The image of an African slave in north America does not include a man who spoke three languages. History books do not tell us about a slave who, even after forty years of captivity, still remembered how to recite the Fatiha. Not many people have ever heard of the African prince that worked on a plantation in Natchez, Mississippi for forty years before President John Quincy Adams and Secretary of State Henry Clay shook hands with him and helped him return to Timbuktu, Africa.

 Abdul Rahman Ibrahim Sori spoke Arabic, Pulaar (the language of his people, the Fulbe), and English and was the son of King Sori of Futa Jallon, present-day Timbuktu, where an Islamic state of cattle herders had organized thou-sands of schools for their children’s education. He knew more about mathematics, science and religion than did his owner Thomas Foster. He was a natural leader and was promoted to serve as a general in his father’s army. West Africa was then convulsed in unending warfare among various West African powers, brought on by the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was during one such war in 1788 that the prince was captured at the age of 26 and sold to European slave traders for “guns, powder, two bottles of rum and eight hands of tobacco.” His capture was neither his defeat nor the end of his jihad. He was captured while defending his people in West Africa, then enslaved as he struggled to maintain his Islamic identity in the wilderness of 18th-century Mississippi.

 Abdul Rahman’s story was a lost treasure until Terry Alford, professor of history at Northern Virginia Community College in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., began following Rahman’s paper trails through Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Boston. Alford began his research in the 1960s and, without grants or funding, was the first to un-cover the story of the enslaved prince. Abdul Rahman’s biography challenges the stereotypical image most people have of slaves in antebellum America. He was more educated than his owner, and he was a Muslim that maintained his faith in God despite difficulties that slave-life presented.

 In 1788 Abdul Rahman’s captors forced him to walk 100 miles barefoot as they led his horse in front of him. After being sold to Europeans he was deported from Africa on a slave ship headed to New Orleans. The average height of the area where slaves were kept was five feet, and Abdul Rahman was six-feet-tall and chained by the ankle to another passenger. He was confined in a space that was filled with human excrement and vomit and then thrust onto the undeveloped lands of New Orleans with no idea how far he was from home. In New Orleans, the Foster family bought Abdul Rahman to work on their plantation in Natchez, Mississippi. Both cities were far more primitive compared to Futa Jallon (of Africa), which was a shock to the prince of a well-organized and sophisticated society. Slavery stripped Africans of their identities; names were changed and families were torn apart. Abdul Rahman came from a culture where long hair marked one’s beauty and farming and was considered beneath him, but in Natchez his owner cut his hair and expected him to work in the fields. Abdul Rahman tried to explain to Foster that he was a prince whose father would pay a large ransom for his safe return, only to earn the name “Prince” as a mockery of his implausible story around the plantation.

 Abdul Rahman had never treated anyone this way before; he came from a society where those who are lost are helped. In 1781, one-eyed John Coates Cox, an Irish surgeon from a ship that had washed ashore, arrived in Futa Jallon exhausted, ill and terribly bitten by insects. The Fulbe had never seen a white man before and treated him well, asking him to stay until he was well enough to return and furnishing him with gold to pay for his journey back to the New World. This was the beginning of a long friendship between the white man and the Fulbe and Abdul Rahman would redeem his favor from Cox one auspicious day.

 But pleasant memories of the white man he had once befriended were taken over by the miserable routine he had found himself in. Within a few weeks a miserable and rebellious Abdul Rahman ran away from the Foster plantation.

 After several weeks of living in the woods, hiding from fugitive slave-hunters, Abdul Rahman returned to the plantation. He had no choice but surrender his life—his fate to be decided by the Fosters. They could keep him as a slave or kill him for having ran away. His faith kept him alive thus far; many slaves committed suicide after running away, yet something kept Abdul Rahman from doing so. Suicide is forbidden in Islam, and Abdul Rahman felt that his life would have better plans.

 Abdul Rahman’s faith in God kept him faithful to the Fosters, who held him in high regard as a trustworthy slave, allowing him the freedom to practice Islam. But Abdul Rahman is one of the few Muslim slaves to maintain an Islamic identity. Locally, he was known as the “Mahometan” who adhered strictly to the forms of his religion. Practicing Islam as a slave was difficult; keeping up with the requirements of cleanliness, prayers throughout the day, and fasting while being required to work long hours on plantations, and uncooperative slave-owners kept many from practicing Islam. Because of all of these difficulties, Islam was not able to last through antebellum America, although Rahman’s story proves that Muslims are deeply rooted in the foundational period of the United States’ history.

 Abdul Rahman was able to maintain his faith in God but life’s events took a toll on him in other ways. Second-hand written accounts of him from locals claim Abdul Rahman was pious and a hard-worker yet never smiled. He was strange in the eyes of the white people as well as the slaves because of his education and claim to royalty. His piety was highly regarded by the Fosters and earned him the right to plow some land for himself.

 Abdul Rahman often made trips to a market about an hour’s walk from the plantation to sell vegetables he had grown on the plot Foster had given him. The money he earned was his own. In the summer of 1807, Abdu Rahman went to the main streets intent on selling sweet potatoes when he saw a one-eyed Irishman in front of him. Somehow the only white man who knew Rahman’s true identity had came into his life, again. John Cox embraced Abdul Rahman.

 Cox did everything in his power to convince Foster to free Abdul Rahman, but Foster was unwilling to even name a price. Less than twenty years ago Abdul Rahman had put his life and his fate into the hands of the Foster family and now he had to come to terms with the fate that was decided for him, all over again. Cox died before Abdul Rahman was emancipated, but he was able to validate Abdul Rahman’s identity and drew the attention of Andrew Marschalk, editor of the Mississippi State Gazette. Marschalk met frequently with Abdul Rahman.

 Marschalk helped Abdul Rahman send a letter to Africa in which the slave wrote the only Arabic he knew he could remember perfectly: the Fatiha. Marschalk sent the letter to Morocco, and the Moroccans, seeing that a Muslim man was captive in a foreign land, showed interest in helping Abdul Rahman gain freedom. On February 22, 1828, after forty years of enslavement, Thomas Foster granted Abdul Rahman his freedom.

 Abdul Rahman took a tour to Ohio, Kentucky, Boston. During his tour he met with President John Quincy Adams and Secretary of State Henry Clay, both of whom were helping Abdul Rahman return home. He was able to return home to Timbuktu on February 7, 1829. Just five months after his return, Abdul Rahman passed away.

 Enslaved Africans had a religious identity before they came to North America and Abdul Rahman’s story addresses how slaves dealt with the enormous stress of being cut off from everything that is familiar to them. Their stories are very important and must be resurrected.