A Muslim American slave : the life of Omar Ibn Said

The Resource A Muslim American slave : the life of Omar Ibn Said
Label
A Muslim American slave : the life of Omar Ibn Said
Title remainder
the life of Omar Ibn Said
Statement of responsibility
translated from the Arabic, edited, and with an introduction by Ala Alryyes
Creator
Contributor
Editor
Writer of introduction
Subject
Genre
Language
  • eng
  • ara
  • ara
  • eng
Summary
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 became a local celebrity, and in 1831 he was asked to write his life story, producing the only 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 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 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. 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
Member of
Biography type
autobiography
Cataloging source
WU/DLC
Government publication
government publication of a state province territory dependency etc
Illustrations
  • illustrations
  • maps
  • facsimiles
Index
no index present
Language note
English translations on pages facing facsim. pages of Arabic text
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography
Series statement
Wisconsin studies in autobiography

Context

Context of A Muslim American slave : the life of Omar Ibn Said

Work of

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