Rare slave memoir in US tells story of African Muslim

By Umar Farooq

WASHINGTON

The autobiography of Omar ibn Said, a Muslim slave in the United States, sheds more light on the backgrounds of many Africans who were forced and sold into slavery during the Atlantic Slave Trade.

The collection of manuscripts was assembled by an abolitionist named Theodore Dwight in the 1860s. It was then passed around to different owners over the years. For a period of almost 50 years, the collection had disappeared.

Last week, the Library of Congress announced the autobiography was in its possession, as well as other documents, and released a digital copy on its website.

The life of Said captivated many historians, who have used it to offer a more detailed perspective to the lives of African slaves.

"I cannot write my life because I have forgotten much of my own language, as well as of the Arabic. Do not be hard upon me, my brother. — To God let many thanks be paid for his great mercy and goodness," he wrote in a letter, to which the recipient remains unclear.

Said was an educated Muslim African born about 1770 in Futa Toro, in what is now modern-day Senegal. He was captured at the age of 37 and sold into slavery in South Carolina.

He described himself as being a scholar, a teacher, and a merchant before becoming a slave.

After arriving on American soil, Said was purchased by James Owen, the brother of then-North Carolina Governor John Owen. The Owen brothers were fascinated with Said, and provided him with an English Quran hoping he would learn the language.

In 1821, Said was converted into Christianity and baptized. However, records show that he never truly gave up his Islamic faith.

What separated Said's autobiography from other slaves at that time was that it was written in Arabic, a language hardly understood by anyone in America at that time. This made his memoir "more candid and more authentic," according to Mary-Jane Deeb, the chief of the Library of Congress' African and Middle Eastern Division.

Said died in 1864, one year before the U.S. officially abolished slavery. He spent 50 years as a slave, where he lived out his life in the house of Owen.