Kidnapped and abandoned to America and sold in the slave market.. Omar bin Saeed, the Senegalese Muslim scholar whom slaves tried to Christianize

Omar bin Saeed, a Senegalese scholar and intellectual who descends from a wealthy aristocratic family, memorized the Holy Qur’an, and well versed in legal sciences. After his pilgrimage to the Sacred House of God, he returned to his country and devoted himself to trade and teaching, until he was kidnapped and then forcibly displaced to the United States of America, then sold in a slave market. His life turned from bliss to hell.

birth birth

Omar bin Saeed was born in 1770 in the "Futa Toro" region between the Senegal and Gambia rivers, from a Muslim family whose origins go back to the "Fulan" tribe, which in 2022 numbered nearly 40 million in Africa.

He grew up in an environment committed to the principles of Islamic law and its approach to life, and among a wealthy family with many and varied properties.

When he was 5 years old, his father died in battles and tribal and civil wars, so his family left the "Futa Toro" region to settle in the Senegalese city of "Bondo".

His family was aristocrats and wealthy, as he mentioned in his memoirs written in 1831 that his family used to pay zakat every year in gold, cows, sheep, and agricultural crops.

Study and formation

Omar bin Saeed Bawakir received his education at the hands of his brother, Sheikh Muhammad Sayed bin Saeed, after which he moved between the Qur’anic and Islamic schools, seeking knowledge for a period of 25 years of his life.

Among the most prominent sheikhs who studied with them after his brother, Sheikh Suleiman Kembah and Sheikh Gabriel.

Jobs and responsibilities

And after completing his studies in Islamic schools, he returned to the "Futa Tor" region, practiced commerce, and taught Sharia sciences for a period of 6 years.

During this period of his life he participated in the jihadi wars against the pagan tribes in West Africa.

At an early stage of his life, he performed the Hajj, and it is expected that it was between 1800 and 1805.

The road to slavery

In the year 1807, when he was 37 years old, ethnic wars broke out in the "Futa Tour" region, and he fell captive at the hands of the Bambara tribes, who sold him to slave traders in the port of "Saint Louis" in Senegal, and he was forcibly deported by sea to the United States of America.

After a journey that lasted a month and a half on board a ship, he arrived in Charleston, in the state of South Carolina, and there he was sold to a man known for his cruelty and severity.

After years of mistreatment, he escaped from his master, but was arrested in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and there he was imprisoned in solitary confinement.

In his prison, he was writing on the walls some ideas and notes in Arabic, and this aroused the attention of the prison officials and some important people, so General James Owen (brother of John Owen, Governor of North Carolina) bought him and got him out of prison, and he took him to his farm in Bladen County.

Umar was an honest, observant and highly moral person, and he was greatly trusted by his new master, who treated him with great humanity and kindness.

A picture showing the suffering of slaves on American farms (Al-Jazeera)

intellectual shifts

Omar was adhering to the Islamic religion and persevering in fasting and praying in the first period of his captivity, and he was subjected to Christianization attempts, and his enslavers refused to provide him with books in the Arabic language except for a translated copy of the Bible.

Some accounts say that he converted to Christianity in 1820, but a number of contemporary researchers say that this was coercive and apparent only, and that he remained secretly committed to the Islamic religion, as evidenced by his memoirs that he wrote in 1831.

He began his memoirs with the Holy Qur’an and devoted part of it to praises of Muhammadiyah. He also wrote on a personal card for him dating back to the year 1857, a verse from the Holy Qur’an in Surat Al-Nasr, which is “And I saw people entering the religion of God in crowds.”

During his life, which he spent as a slave owned in the American states, he was able to draw the attention of researchers and writers due to his high culture and good education, so newspapers and magazines wrote about him.

In September 1854, the University of North Carolina Journal published an article about his story, life, and culture.

A painting from inside the "House of Slaves" museum on Gori Island, Senegal (the island)

literature

Although Omar bin Said spent more than 50 years of his life serving his masters in the United States, and was isolated from reading, writing, and everything related to science, he was able to write his memoirs in Arabic in 1831.

The memoirs were written on 28 pages, in which he recounted his life path, the circumstances of his kidnapping and sale to Christians, and the injustices he suffered from life and the vicissitudes of time.

And he opened it with Surat al-Mulk, a preamble that proves his brokenness and the bitterness of slavery that fell on his heart, and because it was written in a language that his masters did not understand, they had no influence on it.

These are the only memoirs written in Arabic by an enslaved African in the United States of America.

Omar bin Said's memoirs disappeared after they were written, and they were not found until the end of the 20th century, and remained circulating in private collections before they came into the possession of the Library of Congress and were numbered and presented to the world in 2019.

Death

Omar bin Said died in 1964 and was buried in Bladen County, North Carolina, one year before the abolition of slavery law in the United States of America.