Omar Ibn Said

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_ibn_Said

Omar ibn Said

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Omar ibn Said (Arabic: عمر بن سعيد‎; 1770–1864) was a writer and Islamic scholar, born and educated in what is now Senegal in West Africa, who was enslaved and transported to the United States in 1807. There, while enslaved for the remainder of his life, he wrote a series of works of history and theology, including a posthumously famous autobiography.

How the autobiography of a Muslim slave is challenging an American narrativeOmar Ibn Said was 37 years old when he was taken from his West African home and transported to Charleston, South Carolina, as a slave in the 1800s. Now, his one-of-a-kind autobiographical manuscript has been translated from its original Arabic and housed at the Library of Congress, where it “annihilates” the conventional narrative of African slaves as uneducated and uncultured. Amna Nawaz reports.

National Humanities Resource Tool Box

“Oh ye Americans”: The Autobiography of Omar ibn Said * an enslaved Muslim in the United States 1831

DeRosset Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/community/text3/religionomaribnsaid.pdf

Omar ibn Said, African Muslim Enslaved in the Carolinas

https://docsouth.unc.edu/highlights/omarsaid.html

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About this Collection | Omar Ibn Said Collection | Digital Collections | Library of Congress The Omar Ibn Said Collection consists of 42 digitized documents in both English and Arabic, including an 1831 manuscript in Arabic on "The Life of Omar Ibn Said," a West African slave in America, which is the centerpiece of this unique collection of texts. Some of the manuscripts in this collection include texts in Arabic by another West African slave in Panama, and others from individuals located in West Africa.

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