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.
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American
Association of School Librarians
General
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