Resumen de Islamic law and slavery in premodern West Africa
This article examines a series of legal works on the subject of slavery and enslavement in premodern West Africa written by Aḥmad Bābā, Timbuktu’s most famous Islamic scholar (963/1556-1036/1627). Inthese juridical opinions (fatāwā, fatwas, and ajwiba, legal responsa), Aḥmad Bābā answers several questions concerning the lawfulness of enslaving different ethnical groups of the bilād al-sūdān,1and the legal procedure that should be followed with the slaves that claim their freedom for having been captured while being free. The author’s stance towards it clearly stresses that in the religion of Islam, slavery is not related to race, but to infidelity, thus rejecting contemporary views that held that Africans were slaves by nature. Nevertheless, the author’s and enquirer’s links to Trans-Saharan trade in slaves may have conditioned the motivation and efficacy of these legal texts
