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CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-Spanish National Research Council)
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Departamento de Estudios Árabes e Islámicos
Complutense University of Madrid, Estudios Arabes e Islamicos
Thesis Title: Islamic law and slavery in premodern West Africa: religion and ethnicity in the work "Mi'raj al-su'ud" by Ahmad baba al-Tinbukti (1556-1627)
About
This dissertation examines the work Miʿrāj al-ṣuʿūd, written in Timbuktu by Aḥmad Bābā (963/1556-1036/1627), a fatwa or legal opinion that addresses the issue of the black (sūdān) slaves that claimed their freedom in the markets of North Africa, for having been captured while being Muslims, something not allowed in pre-Modern Islamic law. According to it, only infidels without the protection of a pact or of the dhimma status can be legally enslaved. Aḥmad Bābā repeats this doctrine, while emphasizing that the black skin color has nothing to do with slavery in islam, and that the peoples of pre-Modern West Africa (bilād al-sūdān) are not slaves by nature. This way the author gives a response to the questions that had been addressed to him by North African Muslims: from the Touat and the Draʿa valley regions, in the south of present-day Algeria and Morocco, main enclaves of the Transaharan trade at the time. The analysis of the legal foundations of the work shows that an adaptation of the Islamic regulations on slavery to the social and political characteristics of the local African setting takes place, namely by establishing lists of the “enslaveable” non-Muslim ethnic groups, and the “unenslaveable” Muslims. This feature, that can already be observed in a previous fatwa by Makhlūf al-Balbālī, also issued in premodern West Africa, links religion, the main determining factor for rightful enslavement according to islam, to ethnicity, that sets the pattern of social and political relations, and especially dependency relations, in the bilād al-sūdān. This dissertation suggests that the available textual evidence provides sufficient grounds as to reasonably suspect that the author’s economic and social status could have motivated that his ruling was more favorable to the Transaharan trade in slaves than necessary.
Keywords: Captives, slavery, Islamic law, Māliki law, skin color, premodern West Africa, Transaharan slave trade.
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| Address: | marta.garcia@madrimasd.net |
