From Timbuktu to Sapelo: Arabic scholarship under enslavement
Last updated October 22, 2026. Not peer reviewed; see the review status.
Could enslaved African Muslims read and write Arabic, and what did they leave behind?
Yes. Two manuscripts show it: Omar ibn Said's 15-page Arabic autobiography of 1831, held by the Library of Congress, and Bilali Muhammad's 13-page Arabic legal text from Sapelo Island, Georgia, held by the University of Georgia. How many enslaved Muslims could write is estimated, not counted.
Why it matters. These are among the few records enslaved people produced in their own language and learned tradition. They shift the story from what others said about enslaved Muslims to what some wrote, and show West African learning crossing the Atlantic.
What did Omar ibn Said write?
The Library of Congress holds “The Life of Omar Ibn Said,” 15 pages in Arabic, written in 1831 and bought from Sotheby's in June 2017. The Library calls it the only known extant Arabic autobiography by an enslaved person in the United States, and put it online in January 2019.
A Fula scholar from Futa Toro (present-day Senegal), he was born about 1770, enslaved in Charleston in 1807, and died in 1864.
The Library's digitized English translation (c. 1860 to 1864, credited to Isaac Bird) opens with the first words of Qur'an 67:1, the chapter al-Mulk. Ala Alryyes's 2011 edition prints a modern translation beside facsimile pages.
What is the Bilali Document?
The Hargrett Library (University of Georgia) holds a 13-page Arabic manuscript by Bilali Muhammad, enslaved on Sapelo Island, in the Francis R. Goulding papers (ms2807). First taken for a diary, scholars later identified it as a transcription of a Maliki legal treatise, associated with the jurist Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani. The original is restricted for fragility; a facsimile is available.
It is law, so its writer carried a learned tradition, not only a faith.
Is this intellectual continuity or a curiosity?
Sylviane Diouf's Servants of Allah documents enslaved African Muslims' literacy and practice across the Americas. Michael Gomez's Exchanging Our Country Marks traces African ethnic and religious identities into African American identity. Allan Austin's sourcebooks collected the documents the field still uses.
This site follows them: the manuscripts show learning that predates enslavement. It does not claim that learning shaped later American institutions (see open questions).
What do the sources disagree about?
North Carolina's Department of Natural and Cultural Resources records that Omar ibn Said joined First Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville in 1820. NCpedia notes modern scholars hold he remained a devout Muslim and that sources differ on conversion.
The Muslim share of enslaved Africans is also contested. Historians agree it was meaningful; estimates rest on indirect evidence. The Methods page shows the range.
What does the archive leave out?
Manuscripts survive because literate white people noticed literate men and kept their papers. Women's literacy is not documented the same way, and this site names that gap. The record goes largely silent after emancipation.
This track stops where documents thin. Twentieth-century currents will be added only where primary documents carry the argument.
Scholarly conversation
- Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York University Press, 1998)The standard synthesis of African Muslims' enslavement, literacy, and practice in the Americas.
- Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (University of North Carolina Press, 1998)Shows how African ethnic and religious identities, Muslim ones included, shaped African American identity.
- Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (Garland, 1984)Compiles the biographical and documentary record in one place.
What remains open
- The Muslim share of enslaved Africans. Estimates vary and rest on indirect evidence.
- Whether enslaved-era communities connect to twentieth-century American Muslim institutions, or the line breaks.
- How much the surviving record reflects who was literate and noticed, versus who existed.
Further reading for specialists
- Sylviane A. Diouf, Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York University Press, 1998).
- Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks (University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
- Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (Garland, 1984) and Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (Routledge, 1997).
- Ala Alryyes, ed. and trans., A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011).
- Ronald A. T. Judy, (Dis)forming the American Canon: African-Arabic Slave Narratives and the Vernacular (University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
- Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Edward E. Curtis IV, Muslims in America: A Short History (Oxford University Press, 2009).
Sources checked
- Library of Congress: Omar Ibn Said Collection
- Library of Congress press release (2019)
- New Georgia Encyclopedia: Bilali Mohammed
- Hargrett Library: Francis R. Goulding papers, ms2807
- NC DNCR: Omar Ibn Said Joins the Presbyterian Church
- NCpedia: Said, Omar ibn
- Library of Congress: Translation of the life of Omar ibn Said
Related on this site
Cite as: Threads of Connection, “From Timbuktu to Sapelo: Arabic scholarship under enslavement,” usmuslim.org/ideas/african-muslim-manuscripts-under-enslavement, last updated October 22, 2026. Content licensed CC BY 4.0.