Omar ibn Said Letter : Manuscript

As Black bodies were taken from Africa to North America, their theologies, spiritual language, aesthetics, memories, and devotional practices could not be entirely erased. This 1819 letter and drawing from Omar Ibn Said, who was educated in the Islamic tradition prior to his capture from West Africa and enslavement in North Carolina, illustrates the history and function of Islamic art in North America. In the letter, a drawing, maybe 10 centimeters wide, appears in the middle of the first page.

Said’s letter expresses “a wish to see a place.” He seems to depict it, using quasi-symmetrical geometrical patterns, consisting of 12 shapes in right angles, connected through rectangular spaces, with trapezoidal figures on the outer ends, as if a floor plan to a building, similar to the drawings found in the Topkapi scroll. At the center of his drawing, Said refers to “Shaykh General Jim Owen” (presumably James, John Owen’s brother). Written in the center of the imagined “place,” the central location of the name suggests Owen as an object of devotion. While the political implications are highly problematic, the survival of a traditional and mystical Islamic expression of devotion is notable.

Yet Said’s drawing is a way for this spiritual practice to exist within a completely foreign context, isolated from his community. The unevenness in his lines and shapes create a tension with the geometrically symmetrical aesthetic that could draw attention to the difficulty in expressing such a devotional practice in a foreign context. It is analogous to, in Christian language, the spiritual task of “singing the Lord’s song in a strange land,” of many enslaved people. Yet his participation in that practice, even while facing such challenge and oppression, also makes his spiritual practice into an act of resistance.

Sources:

George E. Post, “Negro Mohammedans in Africa,” Missionary Herald, April, 1869.

Gomez, Micheal A. “Muslims in Early America.” in A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said, edited by Ala Alryyes. University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. 95-132.