Mohammed Ali Nicholas Sa’id: from enslavement to American Civil War veteran

Abstract

Muhammad Ali Sa’id, que tomó el nombre de Nicholas Said después de haber sido bautizado, procedía del estado musulmán de Borno en la década de 1850. Seguirá un periplo que le llevará a través del Sahara hasta La Meca, Istambul y San Petersburgo. Posteriormente viajó como criado por Europa occidental, el Caribe y Norteamérica. Su trayectoria desde que era hijo de un poderoso general y gobernador en Borno hasta su estatus esclavo en el Imperio otomano y, después, como sirviente libre entre la nobleza rusa, le llevó por último a alistarse en el 55º regimiento de Massachusetts integrado completamente por negros durante la Guerra Civil en los Estados Unidos.

Muhammad Ali Sa’id, who was renamed Nicholas Said upon his baptism, came from the Muslim state of Borno in the 1850s, following an odyssey that took him across the Sahara, to Mecca, Istanbul and St. Petersburg. He susbsequently traveled as a valet through western Europe to the Caribbean and North America. His trajectory from the son of a powerful general and governor in Borno to his enslaved status in the Ottoman Empire and then to a position as a freed servant to Russian nobility ultimately led to his enlistment in the all-black 55th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War in the United States.