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God’S Dominion: Omar Ibn Said Use Of Arabic Literacy As Opposition To Slavery, Akel Kahera

Publications

Omar ibn Said’s Th e Life of Omar Ibn Said, Written by Himself (1831) occupies a unique position within the slave narrative tradition. As the only surviving Arabic autobiography written by a slave from the United States, the Life juxtaposes a religious exegesis based on the textual authority of the Qur’an with a first-person account of Omar’s life. Only recently rediscovered, having been found in a trunk in a Virginia at-tic in 1995 and sold to a private collector after being lost since 1920, the manuscript has sparked renewed interest in writings by enslaved Muslims in America, and in particular …