Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Chronology -- Introduction: "Arabic Work," Islam, and American Literature -- The Life -- The Life of Omar Ibn Said, Written by Himself -- Autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina, 1831 -- Contextual Essays -- Muslims in Early America -- Contemporary Contexts for Omar's Life and Life -- The United States and Barbary Coast Slavery -- "God Does Not Allow Kings to Enslave Their People": Islamic Reformists and the Transatlantic Slave Trade -- Representing the West in the Arabic Language: The Slave Narrative of Omar Ibn Said -- Appendix 1: Omar's Earliest Known Manuscript (1819) -- Appendix 2: Letter from Reverend Isaac Bird, of Hartford, Connecticut, to Theodore Dwight, of Brooklyn, New York (April 1, 1862) -- Appendix 3: "Uncle Moreau," from North Carolina University Magazine (September 1854) -- Appendix 4: Ralph Gurley's "Secretary's Report," from African Repository and Colonial Journal (July 1837) -- Contributors.