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Title
SITUATING AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSLIM SLAVE NARRATIVES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
Faculty Advisor
Dr. Doris Hambuch
Defense Date
11 April 2017
Abstract
Slave narrative as a genre became popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and narratives of enslaved African
American Muslims originate between 1734 and 1873. Examples of enslaved African American Muslims are Ayyub ben
Suleiman (Job ben Solomon), Omar ibn Said, Abdr-Rahman Ibrahim, Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, Lamine Kebe, Mohammad
Ali ben Said (Nicolas Said) and Bilali Muhammad (Ben Ali). Their narratives are not anthologized. This dissertation explores
Muslim and non-Muslim African American slave narratives from a comparative perspective. It proposes the inclusion of
African American Muslim slave narratives in American literature.
Chapter one reviews critical approaches to canonization and discusses reasons for the exclusion of narratives by enslaved
African American Muslims from the American canon. Chapter two defines the slave narrative genre in light of the
socio-historical background on slavery in narratives by enslaved African American Muslims. Chapter three focuses on
the characteristics of early African American slave narratives and analyzes Ayyub ben Suleiman’s account. Chapter four
discusses characteristics of antebellum African American slave narratives and analyzes and compares narratives of enslaved
African American Muslims with Fredrick Douglass’s narrative. Chapter five focuses on the post-bellum slave narrative by
Mohammad Ali Ben Said (Nicholas Said), and discusses characteristics of the post-Civil War slave narrative.
The addition of narratives by enslaved African American Muslims would provide a more complete portrait about enslaved
people and their writings at a crucial stage in American history. The study will ultimately contribute to current debates
about literary canonization.
Dissertation
MUNA SULAIMAN NASSER
AL BADAAI
Department of English Literature
College of Humanities and Social Sciences