But the document also holds lessons for non-specialists for several reasons, according to Ernst. The newly acquired manuscript adds to the number of texts Omar quotes in his writings, opening new avenues for scholarly analysis.
“There’s all this work that was written directly by, so trying to analyze that and think about what are the limits of the archive, what can the archive tell us, has been really exciting.” Part of our history As a result, our picture of their lives is incomplete. “The fact is that their complex histories and backgrounds were not of interest to slave owners.”įlodin-Ali points out that nearly all the records related to enslaved people survived because they were preserved by their enslavers. Omar was one of a few known enslaved Muslims from Africa who left documents, but “ultimately it’s impossible to know” what percent of the enslaved population in the U.S. says these documents provoke questions: “Did Omar directly tell someone, hey, this is X, Y, Z? Or did people not really care what he was saying and just choose to interpret the documents as they wanted to?” Yasmine Flodin-Ali, a Carolina graduate student who studies race and Islam in the U.S. Omar would oblige, sometimes including a Quranic text, possibly unbeknownst to his English-speaking company. How should modern readers interpret this manuscript, which contains theological passages from two religions?Įrnst theorizes that the Owen family often asked Omar to write a biblical text in Arabic as a curiosity for other members of the Southern elite. So, what we are faced with is a situation where people wanted to take over the story of his life and use it for the defense of slavery.” Text, meaning and ‘the limits of the archive’ And the repeated statement that he never wanted to do so is obviously false. We know that in his very first document that he wrote in 1819 he asks to return to Africa. The biblical passages Omar rendered in Arabic were once proffered as evidence of his conversion.Īccording to Ernst, “This narrative was designed as a defense of slavery. Those accounts insisted that Omar had no desire to return to Africa after his kidnapping, that he was content with his enslaved status and that he converted to Christianity. Contemporary newspaper accounts handed down a narrative that scholars now reject. He ended up enslaved by James Owen, a politician and plantation owner in eastern North Carolina.īut other facts of Omar’s life have been distorted by the historical record. Omar was kidnapped, taken across the Atlantic, and sold into slavery in the United States in 1807. According to Ernst, Omar’s writings reveal an intimate familiarity with Arabic poetry, Islamic theological literature, law, and grammar, in addition to other subjects. Scholars agree that Omar studied Islam for 25 years in seminaries in what is now Senegal.
The biographical details of Omar ibn Said’s life are somewhat fragmentary, says Ernst, although Omar left behind a slim autobiography and was the subject of newspaper coverage during his lifetime.Īmbrotype photograph of Omar ibn Said, from the Ambrotype Collection in the North Carolina Collection’s Photographic Archives. The manuscript “shows the way in which religion and racism were deeply intertwined in the slavery institution in America,” says Ernst, who is the co-author of a forthcoming book about Omar titled “I Cannot Write My Life.” Understanding the document, and the context of its creation, requires knowing something about Omar’s life. McClellan may have been given the document at a hot springs resort that the Owen family visited. Distinguished Professor of religious studies in the College of Arts & Sciences, one of them appears to be General George McClellan, who later became famous as a Union general during the Civil War. The document includes notations by other people who have handled it.
The Library has digitized the manuscript, now part of the North Carolina Collection at the Wilson Special Collections Library, and shared it online. According to John Blythe, assistant curator of the North Carolina Collection, the item is the first to come to light in many years. (Courtesy of University Libraries)Įighteen examples of similar documents written by Omar are currently known. Carolina Next: Innovations for Public Good ↗Ī cropped image from the manuscript.