With this I send you a manuscript in Arabic. He was landed at Charleston, remained in South Carolina four years, and has been thirty-seven years in this State, the greater portion of them in the family of General Owen. He was thirty-six or thirty-seven years old when brought from Africa. A specimen of his writing in that language is now before us. He still writes the Arabic with considerable facility. Monroe was a teacher among his own people. The Foulahs stand in the scale of civilization at the head of all the African tribes. They carried with them the literature of Arabia, as well as the religion of their great Prophet, and have ever retained both. The Foulahs, or Fallatas, are known as the descendants of the Arabian Mahomedans who migrated to Western Africa in the seventh century. He belonged to the Foulah tribe in Africa, who inhabit the region about the sources of the Senegal river. Monroe is probably more than seventy-five years of age, instead of sixty, as the letter writer supposes. We refer to Monroe, the servant of General Owen. In one of those which appeared lately there is an account (copied below) of an individual well known in this community, and who, although a slave, is held in high respect and esteem. Journal, there have been published within the past year a good many well written letters descriptive of matters and things in North Carolina some of them exceedingly interesting. Much of what we know is found in account of Omar ibn Said from journals of the period.įrom The Wilmington Chronicle 27 January 1847. During the last twenty years I have known no want in the hand of Jim Owen.” I am not able to do hard work for I am a small man and feeble.
I neither go hungry nor naked, and I have no hard work to do. I am residing in Bladen County. I continue in the hand of Jim Owen who never beats me, nor scolds me. After a month our Lord God brought me forward to the hand of a good man, who fears God, and loves to do good, and whose name is Jim Owen and whose brother is called Col. “I was afraid to remain with a man so depraved and who committed so many crimes and I ran away. In the article “Prince Moro” in The Christian Advocate (Philadelphia) 3 July 1825, it’s noted: “As no one claimed him, and he appeared of no value, the jail was thrown open, that he might run away but he had no disposition to make his escape.” Sold for his “jail dues”, Omar Ibn Said became the property of General John Owen, the brother of the governor of North Carolina, where he worked until his death in 1863. He converted to Christianity. Jailed for 16 days, Ibn Said was spotted writing in Arabic on the cells wall. Ibn Said escaped, working from plantation to plantation until his capture in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Ibn Said tells us he was first sold to a “small and evil man who did not fear God”. The simple, monocular view of Africa and Africans as something other than entirely human, noble savages reared on Western paternalism that masked awkward thoughts, is blown away. And it proved to doubters that Africa was steeped in literary culture, and Abrahamic and monotheistic faiths long before the civilising presence of the white man educated them in the missionary styles and offered one-way trips to the pristine ‘New World’. The work of 15 handwritten pages was unedited by the writer’s owner, giving it an air of authenticity. It is the only known extant autobiography of a slave written in Arabic in America. In 1831 Ibn Said (1770-1863 or 1864), a practising Muslim, wrote his autobiography in Arabic while still in captivity. The Life of Omar ibn Said tells the story of a “prince” stolen from West Africa in 1807 and transported to South Corolina to work as a slave.
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