In their own words
Two of the Muslims in chapter VI left long accounts of their own lives. Here they are word for word as first printed: Omar’s in full, and every passage Baquaqua told in his own voice, with notes on what the words are and where they came from.
Omar ibn Said
The life he wrote in Arabic in North Carolina: his studies in Futa Toro, his capture, the jail in Fayetteville, and his faith, then and later.
Read 1854About 13,000 wordsMahommah Gardo Baquaqua
His father’s prayers in Djougou, his capture, the slave ship, Brazil, and the New York court where he said he would rather die than return to slavery.
ReadHow these texts are given
Word for word, as they were first printed. Nothing is modernized or tidied. Page numbers from the printed editions sit in the margin, so any line can be found and checked. Where a book prints someone else’s words in the middle, the gap is marked and says what was left out.
Neither text reached print exactly as its author spoke or wrote it. Omar wrote in Arabic, and what you read is a translation. Baquaqua told his story to an editor, who wrote it down. The notes on each page say who stood between the man and the page.
Other voices
- Omar ibn Said’s other writingsLibrary of Congress: the Arabic manuscripts, early translations and letters about him, page by page.
- Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, 1734Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, written by Thomas Bluett, who knew him, at Documenting the American South.
- Bilali Muhammad’s manuscriptThe thirteen-page primer of Islamic practice he wrote in Arabic, now at the University of Georgia’s Hargrett Library (New Georgia Encyclopedia).