Senegalese · 1770–1863
Omar Ibn Said was a West African Muslim scholar who was enslaved in the United States. Born in Futa Toro, in what is now Senegal, he studied Islamic law, theology and mathematics for about twenty-five years. In 1807 he was captured, taken across the Atlantic and sold in Charleston, South Carolina. He escaped from a brutal owner, was jailed in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and was then sold to James Owen, whose family kept him for the rest of his life. He wrote several texts in Arabic, including a short autobiography in 1831, the only known surviving slave narrative by an enslaved person written in Arabic in the United States. His manuscripts, which mix Quranic passages with careful words for his Christian owners, are held in the Library of Congress and other archives. He was baptized in 1820, though evidence suggests he kept his Islamic faith. He died in 1863 in North Carolina. His writings are central to the study of Muslims in early America.