A piece of paper inserted in the case for this ambrotype photograph says: “‘Uncle Moreau’ a slave of great notoriety, of North Carolina, a scholar who once wrote me a letter in Arabic & sent me his picture, a sketch of his life. Was in the Congregationalist, also the American Missionary.”

This excerpt from Omar Ibn Said’s narrative, originally written in Arabic, was given to “Sheikh Hunter” (whose identity is unknown) and tells of his life and capture:

You asked me to write my life. I am not able to do this because I have much forgotten my own, as well as the Arabic language. Neither can I write very grammatically or according to the true idiom. And so, my brother, I beg you, in Gods name, not to chide me, for I am a man of weak eyes, & of a weak body.

My name is Omar ibn Seid, (son of Seid,) My birthplace was Fut Tûr [Futa Toro  Senegal?], between the two rivers. . . . I sought knowledge under the instruction of a Sheikh called Mohammed Seid, my own brother, & Sheikh Soleiman Kembeh, & Sheikh Gabriel Abdal. I continued my studies twenty five years, & then returned to my home where I remained six years. Then there came to our places a large army, who killed many men, & took me, & brought me to the great sea, & sold me into the hands of the Christians who bound me & sent me on board a great ship & we sailed upon the great sea a month & a half, when we came to a place called Charleston in the Christian language. There they sold me to a small, weak, & wicked man, called Johnson, a complete infidel, who had no fear of God at all. Now I am a small man, & unable to do hard work so I fled from the hand of Johnson & after a month came to a place called Fayd-il (Fayette-ville?).

Read a translation of the full slave narrative of “Uncle Moreau” [Omar ibn Said, 1770?–1863], translated by Isaac Bird, or the original in Arabic (the only known narrative in Arabic of an enslaved person in the US) on the Library of Congress website.