Manuscripts · a Light

An enslaved man in Carolina wrote his life in Arabic

Omar ibn Said was born around 1770 in Futa Toro, in what is now Senegal, studied for about twenty five years, and was captured and shipped to Charleston in 1807. In 1831, enslaved in North Carolina, he wrote fifteen pages in Arabic setting out his life. It is the only known autobiography written in Arabic by an enslaved person in the United States. He opens not with his own name but with Surah al-Mulk written out from memory, and he describes being taken from a place where he had prayed and studied. The manuscript was bought by the Library of Congress in 2017, digitised, and put online, where anyone can read his handwriting.

Omar ibn Said · North Carolina, 1831