Author: Jonathan Carey / Source: Atlas Obscura
Omar ibn Said was too old and frail to endure the backbreaking field labor his master forced upon him, so he escaped. He feebly made his way into a church where he could find shelter and a moment to pray about the plight of his situation.
When he was arrested soon thereafter, it unexpectedly changed his life for the better.We know these things because Said wrote about them in his 15-page autobiography, The Life of Omar Ibn Said, written in Arabic while he was enslaved in 1831. The text is considered the most well-known account of a Muslim slave living in America. Now the original manuscript, along with 41 other documents including personal writings and letters, have been restored, digitized, and made available online by the Library of Congress.
In 1770, Said was born into an aristocratic Muslim family in a region known as Futa Toro, now modern-day Senegal. It wasn’t uncommon for someone in Said’s position to receive years of education. In fact, for 25 years, Said studied under the guidance of three teachers, including his brother. They taught him Arabic, math, and how to interpret the Quran according to schools from across Africa. He was known as a scholar for much of his life in Africa, where he taught and worked as a tradesman.
But at 37, his entire life changed. Various tribes and kingdoms throughout Africa were at war and Said fell victim to these quarrels. “Then there came to our place a large army, who killed many men, and took me, and brought me to the great sea, and sold me into the hands of the Christians, who bound me and sent me on board great ship and we sailed upon the great sea a month and a half,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Eventually, Said arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. There, just one year before the Atlantic Slave Trade would be made illegal, he was sold to an individual he described in his manuscript as a “wicked man” and “a complete infidel.”
The rest of Said’s writings are similarly forthright, and this approach may be one of the reasons why he chose to write in Arabic. “It is interesting to think about why he wrote this [autobiography] in Arabic and it may very well be because other biographies that we have that are in English were either dictated or edited or written by the slave owner,” says Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division at the library. She adds that other narratives may have been crafted with trepidation because writing in English meant their owners could read their works, garnering unwanted attention.
In the case of Said, nobody really had a clue what he was writing—most were just enamored with his ability to craft such beautiful calligraphy.
While in jail for his escape in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Said wrote in Arabic on his cell wall. Said’s writing fascinated locals and eventually, he attracted the attention of John Owen, who would later become the governor of North Carolina. Owen recognized Said was an educated man, purchased…
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