I Cannot Write My Life

June 26, 2023
Lo (Muslims in America), an associate professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, and Ernst (Sufism), professor emeritus of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, deliver an excellent study of enslaved scholar Omar ibn Said (1770–1863). Captured in 1807 West Africa and held in the U.S. for 50 years, Said was something of a curiosity for his enslavers—the Owenses, a prominent North Carolina family—because he could write in Arabic. Lo and Ernst draw on 18 surviving documents Said authored to explore afresh his life and legacy, which have been manipulated by “early amateur scholars, missionaries, and Arabists” who mistranslated his writing, and “zealous proslavery clergymen” who framed him as proof of a “benevolent slavery,” partly by claiming a voluntary conversion from Islam to Christianity (those sources fail to note that Said recites Qur’anic blessings in documents dated as late as 26 years after his supposed conversion). Early chapters fill in Said’s life in Africa, including 25 years spent studying at an Islamic seminary; later ones focus on Said’s 1831 “Autobiography.” Drawing on scrupulous close readings of Said’s work, Lo and Ernst make a worthy contribution to the scholarship on slavery in America and testify to the importance of evidence left behind by enslaved people themselves. This edifies.