Abstract
This article analyzes how the currently known West African fatāwā up to the 11th/17th-century, namely the rulings by Maḥmud b. ʿUmar b. Muḥammad Aqīt, Maḫlūf al-Balbālī and Aḥmad Bābā al-Tinbutkī, portray the sale of free Muslims (bīʿ al-aḥrār) in the premodern Sahel. It argues that the strong contradictions between Aḥmad Bābā al-Tinbuktī’s Miʿrāǧ al-ṣuʿūd and his previous legal replies to Yūsuf al-Īsī may justify to affirm that these Aǧwiba were not authored by the Timbuktu scholar, and suggests that the reasons for their elaboration and their attribution to him may be related to the interests of traders from the Maghreb, where the manuscripts of the Aǧwiba were found and the Replies supposedly emitted. This study brings forward the hypothesis that the aim of the text may have been to reduce the impact that the extraordinary measure of accepting the enslaved person’s qawl when declaring to have been illicitly captured at times and places where the sale of unenslaveable persons is attested, found in the Sahelian rulings but also in preceding Andalusi and Maghrebian rulings, could have probably caused in putting the indiscriminate sale of West African captives into question. This would also imply the existence of voices against their sale, probably because the adherence to Islam of the enslaved persons must have been clearly manifest.
Acknowledgment
This article is part of the results of the Research Group (GIF) MASYG (Universidad de Alcalá, UAH) and the Research Sub-Project “Transits and Migrations in North Africa: Diachronic Analysis of the Population and its Environment (DIANA)” (HAR2017-82152-C2-2-P; P.I. Helena de Felipe, Universidad de Alcalá), which, together with the Research Sub-Project “Transformations in Maghrebian Space through a Historic Perspective (TRAMAGHIS)” (HAR2017-82152-C2-1-P; P.I. Miguel Ángel Manzano, IEMYRhd, Universidad de Salamanca), is integrated in the Coordinated Research Project “Transits and Transformations in Maghrebian Space and Population (MAGNA II)” (MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 y FEDER Una manera de hacer Europa, coord. Miguel Ángel Manzano). I wish to express my gratitude towards the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, as well as towards Clément Salah, Ayoub Filali and Wissam Halawi.
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Shaping the norm: Social and doctrinal development of the Mālikī maḏhab
- Aufsätze – Articles – Articles
- Early Mālikī Manuscripts: A Retrospective
- L’émergence du mašhūr mālikite (IVe-VIe/Xe-XIIe siècle): harmonisation de la norme juridique et crise de l’autorité en Occident musulman
- Coping with External and Internal Disintegration Forces: Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ and the Stabilization of Mālikīsm in the Maghrib
- Du mālikisme dans les Nukat al-maḥṣūl d’Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (m. 543/1148). Contribution à l’histoire des uṣūl al-fiqh en Occident musulman
- La validité de la prière communautaire en milieu oasien : élaboration d’une jurisprudence saharienne (ixe/xve s.)
- Who Wrote the Replies to al-Īsī? Islamization in the Sahel and Trans-Saharan Slavery in Early Modern Mālikī Fatāwā
- Judicial Practice as Islamic Law: The ʿAmal of Fez in Post-Classical Mālikī Legal Tradition
- Les dynamiques contemporaines du mālikisme francophone
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2023
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2023
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Shaping the norm: Social and doctrinal development of the Mālikī maḏhab
- Aufsätze – Articles – Articles
- Early Mālikī Manuscripts: A Retrospective
- L’émergence du mašhūr mālikite (IVe-VIe/Xe-XIIe siècle): harmonisation de la norme juridique et crise de l’autorité en Occident musulman
- Coping with External and Internal Disintegration Forces: Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ and the Stabilization of Mālikīsm in the Maghrib
- Du mālikisme dans les Nukat al-maḥṣūl d’Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (m. 543/1148). Contribution à l’histoire des uṣūl al-fiqh en Occident musulman
- La validité de la prière communautaire en milieu oasien : élaboration d’une jurisprudence saharienne (ixe/xve s.)
- Who Wrote the Replies to al-Īsī? Islamization in the Sahel and Trans-Saharan Slavery in Early Modern Mālikī Fatāwā
- Judicial Practice as Islamic Law: The ʿAmal of Fez in Post-Classical Mālikī Legal Tradition
- Les dynamiques contemporaines du mālikisme francophone
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2023
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2023