The New York Public Library, Humanities and Social Sciences Library, General Research Division

The Colonizationist and Journal of Freedom, 1834

Ibrahima was the son of the almamy, or Muslim ruler, of Futa Jallon (Guinea).

In 1789, at the age of twenty-six, Ibrahima, then a young lieutenant, was captured in a war and deported to Natchez, Mississippi. He spent thirty-nine years as a slave on a cotton plantation before sailing to Liberia in 1829. It is estimated that from 10 to 15 percent of the Africans shipped to the Americas followed Islam. The religion, which first appeared in West Africa in the eleventh century, was spread first by Berbers, and then by sub-Saharan African traders.