ABSTRACT
The dignified Abd ar-Rahman and his dramatic story were famous for a year and have been recalled often since. The also dignified, less dramatic, proudly mysterious, even controversial Umar ibn Said and his varied writings were also the objects of attention, from 1819 to 1864—nearly all of Umar’s American lifetime—and also into our own time. His Bible in Arabic, a daguerreotype portrait, and fourteen manuscripts in Arabic by Umar have been preserved. These include the only extant autobiography by an American slave in Arabic—a very legible, sixteen-page manuscript. (Abu Bakr as-Siddiq wrote another such autobiography but in Jamaica.) Umar’s “Life” was thought to be lost after 1925 but was found late in 1995. Umar’s grave has also been rediscovered. There is some debate over the religion of his life and his spirit. Once acclaimed as a convert to Christianity, as an Arabian who found no fault with American slavery and who despised Africans, Umar has recently been more closely examined as a closet Muslim, religiously conservative as his people, the Fulbe—clearly African—regularly were. Today, a Quranic school, or masjid, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, has been named after Al Hajj Umar ibn Said. In the past, interest in Umar was mostly regional, restricted to the Carolinas, where he lived. About thirty-five articles, including mixes of fact and fiction, surfaced by the 1970s; the numbers have risen since then and are likely to continue to do so because Umar has become a significant element in the ancient struggle between Christian and Muslim scholars, propagandists, and wishful thinkers; between fact and fiction regarding American and Christian slavery and the humanity and intelligence of Africans.
