Omar Ibn Said: Conserving a One-of-a-Kind Manuscript

(This is a repost from the Library of Congress Blog.  The author is Sylvia Albro, a senior paper conservator in the Conservation Division. Earlier this month, the Library released online the Omar Ibn Said Collection, including Omar Ibn Said’s autobiography, the only known extant autobiography written in Arabic by an enslaved person in the United States. A wealthy and educated man, Omar Ibn Said was captured in West Africa and brought to the U.S. as a slave. He wrote his autobiography in 1831.)