Remaining enslaved for the remainder of his life, he wrote a series of Arabic-language works on history and theology, including a short autobiography.

Omar ibn Said was born to a wealthy family in what would in a few years become the Imamate of Futa Toro,[2] an Islamic theocratic state located along the Middle Senegal River in West Africa.

"[5] Ibn Said was offered multiple opportunities to return to Africa, but he chose to remain in the United States, citing his uncertainty that his family and his people were still intact.

The back of this card contains another person's handwriting in English misidentifying the surah as the Lord's Prayer and attesting to Omar's status as a good Christian.

It was most likely that he stayed a Muslim his whole life but was believed to have converted to Christianity by people at the time when he simply loved Jesus since he was considered a prophet in Islam.

[citation needed] Literary analysis of ibn Said's autobiography suggests that he wrote it for two audiences: the white literates who sought to exploit his conversion to Christianity and Muslim readers who would recognize Qur'anic literary devices and subtext and understand his position as a fellow Muslim using Taqiya to hide his faith while living under persecution.

Scholar Basima Kamel Shaheen argues that Said's spiritual ambiguity may have been purposefully cultivated to impress upon a wide readership the injustices of slavery.

[15] The opera Omar, inspired by ibn Said and written by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, had its debut at the Sottile Theater during the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina on May 27, 2022.