Authenticity Of Arabic Slave Narratives

Damascus University Journal, Vol.21, No. (1+2)، 2005 Abdulhafeth Ali
Khrisat
73
Authenticity of Arabic Slave Narratives
Dr. Abdulhafeth Ali Khrisat*
Abstract
Arabic slave narratives, written by Muslim Africans, are records
of protest against slavery in America left by ex-slaves. In these
narratives, there is the slave narration and there is the reformist
editor; therefore, authenticity of the narratives is in doubt, for being
used as abolitionist propaganda. An ex-slave, Omar Ibn Said, left
more than fourteen manuscripts; only one of these was translated into
English in 1836. The authors of these narratives, focusing on the
slave’s being converted into Christianity, directed the style since they
had the freedom to re-narrate and control what was said and
published as in the narratives of Selim of Algeria and Prince Abdul
Rahaman. These Arabic narratives found no way for publication,
since they used the Arabic language. What have been published were
translated excerpts from the original manuscripts or oral translations.
Despite their shortcomings, Arabic slave narratives were
contributions to the American cultural history in the nineteenth
century.
African Muslims were unnoticed. The trends of treating them in
America have been related closely to the treatment of Africans and
Dept. of English Language & Literature -Faculty of Arts-Mu’tah University.

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African-Americans in the literature. Melville (1856), seemed to ignore
that his main African characters, literate, rebellious slaves, were Muslims
despite his reference to the fact that they were believers in Allah. Harriet
Beecher Stowe (1856), presented a protagonist who was the son of
Mandingoes, Muslims, but she did not admit any such religious
heritage.1
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1999) attempted unsuccessfully to
present a very separate African culture in West Africa that had nothing to
do whatsoever with Muslim and Arabic culture. Gates (1999) also
remarked that “It’s taken my people 50 years to move from ‘Black’ to
‘African American’. I wonder how long it will take the Swahili to call
themselves ‘African.’” This is an indication of Gates’ determination to
claim that the Swahili have no right to identify themselves with Muslims
or Arabs but with Africans.
Thomas E. R. Maguire (2000) emphasized that Gates’ first
encounter with Africa during his excursion is an assertion of his idea that
“The image of Islam progresses from veiled women, mosques and
Quranic schools, to bigotry, concubines and confused identity, neatly
reaffirming Islamic ‘Simulacrum.’” In the whole series entitled Into
Africa, Gates used “Islam” and “Arab” inappropriately as
interchangeable signifiers (3-4). Gates also worked very hard to
separate the West Africans from any Muslim or Arabic cultural
influence. His major concern was and has been to assert the
“Africanness” of West Africa. Therefore, scholars have not been much
interested in the early writings of African Muslims for one reason or
another. Regarding Arabic slave narratives, no studies have been
conducted as far as I know. If there has been any mention of these
narratives, it comes very accidental. Thus, these narratives need to be
examined more carefully and brought to the surface.
However, despite Gates' attempt to ignore and deny any
relationship between West Africa and Muslim culture, many Muslim
Africans knew the Arabic language, wrote their autobiographical
sketches in both Arabic and English as in the case of Prince Abdul
Rahaman and Omar Ibn Said. Mattias Cardell (1996) estimated ten
percent of all those imported to and enslaved in America, having Muslim
1
See Allan D. Austin (1998), 13.

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75
and Arabic culture, have played a significant role in African-American
history.
Slavery in the United States was primarily located in the South
where slaves were considered property just because of their blackness.
However, the large number of white population did not own slaves.
Most of non-slave-holding population defended and were identified with
the institution of slavery because it gave them privilege as being not
slaves and gained a sense of power by being white.
Conditions for the slaves were very disastrous. Because of the heat
and humidity of the South, slaves suffered from various diseases where
they were forced to work even when sick. One major problem
confronted the enslaved was that they had to live under the constant
threat of sale by the master. What kind of relationship existed between
the white masters and the slaves? It was that authoritarian relationship
that remained firm in the 19th
century American society.
Moreover, a slave could not process any anti-slavery literature or
visit the homes of whites, who sympathize with him or with free blacks.
However, some were educated as in the case of Omar Ibn Said and
Prince Abdul Rahaman and others such as Frederick Douglass who
learned to read and write in America, a practice forbidden by law: by
doing so, the slaves affirmed their humanity.
Slaves turned to the whites who sympathized with them and
assisted some of them to gain their freedom. By 1770s, abolitionists
began to pressure to emancipate slaves on religious, moral, and
economic grounds. Late in the 18th
century, Pennsylvania Abolitionist
Society declared their goal in 1784: abolition and the establishment of
anti-slavery organizations in all cities.2
Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society also organized local efforts to
support the ban on slave trade and transportation of slave children,
pregnant women or sending ships from Philadelphia. Furthermore, the
Society wrote an address to the public explaining the devastating effects
of slavery. Their attitude was sympathetic although numerous pamphlets
were written challenging the notion of black inferiority. Another society,
2
On slavery and freedom, see GunJa SenGupto (1993): 200-213; see also
Richard Sheridan (1998):28-47..

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the American Colonization Society was founded in 1816 to act as the
ideal solution to the American racial dilemma. Claiming to be interested
in the welfare of the Africans, it advocated colonizing in Africa. It
comforted slave owners by saying that it was not concerned with
emancipation but it implied that slaves might be purchased for
colonization. Their propaganda, writing pamphlets, reprinting and
assuring that slaves had to write their stories, was an attempt to
demonstrate that the freedman lived in a wretched state of poverty,
ignorance and immorality and he would be better off in America.3
This led to the establishment of the Republic of Liberia. This
Society stressed the inferiority of the black and the only solution was to
separate whites from blacks.4
Of course, this project of colonization
society was intended to make Liberia a commercial colony utilizing
cheap labor to despite the solution of carrying civilization and religion to
the natives and undermining slave trade.
The abolitionists were involved in convincing some slaves to write
their lives and present their views in a form of biographical sketch.
Therefore, the slaves encouragement by the white abolitionists, who
were mainly ministers of the church, led them to tell and write their
stories. The abolitionist’s role came as an editor of the whole narrative.
The slave narrator made revisions because the abolitionist editor in many
cases had asked him to do so. Moreover, the editor himself felt at liberty
to revise the narrative so that it would be received by the public.
Therefore, too much attention was paid to what the public might think of
.the narrative. Thus, the editor always thought of the reception of the
story when he revised and/or edited the narrative since one of the main
objectives was to spread these narratives in the 19th
century American
society.
Slave narratives are records of protests against chattel slavery in
America left by ex-slaves. They constitute the earliest forms of American
popular reading in colonial society, blending history, autobiography, and
3
To get a sense of the extent of slavery in nominally free states and territories,
see Quintard Taylor (1982):153-70; see also Albert S. Broussard
(1985):17-21.
4
For more on the views to solve the problem of slaves, see Norman Combs
(1972): Chapter Four.

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anti-slavery discourse. The sole purpose of the narratives, from the
perspective of abolitionists who often commissioned these texts, was to
refute European charges of black inferiority, often advanced to justify
bondage and to deny citizenship rights to free people of color. The
narratives were not entirely successful in removing the stigma from the
benighted race, but they did not allow the ex-slave to fill a void and to
reinvent himself/herself as a more complete being. For, through these
stories, the untutored writers were able to inscribe themselves in history
and to disprove the prejudicial claim that they lacked the sensibilities to
be creative writers.
Since abolitionists' interest in the slave narratives was purely
political, the hand of the abolitionist in drafting the narratives necessarily
affected the structure of the stories. For, as they encouraged ex-slave
writers to focus on the cruel facts of the peculiar institution, they
constrained them and perhaps prevented them from revealing facts about
themselves. By requiring ex-slave writers to suppress emotions and to
stick to a prescribed format, abolitionists undoubtedly forced their
protégés to sell themselves short. As a result, many of the narratives
have plots that appear, on the surface, to be sparse and unimaginative.
Despite the keen interest in slavery and the prominence of slavery
as the theme in modern literature, there is still a dimension of the
antebellum world that has been neglected. Although it is a well-
documented fact that a significant number of the men and women
captured and forced into bondage were Muslims, educated in the Arabic
language and knowledgeable about their culture (see fig. 1), not much
attention has been devoted to the stories they wrote after they escaped
slavery. Perhaps, the language was a barrier to their translation, but this
may not be the entire explanation for the slight. Since these writers,
educated in their own land, could not be censored to the same extent as
their counterparts, who were stripped of their identity in slavery. The
Muslim ex-slaves were able to present their own views of the system.
The slave narrative has an overwhelmingly historical significance
in putting together details related to the realities of slave life.
Descriptions of the chattel system portray arbitrary and absolute power
of slavery. Any reader may recognize the narrator's realistic pictures of
plantation life and labor. During this era, thirty years before 1860,

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Arabic slave narratives were written with their special historical
placement, in addition to narratives written by Douglass, James
Pennigton, William and Ellen Craft, Henry Bibb, and William Wells
Brown. Since their writing, Arabic slave narratives have been neglected.
Studies of slavery have focused on the story of Frederick Douglass and
the real life "Uncle Tom", Josiah Henson, and other popular narratives.
Arabic slave narratives are not a "history" of slavery or a "true" story of
slavery, instead, they are what the slaves said about slavery. At least, the
narratives make it possible for the readers to feel, to know the effect of
systematic education upon one's perception of his plight, and to
understand what it was like to be a chattel slave. In an anonymous
manuscript by a Negro slave of Captain David Anderson of South
Carolina in 1768, verses from the Glorious Koran were written in
Arabic.
To determine the authenticity of the slave narrative is the most
challenging of historical problems. For some American historians, the
narratives are ignored basing their judgment on the view that their tales
are the fabrications of abolitionists propagandists. It is true that there is
the slave narrative and there is the reformist editor, particularly in Arabic
slave narratives. Starling (1988) considers slave narratives as "a form of
sub-literature" (32). Its value lies in the fact that it provided records and
accounts of experience under slavery which make writers use such
matter for inspiration as in Harriet Beecher Stowe. Moreover, these
narratives contain adherence to religious confession, a convention which
is to be found in autobiographical works.
In describing the adventures of a runaway slave, John W.
Blassingame (1972) notes:
The fundamental problems confronting anyone interested
in studying black view of bondage is that the slaves had
few opportunities to tell what it meant to be chattel. Since
the antebellum narratives were frequently dictated to and
written by whites, any study of such sources must begin
with an assessment of the editors. An editor's education,
religious beliefs, literary skills, attitude toward slavery,

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and occupation all affected how he recorded the account
of the slave (130).
In his classical study, Blassingame concludes that most of the
slaves have the ring of truth. Moreover, many of the writers analyzed
slavery in "relatively dispassionate terms" (371).
Authenticity of the slave narrative is in doubt for being used as
abolitionist propaganda in the period of its literary importance, depicting
a foreign social institution to the modern mind. Narratives involve
unreliability, which is natural to the autobiographical form, particularly
when the autobiographer needs editorial assistance; the abolitionists are
the most important publishers for the slave narrator.
With the help of the abolitionist societies, the accounts of the slaves
were edited and published (see fig. 2). That is why the slave narratives
were dismissed as anti-slavery propaganda and ignored as valid sources
by historians and sociologists until the twentieth century. Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., (1984) notes that it rarely happened that critics attempted to
"analyze these texts as narrative discourses as important to criticism for
their form and structure as they are important historiography for the
'truths' they reveal” (xii). To a great extent, the slave narrative captures
a "double heritage" because the black voice goes under pressure from the
white abolitionist showing his wounded signs on the body as the "main
sources of narrative authenticity” (xii).
Rising doubts and denying authenticity to slave narratives leave the
impression that the impact of slavery in the life of the individual and the
writer protagonist's significance and power are minimal. Regarding the
Arabic slave narrative of Omar Ibn Said, it is reported that he has left
more than fourteen manuscripts (see fig. 3, 4). One of these was
translated into English and it was inscribed as "Written by himself in
1831 and sent to Old Paul, or Lahmen Kebby, in New York, in 1836,
Presented to Dwight by Paul." That same original manuscript was
translated into English in 1848 by Alexander I. Cotheal, who for many
years was treasurer of the Ethonological Society and was a fancier of
Arabic manuscript. Another Arabic manuscript was translated and read
to the society in February 1836, which contains a connected narrative of
the writer's life (see fig. 5). From that imperfect translation, Theodore
Dwight also published some extracts in an article in 1864 in The

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Methodist Review. What was left now is another revised version of the
translation made by Isaac Bird of Hartford. There is only one manuscript
nowadays available at the Library of Congress. In addition to what
Omar Ibn Said tells of his life, some additional facts may be found in an
article by William Plumer, a Presbyterian pastor, in New York Observer
of January 8th, 1863 entitled "Meroh, Or Native African" and signed "A
Wayfaring Man."
Of course, the abolitionists were the most important publishers for
the slave narratives. It was expected that the slave narrator of the
abolitionist period would draw a portrait of the slaveholder that
resembled the abolitionist's perception of a master. John Herbert Nelson
(1926) inclines allowing the slave author undue credit.
Curiously enough, of many slave
autobiographies, biographies—for they were
often "edited" by friends of the slave-all but three
or four seem to be forgotten . . . Although filled
with the most vociferous propaganda, in parts
embittered and untrue, even the worst of them
record as nothing else does the work a day life of
the antebellum South. A reader soon learns to
distinguish in the large, the true portions from
the falsified, and having done so, he finds
himself confronted with pictures of slavery as it
was (20).
Nelson acknowledges that these narratives contribute to our having a
picture of the slaves and their masters in the antebellum South. Since
many of these narratives were edited, it is appropriate to believe that they
are, as Nelson claims, "filled with vociferous propaganda" (28).
Like other narratives, Arabic slave narratives might have been used
by the abolitionists as propagandistic matters to attract people's attention
and move their hearts toward religion. The author directs the style of the
narrative because he is the one who has the freedom to re-narrate and
manipulate what has been said and put it in the way he thinks appropriate
to serve its objective. In other slave narratives, like Douglass's (1973), the
narrator has assimilated the rhetoric to achieve his objective of

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persuasion. The author tries propaganda to use the narrative as means of
political struggle, utilizing the slave sufferings and Christian rhetoric in
order to create public support for the abolitionist cause.
Abdul Rahaman, who came from Tombuckto, Africa’s great center of
learning with a university dating back to the 13th
century, was freed in
1828, left to Liberia in 1829 and wrote a letter dated May 5th, 1829 from
Monrovia, Liberia to the Auxiliary Society of abolitionists. What was
published from this letter was only "extracts." In these translated extracts,
the focus is on Rahaman's asking for assistance from the abolitionists to
get his children from bondage. On the cover page of the Auxiliary to the
American Colonization Society, the following is written:
The object to which it shall be exclusively
devoted, shall be to aid the parent Institution
at Washington, in the Colonization of Free
People of Colour in the United States on the
Coast of Africa—and to do this most only by
contributing money, but the exertion of its
influence to promote to the foundation of
other societies..
5
In another autobiographical sketch in October 1828 and in
December 1828, Abdul Rahaman presented a translation of the Lord’s
Prayer preceded by Arabic scripts of Surah “al-Fatiha” from the Glorious
Koran (see fig. 6, 7). Not only translations of Arabic narratives or letters
were incomplete but also editorials were made. Therefore, one might
raise the question about the narratives "defect": Was it one-sided picture
of the slaveholder?
Ephraim Peabody (1849) emphasizes Josiah Henson's story
regarding the slave's fear of being sold away from his loved ones: "We
believe that this internal slave trade is a system more accursed, more
deserving of execration, the cause of more suffering, than the direct trade
from Africa. It is a horrible phantom of the South” (72). This possible
fear enveloped by the selfishness of the masters occupies the thoughts of
many men and women: When he was asked if he were willing to go to
5
See also Griffin Gyrus (1828): 77-81.

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Charleston City, North Carolina, Omar Ibn Said (1937) answers, "No,
no, no, no, no, no, no, I not willing to go to Charleston” (791).
Peabody's analysis of the fugitive slaves paves the way for fiction writers
such as Harriet Beecher Stowe to find subject for her immortal Uncle
Tom in 1857. Stowe (1853) herself admits that Josiah Henson is the
prototype for her Uncle Tom. After the publication of her novel, Stowe
has written to the publishers that she will present the "original facts and
documents upon which the story is founded together with corroborative
statement verifying the truth of the work."6
The slave author, in the full
flush of his release from the dreadful reality of slavery, felt the system's
wrongs. The slave protagonist proved that he was formerly a slave in
order to affirm his personal identity, a personal experience. With his
exceptional characteristics, the protagonist undermined the narrator's
believability as historical document, since it inevitably distanced the
narrator from the self he authenticated. What the slave narrative required
and aimed at was the establishment of personal experience—the
existence of the self.7
Unlike English narratives, Arabic slave narratives in antebellum
America had no way for publication since they were written in Arabic.
What have been published were translated extracts from the original
manuscripts or oral translations. The question might be raised about the
reliability and authenticity of these narratives. The best example to be
examined is what was written about Selim, the Algerian, under the title
"The Converted Algerine" by Reverned Benjamin H. Rice: "The
following narrative was committed to writing by an aged clergyman in
Virginia, and is communicated for publication by a missionary of known
character. Its authenticity may be relied on"8
(my emphasis). A couple
of questions here might be asked: Who is the "aged clergyman in
Virginia?" Who is the "missionary of known character?" Even the editor
himself raises some doubts about the narrative's reliability: "Its
authenticity may be relied on."
6
Stowe's title page of the Key to her novel contains twenty narrative sketches.
7
See Henry Louis Gates, Jr., (1987). On the relationship between songs and
referents, see Ann Kibbey (1983): 162-82; see also Gates (1988).
8
William Meade (1857): Vol. I, 341.

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Other questions also are relevant: Does an Arabic slave narrative, in
its present translated, rearranged, and edited form, represent the actual
condition of the slave's life? Are these left incomplete translations or
excerpts exact productions of what their authors really feel and think?
What happened to some other slave narratives has undoubtedly happened
to Arabic ones. Taking an example from the English narrative by
Harrison Berryman (1861), the narrative reveals the actual alterations
made to the same narrative. A. M. Edderman notes that "The original
manuscript [Slavery and Abolitionism as Viewed by a Georgian Slave]
was, however, afterwards sent to Col. Hogan of Griffin, for his
inspection,and while in his possession was destroyed by fire." Harrison
rewrote and "made some additions", according to Edderman, who read
the manuscript and found "some errors of fact" that need to be corrected
before sending it to press. After making these corrections, the
manuscript went to press. This is what has happened to a slave narrative
written in English. How about an Arabic slave narrative?
In the preface to Mohammed Ali's narrative (1867), the editor states:
At the request of those who had been from time
to time entertained by the recital of positions of
his history, he was induced to put it in writing.
The narrative which follows is condensed from
his manuscript, and his own language has been
retained as far as possible (485).
The editor also attempts to give a wrapping of the narrative by
making the following comment: "At this point the written narrative of
Nicholas ends, at some date during the year 1861" (494).
In another Arabic narrative, the editor confirms that what follows is
an extract from a translation of an Arabic manuscript: "The following
passages from the Arabic manuscript, written in Monorvia, by a Negro
from the interior, at the request of President Benson, of Liberia, for
gentleman in New York" (Brown Brown, 1864, 88). This particular
Arabic manuscript, of eighteen letter sheet pages, is of great interest. It
follows conventional Arabic writings at the beginning. Then it goes on
to address various issues as the "Origin of Man", accounts of animals,
numbers and mystical figures which the editor ignored and felt that the
author was trying to write in different subjects and, according to the

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editor, he fell into confusion. Regarding this manuscript, no trace is
found. All that has been left is what the editor published, short extracts in
a couple of pages, in the Methodist Quarterly Review 46 (1864). In these
extracts, the editor summarizes several pages because they address
"theological and philosophical issues." In another manuscript of sixteen
letter sheet pages written to ex-President Roberts, the editor published
extracts from the translation and made comments that the author
[unidentified] made "few remarkable and incredible statements" (Brown,
88). What are these statements? Nothing is left except what the editor has
approved [short extracts]. Regarding these manuscripts, no trace has
been found.
Blassingame (1972) examined the editorial process of the narratives
and found that most editors tried to write form and he pointed that former
slaves had undergone interrogation to supply evidence on doubtful
points. These editors were impressive groups of people who were noted
for their integrity such as lawyers, ministers, historians, or journalists,
who were antagonists to or had little or no connection with the
professional abolitionists (79). That was found in English narratives but
Arabic narratives did not include much of the sufferings, punishments,
and exaggeration. This exclusion seemed to be made by the editors or
translators of these narratives—in most cases they were ministers and
preachers not journalists or lawyers.
In slave autobiographies, there is included stilted interjections
voiced by a Puritan minister, who recorded them not the narrator. These
versions have moral and sentimental flourishes. In Arabic narratives, the
insights of the narrator could be separated easily from these elaborations
of the editors. This is what the author-narrator (1837) says in Omar Ibn
Said's autobiography:
In the name of God, the merciful, the gracious.
God grant his blessing upon our Prophet
Mohammed. Blessed be He whose hands is the
Kingdom and who is Almighty . . . Say,
"Knowledge is from God" Say; "Have you not
seen that your water has become impure? Who will
bring you fresh water from the mountain?"
(791-92)

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That the slave has undergone various means of torment as chattel is
denied by the pro-slavery writer, who gives a harsh and unfair judgment.
These writers consider slaves liars. This is what a noted leader of the
American Anti-Slavery Society, Gerrit Smith (1837), writes: "Simple-
hearted and truthful" as fugitive bond men from the South might appear
to be, one "must recollect that they are slaves—and the slave, as a
general thing is a liar" (164). Another major critic of the narratives
remarked that the more fictitious a slave narrative, the more it "reads
like a novel, replete with reconstructed dialogue and false sentiment"
(Blassingame, 233). In Abdul Rahaman's narrative, dialogue is not
overused and it is not very dramatic. As it is mentioned earlier, the
narrative is a modified segmental translation of the original Arabic
manuscript.
He said, boy, where did you come from? I said
from Col. F's. He said, he did not raise you.
Then he said, you came form Teembo? I
answered, yes, sir. He said, your name Abdul
Rahaman? I said, yes, sir. Then springing
from his horse, he embraced me, and inquired
how I came to this country? Then he said,
dash down your potatoes and come to my
house. I said I could not, but must take the
potatoes home (Griffin Gyrus, 1828, 81).
According to M. M. Bakhtin (1981), the "novelization of narrative is
a phenomenon that helps to keep any genre"; slave narratives are, for
example, in "a living contact with unfinished, still evolving
contemporary reality." William M. Andrews (1988) notes:
The "reality" that slave narratives evoke for us
through dialogue is not what they are doing or
trying to do in and through certain
conventions of discourse . . . An
autobiographer who "dialogizes" his or her
narrative is often more important to us as a
dramatizer of basic sociolinguistic realities

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that structured the relationships of blacks and
whites in slavery than as a recorder of spoken
discourse (91).
The significance of dialogue in narratives is that it implies
something about the negotiation of power in the discourse between a
slave narrator and a reader or between a master and a slave (Andrews,
91). In his Arabic narrative, Omar Ibn Said (1837) employed no dialogue
because he did not understand English. That was very clear from his
being unable to answer the questions raised by the white men: "On
Friday the jailer came and opened the door of the house and I saw a
great many men, all Christians, some of whom called out to me, 'What is
your name? Is it Omar or Said?' I did not understand their Christian
language" (793). What is significant about this is that Omar Ibn Said
does not dramatize: all that is presented in "translation" points to the
relationship between the slave and the master.
In Arabic slave narratives, of course, the author's narrator is not
telling an autobiography or relating incidents of torture and suffering but
he is preaching a sermon to his congregation. This sermonic element
employed in these narratives is a reminder for all people to go back to
God, praise Him, and pray for their sins.
O ye people of North Carolina, O ye people of
S. Carolina, O ye people of America all of
you; have you among you any two such men
as Jim Owen and John Owen? These men are
good men. What food they eat they give to me
to eat. As they clothe themselves they clothe
me. They permit me to read the gospel of
God, our Lord, and Saviour, and King; who
regulates all our circumstances, our health and
wealth, and who bestows his mercies
willingly, not by constraint. According to
power I open my heart, as to a great light, to
receive the true way, the way of the Lord
Jesus the Messiah (Omar Ibn Said, 1837, 793).

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Moreover, the author directs the style of the narrative because he is
the one who has the freedom to re-narrate and manipulate what has been
said and put it in the way he thinks appropriate. Since the editor is a
preacher, most of the translated narratives focus on theological doctrines.
Reporting about Selim, the Algerian, the editor says, "As they bore him
in and rested in the passage, he rose up, and say melodiously one of Dr.
Watt's hymns for children: 'How glorious is our heavenly King!' The first
time it was ever known, but we suppose it must have been from his
Presbyterian friends in Prince Edward" (Meade, 1857, 348). In the
narrative of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, Richard R. Madden translated the
Arabic manuscript dated September 20th, 1834 with the help of al-
Siddiq. Madden (1835) commented on the translation: "The above was
written in Arabic. The man speaks English well and correctly for a
Negro, but does not read or write it. I caused him to read the original,
and translate it word by word; and, form the little knowledge I have of
spoken language, I can safely present you with this version of it as a
literal translation” (484, my emphasis). Where is the original
manuscript? It may have been destroyed for a long time during the
nineteenth century. Moreover, the slave, as mentioned earlier, can not
read or write English but he can speak the language.
Arabic slave narratives efficacy is tied to the translator's or editor's
motives: appeal to the white audience's religious emotions, emphasis on
the slave’s conversion into Christianity, and gaining the abolitionists'
support. The narratives had certain weaknesses. A majority of them
were dictated by the slaves, all written in Arabic language, translated by
others, and made the original manuscripts disappear for the purpose of
gathering material for its use by those who opposed the institution as
anti-slavery propaganda. This is what Michael Nelson (1994) said about
slave narratives: "The authentic self of American slavery must always
differ from itself, and the antebellum slave narratives stand as the record
of the agonistic cultural and literary coming into being the 'double
consciousness' of the African American and the 'double voicelessness' of
African American" (14). Despite all the shortcomings found in Arabic
and English slave narratives, they have their value and remain part of the
American literature that continued to play a significant role in the
modern Afro-American literature.

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Obviously the slave narratives played an important role in rousing
white readers against slavery and contributed to rouse interest and
prepare for a social conscience. The slave narratives were not the main
cause of abolition but they contributed to that cause. Although the
narratives are accounts which deal in part with life in Africa before
transportation to America, there is the control of slaves by fear which did
not present the slaves from looking back nostalgically to their past days.
These narratives were, and still are influential contribution to American
cultural history of the nineteenth century. It is the slave's suffering in his
private purgatory of oppression where his autobiography recalls his
bondage and freedom. Such writings identify the genre and justify its
place in American literary and cultural history. Despite the life of abject
poverty that would last for generations and all the disasters visited upon
him or her, the slave survived and wrote his sufferings and pains in the
history of man.

Khrisat
89
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Authenticity Of Arabic Slave Narratives

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