Facsimile of the Moorish Prince's Writing
This engraving of a crayon drawing shows Abdul-Rahman ibn Ibrahima Sori (1762–1829), who was an Fulbe (or Fulani, Peule) emir was born and educated in Timbuktu in the Western Savanna region, but was enslaved in the Fuuta Jallon area of the Senegambia region. Sold to the British, he was then taken to the Caribbean island of Dominica, where he briefly stayed until he went to New Orleans, where he was resold to a cotton plantation near Natchez, Mississippi. Upon learning of his noble lineage, his slave master, Thomas Foster, began referring to him as "Prince," a title he kept until his final days. After spending 40 years in slavery, he was freed in 1828 by order of U.S. President John Quincy Adams and Secretary of State Henry Clay after the Sultan of Morocco requested his release. He ultimately reached Liberia, where he died in 1829 and eight of his descendants born in the Americas migrated to Liberia in 1830 from Norfolk, Virginia, on a ship chartered by the American Missionary Society. See Archibald Alexander, A History of Colonization on the Western Coast of Africa (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 256-257, 347.
Image Title
Facsimile of the Moorish Prince's Writing
RegID
SI-OB-1096
Date
1828
Title
Facsimile of the Moorish Prince's Writing
Source
Artist, Henry Inman, 1828. From the Colonization and Journal of Freedom (1834), frontispiece
Language
English
Item sets
Portraits & Illustrations of Individuals
Spatial Coverage
North America--Mississippi
Reproduced In
The Colonization and Journal of Freedom (1834), frontispiece
Researchers
Handler, Jerome; Tuite, Michael; Randall Ericson; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
Identifier
I018