Around 1770, Omar Ibn Said, was born in present-day Senegal in a place called Futa Toro, between the two rivers of Senegal and Gambia in West Africa. As a devout Muslim, he spent over 25 years studying the Quran and other subjects in Africa. Despite the brief mentions of his youth in his memoir, it is clear that he was a wealthy man who became a teacher and a prolific scholar.
Like many other West Africans, Omar Ibn Said was captured by a raiding army that killed many people, and sold him into slavery. Ibn Said writes how he was brought on a ship, sailing from his homeland to foreign shores in Charleston, South Carolina.
The army "sold me into the hand of a Christian man who bought me and walked me to the big ship in the big sea," Ibn Said wrote.
"We sailed in the big Sea for a month and a half until we came to a place called Charleston [South Carolina]."
AN OCEAN AWAY FROM HOME
Taken to a foreign country with an unfamiliar language, Omar Ibn Said describes his first owner, who treated him so badly that after a month, he ran away.
"A weak, small, evil man called Johnson, an infidel who did not fear Allah at all, bought me," Ibn Said wrote. "... I escaped from the hands of Johnson after a month, and walked to a place called Faydel [Fayetteville]."
Omar Ibn Said escaped and walked north from Charleston until he reached Fayetteville, North Carolina. There he was captured and jailed by men with horses and dogs.
"They took me to a big house,"Ibn Said wrote. "I could not come out of the big house – called jeel [jail]."
While imprisoned in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Omar Ibn Said began writing in Arabic on his cell wall. Ibn Said’s writing attracted the attention of John Owen, who would later become the governor of North Carolina. Owen recognized that Ibn Said was an educated man, purchased him as a slave and gave him to his brother, James Owen.
SHATTERING ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ENSLAVED AFRICANS
In 1831, Omar Ibn Said wrote a document that became the only known extant autobiography written in Arabic in the United States by a slave while in captivity. The Ibn Said memoir, consisting of 15 handwritten pages, is extremely rare not only because it is considered the most well-known account of an enslaved Muslim from West Africa living in the United States, but also because it challenges the historical slave narrative we know today.