A Muslim American slave : the life of Omar Ibn Said

Born to a wealthy family in West Africa around 1770, Omar Ibn Said was abducted and sold into slavery in the United States, where he came to the attention of a prominent North Carolina family after filling "the walls of his room with piteous petitions to be released, all written in the Arabic language," as one local newspaper reported. Ibn Said soon became a local celebrity, and in 1831 he was asked to write his life story, producing the only known surviving American slave narrative written in Arabic.
In A Muslim American Slave , scholar and translator Ala Alryyes offers both a definitive translation and an authoritative edition of this singularly important work, lending new insights into the early history of Islam in America and exploring the multiple, shifting interpretations of Ibn Said's narrative by the nineteenth-century missionaries, ethnographers, and intellectuals who championed it.
This edition presents the English translation on pages facing facsimile pages of Ibn Said's Arabic narrative, augmented by Alryyes's comprehensive introduction, contextual essays and historical commentary by leading literary critics and scholars of Islam and the African diaspora, photographs, maps, and other writings by Omar Ibn Said. The result is an invaluable addition to our understanding of writings by enslaved Americans and a timely reminder that "Islam" and "America" are not mutually exclusive terms.
This edition presents the English translation on pages facing facsimile pages of Ibn Said's Arabic narrative, augmented by Alryyes's comprehensive introduction and by photographs, maps, and other writings by Omar Ibn Said. The volume also includes contextual essays and historical commentary by literary critics and scholars of Islam and the African diaspora: Michael A. Gomez, Allan D. Austin, Robert J. Allison, Sylviane A. Diouf, Ghada Osman, and Camille F. Forbes. The result is an invaluable addition to our understanding of writings by enslaved Americans and a timely reminder that "Islam" and "America" are not mutually exclusive terms.


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• List of Illustrations p. vii
• Acknowledgments p. ix
• Chronology p. xi
• Introduction: ôArabic Work,ö Islam, and American Literature p. 3 Ala Alryyes
• The Life
• The Life of Omar Ibn Said, Written by Himself p. 47 Ala Alryyes
• Autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina, 1831 p. 81 Isaac Bird and J. Franklin Jameson
• Contextual Essays
• Muslims in Early America p. 95 Michael A. Gomez
• Contemporary Contexts for Omar's Life and Life p. 133 Allan D. Austin
• The United States and Barbary Coast Slavery p. 152 Robert J. Allison
• ôGod Does Not Allow Kings to Enslave Their Peopleö: Islamic Reformists and the Transatlantic Slave Trade p. 162 Sylviane A. Diouf
• Representing the West in the Arabic Language: The Slave Narrative of Omar Ibn Said p. 182 Ghada Osman and Camille F. Forbes
• Appendix 1 Omar's Earliest Known Manuscript (1819) p. 195 John Hunwick
• Appendix 2 Letter from Reverend Isaac Bird, of Hartford, Connecticut, to Theodore Dwight, of Brooklyn, New York (April 1, 1862) p. 203
• Appendix 3 ôUncle Moreau,ö from North Carolina University Magazine (September 1854) p. 207
• Appendix 4 Ralph Gurley's ôSecretary's Report,ö from African Repository and Colonial Journal (July 1837) p. 213
• Contributors p. 221

"Then there came to our country a big army. It killed many people. It took me, and walked me to the big Sea, and sold me into hands of a Christian man."--Omar Ibn Said Excerpted from A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said by Omar Ibn Said All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.