find our what he
was preaching-mightily impressed some interviewers. They wrote, "The
preacher came from behind the platform and stood silently behind the pulpit
desk, looking dramatically over his congregation. He was tall and spare, with
brown skin, narrow face, and a thin pointed beard, a Mohammedan looking
Negro. He wore a black skull cap, which we learned later was not ritualistic but
was worn to protect his head from the draught. This was preacher Little who,
we were afterwards told , was an itinerant preacher, not a native to the island but
a type native to the district. " To the interviewers, the compelling element was
less what he said than the sound of Preacher Little's voice. More information
about him needs to be found.

SElECTED READINqS

Hodgson read the letter from Couper before the American Ethnological Society
sometime in 1843 and published it in his Notes on Northern Africa, the Sahara,
and the Soudan (New York, 1844),68-75. Hodgson (1801-1871), a Georgia
plantation owner mentioned often in this book, held two honorary degrees
from Princeton and served in the U .S. consulates of Algiers (1826-1829),
Constantinople (1832-1834), and Tunis (1841-1842). He was a founder of
the American Oriental Society and a member of the American Philosophical and
Ethnological Societies. See Leonard 1. MacKall, "William Brown Hodgson"
(an attempt at a life and biography), Georgia Historical Quarterly 19, no. 15
(December 1931),324-345.
Hodgson's racial views may be found in his Notes and in a pamphlet, "The
112 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Foulahs of Central Africa and the African Slave Trade" (New York [apparent-
ly published by the author], 1843): "The Foulahs are not Negroes ... [They are]
a distinct race, in moral as in physical traits. " They were, he said, superior and
white (pp. 4-5). He erred here, as the blacker Fulbe were the more sedentary
and literate, as I noted earlier. To Hodgson "the Negro" was, of course,
barbarous (p. 14). Bur Hodgson appears to have come around later. In 1858, in
a rare pamphlet, he wrote about the "Song hay, Foolah, and other powerful
negro races of the Niger" met by Heinrich Barth (see Chapter 9).
Hodgson, also the translator of one of Abd ar-Rahahman's manuscripts
(see above p. 75, n. 137), was described by John Davidson, Abu Bakr's compan-
ion heading for Timbuktu, as the two men met in Gibraltar in 1835: "the most
gentleman-like American I have ever seen .. . . He improves much upon
acquaintance." Notes Taken During Travels in Africa (London: privately printed,
1839),4-5.
Hodgson in America was also described by a London Times correspondent
during the Civil War (p. 64). At breakfast in Hodgson's home, he saw "in
attendance some good-looking Negro boys and men dressed in liveries, which
smacked of our host's Orientalism." William H. Russell, My Diary, North and
South (New York: Harper, 1863).
Margaret Davis Cate, Early Days of Coastal Georgia (St. Simon's Island, Ga.:
Fort Frederica Association, 1955).
Georgia Bryan Conrad, Reminiscences of a Southern Woman (Hampton,
Virginia: Hampton Institute, n.d. [1901 ?]).
E. Merton Coulter, Thomas Spalding of Sapelo (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University, 1940).
James Bagwell, Rice Gold: James Hamilton Couper, Old Aristocracy, and
Plantation Life on the Georgia Coast (Macon, GA: Mercer UP, 2002)
For the role of overseers and black drivers, see Eugene Genovese, Roll,
Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon, 1974) and Leslie
H. Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
George Gerster, "River of Sorrow, River of Hope," National Geographic
Magazine 148, no. 2 (August 1975), 162-164, provides pictures of the Niger
that would have been recognizable to Salih Bilali.
Michael A. Gomez, "Muslims in Early America, "Journal of Southern History
60 (November 1994),671-709.
Bilali is the major figure in Cornelia Walker Bailey with Christena Bledsoe,
God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks About Life on
Sapelo Island (New York: Anchor, 2000)
 Bilali Mohammed and Salih Bilali 113

Thomas W. Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (1867) (reprinted

New York: Collier, 1962).
Ronald A. T. Judy, (Dis)Forming the American Canon: African-Arabic Slave
Narratives and the Vernacular (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993).
Caroline Couper Lovell (a direct descendant of the Coupers), The Golden Isles
of Georgia (Boston: Little, Brown, 1933). This book is largely a rewriting of
Charles Spalding Wylly's interesting and romantic Seed That Was Sown in the
Colony of Georgia, the Harvest and Aftermath, 1740-1870 (New York: Neale,
1910). The "seed" was slavery.
Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to the United States of North America (New York:
Harper, 1849).
B[radford} G. Martin, "Sapelo Island's Arabic Document ... in Context,"
Georgia Historical Quarterly (Fall 1994), 589-601.
William S. McFeely, Sapelo's People: A Long Walk into Freedom (New York:
Norton, 1994).
Amelia M. Murray, Letters from the United States, Cuba, and Canada (New
York: Putnam, 1856).
Lydia Parrish, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands (New York: Creative
Age, 1942).
James C. Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, 4th ed.,
vol. 2 (London: Houlston and Stoneham, 1851).
Savannah Unit of the Georgia Writers Project of the Works Projects
Administration, Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal
Negroes (1940) (reprinted Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986).
John A. Scott, ed., Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in
1838-1839 by Frances Anne Kemble (New York: New American Library, 1975).
Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia,
1750-1860 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1985).
Lorenzo D. Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1949; reprinted Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974). Neither Turner nor Ian F. Hancock,
"Gullah and Barbadian-Origins and Relationships," American SPeech (Spring
1980), gives much attention to Fula sources of Gullah, though Hancock does
note Gullah numerals in Fulfulde (p. 29). Perhaps there is an untapped linguis-
tic vein here.
Ivor Wilks, "Salih Bilali of Massina," in Africa Remembered, ed. Philip D.
Curtin. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967), 145-151.
 6
Lamine Kebe, Educator

In 1834, after nearly forty years of slavery in at least three Southern states, an
old man whose slave name was "Paul" was magnanimously liberated by his
last Christian master. Like the freeing of Abd ar-Rahman six years earlier,
however, this gesture included neither economic nor American freedom.
Needing and wanting to find a way home, "Paul" was forced to join with
members of the American Colonization Society (ACS) dedicated to sending
free blacks to the one part of Africa they knew anything about: Liberia, that
semi settled coast about five hundred miles away from Kebe's actual homeland.
If this sequence of events had not occurred, it is likely that nothing would
have been recorded about this man and his educational experiences in Africa and
that he would not have become the stimulus for a significant campaign to send
Christian literature in Arabic into West Africa. Nor is it likely that he would
have gained passage back to Africa. But "Old Paul," as he was called in America,
who was apparently called Lamine Kebe in Africa, did become known for a
while among New York colonizationists and missionaries. He deserved even
greater fame.
Kebe was quoted in Chapter 1 as saying, "There are good men in America,
but all are very ignorant of Africa." He might have added "and ofIslam." Little
may be discovered to argue against either conclusion, but more may be found
on the African who made the comment. A white American, Theodore Dwight,
Jr., declared after several interviews in 1835 that Lamine Kebe was-like so
116 African Muslims in Antebellum America

many Africans in America-an excellent but untapped source of information

about Africa. He also found Kebe to be an exemplary teacher and published
some of his advice in The American Annals of Education and Instruction, making
Kebe the only African quoted at length in a contemporary American profes-
sional journal. That Dwight also found in Kebe a stimulus for a plan to distrib-
ute Arabic-language Bibles in West Africa to advance Christianity there is
ironic because Lamine Kebe's history is another reminder of how powerful the
African culture and religion of Islam was even to a man who had been exiled for
thirty or forty years and who had seen New York City and met good and help-
ful Christians. Kebe, in fact, chose to return to the land and religion he had been
born to.
The earliest documented notices refer to introductions of "Old Paul" at
two meetings in New York City late in 1834. He played a part in a carefully
organized defense of the creation of a new settlement of former American slaves
in Africa by a combined New York and Philadelphia company acting inde-
pendently of the near-banktupt parent American Colonization Society. One
mention appeared in the ACS journal The African Repository:

There was then in the room a venerable old man, who would present himself
before them. His name in English was Paul, the aged. He had been thirty years
in slavery, and was now free, and hoped once more to revisit his native land, and
meet his family, from whom he had been so long separated. After being for so
long a period a slave, he had at last met a Christian Master who set him free ....
The old man ... was a scholar, and could write in the Arabic, and knew
the Bible in his own language, though he was ignorant that the art of print-
ing had ever been invented. He had left behind him a wife and three children,
and it was the earnest wish of the Society to send him home as soon as possi-
ble, in the hope that he might once more meet his family, before they part-
ed, never more to meet in this world.
The old man was then brought forward and related in broken English,
the principal events of his life. He was of an affluent if not a noble family, and
went 900 miles to an institution to acquire an education. After that he taught
a school for five years. He was then married, and at a subsequent period went
to Timbuctoo to obtain paper. On his way back he was surrounded when
asleep, and awoke to the act of his captors putting fetters upon him. He was
then taken down to a slave ship and brought to this country. He ended his
narrative by stating his travels and transfer from master to master for the last
30 years ... and concluded by invoking a blessing on this country.
 Lamine Kebe, Educator 117

In other words, after thirty years-possibly forty, as an 1864 Dwight report

"Condition and Character of Negroes in Africa" suggests-of American slav-
ery under several masters, following an African kidnapping (more likely from
near Timbo than Timbuktu), marriage and children, and an academic history
that suggests he was about thirty when taken away, a Christian master decid-
ed that "Paul, the aged" deserved to be freed. Neither this 1834 reporter nor
Dwight chose to delve into "Paul's" trials as a slave among Christians. If they
had, they might have found some reasons why he had not chosen to learn the
language of his several purchasers and spoke only "broken English." As
Dwight's subsequent interviews suggest, this man had the ability to learn
English and he undoubtedly tried his best once he found listeners who might
do him some good. The reporter also skipped over much that might have been
informative about Africa, noting only that "Paul" spoke about his family;
education; teaching; attempt to buy that rare commodity, paper; and capture-
all without elaboration, and with no discussion, it may be noted, of any Muslim
connections. Finally, "Paul" closed with a blessing on America. Very politic.
There is no indication, however, that he received any personal assistance from
this meeting.
A few months later "Paul" tried again. He decided-or agreed with an
adviser-that his audiences might be more generous if he offered the good
Christians something valuable in return for their aid. He knew he had to
persuade his audiences that he was worthy of their assistance. Although the
man is not named, surely the reference in the following paragraph about a mid-
May 1835 meeting found in The African Repository six months after the meet-
ing described earlier is "Paul" adding his new incentive:

"A coloured man was now presented to the audience, who expected shortly to
go out as an emigrant to Liberia. The gentleman who presented him said
that he was an educated man, that he spoke, read, and wrote the Arabic
language very perfectly; and was a professed believer in Christ. He intended
to act as a missionary to his race. He had been liberated by his master for this
end; and had been waiting now for 90 days for an opportunity of going. "

This new Christian missionary message was helpful to "Paul's" sponsors; the
New Yorkers raised $2,000 to help send emigrants to Liberia. Still, this report
does not say whether "Paul" was one of them. Perhaps his audience had not
been convinced by his sudden conversion. Oddly, two later mentions of "Paul"
are also inconclusive about his returning. The secretary of the American
118 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Colonization Society, Ralph R. Gurley, who appeared earlier in Chapters 2 and

4, wrote two years later, in 1837, that "Paul" had corresponded in Arabic with
Umar ibn Said (see Chapter 7) while "preparing to embark at New York for
Liberia." "Paul's" most important and most exasperating memorialist, Dwight,
wrote that "Paul" "spent about a year in New York, under the care of the
Colonization Society, while waiting for his ship to go out." But neither writer
closed Kebe's American history.
Happily, another soutce suggests that "Paul" succeeded. A list of immi-
grants who arrived in Liberia on the ship Indiana August 19, 1835, includes a
peculiarly named "Paul A. Mandingo" (Kebe's mother was a "Manenca" or
Mandingo), freeborn, literate, age sixty, from "North Georgia." The name and
data fit the man. Following this name is a pleasant addition that declares that this
"Paul" moved on to Sierra Leone, which was closer to Kebe's actual homeland.
The most important soutce indicates that it is unlikely that "Old Paul"
brought Christianity home with him. The one American who came to know
him best, Dwight, was interested in distant people; familiar with seven or
eight languages; a founder of the American Ethnological Society; and the editor
of several magazines including his own Dwight's American Magazine. The
offspring of one of the famous Connecticut Wits, Dwight (1796-1866) grad-
uated from Yale in 1814, wrote travel books on Italy (1824) and northern
Europe (1841), and, as a Free-Soiler against the spread of slavery wrote The
Kansas Wars (1859). He was also a member of the New York Colonization
Society and may have met Kebe at one of the meetings described earlier. He had
clearly been impressed by this freeman, whose African name Dwight heard as
"Lamen Kebe" or "Lahmen Kibby. "
Dwight composed at least fout essays about Kebe. Until very recently,
however, it appeared that only two were published. Late in 1995, corrected
galley sheets were found for a preface and some notes for a lengthy narrative on
Kebe. Unfortunately, the middle sheets have not been found. The "Preface,"
however, includes Dwight's single description of Kebe: "about six feet high,
well formed, of mild and grave countenance, friendly disposition, and dignified
but simple demeanor." Dwight also concluded, no matter what Kebe told
Christian New Yorkers, that Kebe was sincerely and wholly Muslim.
Kebe was also worth quoting. In an 1864 article, Dwight wrote that he had
"held numerous and prolonged interviews" with Kebe, who was "deeply inter-
ested" in having "his communications concerning his native country and people,
as well as his own history ... published, for the information of Americans. " But
 Lamine Kebe, Educator 119

Dwight's known publications shed light on only a small part of the informa-
tion Kebe gave him. An exasperating list is offered by Dwight of information
he had gathered from Kebe: "His accounts of [other African nations he had
visited} abound in details of great novelty and interest. The same may be said
of his communications on the history, customs, arts, religions, learning,
languages, books, schools, teachers, travelers, productions, trade, of the mixed
people among whom he lived ...
And Kebe knew how to write history and ethnography: "Write down what
I tell you exactly as I say it, and be careful to distinguish between what I have
seen and what I have only heard other people speak of. They may have made
some mistakes; but if you put down exactly what I say, by and by, when good
men go to Africa, they will say, Paul told the truth ... One wishes, then, Dwight
had produced more.
But the two extant articles begin to enlighten. The first, in The American
Annals of Education and Instruction (a very safe place politically), is underdevel-
oped and terminologically inconsistent, but it does supply essential informa-
tion for tracking the early history of this individual and his scholarly clan.

Lamen Kebe, (for that is his real name,) [probably Lamine-Mande for Arabic
Abd al-Amin, Kebe-Serahule pronunciation, as I have been recently
informed, for a branch of a teaching clan more fully described later] was born
in the kingdom of FutaJalloo, and travelled sufficiently during his youth to
give much interest to the accounts he communicates. He performed two jour-
neys, when quite young, to the Jaliba or Niger river, in one instance in
company with an army ofMahomedans, in a successful war upon an idolatrous
nation, to convert them to Islamism. His education, which commenced at
fourteen [after seven years oflearning the Quran by rote}, and was finished at
twenty-one, was obtained chiefly at Bunder, the city [not a city, but Bundu,
homeland of Job Ben Solomon}. ... He was a school-master five years in the
city of Kebe [possibly the important Mande Muslim religious center Kebe,
or Kaba to Mandingoes}, which he left to travel to the coast [rather than to
Timbuktu, as New Yorkers understood}, to obtain paper for the use of his
pupils, when he was taken and sold as a slave.

Kebe told Dwight several details about the African schools that were common
in the FutaJallon ofBilali Muhammad, Abd ar-Rahman, and Kebe. His school-
books were thirty manuscripts, a list dictated by Kebe but not clearly recorded
120 African Muslims in Antebellum America

by Dwight, used in studies beyond the reading of the Quran. Kebe also indicat-
ed that "several native African languages were written in Arabic characters. "
Dwight understood that Kebe was "of mixed extract; his father being a
Serecule, and his mother of the Manenca nation." Kebe also told something of
the spread ofIslam via education and of the movement of his anti-military teach-
ing clan, the Jakhanke, from east of the middle Senegal River to FutaJallon.
Dwight then apologized about not having enough space to pass on details
"concerning this nation, its traditions, manners, manufactures, schools, high
schools, &c.," because he wanted to show his academic readers that Kebe's
language and knowledge were worthy of attention, though unknown "as yet"
to "the learned of Europe ... even our latest geographers." Dwight was correct.

After some pertinent and impertinent criticism of those who lacked infor-
mation about Africa while knowledgeable men like Kebe who might have
enlightened them were despised as being only slaves, Dwight reported that
Kebe mentioned both male and female teachers-including an influential
aunt, unfortunately unnamed, "who was much more learned than himself, and
eminent for her superior acquirements and for her skill in teaching." Dwight
may have overstated the extent of learning opportunities for women, but in
fact others, including the explorer Mungo Park and later Usman Dan Fodio, the
Fulani Emir of Sokoto, offered similar evidence on female scholars, especially
his daughter.
Kebe then went into detail on Serahule schools. They were provided by
the government and were, like some schools in other religions, divided accord-
ing to sex. Kebe's remarks dealt with classroom procedure, student attendance,
teacher attitudes, and bilingual education.

In some schools, boys and girls are under the care of the same master; but they
are placed in separate rooms. Our informant had from fifty-five to fifty-seven
pupils in his native town, after he had completed his education, among whom
were four or five girls. His scholars, according to the plan pursued in his educa-
tion, were seated on the floor, each upon a sheepskin, and with small boards
held upon one knee, rubbed over with a whitish chalk or powder, on which
they were made to write with pens made of reeds, and ink which they form
with care, of various ingredients. The copy is set by the master by tracing the
first words of the Koran with a dry reed, which removes the chalk where it
touches. The young pupil follows these marks with ink, which is afterwards
rubbed over with more chalk. They are called up three at a time to recite to the
 Lamine Kebe, Educator 121

master, who takes the boards from them, makes them turn their backs to him,
and repeat what they were to do the previous day, which they have a decided
interest in doing to the best of their recollection; because it is the custom to
mark every mistake with the stroke of a stick upon the shoulders.
The mind of our informant shows some of the traits of a professional
school-master, and his opinions on pedagogy, claim some attention, as they are
founded on experience, and independent of those current in other countries.
"It is of great importance," Lamen remarks, "that children should not be
allowed to change school. In our country, no such thing is known or permit-
ted, except when absolutely necessary. It is indeed permitted to a boy who has
learnt all his master has to teach, to seek other teachers during the recess of
his own school, ifhe does not neglect his own; and it is no uncommon thing
for intelligent youth to attend the instructions of two or three teachers at
different hours of the day. But it is very wrong to do as your children do in this
country. When a boy has been punished, or for any other reason dislikes his
teacher, you let him run all about to this school and that, and he learns noth-
ing, and is good for nothing.
"You should be very careful too what kind of a teacher you get for your
child. He must not be too severe, because the boy will be looking out all the
while for a whipping, and cannot study; and he should not be an easy man,
because if children have their own way, they will not study; you never knew
one that would. An easy man will let them have their own way, and therefore
they never will learn. But you should get a middle man for a schoolmaster. He
will not frighten the boys all the time so that they cannot study; but yet he
can speak to them now and then as ifhe would eat them up; and they will not
forget it for months. "
It is interesting to the friends of education in America, to hear of
improvements introduced in the schools of other countries. Lamen Kebe has
a high opinion of a certain process practised in some of the institutions of
his native land, which he calls doubling; while of those in which it is not
practised, he speaks with comparative contempt. In schools of the latter and
common class, the Koran is taught in Arabic alone, which not being the
vulgar language of any of the negroes, is totally unintelligible. In those in
which the important process of doubling is adopted, the meaning of the
Arabic words is explained as well as translated. He inquires with some inter-
est, whether the doubling or explaining [bilingual} system is properly culti-
vated in the United States.
122 African Muslims in Antebellum America

This article concluded with Dwight's attempt to record a Serahule vocab-

ulary and to list texts known to Kebe. Dwight's vocabulary is a haphazard
selection of nouns, adjectives, prepositions, and only three verbs, altogether
about one hundred lexical items-of which fourteen are Arabic. When
compared with two Serahule vocabularies Dwight mentions, his does not fare
badly, though it is poorly printed. Fourteen words may be found in the origi-
nal edition of Mungo Park's Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in 1795,
1796, and 1797. Nineteen words may also be found in Sigismund Koelle's
wonderful Polyglotta Africana, first published in 1854, which bears the descrip-
tive subtitle A Comparative Vocabulary of Nearly 300 Words and Phrases, in More
Than 100 Distinct African Languages.
Kebe's words for America are interesting: "alkitabiatu (a book country)";
sea, "Francos (bitter river)"; "black people's country-serambine diamau
[diamani}." Dwight tried to list Kebe's books, handwritten in the absence of
any press, and thought he was giving titles and leaving out long names of
authors. He heard this: "Nahayi, Fakihu, Sani, Lauan, Taurat, (the Torah, or law
of Moses,) Yabury, and Alsara, (parts of the Scriptures,) Ankidutilmamy,
Segudin, Bunamara-kibura, Bunamara-wussita, Bunamara-fusilun, Sulaimy-
kubura, Sanisy-kubura, Sanisy-wussita, Sanisy-sugura, Sanisy-suku, Aluwatriet,
Bonomahha-jabby, Almahhama, and Talakiny."
Since I first offered, in 1984, translations of this list, which is important
because it is insttuctive although little known and is closely paralleled by lists
from at least three of Kebe's contemporaries also included in my earlier book,
further reading and some disagreements by Ronald Judy have led me to some
conclusions probably of interest only to specialists. *
These manuscripts signify study far beyond the basic reading of the Quran.
Kebe was referring to the major subjects taught by advanced scholars: Arabic
grammar, law, moral guidance from the Prophet's example, and theology; it

* "Nahayi"-nahw, or grammar (citing Jack Goody and his version of a Fula list in Literacy in
Traditional Societies [l968}, 224); "Fakihu"-fiqh, or jurisprudence (laws for men); "Sani"-sunna,
or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad; "Lauan"-lughah, or linguistics; "Taurat"-tawhid, or
theology (the laws of God or Allah). The remainder are texts and authors. "Alsara" is possibly the
Risala of Ibn Zaid, a popular treatise on law that may have been quoted by Bilali (Chapter 5).
"Bunamara-kibura" through "Bunamara-fusilun" indicates a multivolume or manuscript work
by a single author. These may be texts on the uses of magic squares, numbers, and names in
charms or amulets-called gris-gris and jujus by Europeans-provided by presumably spiritu-
ally powerful Muslims to both believers and animists (Goody, Literacy in Traditional Societies,
226). Another series by Sanusi follows. An as-Sanusi produced five volumes of religious commen-
tary (according ro Lamin Sanneh, who has studied Serahule traders, TheJakhanke, 99), and was
 Lamine Kebe, Educator 123

includes two commentaries on language, two on Islamic laws, four on theolo-

gy, and one anthology of poetry.
Judy has argued that Kebe's pedagogy undermines the so-called universal
categories of understanding of the Enlightenment philosophers who influenced
so much of the West's misunderstanding of Africa and Africans. His is a heavy
argument, but it is surely true that the admitted lack of experience of David
Hume, Immanuel Kant, and G.W. F. Hegel, in particular, and Europeans and
Americans, in general, in conversing with Africans as equals and in reading
African manuscripts or understanding music, dance, religion, and other cultur-
al signs must have kept them "ignorant of Africa," as Kebe correctly concluded.
Dwight's second essay, "Condition and Character of Negroes in Africa"
(1864), is much more pretentious and much less satisfying. He began with a
healthy denunciation of scholars of his time and place for having been so little
interested in Africa and those Africans who had been brought to America by
force and trickery. He went on to name available sources of information,
"[Baptist missionary Thomas J.} Bowen [I857}, [missionary David}
Livingstone [l857}, and [explorer Heinrich} Barth [l858}," for rectifying such
a lapse in intelligence; denounced Catholicism as anti-literate; exaggerated the
extent to which literacy using Arabic characters had spread across West Africa;
imagined the lines of this spread as channels prepared and hungering for
Protestant Christian influence and education; and then rerurned to the theme
that a number of Africans in America were unconscionably treated "like beasts
of the field" despite their being "men oflearning and pure and exalted charac-
ters." He then named a few of these men-all presented in this book: "Job-Ben-
Solomon," "Abder-rahman," "Omar-ben-Sayeed," and "Lahmen Kibby."
Dwight reasserted that he possessed voluminous notes gathered from Kebe.
It is a great disappointment, however, that the rest of the essay includes only
a few of these notes in what turns out to be an interesting but too wide-rang-

a scholar of tawhid and author of Kubra-Dwight's "Sulaimy-kubura" (Trimingham, History 0/

Islam in West A/rica, 81-82)? Probably as-Sanusi's Aqidat Sughra is the "Sanisy-suguta" later in
Dwight's list. Dwight's "Aluwatriet" is close to "Watirati," an item in a contemporaneous Mrican
manuscript list he appended to an article by an African teacher called Kabwee. In turn, both are
close to Al-Witriyat, the anthology of six poets mentioned by Goody as part of the advanced
coursework among the Fulbe (Literacy in Traditional Societies, 225).
The multilingual-including Arabic-cultural theorist Ronald A.T. Judy has also com-
mented on this list. Judy finds a grammar by al-Jurrumiya in "Yabury," another text by as-
Sanusi in Dwight's "Ankidurilmamy," at-Tawankali's commentary onfiqh in "Talakiny,"and an
al-Mukhtar text on Sufi law in Dwight's "Almahhama." The first three may be correct, but the
last seems to me more likely to be the Maqamat of al-Hariri on grammar (Trimingham, 82).
124 African Muslims in Antebellum America

ing survey of African Muslim intellectual acquirements in Africa that might be

urilized by Christian missionaries. So far, as I mentioned earlier, only a galley-
page-and-a-half "Preface" and three galley pages of notes have been found of
Dwight's third effort.
My own investigations following Dwight's available leads corroborate all
of his main points. Kebe undoubtedly came from a famous clan of pragmatic,
dedicated Muslim teacher-priests in Africa. Kebe said his father was a
Serahule-the founders of ancient Ghana, who were among the earliest converts
to Islam south of the Sahara-and who were a very black people-and his
mother a "Manenca" (Mande or Mandingo).
The still important town of Kaba (sometimes Kebe, Kangaba, and
Kaniaba) was founded by Serahule or Jakhanke immigrants led by religious
leaders from the Kaba or Kebe family of the Qadiriya brotherhood in the late
1770s. This group of itinerant teachers emphasized "faithfulness to the record"
and memorization of important occurrences and history. Furthermore, this
group sensibly combined, as a modern scholar who shares Kebe's first name,
Lamin O. Sanneh, purs it, "local resources and outside inspiration." While
constantly bringing young people to a deeper understanding ofIslam by teach-
ing the Quran in local languages as well as Arabic, it also utilized native reli-
gions and social practices that were not in direct opposition to Quranic
teaching. Sanneh argues that the practice of the J akhanke showed the" indige-
nous character of clerical Islam in West Africa." The Jakhanke were pacifists,
although they sometimes traveled with militant Muslims on jihads. They were
not opposed to slavery. The Scottish explorer Mungo Park joined a coffle of
enslaved captives en route to the coast that was led by reliable and very strong
Serahule "slatees," as he called them, who were necessarily well informed about
the lands and peoples they traveled among.
There should be little doubt about Kebe's geographical origins or abour his
family. He said he was from an affluent family, and he knew its history.
Accordingly, there seems little reason to distrust the remainder of the infor-
mation found in Dwight's writings. As is suggested earlier, however, there is
too little information on Kebe personally. Instead, Dwight expanded on his
own hobby of finding intelligent, literate Africans for his obvious purpose. He
told of procuring Umar's autobiography, in Arabic, and a translation that he
added to his second article-a gift from Kebe, actually, from correspondence
in Arabic between Kebe and Umar. Bur Kebe's side of this correspondence has
not yet been found. Dwight was, of course, pleased to report his understanding
that Umar had converted to Christianity and had advised Kebe to do the same.
 Lamine Kebe, Educator 125

Toward the close of the 1864 article, Dwight guoted from a translation of
Umar's "Life," an African-produced manuscript in Arabic, and he appended
yet another in facsimile with a translation to help make his case about the util-
ity of Arabic in spreading Christianity. In recently recovered papers (1995)
mentioned earlier, now owned by Derrick Joshua Beard who generously showed
them to me, the original Arabic manuscripts and translations of each of these
documents have been found , along with translations of a prayer and of three
amulets (short prayers to be worn in leather pouches around the neck); an
amulet written in the form of a circle and a translation finding in it a prayer
seeking protection for a trading enterprise-both written in Africa; and three
letters (four pages) from the 1850s in Arabic from a Sana or Sawa See (Sonni
Ali?) enslaved in South Carolina and Panama, accompanied by hesitant trans-
lations. These letters give minimal information about Sana See but do show his
adherence to Islam. This lot of papers also shows that further documentation
may yet be found on any of the people mentioned in this book.
From such evidence of literate Africans in America and the Liberian hinter-
land, Dwight was led to believe that Bibles would be welcome in Muslim West
Africa. In the papers mentioned above there are originals or copies of eleven
letters to Dwight on his campaign to send new and improved, that is, more
eloguent than an 1811 translation of the Bible to West Africa. Eventually, late
in the 1860s, Daniel Bliss, president of the Syria Protestant College and one of
Dwight's correspondents, sent a case of Bibles in Arabic to Liberia to be distrib-
uted in its hinterland. This act paralleled the innovative Arabic studies program
of the College of Liberia, founded by the important black St. Lucian Edward W.
Blyden, who often visited the United States and Europe on behalf of his coun-
try and who became one of the most prominent Christians to write positively
about African Muslims in the nineteenth century. One wonders what Lamine
Kebe might have thought about his part in the campaign.

SELECTED READINGS

Edward Wilmot Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (1888) (reprint-
ed Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1994).
Theodore Dwight, Jr., "Condition and Character of Negroes in Africa,"
Methodist Quarterly Reviw (Jan. 1864), 77 -90; and "Remarks on the Sereculehs,
an African Nation, Accompanied by a Vocabulary of their Language," American
Annals of Education and Instruction, V (1835), 451 - 456.
Jack Goody, Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1968).
126 African Muslims in Antebellum America

Ronald A. T. Judy, (Dis)Forming the American Canon: African-Arabic Slave

Narratives and the Vernacular (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1993).
Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure (New York: Collier, 1969).
Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in 1795, 1796, and
1797 (London: African Society, 1799).
George E. Post, "Arabic-Speaking Negro Mohammedans in Africa,"
Missionary Herald (April 1869), 114-117.
Lamin O. Sanneh, TheJakhanke: The History of an Islamic Clerical People of
the Sene-Gambia (London: International African Institute, 1979).
J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa (London: Oxford
University, 1962).
Fig. 2l. Vmar ibn Said, Photograph from a Daguerreotype, 1850s or 1860s, Davidson
College Library, Davidson, North Carolina.
 7
Vrnar ibn Said's Legend(s),
Life, and Letters

The dignified Abd ar-Rahman and his dramatic story were famous for a year and
have been recalled often since. The also dignified, less dramatic, proudly myste-
rious, even controversial Vmar ibn Said and his varied writings were also the
objects of attention, from 1819 to 1864-nearly all ofVmar's American life-
time-and also into our own time. His Bible in Arabic, a daguerreotype
portrait, and fourteen manuscripts in Arabic by Vmar have been preserved.
These include the only extant autobiography by an American slave in Arabic-
a very legible, sixteen-page manuscript. (Abu Bakr as-Siddiq wrote another
such autobiography bur in Jamaica.) Vmar's "Life" was thought to be lost after
1925 but was found late in 1995. Vmar's grave has also been rediscovered.
There is some debate over the religion of his life and his spirit. Once acclaimed
as a convert to Christianity, as an Arabian who found no fault with American
slavery and who despised Africans, Vmar has recently been more closely exam-
ined as a closet Muslim, religiously conservative as his people, the Fulbe-
clearly African-regularly were. Today, a Quranic school, or masjid, in
Fayetteville, North Carolina, has been named after Al Hajj Vmar ibn Said. In
the past, interest in Vmar was mostly regional, restricted to the Carolinas,
where he lived. About thirty-five articles, including mixes of fact and fiction,
surfaced by the 1970s; the numbers have risen since then and are likely to
continue to do so because Vmar has become a significant element in the ancient
struggle between Christian and Muslim scholars, propagandists, and wishful
130 African Muslims in Antebellum America

thinkers; between fact and fiction regarding American and Christian slavery and
the humanity and intelligence of Africans.
Despite authoritative sources, including letters in his own hand, on Vmar's
life, legends fostered by white Christian romantic, racist, and religious writers
predominated over the years, beginning about 1825. Into the 1980s, this
romantic Southern, antiblack, militant Christian legend grew over and around
what was known about the man. Fitting the earlier representation, Vmar's
Arabic Bible, a gift of Christians interested in his conversion or his salvation,
has been preserved, whereas an earlier gift, a Quran in English, has not. With
some variations over time, this legend represents Vmar as a well-educated
Arabian prince who somehow found himself in Africa, being captured by
Africans, whom, the tale declares, he despised all his life. There is some confu-
sion here with Joel Chandler Harris's fictional Ben Ali (Chapter 5) and perhaps
Abd ar-Rahman (Chapter 4). The hero of this legend was in no way African. He
had straight hair, a light complexion, and the "features and the form of an
Apollo Belvidere"-the Greek sculpture raised as an ideal of European, and
therefore universal, manly beauty. His capture by "constantly warring" Africans
led to his being sold and shipped to Charleston, South Carolina. There he ran
away, not from a master-for in this legend, all slaveholders were kind-but
from his second master's overseer, who, as sometimes happened, was unkind.
Vmar was saved, however, by a one-time governor of North Carolina, John
Owen, a full-time gentleman who recognized the royal quality in the strange
runaway. In a few years, the good governor and some noble ministers of the
Gospel sensitively turned Vmar away from his early stubborn faith in the
"bloodstained Koran" and toward a marvelously pious later career "worshipping
at the feet of the Prince of Peace. " He naturally had also been turned from any
interest in Africa-perhaps because he had his own garden and horse and
buggy, or possessions equally unusual for a slave-and toward a sincere love of
white Americans and their offspring, to whom he told wonderful tales.
This is a sweet "before the war" Southern story. It is also a misrepresenta-
tion in several of its essential and often contradictory details. This legend was
the product of a lengthy series of misrepresentations based on disrespectful
attitudes toward Muslims and Africans. True religious sensibilities in a Muslim
and literacy or "civilization" in an African were not easily admitted: the black
man who believed in one god, who prayed, who knew biblical figures, and who
could read and write had to be called an Arabian to be allowed in most ante-
and postbellum Southern publications.
A glance at some of these works suggests how the legend grew. Early on-
 Vmar ibn Said's Legend(s), life, and Letters 131

as happened with other Africans, non-Muslim as well as Muslim-Umar's

dignified, even proud, carriage and manners led visitors to see in him a prince.
So argued one minister, G.T. Bedell, who may have witnessed Umar's baptism
into the Presbyterian Church (recorded in 1821), in "Prince Moro" (1825).
Following up on translations of an autobiography Umar wrote in 1831 and of
two letters Umar wrote to Lamine Kebe, Ralph R. Gurley, secretary of the
American Colonization Society, declared that Umar had completely converted
to Christianity (1837). Both of these writers allowed U mar to be an African, but
a decade later the legend began to take its ultimate shape. Umar was called
"Monroe," a royal Arabian scholar, in an unsigned Wilmington, North Carolina,
newspaper article in 1847; was seen as an Arabian prince who looked like a
model Greek rather than an African and was saved by the governor from a bad
overseer in "Prince Omeroh: Romantic Experience of a Princely Slave-A
Strange Story of the Old Plantation Days," also unsigned in a Raleigh, North
Carolina, newspaper, July 1884; was called by a pure Confederate propagandist
a slave-trading Arabian Sheikh caught just above the Congo River! and brought
by a New England ship to America, and purchased by good Governor Owen in
"Meroh-A Slave" by another unnamed North Carolinian in 1887-my
emphases; was three times misidentified as Governor Owen's slave and an
Arabian in Louis T. Moore's "Prince of Arabia" (1927); was similarly misiden-
tified in "The Story of Prince Omeroh: Native Arabian, [etc.}" by Calvin
Leonard, 1934; and was proclaimed a literate prince and "not an African" by
Margaret McMahon in "Bladen Slave Was Also a Prince" (1968).
In order to end up with such an antiblack and anti-Muslim legend, several
earlier articles-and his portrait, the frontispiece in this chapter which is clear-
ly that of an African-had to be overlooked. Not fitting were such pieces as the
following. In an 1819 letter about Umar to Francis Scott Key, author of our
national anthem, John Louis Taylor of Raleigh told Key that Umar might not
mind being sent back to his homeland in Africa, where he would probably give
a positive picture of America. This letter was accompanied by a two-page manu-
script by Umar showing that he had been a Quranic scholar (see Figs. 22 and
23). The 1825 article mentioned earlier inadvertantly supplied a shrewd clue to
an understanding of the man: Some enslaved Africans in North Carolina saw in
Umar a "pray-god to the king," a marabout, or a kind of religious counselor, to
non-Muslim rulers. Umar's aurobiography, first translated in 1848, clearly
establishes his African homeland; education; literacy; early adherence to Islam;
and, it seems, conversion to Christianity. There is a correction of the Arabian
misidentification by an unnamed observer in a Raleigh newspaper article in
132 African Muslims in Antebellum America

"An African Scholar" (1853) and a more significant article by Rev. Mathew B.
Grier, the minister of the church Umar last attended, who admitted Umar's
African origins and who also expressed some doubt about the absoluteness of his
conversion to Christianity in "Uncle Moreau" (1854 and 1859).
Umar is called an ex-prince and a Freemason bur visibly an African by
John F. Foard recalling an 1855 visit with Umar in "A True Story of an African
Prince in a Southern Home" (1904). Another visiting minister, William
Plumer, remarked upon Umar's refined "whole person and gait" and
Christian-why not Muslim?-character in "Meroh, A Native African" (1863).
Umar was properly recognized as being from Senegal, Africa, and as being
purchased by General rather than Governor Owen when much of his autobi-
ography was first printed in translation in 1864 by Theodore Dwight, Jr.,
whom we met in Chapter 6. Umar is knowledgeably included in a transat-
lantic context in George Post's "Arabic-Speaking Negro Mohammedans in
Africa" (1869). His autobiography was finally aurhoritatively translated and
published in the American Historical Review (1925). His story was also accu-
rately treated in "Omar ibn Said, a Slave Who Wrote an Aurobiography in
Arabic," published in the Journal of Negro History (1954). Another twelve arti-
cles offer further variations. Some are truer than others. All are included in my
African Muslims in Antebellum America (1984).
Inconsistencies abound in many of the pieces unrelated to Umar's autobi-
ography. The mix of sentimentality, ethnic wonderment, negrophobia, Christian
presumptions, and carelessness in this legend needs sorting out. Muslim schol-
ars have taken heart because of the equivocal conclusion about conversion
expressed by Umar's last minister; their knowledge that Fula Muslims, in
particular, have long stood out as being true to their religion; and evidence in
all of the available Arabic writings by Umar found up to 1995. They may
create their own legend-beginning with assuming that Umar made a pilgrim-
age to Mecca. This notion is not impossible, as many others did so from Senegal
and Mali in his time, but is debatable-a matter to be taken up below. On
the other hand, until modern scholars of both persuasions get to further study
the original manuscript of Umar's aurobiography, proof of its reported asser-
tions-according to Christian translators-of his adopting Christianity will
also have to be postponed. Undoubtedly, even examination of the manuscript
will not finally settle the question.
It is evident that Umar was a spiritual soul who needed to pray regularly
with others who prayed. He might have agreed to baptism in order to be allowed
to do so and to enjoy a level of comfort and even prestige among Christian book-
 Vmar ibn Said's Legend(sL life, and Letters 133

men not available to other African-born servants. And he may have done so out
of an appreciation for the genuine kindness of his ultimate purchaser James
Owen and his family and for some aspects of Christianity. Others, including ar-
Rahman, Kebe, King, and five African Jamaicans, also said that they admired
elements of the Christian religion-but they all reverted at the first opportunity.
None of these men, however, was reported to have declared a conversion as defi-
nitely as Umar. After setting the record as straight as possible on Umar's life, I
will turn to his letters for further insights into this impressive African.
Umar's actual life, or what is known of it from the better pieces cited previ-
ously-and his autobiography-goes something like this. He was not an
Arabian but an African, a dark Tukolor Fula, probably kin, at some remove, to
Job, Yarrow Mamout, Abd ar-Rahman, Charno, Bilali, and Salih Bilali. His
portrait clearly reflects contemporary descriptions of his color, hair, and phys-
iognomy as being "distinctly of the African character," as Rev. Bedell wrote. He
was born around 1765 in Futa Toro (present-day Senegal-see Map 1) to a
father who had six sons and five daughters and a mother, whom he regularly
commemorated in his American-Arabic writings, who had three sons and one
daughter. At age five, when his father was killed in a war, he was taken by an
uncle to be raised and was educated by an older brother and others in Futa
Toro, Bundu (Job's country), and possibly in FutaJallon. Three of his teachers
are named in his autobiography, but no Fulbe family or clan name is given.
His most important activities in Africa-judging by the space he gave them
in his autobiography-were his training in and practicing of the Five Pillars
of Islam: the Quranic obligations on praying five times a day, fasting, giving
alms to the poor, fighting for the faith, and going on pilgrimages. One trans-
lation has him going to Mecca; another appears to refer to burial sites of local
saints. (Recently, Muslim enthusiasts have added "AI Hajj" to Umar's name
because, apparently, he said he had gone to Mecca. Although there are records
establishing that many Muslims from Senegal did go to Mecca around 1800,
there must have been some exaggeration in Umar's case. His pilgrimage would
have been remembered in his homeland, and he would undoubtedly have talked
about so wonderful a journey when he was in America.) Finally, of course, Umar
declared his belief in one god and his prophet, Muhammad. Apparently, howev-
er, Umar did not have a family of his own in either Africa or America. No one
mentions a wife or children-practically, socially, and religiously an obligation
on either continent and in either religion.
U mar had not been a prince but had come from some wealth, as he appears
to have told an American that his father had seventy slaves. According to his
134 African Muslims in Antebellum America

own account, he had been a scholar for twenty-five years; a teacher; and then,
according to his minister, a trader in "salt, clothes, &c." This etcetera mayor
may not have included slaves. Some African-born slaves in America saw in
Umar a "pray-god to the king," an adviser to a non-Muslim court. There may
have been some mistake on his part that led to his capture and exile, but he was
also a soldier against the infidels. Umar first told of being captured in a war,
probably against the anti-Muslim Bambaras from Kaarta to the northeast or
from Massina to the southeast who defeated the Almaamy of Futa Toro just
north of Bure around 1807, the year U mar was sent to America. He was taken
captive in that country, he said, by a large army.
In a beautifully written 1819 manuscript, Umar said he wanted to be seen
again at Kaba or Kebe (see Chapter 6-a cultural center of the Mandingo
Muslim people) in Bure, suggesting that this city was his home at the time of
his capture. The accompanying letter from Taylor to Francis Scott Key suggest-
ed that Umar might be willing to return-perhaps as a Christian missionary.
Shortly thereafter, however, Umar began to change his mind and story. He
thought it might not be good to return because his friends might be dead or
dispersed. Then, as Umar grew older in America, he seems to have catered to
an American need for dark impressions of Africa. Interviewers reported that
he acted as if something too terrible to talk about had happened in Bure and as
ifhe would not want to go home again. This attitude contrasts markedly with
impressions given by Abd ar-Rahman and Lamine Kebe, who offered much
brighter pictures of the "Dark Continent." Of course, these two were being
helped to go home.
Other African adults, such as Abd ar-Rahman, had suffered humiliations
similar to Umar's. Umar was led to what he called the "great sea" and to a ship that
took a month and a half to carry him to Charleston, South Carolina, the chief
slave port in the South. He said that there were only two others on the ship who
shared his language. The "large army" had apparently sent off more than Fulbe
enemies-possibly the others were of the people whom Umar had been advising.
The American landing brought Umar a good first master, but he died.
Umar's second master was not religious and demanded heavy physical labor.
Umar would not stand for those conditions. He ran for about thirty days until
he was taken out of a Fayetteville, North Carolina, church where he had gone to
pray and was put in a prison. There his mild, well-mannered, and dignified ways
and his writing on the walls attracted local attention. After somehow getting an
evil sort of putchaser out of the way around 1811,)ames Owen, a one-time local
militia officer (thereby earning the title of General), took Umar into his home.
 Vmar ibn Said's Legend(s), life, and Letters 135

According to all accounts, General Owen and his brother, Governor John
Owen (1828-1830), treated Umar as the frail, spiritual, soon-to-die exotic
that Umar said he was and required little from him. The poor slave, then around
forty, hung on for the next fifty-three years. The General was so good that he
managed to find a Quran in English at Umar's request and had it read to the
near satisfaction of his scholarly slave. Umar reportedly maintained his required
fasts and dietary rules for some time, and he seems not to have tried to master
the language of the New World. One visitor thought he had never heard such
bad "broken English." Perhaps Umar had come to America too late, but it
might also be that, like other Muslim slaves among a few friends but many
enemies, he saw little gain in trying to learn a new language.
Like Abd ar-Rahman, Umar attended church. Presbyterians were serious
prayers, as he was. In 1821 he became a church member and was baptized. His
Arabic Bible was used so much that it had to be recovered, apparently more
than once. There is no evidence thus far, however, that Umar ever attempted to
copy more than two pieces (the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm)
ftom it. Several visitors to Fayetteville and to Owen's other home in Wilming-
ton asserted that Umar was a wonderful Christian. Several ministers mentioned
uplifting moral and spiritual conversations with Umar. Within his lifetime, he
seems to have talked with adults rather than with the children described as
listening to his stories by the African-disparaging myth mentioned before. His
last minister, Rev. Mathew B. Grier, liked to think Umar was a mature
Christian but allowed a little doubt as he hedged and wrote that "by all outward
signs" U mar seemed to be a "sincere believer in Jesus Christ." As I indicated
before, this equivocation offered an opening for Muslims to have their own
ideas about Umar's religious beliefs.
Creators oflegends and would-be biographers ofUmar have an enormous
advantage over those seeking the truth about others discussed in this book
because Umar was encouraged to write over and over again in Arabic and was
urged to write more than a few lines. This cannot be said for most of those
considered in this book. So Umar often wrote; he wrote for people who could
not read his language and who accepted Umar's characterization of the contents
no matter what his subject matter actually was. He also undoubtedly wrote
for himself, to maintain his faith through rewriting the words of Allah or God.
There are fourteen extant available productions of his hand; eleven, avoid-
ing duplication, are reproduced here. There are mentions of eight others of which
translations or paraphrases exist, although the original manuscripts have not
been found. Unlike Abd ar-Rahman, who told contributors to his freedom fund
136 African Muslims in Antebellum America

that he was writing the Lord's Prayer in Arabic when he was actually writing the
Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Quran, Umar usually actually wrote the Lord's
Prayer-and he wrote it often. This was a sufficient sign to Christians that he
was a convert. It may be argued, however, that nothing is said in that prayer
that is peculiarly Christian. Sometimes Umar also seems to have let it be thought
that he was writing the Lord's Prayer when he was only making a list of Owen
family members, and his last supposed Lord's Prayer was actually a selection
from the Quran. Umar also wrote the Twenty-third Psalm for visitors. Again, the
psalm contains nothing that a Muslim might not be able to say in prayer to
Allah.
One translator ruefully noted in 1904 in a note to his rendition ofUmar's
Twenty-third Psalm, written in 1855, "It is a little startling to find that 'Uncle
Moro' still retained a little weakness for Mohammed." The supposedly Christian
prayer was preceded by the traditional Muslim invocation to Allah and his
Prophet Muhammad. This addition was Umar's regular practice. The notes in
Umar's Bible and all extant manuscripts open with or include invocations to
Allah and, usually, to his Prophet Muhammad; emphasize Umar's need of help;
and recognize his responsibility to be strong in his faith.
But according to translators, Umar's autobiography and several currently
unavailable translations make bold assertions of his giving up the Prophet
Muhammad for the Prophet Jesus Christ. At least three documents-including,
reportedly, two to "Paul," or Lamine Kebe-urge other Muslims to do so too. I
will pass on those translations, but let us look first at facsimiles ofUmar's avail-
able writings.
It is to be expected that the earliest known Umar manuscript, two beau-
tifully written pages from 1819, Figs. 22 and 23, should be a melding of
Hadith and Quranic excerpts. It is a sophisticated prayer for assistance by a
man in forced exile. It begins with the Fatiha or first Surah of the Quran: "All
praises to Allah, Who created all of us to worship Him. See what works they
do; what they say; those who do good will have good; those who do evil will
have evil." This is followed by "Greetings and peace to mindud [commander?}
and John Owen and those with them of the community of Christians in the
place called Rula [Raleigh?} from high to low; live! And to my brethren
unreachable in a far country. I say then, as I begin: Blessed be He in Whose
hands everything is owned, and all is capable."
Following are several lines of poetry based on the Hadith (traditions of the
Prophet); Umar's arabesque; what appears to be a date transliterated from
English ("November eighteen, Sunday, nineteen[?}"); ayats, or verses, from
 Vmar ibn Said's Legend{s), Life, and Letters 137

Surah 53.21-23a-against Christian idolatry-and Surah 2.285-signifi-

cant because it implies that there are those who accept all apostles or prophets
equally: "We make no distinction (they say) between one and another of His
apostles. "
Is there a rationale here for accepting Jesus as an apostle or prophet, as he
is accepted elsewhere in the Quran (Surah 3.45)? This acceptance does not
mean, of course, that Jesus is seen in the Quran as a savior or as God.
The following Surah, 2.286, declares that Allah does not demand too much
but asks that Allah forgive believers in the land of unbelievers; Surahs 41.46 and
80.34-37 move toward the judgment all have to face, described more fully in
82.19 and 78.40. Umar's reference to his African home follows: "I am wanting
you to know I want to be seen in a place called Africa in a place called Kaba in
Bewir [Burel" The manuscript closes with thirteen ayats from Surah 67 (al-
Mulk), including lines on Allah's knowing a believer's mind even if the believ-
er is not able to proclaim his thoughts openly.
John Louis Taylor, who sent this manuscript to Francis Scott Key, said he
had other manuscripts by Umar, but these have not yet been found.
Umar wrote in Arabic in the Bible sent to him by Key. Inside the front
cover are four inscriptions in Arabic; the first and fourth read, "All Praises to
Allah, or God," the second, "All good is from Allah. " The third is illegible.
These expressions are Quranic; perhaps their origin does not exclude the possi-
bility of their referring to the God of all peoples who could read. The only
page annotated by Umar, the final one, begins similarly. It reads, "Praise God,"
then is illegible until halfway through Umar's third line, which appears ro be
a personal prayer he wrote often: "My name is Umaru, son ofSayyid; my moth-
er is Umhan Yasnik. May God comfort her resting place" (Fig. 24).
Although Fig. 25 is identified as the Twenty-third Psalm by a handwrit-
ten note, the manuscript is acrually the Lord's Prayer. This prayer, often recom-
mended for new converts to Christianity, is preceded here by the curious
statement, "And this is how you pray, you." Umar seems to be separating
himself from Christians. This may have been written in 1828, as on its reverse
is a transcription of a Victor Hugo poem with that date written beneath.
Also mismarked, Fig. 26 is not the Lord's Prayer but a list of nine James
Owen family members following a design close to that found in Fig. 22. This
may have been written in 1828 as it appears in the same scrapbook as Fig. 25.
The Fig. 27 and Fig. 28 manuscripts were found together in a notebook.
It may have been written in 1840-the date given in Louis T. Moore's "Prince
of Arabia" (1927), wherein Moore described the manuscript. It begins exactly
Figs. 22 & 23. The Earliest Known Ms. (two pages) by Umar, the "inclosed letter" from
John Louis Taylor to Francis S. Key, 1819. Franklin Trask Library, Andover Newton
Theological Seminary, Newton, Mass.

138
139
Fig. 24. Only Annotated Page (the final p. of Revelation) in Umar's Bible,
Davidson College.

140
Fig. 25. Umar's Lord's Prayer (mismarked "23rd Psalm"), 1828? John Owen Papers, North
Carolina State Archives, Raleigh.

141
Fig. 26. List of Owen Family Names (mismarked "The Lord's Prayer")
, John Owen Papers,
North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh .

142
Fig . 27. Th e Lord·s Pra
yer, 1840?, Davidson Co
lleg e.

143
144 African Muslims in Antebellum America

as does the Taylor manuscript with the Fatiha: "Thanks be to God, whom crea-
tures were created to worship. He is the Lord of actions and sayings. Whomever
does good, does so for himself; and whomever does evil will have evil. " This is
followed by The Lord's Prayer.
Another Lord's Prayer, Fig. 28, is preceded by the Bismillah, a conventional
Muslim invocation: "In the name of God the Merciful, the compassionate. May
God have mercy on the Prophet Mohammed." This is followed by Umar's
benediction: "My name is Umaru, son ofSayyid; my mother is Umhan Yasnik.
May God comfort her resting place. "
In 1855 John F. Foard, another colonizationist, asked Umar for some of his
writing. Umar sent him a manuscript that was translated by Princeton professor
R. D. Wilson in 1904 (Fig. 29). It was the Twenty-third Psalm, preceded by the
Bismillah: "In the name of God, the merciful and gracious. May god have mercy
on the Prophet Mohammed." This led to Wilson's observation that '''Uncle Moro'
still retained a little weakness for Mohammed." The translator could make noth-
ing of the writing in the box, but it is Umar's benediction for his mother.
Fig. 30, an important manuscript, was given to the daughter of a promi-
nent minister by James Owen in 1857. It was supposed to be the Lord's Prayer
but is not from the Bible at all. U mar reached far back into his Quran to recall
Surah 110. Suggestively, this was one of the last recitations from Allah-as
Muhammad declared-before the death of the Prophet. Umar must have felt
as if he were near a similar crisis. He also signed it: "My name is U mar. "
Figs. 31,32, and 33 show manuscripts that are undated. James Owen's
daughter Eliza kept a scrapbook that included these three manuscripts. Fig. 31
includes the Bismillah, Umar's arabesque, and the names of Eliza and five other
children.
Fig. 32 contains the Bismillah, the Twenty-third Psalm, and Quranic
phrase "All good is from Allah, and no other." Umar signed his name in the star.
Fig. 33 is a provocative statement. The Bismillah is extended to praise the
Creator and "the Lord of actions and sayings." But line 5 has been translated:
"You recognize as a servant and son [of God?} Jesus." Does Vmar not do so?
Another line is not visible.
Thus far, it is surely possible to discern Vmar the Muslim under Vmar
the Christian in these documents. But translators of presently unavailable Vmar
manuscripts-all Christian, of course-discovered a convert. Leaving aside
Vmar's "Life" for the moment, let us glance at some translated items. In 1835,
Gurley ordered translations of two Vmar letters to Kebe that supposedly urged
the latter to "lay aside Mahomet's prayer and use the one which our blessed
 Vmar ibn Said's Legend(s), Life, and Letters 145

savior taught his disciples-'our Father, &c.' and god has been good to us in
bringing us to this country and placing us in the hands of Christians. Let us now
wake up and go to Christ, and he will give us light. God bless the American
land! God bless the white people!"
This exhortation is so developed that it must appear that these were the
words in Arabic. But it seems too pat and pleasing to be true. Umar did go on,
according to this translation, and declared reason enough to be grateful: "My
lot is at last a delightful one. From one man to another I went until I fell into
the hands of a pious man. He read the Bible for me until my eyes were opened,
now I can see; thank God for it. I am dealt with as a child, not as a servant."
Another missionary wrote that sometime around 1860, Umar's mistress
gave the near centenarian a blank book for another autobiography. He filled it
with Arabic writing. George E. Post, a missionary in Syria, saw the manuscript
in 1868 and found "the pith of the scheme of redemption, in a series ofScriprure
passages from the Old and New Testaments." Post wrote that these passages
were followed by an appeal to Umar's African relatives-who were not likely
to ever see it: "Salaams to all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. I have given
my soul to Jesus the Son of God. 0, my countrymen [of} Bundah [Bundu},
and Phootoor [Futa Toro}, and Phootdalik [Futa Jallon?}, ... Come, come,
come, come to Jesus the Son of God, and ye shall find rest to your souls in the
day of judgment. "
This except would seem to settle the question about Umar's ultimate reli-
gious stance on the side of the Christians. Bur it is, once again, an invisible
writing because the original manuscript has yet to be seen by modern scholars.
In addition, Post's dating may be inaccurate. The manuscript may have been
written before Umar wrote his Surah 110 around 1857.
Then there is Umar's "Life." In 1925, J. Franklin Jameson, then managing
editor of the American Historical Review, authorized, intelligently introduced, and
annotated a translation of Umar's most important writing, which Jameson
titled "Autobiography ofOmar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina, 183l." He
described the original document's history, its first translation in 1848 by
Alexander I. Cotheal, "for many years ... treasurer of the [American}
Ethnological Society, and ... a fancier of Arabic manuscripts." He recalled a
second translator, Rev. Isaac Bird, a missionary in Syria from 1823 to 1835
whose effort some time later became the basis of the 1925 translation-and was
probably the one quoted by Theodore Dwight, Jr., in Chapter 6-which was
revised in the 1920s by Dr. R. M. Moussa, secretary of the Egyptian Legation
in Washington.
Fig. 28. The Lord's Prayer, signed by Umar, Davidson College.

146
Fig. 29. The 23rd Psalm, 1855, John Frederick Foard, North America and A/rica: Their
Past, Present and Future and Key to the Negro Problem, 1904.

147
Fig. 30. Umar's Latest Known Extant Writing: Surah 110, 1857, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.

148
Fig. 31. List of Owen Family Names, Eliza H. Owen Scrapbook owned by Mrs. Trammell,
Atlanta, photo courtesy of Thomas C. Parramore.

149
Fig. 32 . The Bismillah, 23rd Psalm , and Quranic phrase "All good is from Allah ,
and no other. "

150
Fig 33. The Bismillah and "This is How You Pray, You .... " Both
from Eliza H. Owen Scrapbook.

151
152 African Muslims in Antebellum America

As I noted before, the manuscript fell out of sight until the winter of 1995.
In December, it and several related papers, mentioned earlier in Chapter 6,
were shown to me for identification purposes, and they were auctioned off to the
knowledgeable collector Derrick). Beard, by Swann Galleries, New York. The
present owner, interested in educating the world about Vmar and his peers, has
generously allowed me to tell about it and to print the accompanying photo.
It is sewn into light brown wrapping paper. On this cover, Fig. 34, someone has
written, "The Life of Omar ben Saeed, called Morro, a Fullah Slave, in
Fayetteville, N.C. owned by Governor Owen, Written by himself in 1831, &
sent to Old Paul, or Lahmen Kebby, in New York in 1836, Presented to
Theodore Dwight by Paul in 1836, Translated by Alex. Cotheal, Esq. 1848.
(The beginning at the other end.)"
There are a few inaccuracies here, bur the writer knew which end was up.
The booklet has twenty-three pages, but writing appears only on fifteen. There
is no writing on pages 6-13. As I write this sentence in April 1996, contem-
porary translators are at work on the manuscript once again. Thus far, howev-
er, no one has gone through it completely. Two who have begun translating it
find the earlier translation close to the original, but one of these, Muhammad
al-Ahari, insists that there is no negation of Islam or Muhammad in the orig-
inal. As is also true in the Quran, there is an acceptance of the prayers and
prophethood ofJesus. The latter acceptance appears to be added to the spiritual
wealth Vmar had been gathering for most of his years.
Following the Fatiha, a long qutba, lesson or sermon, opens the autobiog-
raphy: Surah 67 complete. This Surah also closes the manuscript sent to Key,
Fig. 23. The spiritual rather than the physical person is the usual subject of
Muslim autobiographies. As I noted earlier, most of the Surah deals with the
necessity for humans of right thinking about the power, creation, and true
prophet of God. It is true that Muhammad is not named here-allowing the
introduction, perhaps, of Jesus-but it is also true that this Surah is central to
assertions of Muhammad's ultimate prophethood.
Following this qutba, Vmar is as conventional as any European in apolo-
gizing too much for his writing; Vmar says he has forgotten both Arabic and
his own language (Fulfulde, written with Arabic letters). Then he proceeds, as
any Muslim must with any serious action, with the Bismillah: "In the name of
God, the Gracious, the Merciful." He tells most of his own life story as outlined
before. When he gets to his purchase by "Jim" [sic}, apparently with the assis-
tance ofJohn Owen he expresses his gratitude for the life they have allowed him:
"These men are good men. What food they eat they give me to eat. As they
clothe themselves they clothe me." This was treatment that Africans expected
 Vmar ibn Said's Legend(s), Life, and Letters 153

when they adopted a master's religion-as was the way in Muslim lands and
supposedly also in lands enlightened by the New Testament, though it was
seldom the case, according to ar-Rahman, other American slave narrators, and
histories of American treatment of Africans.
V mar then stretches: "They permit me to read the gospel of God, our Lord,
and Saviour, and King"-the New Testament God, presumably. But this god
is seen in a Quranic way as one "who regulates all our circumstances, our health
and wealth, and who bestows his mercies willingly, not by constraint." The
translator has Vmar speaking of "Lord Jesus the Messiah" as God. It is not
likely that even a converted Muslim would go this far toward a trinitarian
belief.
Another section tells what V mar used to do as a proper Muslim back in
Africa. He followed the Five Pillars. This section concludes with "Written
A.D. 1831."
Then the translation suggests a second beginning. Vmar must have been
convinced that he should be more direct in his gratitude. There is no Surah
from the Quran; instead, this section begins with a list of sixteen Owen fami-
ly members and is followed by Vmar saying that he has gone from taking plea-
sure in the Quran to finding it in the "gospel" of "Jesus the Messiah." Some of
his language ("Lord of all worlds") suggests that he has the same god in mind
on either side of his ostensible conversion, but the translator has Vmar declar-
ing that he has dropped the Fatiha for "Our Father, ... " (the Lord's Prayer), "in
the words of our Lord Jesus the Messiah." These words are unequivocal-but
were also available only in translation, and Vmar may have felt he had to say
something like this to keep in the good graces of the Owens. This notion is
borne out by Vmar's 1857 piece.
Vmar's autobiography included two final paragraphs: details about the
abuse he had suffered in Africa, where "wicked men took me by violence," and
in Charleston, where "I fell into the hands of a small, weak and wicked man,
who feared not God at all, nor did he read (the gospel) at all nor pray"; and how
he ran from this wicked man to North Carolina and the good Owens. A final
paragraph makes it clear that Vmar is very happy that he is being treated well
by the Owens and is not required to do "hard work. "
We await a definitive translation-and the discovery of more of Vmar's
papers.
There are, finally, two interesting sidelights on Vmar ibn Said's history.
One account of him said that Vmar received a letter in Arabic from a man named
Yang, a Muslim from Canton, China. Apparently a missionary had brought one
of Vmar's letters to Yang, who was moved to respond in kind. Nothing more
Figs. 34 & 35. Cover Page and First Page ofUmar·s "Life .. · Photos courtesy of
Derrick Joshua Beard.

154
155
156 African Muslims in Antebellum America

seems to have come of this correspondence, but other letters by Umar were
shown by Lamine Kebe's biographer to Rev. Daniel Bliss, president of the Syria
Protestant College. Bliss followed up on what had been learned from Lamine
Kebe, as well as what had been heard and read of Umar, by sending a case of
Bibles in Arabic to Liberia to be distributed around Umar's distant country.
This act provided, in fact, an opening into the Muslim hinterland for the
young Arabic studies program of the College of Liberia and for its founder, the
great black Caribbean scholar Edward Wilmot Blyden, who began teaching
Arabic in Liberia in 1867-as I mentioned in the conclusion to Chapter 6.

SElECTED READINGS

"Autobiography ofOmar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina, 1831," American

Historical Review, XXX, No.4 (July 1925),787-795.
Gregory Townshend Bedell, "Prince Moro," Christian Advocate (July 1825),
306-307.
George H. Calcott, "Omar ibn Said, a Slave Who Wrote an Autobiography
in Arabic, "Journal ofNegro History, 39 (1954),58-63.
Philip D. Cuttin Economic Change in Pre-Colonial Africa (Madison: University
of Wisconsin, 1975).
Theodore Dwight, Jr., "Condition and Character of Negroes in Africa,"
Methodist Quarterly Reviw (Jan. 1864),77 -90.
John F. Foard, North America and Africa, 3rd. ed. (Statesville, N.C., 1904).
Mathew B. Grier, "Uncle Moreau," African Repository (J une 1869), 174-176.
Ralph R. Gurley, "Secretary's Report," African Repository, XIII (July 1837),
20l.5
Margaret McMahon, "Bladen Slave was also a Prince," Fayetteville News and
Observer (17 March 1968).
On Futa Toro in U mar's day, see Gaspard Mollien, Travels in the Interior ofAfrica
to the Sources ofthe Senegal and Gambia (1820) (reprinted London: Cass, 1967).
Louis T. Moore, "Prince of Arabia," Greensboro Daily News, 13 February 1927.
William S. Plummer, "Meroh, a Native African," New York Observer (8 Jan.
1863).
George E. Post, "Arabic-Speaking Negro Mohammedans in Africa," African
Repository (May 1869), 129-133.
[Henry M. Schieffelin}, People of Africa (New York: Anson D. F. Randolph,
1871).
Clyde-Ahmad Winters, "Roots and Islam in Slave America," Al-Ittihad
(Oct.-Nov., 1976).
Fig. 36. Cover of Mahommah G. Baquaqua's Biography, Detroit, 1854, Burton
Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.
 8
The Transatlantic Trials
of Mahommah Ciardo Baquaqua

Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua was an unambitious, undisciplined, modestly

intelligent boy and man who loved his mother, liked alcohol, and got in trou-
ble out of mischief or boredom rather than malice-a not-unusual case on any
continent. But this young African's troubles led him a long way from home. He
was born around 1830 in Djougou, a large city in present-day Benin.
Uninterested in school and religion, his father's and older brother's rigorous
Islam, or physical labor, Baquaqua became a victim of others at home and
abroad. He was captured during a distant war and was released; became a petty
servant of a petty non-Muslim chief; was tricked by drinking friends into slav-
ery; was marched toward the coast by male and female putchasers; suffered a
long passage across the sea; and was owned by a harsh baker and then a cruel
shipmaster and his wife in Brazil. He was a mistreated steward and near alco-
holic on board a ship that sailed to New York City; a lonely fugitive there and
in Boston; an uneasy convert to Christianity in Haiti; a mistreated student and
a dubious missionary candidate in upstate New York and in Canada; a published
storyteller in Detroit, Michigan, in 1854; and in 1857, a sojourner in England
on his way, he hoped, home to Africa.
There are several uncommon elements beyond the obviously unusual
geographical and biographical aspects of Baquaqua's life story. His An Interesting
Narrative. Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua is the only known description
of that time by an African of his homeland and its neighbors. Its section on his
160 African Muslims in Antebellum America

life in Brazil is the only known slave narrative from that time and nation. Its
pages on his escape in New York City offer glimpses of a secretive "undersea
railroad" that rescued victims of slavery in Northern seaports. Its personal
account of U.S. missionaries in Haiti provides an uncommon African view-
point. And its black student's description of the only pre-Civil War American
college to boast African American professors-although he does not mention
any of the three directly-is, so far, unique.
By 1854, Baquaqua had gained enough attention to become noticed in
several American newspapers and magazines, according to a short account of
Baquaqua in Facts for Baptist Churches (Utica, 1850) that provides one of two
known portraits of him (Fig. 37). Presumably, several of these undiscovered
articles will be found one day. There are also letters to and from Baquaqua yet
to be found. To date, I have found seven letters in English in his own hand
written in 1853 and 1854. These show that Baquaqua was seeking a way to go
home to Africa as a missionary, teacher, or cook. They also show that he was
unprepared religiously, intellectually, or emotionally for any of these positions.
Still, he did get to England somehow.
When his overtures to American missionary societies seemed to have failed,
Baquaqua convinced himself that it might be helpful to his pocket and propos-
als to tell his story in print. He found a willing and helpful publisher for his
sixty-five-page Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, composed with the
aid of a collaborator about as naive as himself. On the title page, Samuel
Downing Moore claimed previous editorial and professional writing experi-
ence, but there is little evidence of that in the text. In his "Preface and
Compiler's Notes," Moore said that Baquaqua spoke "imperfect English" but
that their book would be readable, clear, instructive, plain spoken, amusing, and
helpful to "all classes of readers" and to Baquaqua's missionary project. In places
the text is all of these things, but it is usually disorganized and incomplete on
its many topics and is too often directed toward young people rather than
adults capable of forwarding Baquaqua's religious career. Futther, Moore's intro-
ductory paragraphs show that he was absolutely ignorant of and overly senti-
mental about Africa and simplistically Eurocentric in his interpretations of
Baquaqua's words and motivations for returning to Africa. On the other hand,
the naivete of both men makes much of this text fascinating for its directness
and its unresolved two-part structure. Although it begins as biography, about
a third of the way through it becomes autobiography. The title page includes
the phrase: "Written and revised from his [Baquaqua's} own words." Baquaqua
promised a fuller version later.
 The Transatlantic Trials of Mahommah Qardo Baquaqua 161

Fig. 37. Mahommah Baquaqua and Missionary William L.Judd, c. 1848, from Andrew T.
Foss and E. Mathews, Faasfor Baptist Churches, 1850. Miller Library, Colby College, Waterville,
Maine.

The Biography is very strangely organized. It opens with a sign of the

writer's naiVete: a list of the numbers from one to one thousand in the language
of the Songhai-Baquaqua's father's people. Some pages later Baquaqua takes
pride in having learned these numbers in Portuguese. Baquaqua apparently
believed that such a recitation would show his intelligence and recommend
his cause. Moore's placement of this list suggests that he agreed. One-third of
what follows is divided into six short chapters made up of haphazard, usually
unreliable notes on Baquaqua's native Islam, government, scenery, agriculture,
162 African Muslims in Antebellum America

people, manners, official ceremonies, trade, wars, and slavery, while a seventh
chapter, taking up the last two-thirds of the document, finally delivers
Baquaqua's unvarnished life tale.
I will emphasize the latter too. Baquaqua was born into a family with
fading fortunes on the paternal side, saved by the rising fortunes of the single
wife his father could afford. His father was a "not very dark complexioned,"
devout Muslim whose people had been called Songhai until they were dispersed
after the fall of their extensive empire by the capture of their capital, Timbuktu,
by Moroccan and Portuguese mercenaries carrying firearms-never before seen
in the interior of Africa in 1591. His father was born in "Berzoo" (Borgu),
where the displaced Songhai were called Dendi. Baquaqua's mother was a Hausa
woman from the city of Katsina (as was the mother of Abu Bakr, Chapter 2;
Katsina was also where Mohammed Ali ben Said was taken after his capture-
see Chapter 9).
Baquaqua was born in the large city of "Zoozoo" (Djougou), a walled city
unvisited by Europeans until after 1854. The city was a trading center on a
major route between Kumasi to the west, the Ashanti capital in control of kola,
salt, metals including gold, European goods, and other items, and by the Hausa
of Kano to the east, famous for their horses, donkeys, leather, ivory, cloth, and
metalwork (see Chapter 1, Map 1). Rice and other grains, yams, fruits, beans,
onions, cotton, and domestic and wild animals were plentiful.
Although Djougou's sizable Muslim population did not yet have its own
mosque and held its prayers outside when Baquaqua lived there, Dendi Muslims
got along well with Bariba, or non-Muslim, sections of town, and their sarra
feast after Ramadan's month of fasting was celebrated by the Bariba ruler.
Baquaqua represented it as a pleasant homeland, and his account accords with
descriptions of nearby cities to the south explored by Englishman John
Duncan's expedition in 1845-1846.
His father wanted Baquaqua to become as religious as his older brother,
who became a teacher, adviser, and diplomat for distant non-Muslim chiefs as
well as a supplier of Quranic amulets for ordinary people feeling a need for
something to ward off evil. But Baquaqua decided at some point in his educa-
tion that he was not interested in going further. He was apparently well protect-
ed by his mother against the father and brother. Moore ascribed Baquaqua's
later recklessness to this maternal fondness.
For a while he was apprenticed to his blacksmith uncle, working in iron,
copper, and brass. The uncle, Baquaqua said, worked gold and silver into
bracelets, earrings, and rings. When the uncle died, Baquaqua's mother inher-
 The Transatlantic Trials of Mahommah Cjardo Baquaqua 103

ited his wealth. She soon needed it. She ransomed the older brother from captiv-
ity in a war to the east and later sent Baquaqua on a seventeen-day march to
carry grain to his brother, then in Daboya to the west, where he was again an
adviser to a king. Here both brothers got in the way of another war: "The guns
began to boom away," Baquaqua said. Everyone fled for their lives, but the
brothers were captured and led into a forest, where Baquaqua or Moore
described the mosquitoes as more vicious than men: "real big hungry fellows,
... they came whim! whim! about our ears, ... I never wish to be in that place
again"-suggesting a boyish narrator. This time his brother found an escape
and ransomed Baquaqua.
His mother then helped Baquaqua obtain a messenger's position for a local
king to whom she was related. Baquaqua described this position as the third
most important post in service to a respectable king. As he tells about his
duties, however, he appears to be a thug working for a thug. He ran with
soldiers who, in lieu of pay, "plundered for a living. " Often they did so under
the influence of palm wine-and here Baquaqua acquired the predilection for
alcohol that got him into many of his later difficulties. Petty chiefs and uncon-
trolled bands of young men such as Baquaqua unhesitatingly described did
rise with the decline of the Borgu part of the old kingdom ofOyo (a loosely knit
confederation of nearly autonomous peoples, including Yotubans, who were
just becoming numerous in the Atlantic slave trade).
Around 1846 he was on his way back to Djougou to visit his mother when
some supposed friends hired praise-singers to flatter Baquaqua, got him drunk,
and took him to a great party, from which he awakened the next day to discov-
er himself a prisoner and a slave. He cried for his mother and drank some more.
He was put into a rough wooden collar, and his march to the sea-more than
three hundred miles away-began. He described passing friends unable to
rescue him and his sale to a female slave trader, who carried him farther south
for "several" days past towns, great prairies with very tall grasses, and some
mountains where the weather was very pleasant.
At a town called Efau, Baquaqua was sold to a rich man. He was "very
well treated" but did not like the work assigned to him and threatened to run
away. After "several weeks" there, he was led past fearsome leopards and other
wild animals further south to Abomey, the capital city of the Dahomeans,
famous for its female armies and the king's house decorated with the skulls of
enemies. Baquaqua saw one of the warrior-wives but missed the house. He
seems to have been more interested in the city's reputation as "a great place
for whiskey." At this point he gave up hope of seeing his mother again.
164 African Muslims in Antebellum America

A day and a half below Abomey-which Baquaqua called Dohama-he

saw his first white man and his glass windows. Baquaqua said that the man
"took my attention very much." More importantly, he also saw an acquain-
tance who had disappeared from Djougou two years earlier. He too had been
kidnapped and enslaved. They were unable to help one another. Two nights
and a day's ride down a river led to "a very beautiful place"-an ironic touch-
where he was confined in a slave pen, branded with a hot iron, bound in chains
or ropes, and saw the seashore and a waiting European ship.
This last sight was terrifying. Baquaqua thought the ship might be a white
man's "object of worship" or a place where the waiting captives were to be
slaughtered. The prisoners-"from all parts of the country"-had been given
a kind of feast before boats rook them to the waiting ship. Those rowing had
been given a lot of whiskey. One of several crowded boats did not make it
through a rough sea; it capsized and all but one of thirty aboard drowned.
Baquaqua, of course, was in another boat that did make it. He said everyone was
naked; males and females were separated; the hold was too low to stand in; and
the loathesomeness and filth-probably not Baquaqua's exact words-were
horrible. All suffered from seasickness early on. The only food was "corn [grain}
soaked and boiled." A pint of water per day was insufficient but was all he was
given. Only twice in what was commonly at least a six-week voyage was he
allowed to go on deck; many of his fellow captives died.
Finally, Pernambuco in northern Brazil was sighted. For a day there was no
food, water, or noise allowed. The slave trade was not yet illegal there but was
apparently frowned upon. At night the prisoners-who had been "viewed and
handled" by potential buyers visiting the ship-were taken ashore to a trader
who liked using the whip. On the ship there had been some Africans-appar-
ently crew members-who sometimes talked to the captives and who spoke
Portuguese. Baquaqua had begun to practice their talk and found his little
knowledge useful to his eventual purchaser, a baker. Moore the Baptist and
Baquaqua the one-time Muslim had some fun mocking his Portuguese master's
Catholic images and religious services for the "benefit" of slaves. But Baquaqua
learned that becoming Christian in Pernambuco did not mean becoming free.
After being forced to help build a stone house, Baquaqua tried to serve his
master diligently and honestly as a bread seller. He even avoided drinking until
he found that his master would not be pleased and could not lighten his load
no matter how hard he worked. He tried running away but was caught. He
decided to do little and to drink whiskey but was beaten for his lack of effort.
He thought of killing his master but decided it would be easier to drown
 The Transatlantic Trials of Mahommah Ciardo Baquaqua 165

himself by jumping in a river. He found no luck that way; he was saved and was
beaten severely.
Baquaqua was then sold to another cruel purchaser who abused his female
slaves but who soon sent Baquaqua off to Rio de Janeiro, where he was sold to
a sea captain. In that service, he rose from brass polisher to understeward and
steward bur had a hard time pleasing the captain's Brazilian "lady," who was
often angry, apparently because she had been kidnapped by the captain as she
was about to be married to another man. Several exciting episodes at sea suggest
that the captain's seamanship was less than perfect. Baquaqua was also treated
harshly by the ship's mate, against whom he once raised his arm to fight back.
The captain's brutal punishment was stopped by the capricious "wife." At
another time, in port, Baquaqua's drunkenness led to a ducking and presum-
ably another beating.
His last voyage with the captain-carrying coffee to New York City about
two years after he was taken from Africa-brought Baquaqua to freedom. But
his escape was not easy. He and other slaves had heard that slavery did not exist
where they were heading. He had high hopes of escaping, did not want to
appear unhappy about his situation, and obeyed all orders to the letter. But a
hurricane and his captain's anger at his inability to light a signal lamp led to a
severe beating that endangered his life as well as his hopes. Baquaqua refused
to beg for mercy as demanded and tried to fight back. He was locked up,

became sick, and nearly despaired.

Bur an Englishman on board encouraged Baquaqua with stories, in
Portuguese, of New York and freedom and taught him the English word "free."
Once he reached port, a local pilot was positively decent to him, and on the
second day a committee of African Americans somehow got on the ship and
boldly inquired about the presence of slaves aboard. These people were
undoubtedly members of the New York Vigilance Society, which had recent-
ly been revived, going about business similar to their earlier rescues of slaves
from visiting ships. Baquaqua, another young male, and two female slaves
understood what was being asked but did not know how to act. Shortly there-
after, Baquaqua recklessly declared that he would soon be free and was again
locked up.
Mter "several" days, however, Baquaqua broke out, jumped ship, and ran for
his life. He was captured by authorities and returned to the ship, but by then New
York lawyers had been informed of his situation, presumably by the Vigilance
Society, and a few days later Baquaqua was taken off the ship, carried to City
Hall, and brought to hearings, held in prison, brought to hearings again-
166 African Muslims in Antebellum America

proceedings he could not possibly understand-until he was physically rescued

by "friends" who were undoubtedly from or related to the Vigilance Society
again. In 1848, probably around the age of twenty-here the Biography is
unhelpful-Baquaqua was a free man. His new friends helped him and a fellow
fugitive from the ship flee to Boston, where they were taken care of for about four
weeks before someone decided they needed to fly farther. Given the choice of
England or Haiti, Baquaqua seems to have concluded that the climate and color
of people in Haiti would be more agreeable, and there the two were sent.
On the way to Haiti, a colored man named Jones took an interest in
Baquaqua and started teaching him about shadows and other common folkloric
phenomena. In Port au Prince, Haiti's capital, Baquaqua felt free but had diffi-
culty because he did not know the language. A military officer was helpful but
offered little more than shelter and whiskey. A black man from America proved
to be a mean employer; Baquaqua and his companion suffered from malnutri-
tion and fell ill. His companion found out about a Baptist missionary from the
military officer, who probably thought he could take care of two pests at the
same time and who sent Baquaqua to the missionary for help.
William 1. Judd, his wife, and the latter's sister were the first missionar-
ies from the United States to work in Haiti. They had been sent by the
American Free Baptists, who were strongly antislavery and, according to two
of the organization's leaders, were dismayed by the carelessness with which
U.S. Christians had treated the Haitians, who were the second American people
to declare themselves free of European rule and who had fought heroically to

gain their eventual independence in 1804. But Haitians were also black. Their
country, its rights, and its people's needs in the form of trade were not recog-
nized by the United States until the Civil War.
When the Judds arrived in Haiti in January 1847, they were hardly
welcomed by the nominally Catholic nation. But by October, Judd was able to
baptize twenty-four natives. In 1849 he also baptized Mahommah Baquaqua,
declaring that this man's baptism was an unusually affecting moment. Judd
wrote, "[Baquaqua} is endowed by narure with a soul so noble that he grasps
the whole world at a stroke, in the movement of his benevolent feelings .... He
now seems filled with the most ardent desire to labor for the salvation of
souls .... 'I want to do all for God, all for good,' " Baquaqua reportedly declared.
Characteristically inconsistent-and candid-he also said he wanted to go
back home to Katsina to visit his mother.
The relationship between Judd and Baquaqua undoubtedly often reflect-
ed the portrait of the two men accompanying this chapter. Baquaqua must
 The Transatlantic Trials of Mahommah Ciardo Baquaqua 167

often have appeared as cowed and Judd as tired as this image suggests.
Baquaqua was an imperfect candidate for conversion. He says he tried to be
good but was often unkind, even to the saintly Mrs. Judd: "I must confess, I
sometimes treated them rather badly. I had not much gratitude then. I would
often get very drunk and be abusive to them, but they overlooked my bad
behavior always, and when Mrs. Judd would try to coax me to go home and
behave myself, I would fight her and tell her I would not. "
After his conversion, Baquaqua declared that he would give up alcohol
completely. The Judds apparently had some hopes that he was sincere, and he
accompanied Mrs. Judd to upstate New York for her to visit her family and for
Baquaqua to become educated in preparation for a missionary life. Threatening
storms at sea and a visit to their ship in a Southern port by a slave trader who
wanted to buy Baquaqua did not interrupt their long voyage. Nor was it
stopped by a racist sailor who tried to cause trouble until Baquaqua "let him
see a little of my own ugliness." Shortly after arriving in New York City again,
on a boat on the Erie Canal, Baquaqua became playful and thought of pretend-
ing to be a fugitive slave. He had to be shamed into admitting that he was
Mahommah Baquaqua from Haiti.
In about a month, he was settled into the academy, or "primary depart-
ment," of Central College in McGrawville, New York, sponsored by the
American Free Baptist Missionary Society. It was the only college in the United
States that knowingly hired African American professors before the Civil War-
and one of few to have women as faculty. Central College included three mulat-
toes who clearly identified themselves as "black." Charles 1. Reason, professor
of belles lett res (literarure), and French and adjunct professor of mathematics,
1849-1850, was later an important educator in New York City. William G.
Allen, professor of Greek and German, 1850-1853, got into trouble at Central
when he not only fell in love with Mary King-one of Baquaqua's student
teachers and a marure daughter of liberal whites-but when the two serious-
ly considered marriage. There was a near riot, virtual imprisonment of Mary
King, and an escape and elopement not unlike Othello's, perhaps, but followed
by a hasty retreat to England in 1853. Miss King composed a poem on
Baquaqua that was reprinted in the Biography. (Coincidentally, one of
Baquaqua's letters offers a defense against an allegation that Baquaqua was also
trying to "marry" a white student later in 1853. The woman's parents and
classmates probably feared an affair rather than a marriage.) The third African
American professor, George B. Vashon from Pittsbutgh, had been a professor at
Haiti 's College Faustin between January 1848 and the summer of 1850. He
168 African Muslims in Antebellum America

became a professor of classics at Central College from 1854-1857-too late to

share impressions of Haiti with Baquaqua.
Baquaqua's three years in and around McGrawville were hardly easy. He
had to do manual labor for his keep; he was regularly harassed by white
students; and he probably was not ready to be a student or sojourner there. He
quietly put up with many of the tricks other students pulled, but he left the
college for a while to study privately with American Free Baptist missionaries
and at a school at nearby Freetown Corner. His biography says that at some
point he returned to the college but left to visit Canada, where he was treated
so well by everyone that he eventually moved there to became a naturalized
citizen.
The Biography ends with a suddenly remembered hope for help to come to
Baquaqua so that he might return to his own country as a missionary. But all
assertions about Baquaqua's Christian conversion and zeal came not from
Baquaqua but from Judd or Moore. Readers seeking reasons to support this
man as a missionary could not have been satisfied by what is said about his
religious and educational preparedness. Nor was there any help in the otherwise
pleasing addition of a strongly abolitionist but weakly Christian poem supplied
anonymously by James Monroe Whitfield, an African American whose emigra-
tionist arguments against Frederick Douglass and others were printed in Detroit
by the same printer who published Baquaqua's work.
More may be learned about these last known incidents of Baquaqua's life
from Baquaqua's seven extant letters. These show that as late as the summer of
1853, he was nowhere near being a religious scholar. He had learned how to
write an understandable letter, although he confused tenses and long and short
vowels. In August 1853, at a low point in his relations with New Yorkers and
amid some difficulty with his original Free Baptist sponsors, perhaps, he wrote
to George Whipple, the secretary of the nonsectarian American Missionary
Society of the Congregational Church. He said he would not tell others about
their correspondence but would like to go home soon-very soon. He wrote,
"I made my mand [sic} to go to Africa this fall, if! can .... I feel I may do more
good in Africa than I can here. " He added that he believed in one Church. This
bland statement could not have made Whipple very hopeful about Baquaqua's
evangelical zeal.
Baquaqua's second letter (September 14, 1853) was even more insistent
in requesting a date for his return to Africa in October or December. The third
was written to another correspondent; in it he admitted that he had been writ-
ing to Whipple because he thought he would not be allowed money that he
 The Transatlantic Trials of Mahommah Ciardo Baquaqua 169

thought was owed to him by some person or organization he does not specify
in New York. He said he wanted to work with George Thompson, a famous
missionary who had gone to Africa with Africans who were freed in a lengthy
legal battle after their revolt on the Amistad slave ship hauled into New York
in 1838.
On October 8, Baquaqua responded to a letter from Whipple. Baquaqua's
letter indicates that he had been asked several serious questions. His state-
ments and improved penmanship suggest that someone else was supplying
some of the words and reminding Baquaqua to write more carefully. Baquaqua
declared that nearby friends thought he would be acceptable for Thompson's
Mendi Mission. He admitted that he needed more preparation and said that
learning English was hard. Again, however, his missionary zeal is unconvinc-
ing because he added that he did not want to stay in the United States and
wanted to go home. Nor was it helpful for him to write that he might go to
Canada even though doing so might lead to his giving up on Africa-to say
nothing of his giving up on converting Africans to Christianity. He thanked
Whipple for his advice.
On October 26, Baquaqua had to respond to a more serious question.
Whipple had been told that Baquaqua had been courting a certain young white
lady. Baquaqua denied it; he said that they had met three years earlier and that
she was nice but that he had not sought to marry her. Baquaqua wrote that
local New Yorkers had seriously threatened him over the matter. Baquaqua
had intented to go to a Freetown Baptist church to get a letter recommending
him to a church in Canada, where he was planning to move. Someone warned
him not to go because there was a rumor that he was going to the church to get
married. Baquaqua wrote that he declared: "bless my body to day, Something
I did not know nothing about it." Undoubtedly recalling the vicious crowds
that had accosted Professor Allen only months earlier, Baquaqua did "give up
going," as he feared they would do "very bad to me indeed." Subsequently, he
felt he had to be very careful: "I dont go out much. I study my books, this all.
I have a great trouble with these wickit people."
Following these words, Baquaqua wrote three words in Arabic, the
language of his first school back home. They appear to be "Allah, Allah, most
[or} ever," all that he could recall, perhaps, from the Bismallah: "In the name
of Allah, most benevolent, ever-merciful." Perhaps he was thinking of going
home and returning to his original religion. The orthography is similar in style
to Nigerian manuscripts of the day. Baquaqua added a pathetic postscript that
seems to show his doubts about being accepted as a missionary. In it he
170 African Muslims in Antebellum America

expressed a hope that his story would be told to Missionary Thompson for
whom he said he would cook if he could not teach. He had become desperate
to go back home.
Another letter to Whipple, January 6, 1854, still postmarked McGraw-
ville, contained only five short, pessimistic sentences. It must have been writ-
ten in a state of depression. He promised nothing and seemed to expect nothing:
"Some thing which is nescessary for me to let you know. I should like to know,
if I will go to Africa, this year or next year. Because I have to work in farms in
the Spring, I board myself here about two years. I use to hire one acre of land.
This reason I should like to know. Yours in Christian love, M. G. Baquaqua."
Later in the month, January 29, Baquaqua tried again. His studies helped
make his next letter begin more formally: "Dear Br[other}, Yours of the 14th
is received. I now take my pen to address [?} you, ... "
But the body of the letter is full of grammatical errors and logical or
emotional confusion. He was again replying to the doubting Whipple. In short,
Baquaqua declared that he was anxious to go to Africa to teach his countrymen
because he believed he was a disciple of Christ since he too had suffered many
trials. Setting aside any pretense of being a missionary, however, Baquaqua said
he would like to be an interpreter of the Arabic and "Zogoo" languages,
presumably Songhai. On that matter, he also said, unhelpfully, that he wished
he understood English better.
Finally, Baquaqua responded to another Whipple statement: "You say that
they [the Mission} want a good man to go there, bur I did not know how good
I am, but I love God and try to do which is right." Once again, Baquaqua is
simple, direct, and unsure of both means and ends. There is also a postscript
written in haste suggesting that Baquaqua is putting all his time into school-
work. Again, the letter seems to be from a lonely and nearly desperate exile, and
is still postmarked McGrawville.
That was Baquaqua's last letter, as far as I am aware, though there must be
others elsewhere. At least momentarily, Mahommah G. Baquaqua must have
felt proud and hopeful of good results when George A. Pomeroy, a sympathet-
ic printer; Samuel Downing Moore, an interested fellow who claimed to be a
writer; and J. G. Darby and Moses Sutton, local artists, combined to produce
Baquaqua's book. It seems reasonable to think that he wrote one or two letters
as his Biography was being composed and printed and that he wrote a few letters
asking about sales and responses-or the want of any. It is pleasing to imag-
ine that Baquaqua wrote some letters to tell someone about feeling safe and
comfortable, at least temporarily, across the border in Canada. It is possible
 The Transatlantic Trials of Mahommah Ciardo Baquaqua 171

that he also wrote about meeting friendly missionaries or African coloniza-

tionists and finding a way to Africa, closer to his mother and his home.
Baguagua did get as far as England by February 1857, according to an
American Free Baptist Missionary Society correspondent (brought to my atten-
tion by Brazilian scholar Sylvia Lara). But the society declared that it would be
a year before it would have any money to further his work. It is possible tpat
Mahommah Baguagua did get back home to Djougou, but after the disap-
pointments he had experienced at the hands of Christians, he may have returned
on his own, and, like the rest of the people in this book, reverted to the religion
of his youth.

SELECTED READINCiS

Baguagua's letters are in Amistad Collection, American Missionary Associ-

ation Papers, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Peter B. Clarke, West Africa and Islam (London: Edward Arnold, 1982).
John Duncan, Travels in Western Africa in 1845 and 1846, Comprising a
Journey from Whydah, through the Kingdom of Dahomey, to Adoofodia, in the Interior,
II (London: Bentley, 1847).
Nehemiah Levtzion, Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1968).
Samuel Moore, comp., Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua (Detroit,
1854). For full title see frontispiece.
Jane H. and William H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free: Blacks Search for
Freedom 1830-1861 (New York: Atheneum, 1974).
Joao Jose Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in
Bahia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993).
For information about early academies for blacks, see Milton C. Sernett,
Abolition's Axe: Beriah Green, Oneida Institute, and the Black Freedom Struggle
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
Robin Law and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., The Biography of Mahommah Gardo
Baquaqua: His Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America (Princeton:
Markus Wiener,2001)
Fig. 38. Mohammed Ali or Nicholas Said, Carte de Visite, 18631 Massachusetts Historical
Society, Boston.
 9
Mohammed Ali ben Said,
or Nicholas Said:
His Travels on Five Continents

This chapter tells about an uncommonly bright, congenial, curious, and adapt-
able man whose people, the Kanuri; original name, Mohammed Ali ben Said;
and references to Allah indicate his African Muslim beginnings. He did not
forget the land and the religion of his fathers, as his autobiography shows, bur
by the time Said arrived in the New World in 1860, he had wandered so far and
witnessed so much as both a slave and a freeman that his origins and religion
were the oldest parts of his extraordinarily extensive multicultural baggage.
The story of Mohammed Ali ben Said, or Nicholas Said, as he called himself
after a problematic baptism in Russia, is by any standard an unusual one.
Said was born just west of Lake Chad (present-day Nigeria) into a pros-
perous military-merchant family around 1833. He was well educated but not
wholly wise when he was captured by Tuareg raiders around 1849. Then his
travels began. Said was marched as a slave across the Sahara Desert (a three-
month trek), was sold in Tripoli and taken to Mecca, became a rich man's slave
in Turkey, and was another rich man's servant in Russia and throughout Europe
(1853-1859) before he was hired to be a manservant for a traveler to South
and North America. Sometime in 1862, he became a teacher in Detroit,
Michigan. A year later, Said joined the 55th Regiment of Massachusetts Colored
Volunteers-as deserving of a movie as the more famous 54th, the subject of
the film Glory. He was mustered out in South Carolina in the fall of 1865. Said
married and then disappeared except for a barely legible handwritten note
174 African Muslims in Antebellum America

about his death, found in a copy of his regimental record held by the Massa-
chusetts Historical Society, Boston: "Nicholas Said, Brownsville, Tenn. Aug. 6,
1882."
Before traces of him were lost, however, fellow soldiers admired Said as a
pleasant person, sophisticated storyteller, and competent soldier. Thus far, a
regimental record, two notes by people who knew him in the army, and a short
article about him in a Groton, Connecticut, newspaper have been found. Each
source provides corroboration of the facts and the character drawn directly in
his own legacy: a remarkable photographic portrait and a charming and percep-
tive autobiography. The latter exhibits a number of subtleties: its African
"father of his country" hero is nicely tailored to American sensibilities, and its
Odyssean sensibilities and adventutes speak to both American and Eutopean
readers. Someone, probably Norwood P. Hallowell, a commanding officer who
also spoke about Said elsewhere, apparently recognized these qualities and had
the autobiography published in the most prestigious journal of the day, the
Atlantic Monthly, under the title "A Native of Bornoo" (October 1867).
That Nicholas Said was not prevailed upon to produce a full-length book
is a serious loss to mid-nineteenth-century comparative history. His observations
during his extensive travels prove to be trustworthy, as most of his geograph-
ical and historical references can be confirmed elsewhere. His country, Bornu,
had been the headquarters for two well-documented British exploratory expe-
ditions in the 1820s and the 1850s, and the accounts of these groups square
with Said's pictures of his homeland, its peoples, and the Saharan route north.
Other works support his stories of subsequent travels. With genuine moral
and fiscal encouragement, this obviously curious and well-read African could
well have produced a multivolume Travels on Five Continents to balance book-
shelves and points of view otherwise burdened only with multivolume Travels
by Europeans.
What we have must do.
A headnote to Said's autobiography included these points:

Nicholas Said, ... was of medium height, somewhat slenderly built, with
pleasing features, not of the extreme negro type [here Said's portrait, the fron-
tispiece to this chapter, may be studied to figure out what the writer meant},
complexion perfectly black, and quiet and unassuming address. Inquiry
showed that he was more or less acquainted with seven different languages,
in addition to his native tongue[s}; ... At the request of those who had been
from time to time entertained by the recital of portions of his history, he was
 Mohammed Ali ben Said, or Nicholas Said 175

induced to put it in writing. The narrative which follows is condensed from

his manuscript, and his own language has been retained as far as possible.

How pleasing it would be to find Said's original manuscript.

The autobiography's title, "A Native of Bornoo," is inadequate for its
contents; I like to think that Said did not choose it. Said began with a tradi-
tional apology for possible shortcomings; but his cause was, of course, unusu-
al: "Reader, you must excuse me for the mistakes which this article will contain,
as you will bear in mind that this language in which I am now trying to write
is not my mother tongue; on the other hand, I never had a teacher, nor ever was
at school for the purpose of acquiring the English. The only way I learned what
little of the language I know was through French books."
He began his story, however, with another tradition-the opening lines of
the majority of African American slave narratives: "I was born ... " But his
own life story started far away "in the kingdom of Bornoo, in Soodan" (the
bilad as-Sudan, or land of the blacks in Arabic), which, he recognized, was
"imperfectly known." He described his land and that of the Fellatahs (Fulbe)
as being strong Muslim nations with high literary expectations for the upper
classes. His nation was the most civilized because of its trade with North African
states and those to the south in "gold-dust, ivory, &c.," a trade that included
slaves-a subject that is delicately omitted here. There have been varying opin-
ions on the character but not the significant extent of Bornu's commerce.
These remarks led to a quite reliable historical sketch of Bornu's "roman-
tic history" from the eleventh century to its near demise under the latest kings,
or mais, and the attacks from 1808 to 1815 of the Fula jihad led by a man Said
deprecatingly calls a shepherd, "Otman Danfodio." Us man Dan Fodio was one
of the most remarkably energetic, intelligent, literary, and successful Muslim
expansionists at a time when the rest of the Muslim world was being reduced
by European military advances. With only a little exaggeration, Said described
the temporary defeat of his people.
In 1815 Bornu regained its freedom by the efforts of an equally remarkable
leader, "Mohammed el Amin el Kanemy," whom Said called "the Washington
of Bornoo" (see Fig. 39). El Kanemy's victorious struggle, however, was spread
out over a longer period than the two months Said-or his editor's misread-
ing-alleged.
Like Washington, the successful liberator refused a crown; but he placed
himself at the disposal of the legitimate king. Here Said's story differs from
official histories given to the German traveler Heinrich Barth, but a similar
Fig. 39. Mohammed el Amin el Kanemy, Bornu's George Washington, from
Dixon Denham and Hugh Clapperton, Narrative a/Travels and Discoveries in Northern
and Central A/rica in ... 1822, 23, and 24, 1826.

176
 Mohammed Ali ben Said, or Nicholas Said 177

version has been found in Bornu folklore. This element provides another valu-
able aspect of Said's firsthand account. "Mais Barnoma" (Mai Dunama) grew
jealous of el Kanemy and involved the neighboring ruler of "Begharmi "
(Barghimi) in an elaborate plot to get rid of his enemy in a staged battle. With
foreknowledge of the trick from a messenger supposed to be reporting to
Dunama, el Kanemy rearranged the players, and in the end Dunama was killed
instead. Said wrote, "Allah, who protects the innocent and punishes the guilty,
was smiling over [el Kanemy}. " The king of Barghimi was quickly defeated and
was forced to ford the Shary River, where many of his soldiers were killed. El
Kanemy then ruled securely for years, encouraging trade, defeating very hand-
some and very black enemies on Lake Chad (the Budduma), and absorbing
other lands and peoples until Bornu amounted to "nearly fifteen millions. "
Said claimed that he was the son of Barca Gana, who was a slave but also
el Kanemy's premiere cavalry officer. This man became known in European
circles-as did el Kanemy, of course-when a British exploring expedition
penetrated the Sudan from North Africa (1822-1825). Barca Gana saved the
life of Major Dixon Denham, one of the expedition leaders. Said did not let on
that his father was a slave bur claimed that both of his parents were from the
upper classes. Barca Gana, meaning a short man, was a common name; it is
not clear whether the famous cavalryman was Said's father.
Said was born in Kuka "a few years after the Waday war of 1831." At this
point, for some reason, perhaps editorial, national history is completely replaced
by Said's personal story. Said was one of "nineteen children, twelve boys and
seven girls. I was the ninth child of my mother. " All his brothers were educated
in the Arabic and Turkish languages. Two of them were rich traders and had
been to Mecca as pilgrims. After his father's death, land and gold were set aside
to be distributed when he and others turned twenty, and Said was sent to school.
He must have been about seven then. In four and a half years he could read
and write Arabic and perhaps his own language using Arabic characters. He says
he could write both languages.
His age group-about three hundred boys around the age of twelve-
was circumcised and feted for fifteen days, according to custom. When he
returned home, "his mother, sisters, and brothers" treated him as "a pet for
some time." Four or five years later, Said wrote (around 1849), he and three
brothers were invited to the "very charming" "province of Yaoori and Laree
[Yo and Lari in Denham}, ... worthy to be called the garden of Eden. " Denham
and Barth offered similar opinions. Here Said indulged a passion for hunting
in the woods that his mother had said would be his ruin. And so it was.
 FEZZAN

ARABIA
Murzuk'\.
) Sahara Desert

I
t
.... ) Bilma
TIBDOO
~
..-.- )
KatsinaL.. -... ~
Kano. k· Lake Chad
Ku a
BORNU

MANDARA

Travels in Africa and to Asia of COUDtri"" ~ARABIA

Mohammed Ali ben Said TOWDS = Timbuktu
Geoe.aphl" Featu.es = Niger R.
(Winter 18491 to Spring 185l?)

Map III. Travels in Africa and to Asia of Mohammed Ali ben Said.
 Mohammed Ali ben Said, or Nicholas Said 179

Wandering Tuareg raiders, the "Kindil," as Said called them, took away eigh-
teen of forty boys on horseback. Said cried for himself and for those he had
persuaded to come into the forest with him. His particular odyssey had begun.
Said's route to North Africa and then to Arabia and Tutkey may be followed
in Map 3. His descriptions of the landscapes and people he met in Africa and
across the Sahara-including a bespectacled Englishman in Murzuk-are
similar to contemporary accounts by Barth and Barth's African servant Dorugu
and are not very different from accounts of salt caravans and a journey through
Ethiopia to Mecca in recent articles in National Geographic. Said did not stress
the attendant horrors perpetrated by callous traders or the lusts directed against
caravans made up of young women emphasized elsewhere. Instead, Said was
interested in local stone formations, foods, and people-some of whom
indulged in the use of hashish.
Said-one of five hundred trekkers in his caravan-was first the slave of
an African-Arab carrying ivory and other goods. At Murzuk he was sold to
someone who did not put him to work in the fields that he said he was not used
to. He seems to have been a personal servant. He was sold again in Tripoli and
commented on the variety of women he saw there, expressing his preference for
Hausa women. His long trip as a slave to Mecca and back to Egypt led to
another sale in Turkey to a man for whom all he had to do was tend his master's
tobacco and pipes while fancily dressed. Said was shifted to this man's broth-
er and then was sold in Constantinople to Prince Alexander S. Menshikov, the
Russian general and chief envoy who, following the order of Czar Nicholas I,
made demands on the Turks that neither they nor the British and French found
acceptable. Shortly after Said and Menshikov left for St. Petersburg on May
21, 1853, the bloody Crimean War between these three powers and Russia
began.
Said's new master, being rich, lived on the best street and in one of the
better houses in the capital. But Menshikov was sent to the Crimea, and Said
had trouble with the head servant and somehow managed to "engage service"
with another prominent aristocrat, Nicholas Trubetzkoy. This man's country
property included four villages and a house of marble as big as the Fifth Avenue
Hotel in New York City, according to the well-traveled narrator. After about
a year and a half in St. Petersburg, his master or employer-it is not clear
which, except that Said said he was a personal servant-stood as his godfather
and changed his name from Mohammed Ali ben Said to Nicholas Said when he
was baptized on November 12, 1854 (Said wrote 1855, but the itinerary
outlined later establishes the earlier date). Said reflected that he thought
 \
\
'" ~
....
00
o

Cltles = Vl :Jr.qa ....'

Genl"'pbie Features = Black Sea

Jf('dde"/'{Wt~C1" StU!

Map IV. European and Asian Travels of Mohammed Ali ben Said.
 Mohammed Ali ben Said, or Nicholas Said 181

Trubetzkoy meant well, "but I cannot help thinking that the way I was baptized
was not right, for I think that I ought to have known perfectly well the nature
of the thing beforehand." He did not elaborate. Said's life was comfortable,
but Trubetzkoy, who preferred "inaction" to any work, was a nervous wreck.
Few Russians were comfortable under Czar Nicholas; Trubetzkoy's being the
czar's godson apparently did not help him. He was not able to gain permission
to travel to a Europe too liberal for the czar, but he and Said did go to Georgia
in the Caucasus Mountains and on to Persia.
Czar Nicholas died in February 1855, and Alexander, his more liberal
successor-who was to free his nation's serfs, or native slaves to the land, in
1861-allowed travel to the West. The two men set out almost immediately,
and Said reported that Trubetzkoy's nervousness never appeared again. They
vacationed back and forth across Europe for the next four years (see Map 4). In
Dresden, Germany, he was bothered by children and adults who had never seen
a black man or who were fascinated with his Asian "uniform. " But he won over
those who understood French (which he would have learned among the Russian
aristocracy) with his stories and gifts. Better yet, Trubetzkoy's brother in
Dresden gave Said several religious and secular books. He admitted that later,
in Milan, Italy, "I did not behave as well as I might have done," as he drank and
spent too much. But there he also met a countryman serving a Venetian
marquis. At a party later in Florence, he thought he had a better time than
did Trubetzkoy. At another, he met Prince Demidoff, who was notorious for
mistreating his servants-and his wife, according to a contemporary source.
In the spring of 1856, Trubetzkoy and Said were in Paris; they spent the
summer in London in the country, where Said concluded that English servants
lived better than any others in Europe. He apparently shared their "gay times. "
Back in Germany, he served at an international soiree that included the rulers
of Russia, France, and several German states as well as other foreign leaders.
This meeting apparently led Nicholas Said "to think of the condition of Africa,
... how European encroachments might be stopped, and her nationalities unit-
ed." He wondered if the unification of the states in the New World might be
a model; he wondered if he could induce several hundred young Africans to
study in Europe; he cried when he thought of foreign superior weapons and
tactics overcoming brave Africans. He prayed to Allah or the Russian Orthodox
god-or perhaps both-to be of some help to his people.
But he was still in Europe. There was an interesting meeting with
Trubetzkoy's beautiful niece, who was to marry the Due de Morny; she hesitated
but then allowed black Said to kiss her hand. In London again early in 1859,
 ---- --
..,..--

--~

/t The American Travels of

~I Mohammed Ali ben Said
(1857-1863)
II
lJ CGunUies = JA1J1AJCA
Cities = New York

~.
~
Long Island \
Providence

~gU8.\ '-:---...kes Gonaives

CUBA ~ St. Marc . .........

• - C "-
"_ ""'f
-
JAMAICA. HAITI '- -
GUADELOUPE

..
~ "-. ~ARTINIQUE
'" "
'-....."- "\
~---O ~\
SOlfl'H AMERICA

GUIANA

Map V. The American Travels of Mohammed Ali ben Said.

182
 Mohammed Ali ben Said, or Nicholas Said 183

Fig. 40. "Entrance of the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts (Colored) Regiment into

Charleston, Feb. 21, 1865" from Thomas Nast Engraving for Harper's Weekly.

Said, expressing his desire to do something for his country, and Trubetzkoy,
professing that he would always be interested in Said's life, sadly separated.
However, while Said waited for a ship to Africa, a "gentleman from Holland"
proposed that Said should go with him to the United States and the West
Indies. Having read much about these countries, he agreed and left Liverpool
soon after New Year's Day, 1860. Map 5 touches on the main ports and places
they visited. In Elmer, Ontario, Canada, his employer ran out of money. Said
loaned the man $500, and they separated. Subsequently, Said's travels came to
a temporary low point: "This failure [to get repaid?} compelled me to remain
in this country and earn my living by work to which I was unacsustomed"-
manual labor, undoubtedly, to which he had objected long ago in Mutzuk.
As his editor reported, however, Said managed to avoid that terrible fate
and convinced someone in Detroit that his English and education made him fit
to teach school. A Union army recruiter saved him from that fate too when he
signed Said up for the 55th Regiment of Massachusetts Colored Volunteers.
According to a Groton (Connecticut) Transcript article that called Said's French
"quite Parisian" and his Italian "correct," Said said he joined "because all his
folks seemed to be doing so"-a nice identification with African Americans.
The autobiography's editor barely touched upon Said's army days but did report
184 African Muslims in Antebellum America

that he rose to sergeant by July 1863 and later, in September 1864, asked to be
reduced to corporal and to be detailed to a hospital in order to "acquire some
knowledge of medicine. " He added that Said was mustered out in South Carolina
late in 1865 and concluded that a marriage, presumably with an American
woman, might keep Nicholas Said from returning to Africa. The note on his
death in Tennessee may be taken as corroboration of this guess, but thus far no
information has been discovered on Said's movements from 1865 to 1882.
The regimental records of the Massachusetts 55th provide the dates given
above and show Said enlisting in May 1863 and serving in Company I. Said may
have requested hospital detail because of a desire to someday educate his native
countrymen in the "sciences of the West," as he wrote in his autobiography. He
may also have been attempting to do something about the woefully inadequate
medical attention the 55th and all other African American regiments received.
Furthermore, although his regiment fought in important military battles
(Ft. Mims and Honey Hill, 1864; James Island, Biggin Creek, S.c., 1865), its
more serious and less well-known struggles consisted of its attempts to deal
with the government's unfair treatment. In concert with the Massachusetts 54th
Regiment, it waged a successful fourteen-month-long campaign for pay equal
to that given white troops and a less successful one against extended fatigue
duty beyond that required of white regiments. There were mutinies and near
mutinies, but the poorer treatment continued. Still, the unhappy regiment had
its moments of glory, when, for instance, it was in the vanguard of the Union
troops that marched in to take Charleston near the war's close. The regiment was
eventually mustered out on August 29, 1865. None of this military exercise
and sordid treatment is included in Said's autobiography. His own sensitivity,
perhaps, or his editor's sense of propriety may have led to this omission.
Another aspect of the man who began as Mohammed Ali ben Said may
appear to have been omitted: his religion. But his autobiographical perspectives
reflect Muslim training. Said asserts a lengthy history of Islam in his ancient
country, and he declares that Allah protected Mohammed el Amin el Kanemy
from Fellatah (Fulani or Fulbe) Muslims under the equally great leader Usman
Dan Fodio in a protracted struggle-including slave-taking raids from both
sides-over who was the most Islamically correct. Slavery is also a subject
omitted in the autobiography.
Said took, however, longer than he should have to learn Arabic, and he
did set out to picnic during Ramadan when he should have been fasting. Hence
his capture, perhaps. His religion did not save him from being sold to several
 Mohammed Ali ben Said, or Nicholas Said 185

Muslims, nor, since he did not go as a free person, did it allow him to visit the
grave of Muhammad at Mecca-to complete, that is, the hajj, or holy pilgrim-
age. Possibly because of his audience, Said did not claim a strict adherence to
Islam, and at least once he indulged in alcohol, which is denied to true believ-
ers. Perhaps he was simply being pragmatic, as he appeared to make himself
comfortable with the religions of the powers around him: the Eastern Orthodox
Church in Russia, Protestantism in Massachusetts, and possibly Roman
Catholicism in Italy and France. Still, in his autobiography, his religious refer-
ences were to Allah rather than Christ.
Since Said's carte de visite portrait and the Gtoton newspaper article were
uncovered in 1994, it is pleasing to think that more might be found on this
extraordinary man's life and career.

ADDENDUM: DECEMBER 2000

The chapter above begins and ends with the hope that more might be recov-
ered of the writings and adventures of Mohammed or Nicholas Said. I am
pleased that Routledge has allowed me to announce here the unusual and signif-
icant discovery of 228 very readable pages by this remarkable traveler and
observer. With the assistance or direction of conservative Alabamans, Said
published The Autobiography o/Nicholas Said: A Native 0/ Bornou. Eastern Soudan,
Central A/rica (Memphis: Shotwell & Co., Publishers, 1873). Its descriptions of
varied landscapes, ethnicities, classes of people-including several historical-
ly noteworthy individuals-and the activities, architecture, and urban hygiene
surrounding them, among more irregularly treated matters, are worthy of
notice. That these emanate ftom an African makes them even more uncommon.
Much of what appears in his longer work enlarges upon the twenty pages
referred to above. Some details differ; some, but not all, are tweaked to better
please conservative white Christians. Most unhappily, Said completely squelch-
es his service in the Union Army, asserting that from 1858 to 1866 he moved
around Europe. Surely a politic act for his time and place. Finally, Said's last
chapter is an economic survival act: an extended advertisement on the delights
of Bladen Springs, Alabama.
The Autobiography was brought to my attention by Harvard College grad-
uate student Precious Muhammad, who is preparing an edition.
186 African Muslims in Antebellum America

SELECTED READINCiS
[Nicholas Said}, "A Native of Bornoo,"Atlantic Monthly (October 1867),
485-495.
Allan D. Austin, "Mohammed Ali ben Said: Travels on Five Continents,"
Contributions in Black Studies 12 (1994),129-158.
For a study of Said's homeland, see John Wright, Libya, Chad and the Central
Sahara (Totowa, N.].: Barnes and Noble, 1989).
For a report by early European visitors to Said's homeland, see Dixon
Denham and Hugh Clapperton, Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern
and Central Africa (London, 1826) in Missions to the Niger, II, III (London:
Hakluyt Society, 1966).
For a report by a contemporary European visitor, see Heinrich Barth, Travels
and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: Being a Journal of an Expedition
Undertaken Under the Auspices ofH. B. M. Government in the Years 1849-1855, 3
vols. (1857-1858) (reprinted London: Cass, 1965).
For a study of el Kanemy's sophisticated Fula enemy, see Mervyn Hiskett,
The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of the Shehu Usuman dan Podio (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1973).
For a contemporary African's similar walk across the Sahara, see "The Life
and Travels of Dorugu," trans. and ed. Paul Newman, in West African Travels and
Adventures: Two Autobiographical Narratives from Northern Nigeria (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1971), 28-129.
For pictures of areas Said traveled early in his wanderings, see Victor
Englebert, "I Joined a Sahara Salt Caravan," National Geographic (November
1965),694-711.
For pictures of part of the route Said followed through Ethiopia to Mecca,
see Owen Tweedy, "An Unbeliever Joins the Hadj," National Geographic 65
(June 1934),761-789.
Allison Blakely, Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian Thought and History
(Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1986).
Mina Curtiss, "Some American Negroes in Russia in the Nineteenth
Century," Massachusetts Review (Spring 1968),268-296.
Charles B. Fox, Record of the Services of the 55th Colored Regiment of
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Cambridge, Mass.: John Wilson, 1868).
 Index

Often referred to names have been 71; remeets, in 1807, only

abbreviated: Abd ar-Rahman-AR, European to come to his hometown
Abu Bakr-AB, Bilali-B, Salih 71-72,81-82; American wife and
Bilali-SB, Job Ben Solomon- family 65, 71-72, 77, 78, 81; and
Job, Lamine Kebe-LK, "Man newspaper editor Andrew
Who Prayed Five Times a Day"- Marschalk 72, 78-80; and newspa-
MWP, "Moor" on Mississippi- per editor Cyrus Griffin 78; called a
MM, Mahommah Baquaqua-MB, Moor 67,80; freed 72; with Henry
Mohammed Ali ben Said-MS, Clay 72, 73, Pres. John Q. Adams
Umar ibn Said-V, Yarrow in Washington, D.C. 72, 73, 81;
Mamout-YM. through Northeast 65, 66-68,
76-77; and American Colonization
Aaron, slave runaway to Canada 40, 88 Society 68, 73,76, 80; and impor-
Abd ar-Rahman-also Ibrahim(a) Abd tant African Americans 68, 73,76,
al-Rahahman Bari, Sori, Diallo or 77; adherence to Islam 68, 73, 75,
Jallo in Africa, Abdul Rahahman 76; and significant European
and Prince in America (AR) 6, Americans 66-67, 79; demonized
10,11,12,13,15,16; port. 64; in Old southwest 67, 77, 78; to
summary of his life (1762-1829) Liberia 77; his death 77; "lesson of
65-66, autobiography in transla- encouragement" to African
tion from Arabic 80-82; education Americans 79; lesson on African
in Mali and Guinea 69, languages acquirements to historians 79, 123;
70; literacy 23-24,34,43-45,72, object of racist slur by Mark Twain
73-76,77; Mss. 74,75; family 69, 79; and V legend 130; and
77, 78, 80-81; color 69,80; sense Christians 133; and V 134, 135
of superiority 69, 81; child 70; Abu Bakr as Siddiq (AB) in Africa and
military leader 69-70, 80; jihads Jamaica 21, autobiography in
69-70; capture and enslavement in Arabic and translation 24, 129;
Africa; bitter passage to America adherence to Islam 41-42; exten-
(1788) 65-66, 70, 80-81; runs sive geographical knowledge of
away 71; enslaved forty years in Africa 41; plantation bookkeeper
Natchez, MS, plantation manager
188 Index

45,46; return to Africa (1835) as homelands Map 1,11,21-22,44;

guide toward Timbuctoo 42, 43, 44 Bundu, Senegal and Job 6, 53, 60,
Adams, John Quincy, Pres. and AR 67, 61, LK in 119, U in 7, 133-134,
78; AR on 12,73 145; Bornu, Nigeria and MS in 8,
Africa and Africans, American ignorance 174,175-77; Bure, Bambouk,
of 3-5,12-15, 47; James A. Mali 53,87, LK in 119, U in 134,
Michener 12; LK and Dwight on 137; Djougou, Benin and MB 8,
16, 120, 123; Edward Everett on 22,44,159,161-163; FutaJallon,
79, 123; Samuel D. Moore 160; Guinea 6, 8, 9, 22,41,44,65, and
post-Civil War notions 14, 39, 79 AR 6, 69-70, and B 6, and LK 6;
attitudes of Europeans and Americans Massina, Mali and SB 6, 99-108;
toward 3-5,9-15,18-23,25, Timbuktu, Mali and AB 41
47-48; G. W. F. Hegel 13, 58, knowledge of, by narrators 10; AB
123; David Hume 13,58,123; and others 21, 41; AR 70, 72; SB
Thomas Jefferson, Noah Webster, 104; LK 118-119, 120, 123-124;
and others 13, 58-59; David MB 159, 162; MS 175
Brown 37; Thomas Bluett 56, march to sea after capture 11,
58-59; Francis Moore 59; Fredrika 20-22, 33;Job 55-56; AR 70,
Bremer, journalist in Cuba 43,86; 80-81; SB 107-108; MWP 35; U
John and James Hamilton Couper 134; MB 163; MS 179
103; William Brown Hodgson non-Muslim 20, 21, 22, SB and 107;
111-112 AR 70, 80-81; MB 164
attitudes toward narrators 11,16-17; ports sent from 11; Gambia: Job and
ofMM 16, 35; of AR 16; ofLK 16, Jay 54-56, AR 44, 70, MWP 44;
115-116; of Hamet Abdul 37; ofU Senegal: YM, King, Cochrane, U
134; ofMB 168, 170, 171; ofMS 44; Guinea: B, LK, Rainsford 44;
181 Anomabu, Ivory Coast: SB 44;
education and training in 5-9, Lago, Ghana: AB 44; Badagry,
11-12,20-25,43-44; see individ- Benin: MB 44; Katsina, Nigeria
ual narrators across the Sahara Desert: MS 44
families Jay 47, Job 53, AR 70,77, return to, sought by Hamet Abdul
78,80-81; LK 24; U 133, 145; 37; by MB 46,168,170,171; by
MB 162-163; MS 177 MS 181, 183
history of, especially West Africa returned to 11, Job from Maryland 6,
3-15,18-23,44-48; and Job 44,47; Mohammed from Antigua
5-6,53-54,58-61; and B 6, 87, 40; Lamine Jay (Ndiaye?) from
90,92, ; and SB 6, 102, 104-107; Maryland 44, 47; AB from Jarnaica
and AR 6,66,69-72,76,77, 42; AR from Mississippi 6, 47,68;
80-82; and U 6-8, misrepresenta- LK from Georgia 40,118
tions 130-131, 133-134, 153; and slave trade in Muslim 20, 21, 22,
LK 8-9, 116, 118-124; and MB Fulbe 22; MWP and 35;Job and
9,159,162-164; and MS 164, 54,59; AR 69-70; SB and 106,
173,175-179 107; LK and 124; U and 133, 134;
MS 20,175
 Index 189

slavery in Muslim 13, 14, 19-20, King, S'Quash, AB 45; AR 45,71;

DBD on 27; MWP 35; B 45,94; SB 45,99-100, 106
Trinidadian-African 43; Job, 54, adherence of African Muslims to
59; AR and 69, 76 ; SB and 102, Islam in B 6,16,46,85; 11, of
107; U and 133; MB and 163-64; Fulbe people 21; YM 32, 46, 47,
MSand 179 others 33-34, 36; MWP 34-35;
trade other than slave 20-22, 77, MM 35, 46; Charno 35-36; Philip
Job and 60; AR and 69, 70; SB 37; Mohammed 40; five Jamaicans
and 107; MB and 162; MS and 175 41-42; King?,Job, AR, LK 46;
transported to America via "Middle" AR67, 71, 73, 75;LK 116, 118
(European) or "Bitter" (African) attitudes toward America or
Passage 11-12, AR and 65-66, Americans of African Muslims
70; Band 92; MWP 35,43; U and MM 16; AR 16; LK 115-116
134; MB and 164 attitudes toward Christians of narra-
African American Muslim children 10, tors 11,19,20, B 16,87,92 AR,
17,47; of AR 72,77,81; ofB 44, U 16;MM 35;
69,96-99; ofSB 45, 85 attitudes toward other ethnicities
African American Muslim ummah 20, of Fulbe 21, of AR 69; of
(community) in Georgia 6, 14, S'Quash 34; of King 37,47; of AR
and B 16, 86-87, 92-99; and SB 81; ofMS 183
86-87,94-104 children B 47, 92, 96-99; SB 47,
African Americans, adjustments to New 108-111;AR67, 72, 73, 77,81
world slavery 11-12,16-17,21, Christians criticized by B 16,85,
23,31-32,33,45-48 87;Job 57-58; AR 16, 76; other
and Muslims 14-15,23; Martin R. Muslims 18-20; YM 32; MM 46;
Delany and 14; Henry Highland U 152-153
Garnet and 14; early demi-Muslim combining Christianity and Islam
groups and late Nation ofIslam 14; London? Lizzie Gray, Timothy
Alex Haley's Roots 15; AR and 69, Drew 39-40, U? 137, 153
his wife 71; Christian slaves and B connections to modern African
16,87; Charles Ball and MWP 34, Muslims in 40; Preacher Little?
43; S'Quash and 34; King and 37; 111
Aaron and 40; David Walker and conversions? into Christianity 6, 10,
AR 67, blacks in Boston, New 14,24,33,35,37,39-40,46;U
York, and Philadelphia and AR 68, 8,11,16,46,129-132,135,136,
76,78; U and 131; Detroit blacks 144-153; King 37; London 39,
and MS 183 MB 17,46,159-160,168-169;
Alford, Terry, biographer and AR 15, LK 115-117, 133, MS 46
44,66,70 numbers of African Muslims in
America, accommodations of Christian 22-23
purchasers to Africans in 5, 12, practicing obligatory Five Pillars of
45-46; to African Muslims 5, 12, Islam YM 32, MWP 34, MM 35,
44-47; by choosing plantation Philip 37, AB 42, Job, B, SB 46,
managers from 6; Big Jack 33;
190 Index

Job 55-56; AR 76; B 85, 87, 92, Twain and AR 14, 79; George W.
SB 105, 106; U 153 Cable 14, 33; Joel Chandler Harris
promises to preach Christianity back and B 14, 39, 88; Kyle Onstott's
in Africa AR 68,73,76; LK Mandingo 45
117-118;MB 160, 168-171 American naming of African purchases
runaways 6,34,37; Osman 37, 45; U 8, MB 8; 12, 33, Jupiter Dowda,
Job 55; AR 65; U 45, 134; MB King, Tom, Prince (AR) 71, Tom
164 (SB) 86
slavery in Maryland: Job 5, 55-56, American naming resisted Samba and
Jay 31, YM 31-32; District of others 34, AR passim; Chamo 24,
Columbia: YM 32; Mississippi: AR 35,36; Bullutah (Bilali) 36; B 6;
6,66-67,70-72, MM 24,35, SB 6; LK 6; U 6; MB 7; Hamet
Jupiter Dowda, Big Jack, others 33; Abdul 37; Osman 37-38; Samba,
Georgia: B on Sapelo Island 6, miscalled Sambo 82; YM 32;
85-88,92-99, SB on St. Simon's "Bulala," 108; Dembo ? 109
Island 6, 99-105, 108, 110, slavery, first experiences, reactions,
London 24, 39, runaways 34, summarized 11, 45
Chamo 35, Aaron and others 40, American stops of AR: Dominica,
LK 115; Carolinas: U in 8, Natchez, Cincinnati, Baltimore,
134-135,153, others 24, 33, District of Columbia, Boston,
S'Quash 34, MWP 34-35, Osman Hartford, New York City,
37-38; Brazil: 8, 42; Jamaica: AB Philadelphia passim; LK: South
and others 24, 40, 41-42; Carolina, Georgia, New York City
Louisiana: 35; Tennessee: 37; 115-116; U: Charleston, SC,
Antigua: 40; Trinidad: 42-43; Fayetteville, Wilmington, NC
Cuba: 43; Bahamas B on 92, SB on 134-135; Jupiter Dowda: New
106 Orleans, Philadelphia 33; London:
American Colonization Society (ACS) Georgia, Florida 39-40; Sana See:
36,48; AR and 68, 73, 80; LK and Charleston, Panama 125; MB:
115,116-118; U and 131 Brazil, New York City, Boston,
American historians and African Haiti, Central College in New
American Muslims 3-17,23-25, York, Detroit, Canada 160; MS:
31-4043-48; and dull "Sambo" Boston, Haiti, Detroit, Charleston,
theory 11, 17; and black plantation SC 173
managers King 37; AR 43,76, B Autobiographies Job's Memoirs (as told
86,87,94, SB 99,100-102,103, to)6,23,27, 31,43, 52-58; by
106 MWP (as told to) 34-35,43-44;
American literature and Muslims by AB (in Arabic) 21, 41-42, 43,
13-14; Alex Haley 12, 15, 54; 44,45,46,69,129; Anna Mousa
James A. Michener 12; Royall (in Arabic) 41; by AR (as told to)
Tyler, Herman Melville, Harriet B. 67, 80, in his own translation from
Stowe 13; William A. Caruthers Arabic 74, 80-82; by SB (as told
and Chamo 13, 35-36; David to) 102-109; by LK (as told to)
Brown and King 13, 37; Mark 116, 118-124; Us 'Life" (in
 Index 191

Arabic) 8,124-125,129-130, 96-99; Charles Lyell on SB 103;

133-134,145,152-153; MB's William B. Hodgson on SB 108;
Biography-autobiography (as told Georgia W. P. A. interviewees on
with) 9-10, 160-168; MS's SB 109-111
"Native of Bornoo" (in English) 10, Americans in Atlantic slave trade 22
52, 174-183, Autobiography of Arab, misidentification 11; of runaway
Nicholas Said: A Native of Bornou, Aaron 40,88; and of others in
Eastern Soudan, Central Africa 183 Georgia 40; of AR 68,69, 79; of U
Autobiographies compared to fugitive 130,131
slave or freedom narratives: Job's Arab attitudes toward Africa and black
"Memoirs" 5-6, 52, 59; AR's auto- Africans 9,17, 18-20, 24, 27; in
biography(s) 6, 79-82; Us "Life" Massina 106
8; MB's biography-autobiography Arabic, extant manuscripts in by
8,159-160; MS's "Native of Anderson's Negro 24,33,44,49; by
Bornoo" 8, 10, 52, 174 Charno Frontispiece 1; 24, 35-36,
editors, amanuenses, biographers, 51; by Job 23,56,57; by AR 23,
translators 5, agendas 9-10, 16, 74,75; by B 24; by U 8, 24;
17, 18,47,48; Thomas Bluett on 135-144, by Sana See (Sy?) 125
Job 6,9,16,51,52,53,58-59, Arabic, reported writing in by Samba
James H. Couper on Salih Bilali 6, 34; by S'Quash 34; by MM 24, 35;
85,86,99, 103-108, Theodore by historian Bryan Edwards's
Dwight, Jr. on LK 6,115-116, servant and another in Jamaica 40;
117 -125; several writers on U 8, by AB 24; by William Rainsford
130-132, 135-136, 144-152; 24; by Charles Larten 24; by
Samuel Downing Moore on MB 8, Mohammed Kaba 24; by Job 23,
160-163, 164, 170; Hallowell? on 55,56,57,58; by AR 23, 77; by
MS 8,174; Douglas Grant on Job LK 6; by B 24; by London 24; by
15, Ronald A. T. Judy on Job, B, U 8, 24, 144-45
LK, U 15,89-92; Charles Ball on Arabic, translated from unavailable Mss
MWP 17, 34,43; Francis Moore by London 24,39,49; by AB
on Job 59-60; Philip D. Curtin 41-42; by Mohammed Kaba 41; by
15; Terry Alford on AR 15, 69-70, William Rainsford 24,41,43,44; by
Cyrus Griffin on AR 67,78-80; Charles Larten 41, 43; by Job 23,
Andrew Marschalk on AR 67, 76, 55,56,58; by AR 23, 73, 77,
78, Ralph R. Gurley on AR 66, 80; 80-82; by U 144-145
Thomas Gallaudet on AR 66; Arabic, translators of AI-Ahari,
Edward Everett on AR 66, 79, Muhammad 15,25,152; transla-
John Russwurm on AR 67 ; tors ofB ms 89, 91; William B.
unnamed amanuensis for AR 73, Hodgson 6,33,39,47; of AB
John F. Shroeder translator of AR Richard Robert Madden 41, George
Mss 73; Muhammad al-Ahari on B C. Renouard 41-42; ofU mss
89,91; Bradford G. Martin on B Alexander 1. Cotheal, Isaac Bird
89, 92; Georgia Works Projects 145
Administration interviewees on B
192 Index

Arabic letters for local languages slave 19-20; name's popularity in

23-25, by AB 24; by London 24, West Africa 89
39; according to W. B. Hodgson Bilali (B) or Belali, Bilali
49; T. Dwight 123; LK on 120, Mohammed, Buallah, literacy of
124; V and 152; MS and 177 6, 24, 90; plantation manager 6; his
book 6, 84, 87 -88, 90-92;
Ball, Charles, fugitive slave narrator almamy or amir on Sapelo Island,
and MWP 17, 34, 43 Georgia 6,85; Other Muslims in
Bambara people 11, 35, SB and 106 ummah (community) 97 -99; Joel
Baptisms into questionable Christianity Chandler Harris's fiction and 14,
Jamaicans 46, V 131-133, MB 88; recent attention 15,88-89,95;
166, MS 46, 179-180 and War of 1812 16,86-87;
Baquaqua, Mahommah Gardo (MB) descendants 44,69,96-99; adher-
43-44,45,46; unique story ence to Islam 85, 92, 97-98;
summarized 159-160, his biogra- described 87; his name 89-90;
phy-autobiography; his Songhai slavery in Africa 92, 98?; in
(Dendi) family and education Bahamas 92, 97, 98?; slavery in
162-163; mother 161,162,163, America 92-95; William McFeely
171; first enslavement 163; among on 95; and Gullah or Geechee
non-Muslims, second enslavement culture 102
and march to coast 163-164; first Bilali, Salih (SB) or Sali-bul-ali, Tom
sight of whites 164; bitter passage 6,24,43,44; descendants 45, 85,
to Brazil 164; slavery 164-165; 87, 101,109 adherence to Islam 87,
runaway 164; escape in New York 106, 107; in Bahamas 106;
City 165; to Haiti 166-168; described 107-111; Fulfulde
conversion? 170-171; at Central (Pular) language and 102, 107 ; and
College academy, New York 9, 158, Massina 99-108; life and slavery in
160,167-68; and college's black Africa 102, 104-107; slavery in
professors 167-68; missionary America 99-105; plantation
impulse 160, 168-170; his corre- manager 99-102, 106; in War of
spondence in English 160, 18127,89; J. H. Couper on
168-171; 165-166; to Canada 102-109; Charles Lyell on 87,
168; finds amanuensis-editor 170 103; other Muslims on St. Simon's
Beard, Derrick Joshua and Us "Life" Island 109-111; and Gullah (or
and other Arabic-American MSS Geechee) 102, 111
125,142,154-155 Bismillah Muslim invocation to Allah
Bible in Arabic New Testament and preceding all important actions by
AR 76; and LK 116, 125, 129; AR 73-75; by V 136, 138, 140,
and Vmar 130, 135, 137, and plan 143-145,146,147,149,150,151,
to send to West Africa by Dwight 155; MB recalling? 169
125, 153-54, 156 Black soldiers in Civil War on St.
Bilali (Bilal), Prophet Muhammad's first Simon's Island, Georgia 108;
muezzin an Ethiopian and former Massachusetts 55th and MS
183-184
 Index 193

Biyden, Edward Wilmot LK and 125; Couper, John and B 86, lO2, port. lO4
U and 156 Cox, John Coates and AR 71-72,
Boston, Massachusetts AR in 66, 81-82
meets David Walker in 67, 76-77,
78; MB in 159, 166 Dahomey and Dahomeans as slave
Brazil Muslim slaves in 42; MB in 9, traders and powers 11, 20, 21; and
45, 159, 160, 164-65 MB 44,163
Brown, Katie, B descendant port. 97, Dan Fodio, Usman on female scholars
96-98 120, MS enemy 175
Butler, Fanny Kemble 86, on Thomas Dash,Julie and B 15,89
Spalding 94, lO3; and criticism of Davidson, John and AB in Africa 42;
Coupers' treatment of slaves lO3, on W. B. Hodgson 112
lO7, 108 Denial of Africanness in AR 15, 72,
80; in S'Quash 34; in King 37; in
Canada fugitive Aaron in 40, 88; MB in Aaron 40; in U 129, 130
160, 168, 169, 171; MS in 183, Detroit, Michigan and MB 9, 159; and
184 MS lO, 183
Cannibalism, allegations of against Dominica, Caribbean and AR 44,65,
Africans and Europeans 22; Job 70,80
60; SB alleges lO7; Mark Twain Drums and Shadows (WPA interviews
alleges 13, 79 of former slaves in Georgia) 15,
Captain Anderson's literate Negro 24, 25, B descendants 95-9; SB
his manuscript 32, 33,44 descendants 109-111
Charleston, South Carolina S'Quash in Dwight, Theodore, Jr. and LK 6, 9,
34; MWP in 34, 35; U in 6,34, 116-119, 132; on plan for Bibles
35,94,130,134,153; MS and in Arabic to Muslim West Africa
183-184 116,118,123,125,156; on U
Charno (Chierno, Thierno) his Fatiha 132, 145, 152
our frontispiece, 24, 35-36
Clay, Henry, Secretary of State and AR England Job honored in 51, 55-56;
67,72-73,77,78 Job's letters to 61; MB in 159, 171;
Color/race issues to G. W. Cable, J. c. MS in 183
Harris 14; Christians 18-20; English, as spoken by Job 57; AR 80;
Muslims 18-20,47-48; in Quran LK 116, 117; U 135; MB 170
19; the Prophet Muhammad English explorations in Africa and Job
19-20; S'Quash 34, 37; Fulbe 44, 54-55; Francis Moore and Job
133; interviewers' presumptions 59-61; Heinrich Barth and LK
47;Job 52, 57; AR 67, 69, 71, 80; 123; and MS's Bornu 175-77;
B 98; SB lO6; MS 174 Davidson and AB 42; Cox and
Couper, James Hamilton and B 86; others and AR 71, 76, 77, 81-82;
and SB 85, 86, 99-100, 102; his andMS 179
letter on SB 103-108; port. 105; Europe lO, AB in 51; MS in 181-183
and Civil War lO9; versus
"Africanisms" lO9
194 Index

Fatiha, opening surah or chapter of Haiti 9,78, and MB in 158, 160, 166
Quran of Chamo, Frontispiece, 24, Haley, Alex 12, 54
35-36; of Anderson's Negro Hall, Basil and Margaret and SB 86,
32-33 ; ofMM 35; of AR 73; ofB 102
84; ofU 136, 152 Hall, Shad port. 96, descendant ofB
Fayetteville, North Carolina Umar and 96-98
6, 129, 134 Harris, Joel Chandler and B 14,85,
Foster, Thomas and AR 70-72,77,81 88; anti-black characters Aaron and
Fula, Pulo (s.), Fulbe (p.), (Fulas, Peuls, Uncle Remus 14, 34, 88; and
Pulos, Fulani, Fellatah) extraordi- Osman 39; and runaway slave
nary adherents to Islam 11, 20, 21, Aaron 40; and U legend 130
23, 129, 132; Hodgson on Hartford, Connecticut Muslim in 33;
111-112; list of 21,22,44,51, AR in 66, 77; Mark Twain in 79
133;Job, AR, B, SB, U, Chamo, Hausa people Jupiter Dowda 33, 44;
MM,23-24,20, 35,37,44; on B's book 90; and AB's family
Philip 37; Chamo 44,51,55,71, B 162; and MB's family 162; Hausa
98; SB 99-100, 102, 106; U 133 women 179
underrecognized in Americas, Hodgson, William Brown, early
miscalled Mandingoes in America American translator of Arabic 6,
33,44 33,39,47; SB and 86,99, 103,
Fulfulde ( Pular), language of Fulbe 6, 108; biographical information
98; flowering in Georgia 102, 106; 111-112
list of Fulfulde words 107; Fulbe
numbers by Philip 37 Inman, Henry crayon portrait of AR
67,69,79
The Gambia, Africa 22,33,35, 43,Job, Isabella, wife of AR 12,65, Baptist 71;
Jay, MWP 44,55, Job retumed to plantation doctor 72; freed 72, 73;
56,59-60 to Africa 68,77-78
Gambia River Job and 53, 60, 65; AR Islam in Africa, especially West Africa
and 70, 81 11,13,18-23,120
Georgetown, D. C. and YM 33, 46 adjustments to local religions and
Georgia 6, 10, 12,24,39,40,45,85, people 19-20,22,35,40,124; U
86, 102-103, 105 and LK and 134
Ghana, Africa 15,41,44, and SB 106 Arabic language education in
Gomez, Michael A. on B and other 22-23, 41;Job 5-6, 23, 41; B 6,
Muslims in America 15; on Muslim 24,87,90,92; AR 6,23; U 6-7,
runaways 34, 89 24; SB 24, 102; MB 24; MS 24;
Gurley, Ralph R. and Muslims in Samba 34; SQuash 34; MM 35;
America 66, and translation or Chamo 35-36; Philip 37; AB 41;
amanuensis of AR's autobiography LK 120, 121-122, 124
80; and LK 117, 118; and U 131, Jihads 21; AR and 69-70; LK and
144-45 119,123-124
 Index 195

Islam and Christian conflicts, ancient 15,16, port. 50, 57; his friend and
12,17-20,24,34-35 biographer Thomas Bluett and his
"Memoirs" 23, 27, 31, 43-related
Muslim education and training 11, ro fugitive slave narratives 52, 59;
19-23,43; MM 35, Job 11,53; summarized 52-58; homeland 53;
AR69; ofB87,90,92:ofSB education 53; slave trading 54,
106; ofLK 119-123; military AR 59-60; wives 53; enslavement
and 69-70; LK and 123-124; ofU 54-56; in Maryland 55-56; lion-
133; ofMB 162-63; ofMS 177 ized and freed in England 56;
Muslim rivalries 21, return to Africa 56,59-61,
Mandingo/Fulbe and Job 54, and thought cannibalized 60; in French
AR 70; Senegal marabouts and U colonial prison 61; adherence to
134; Bornu/Hausa and MS Islam 56-58; described, literacy
176-177, Bornu/Tuareg and MS 23,55,57-58,61,135; intelli-
179 gence 57-58; as trader in
Muslims in modern Africa 23 Senegambia 60-61; de-Africanized
Muslims and non-Muslims compared 57; Fulbe 44, 45; mentioned by
11-12,20-21 Dwight 123; and European-
non-Muslim neighbors Mossi of American image of Africa 27, 52,
Burkina Faso 22, 23; Ashanti 11, 134
20-21,22, and SB 44, 162; Judy, Ronald T., translator and cultural
Bambaras 11, 19,20-21,25, and critic on Arabic-African narratives
SB 44,70,107, U and? 134; 89; on B's book 91; on Kant and
Dahomeans 11, 20-21, and MB LK's vocabulary list 122-123
163;Yorubans 11,20-21,26,and
MB 163 Kaba, Mali and LK 124; and U 134,
137
Islam in America See America and Kane, Cheikh Hamidou, novelist 43,
American 44
Ivory Coast 22,44 el Kanemy, Mohammed el Amin
and MS 175-177
Jamaica AB and other Muslims in 21, Kant, Immanuel 13,58, B's book and
24,40,41,45, 133 91; LK corrects? 123
Jay (Ndiaye), Lamine and Job 43; Kanuri people see MS
returned to Africa 44, 45; translator Kebe, Lamine (LK) or Old Paul 3,
54; capture 60,61 6-8,11,15,16; his African family
Jenne, Mali, Muslim intellectual center 116; described 118; his Qadiriya
69; and SB 106-107 teaching clan 124; as teacher in
Jesus as prophet 18; and Prophet Africa 118-122; Serahule vocabu-
Muhammad confused 40; to Job lary list; 122-123; literacy 43, 44;
58; in U 136, 137; in Quran trials in America 116- 117; freed
152-153 115; his campaign to return to
Job Ben Solomon (Job) Ayuba Africa 11 7; and American
SuleimanJallo 6,10,11,12,13, Colonization Society 116-118;
196 Index

correspondence in Arabic with U Islam of, denied by novelists Melville

131,144-145; pro-Christian, to a and Stowe 13; and Onstott 14;
point 133; image of Africa 134; as slave traders 20-21
return to Africa 118; and Dwight literacy of 24,32-33,40-43
115-25 Marschalk, Andrew and AR 67, 71;
Key, Francis Scott and AR 66; and U enemy of AR 78
131,134,137,152 Martin, Bradford G, translator ofB's
book 15,89,91,92
Languages spoken by AR 23; by Band Maryland 6,31,45, 51;Job and Jay in
children 92; LK's Serahule 54,55, released from 55
120-123; by MB 160, 164, 165; Massachusetts 55th Volunteer Colored
by MS 114, 183-184 Regiment and MS 173, 183-184
Liberia 6, 9; AR and 67, 77; LK and Massina, Mali and SB 85; slavery in
115, 118; Bibles in Arabic to 125, 102; described 106-107
156 McFeely, William S., historian and B
Literacy 6, 8, 9, 10, 17,22 24; of Job, of 15,89,108
AR 23, 69, 71, 73, 76; ofB 87, 90, Mecca, Arabia U and 132, 133; MS in
92; ofU 24, 34, 43,135-144; of 177,179,185
Charno 35-36; ofMM 24,35,43; Mississippi 6, 10, 16,33-35,45,65,
of AB 21,41-46; of Anderson's 72,81
Negro 24, 33,44; ofLondon 24, Mississippi River MM on 24,35;
39,49; ofLK 24; 25, 33, 116, 118, Jupiter Dowda and other Muslims
120; of Samba 34; ofS'Quash 34; of on 33; SQuash to 34; AR on 70,
MWP 34-35; of unnamed 72,77,81
Mandingo 40; of Mohammed Kaba Mohammed Ali ben Said (MS), or
40; of William Rainsford 41; of Nicholas Said 10, 17; port. 172;
Benjamin Larten 41; of Benjamin his 1867 autobiography in English
Cochrane 41; ofMB 43-44; ofMS described, characterized 46, 174,
24,43,44,177; in English 46,71; summarized 175-183; his Borno
ofMB 160, 168-171; ofMS 146, history 176-177; youth and educa-
174 tion 177; literacy of 24,43,44,46;
London 24,39-40, convert? 46 enslaved 179; crosses the Sahara
Desert 179; in North Africa,
Madden, Richard Robert and Jamaican Arabia, Turkey 179; in Russia
Muslims 41 179-181; baptism 179; in Europe
Mali 6, 19,22,35,41,44 181-183; in Canada, Detroit, and
Man Who Prayed Five Times a Day Massachusetts 55th Regiment 183;
34-35,47 Discovery of book-length 1873
Mandingo people Anderson's Negro, Autobiography of Nicholas Said: A
King, London, Mohammed Kaba, Native of Bornou, Eastern Soudan,
William Rainsford, Abu Bakr 44; Central Africa 185
enemies of Job 54; enemies of AR Moor on the Mississippi 16,24,35,
81 43,46
Moore, Francis and Job 59-60
 Index 197

Moore, Samuel D., MB's editor and 136-137,144,145; Salih in 90;

amanuensis 160-163, 164, 170 Jesus in 152
"Moors," narrators miscalled MM 24;
AR 67,69, 72, 80 Russia MS in 10,46, 179-181
Morrison, Toni, novelist and Muslim Russwurm, John, black newspaper
names from Song o/Solomon 89, 95 editor and AR 67, 68, 77
Muhammad the Prophet 18-19,24,
40,58,107, 136,144,152 Sahara Desert and MS 10, 18,44, 173, 179
Sana See (Sonni Ali? Sana Sy?) his trav-
Natchez, Mississippi 6; Big Jack and els, South Carolina, Panama, manu-
other Muslims in 33; MM in 35; scripts in Arabic 125
AR in 65, 67, 70, 71, 78, 81 St. Simon's Island, Georgia and SB 6,
New Orleans, Louisiana majority of 43 , 85,88,102-106; and Civil
Africans from Senegal and the War 108; other Muslims and
Gambia 33, 88-89; MM in 35; AR descendants on 109-111
in 44,65,70,78,81; versus AR 78 Sapelo Island, Georgia runaways from
New York Central College and MB 8, 34; and B 6, 85, 89, 92-93, 110;
159, 167-168 other Muslims and descendants on
New York City AR in 66, 67,73, 95-99
76-77,81; LK in 116-117; MB in Senegal 8,19,21,33; exports from 44;
159, 160,165,167; MS in 179 Job from 53; V from 132-133
Nigeria MS in 10,21,33,42,173 Serehule (Soninke, Jahanke) people and
North Carolina 6,40,45, 129 LK 21, 44,119,120; language
122- 123; school texts 122
Osman or Vsman port. 38, 37-39 Songhai (Dendi) people and MB 44,
Owen,James and V 132, 133, 161-162
134-144; U on 152-153 South Carolina 8,33,34,40,45, 125,
Owen, John, Governor of North V in 134; MS in 173, 184
Carolina and V 130-132, 135 ; V Spalding, Thomas and B 6, 34, Port. 86,
on 152-153 87,90,92-95
Springfield, Massachusetts AR in 66
Park, Mungo and Serahule vocabulary Sullivan, Ben, descendant of SB port.
122; and Serahule slave traders 124 101,99,109
Peale, Charles Willson, artist his oil and
pen portraits ofYM 30-33 Teachers in Africa 11, Cheikh H . Kane
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Jupiter 43; Job 53; male and female 120,
Dowda in 33; AR in 66, 67, 76, 81 LK 120-122, 124; V his African
teachers 133, 134; MB his brother
Quran 8,18,19,24,33 ; transcribed by 162; MS teachers 177
C. Larten 40, by Job 55, 56, 58; B's in America MB Jones and William 1.
copy 85; LK and 120; taught in Judd and wife in Haiti 166; black
local African languages 121-124; professors at Central College:
V's in English 130, 135; V quoting Charles Reason, William G. Allen,
George B. Vashon 167; MS as 183
198 Index

Timbo, FutaJallon, Guinea AR in 65, extant writings and translations

68,76-78,80-81; Fulbe scholar- 131,135-144,146-151; refer-
ship in 69, 70, 71;]. C. Cox in 71; ences to other, unavailable writings
T. Conneau in 77; B in 86; LK in 144-152; his Quran in English
117,119 130,135; his Bible in Arabic 130,
Timbuktu, Mali 6,21,41,42; AR in 135,137,140; his English 135;
69,77,80; Caillie in 77; SB and Dwight and 118, 124-125, 132
106; AB in 112; MB's father and Virginia 14,37
162
Trinidad Mandingo Muslim Society Walker, David, author of Appeal and
42-43,87 AR67
Tripoli 13,173,179 Warof1812 B,SBand46,86-87,
Trubetskoy, Nicholas and MS 179-183 103
Twain, Mark and AR 5,12,14,67,79 Washington, D. C. 66; AR in 73, 80, 81
White people 11,14,22; MWP's first
Umar ibn Said (Omar, Moro) (U) port. sight of 34; MB's first sight of 164
128; significant writer 8, fame 9, Women 12, 13,33-35, 40; Job's wives
13, 129; Southern slave-holder 53,56; AR's wife Isabella 71-72,
legend, modern Muslim legend 77-78; slaves in Georgia 86; B's
130, 132; Tukolor Fula 44, 45, wives and female descendants 92,
133; described 132, 133; African 94, 96-98; F. Kemble on abuse of
training and activities 11, slave women 94; Katie Brown port.
133-134; capture in war? for 97, 96-98; women as carriers of
crime? 134; Middle Passage to tradition 99; SB on Massina female
Charleston, SC 134; slavery 152; slaves 107, descendants 110; LK's
runaway to North Carolina 134; learned African teacher and
changed attitudes toward Africa students 120; in U's family 133,
134; African Americans on U 131; U's mother 133, 137, 144; slavers
Africanness denied 130-131; and MB 159; MB's mother
Africanness asserted 131, 132; to 162-163,166; warriors 163; on
Mecca? 132, 133; mother's benedic- slave ships 164-171; abused in
tion 133, convert to Christianity? Brazil 165; MB and a missionary
14, 15, 16, 129, 130-133, wife 166-167; MB and romance
13 5-15 3 baptized 135 with white? 167; MS's mother 177;
Christian-and Muslim-assertions MS on African women 179; on
16,144-145,152,153; his literacy European woman 181
in Arabic 24, 34,43, 135; Us
"Life' 14, 129, 131, 132, 145, Yorubapeople 11, 20, 21,163
152-153; translations, reactions to Yarrow Mamout (Diallo? Muhammad)
"Life" 14, 131, 132, 152; letters to port. 30,31-32,44,46
LK 131, 134, 136, 156; other