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SLAVERY, EXCHANGE AND ISLAMIC LAW:
A GLIMPSE FROM THE ARCHIVES OF MALI AND
MAURITANIA*
Ghislaine Lydon University of California, Los Angeles
any pages have been written about slavery and the slave trades in and out of Africa. Much less attention has been paid to the local laws that governed such dealings in the past. While several detailed studies document the pervasiveness of slave pawns in the credit and loan markets, our knowledge of both the legal and the financial institutions that once regulated such transactions in Africa is still limited.^1 This is particularly true of scholarship on Muslims who were more likely to leave written records of their commercial activities. Indeed, because of the availability of such sources, and given that slavery is such a popular subject of historical investigation, one would expect that the rules governing commercial exchange in slaves between Muslims in precolonial West Africa, and the place of Islamic law as a referent, would be better understood.^2
M
Based on a reading of Islamic legal theory, and relying on a handful of commercial and legal sources, this article is a modest contribution to our understanding of exchanges in slaves among Muslims in nineteenth-century Mali and Mauritania. After setting the context for these documents with a brief discussion of the trans- Saharan slave trade in the nineteenth century and Muslim justifications of it, I examine the provisions regulating sales and
purchases of slaves according to the Mālikī doctrine of Islamic law prevailing in the region. I review how such transactions were defined in key references, including the two most commonly used legal
manuals in West Africa: the compendia of Abū Mu ammad
‘Abdullah ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī and Khalīl ibn Isā q al-Jundī.^3
Then I turn to the local evidence documenting transactions in the human commodity in order to ascertain to what extent Islamic law provided a framework for commercial exchange and the regulation of slave property rights. From this limited sample of sources I make the following three preliminary observations. First, Islamic legal
African Economic History v.33 (2005): 117-148.
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principles on transactions in slaves were well known among learned Muslims who tended to be traders as well as conspicuous consumers of slaves. Second, local jurists provided legal intermediation to Muslims who actively sought counsel or arbitration in matters concerning slave transactions. Finally, Islamic law, as defined in classic legal manuals and represented in the official record of slave transactions, while offering guidelines, was not always followed, applied or enforced among these ostensibly litigious societies.
I. The Setting: Trade, Slavery and Islamic Practice Most historians concur that the volume of trans-Saharan trade, including the trafficking of enslaved Africans from West Africa to the Maghrib, over to northeast Africa and beyond to the markets of the Middle East, grew significantly in the nineteenth century.^4 In the early part of the century, European imperial powers, starting with Denmark and followed by Britain and then France, eventually put an end to the Atlantic slave trade. While on the coast slave markets experienced a ‘slow death’, in the Western Sudanic interior they remained active well into the twentieth century. For the region that concerns us these markets included the northern desert-edge market of
Guelmīm, the Mauritanian desert-oasis of Tīshīt, ports of trade along the Senegal River, the Malian center of Timbuktu, and the Libyan market of Ghadāmis. Prices of enslaved Africans may have shifted as a consequence of the drop in the Atlantic-side demand, perhaps reaching one of their lowest levels in West Africa sometime in the nineteenth century. Martin Klein found that the overall prices of slaves would have dropped in the first three decades before rising again for the remainder of the century.^5 This may well have been the period when, based on real or imagined facts, a slave’s worth in salt was the size of a foot cut out in a slab of salt.^6 At the same time, European mercantilism along the coast of West Africa now imported ever larger quantities of goods, from industrial cotton cloth and paper to sugar and tea, which transformed consumption patterns and African demand in the hinterland.
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wells. Access to cheaper slaves gave a boost to the labor-intensive date palm cultivation, and especially the small cereal-producing fields of Saharan oases.^13 Concurrently, this increase in cereal production in the Sahara may have been provoked by Saharans’ desire to secure basic subsistence needs in the face of the increasing insecurity surrounding West African markets. Salt bars were the primary currency Saharans used to acquire slaves. Ann McDougall convincingly argues that a higher demand for slave labor in salt-pans, to meet the increased demand for salt bars in and across the Sahara, gave added impetus to the slave trade.^14
Muslims, Literacy and Caravan Trade As Saharan archives reveal, the nineteenth century was also the most prolific period for written documentation in Arabic, including material pertaining to trans-Saharan trading activity. Indeed, as is clear from their numerous legal and commercial records, a majority of large-scale caravan organizers were Muslim and literate. Many relied on Islamic law as a framework for regulating their often complex business operations and contractual agreements. To finance caravans, they depended extensively on multiple forms of credit transactions across long distances and currency zones. Observance of the basic tenets of Islamic law tended to be self- regulating as most Muslims generally abided by its basic principles. But when legal contestation or disputes arose, the role of scholars of Islamic jurisprudence was paramount. These legal specialists influenced the conduct of trade through contract enforcement and mediation, by establishing standards of measures and valuation, and by setting guidelines for local and cross-cultural exchange. Classic and local interpretations of Islamic practice provided an institutional framework upheld by Muslim authorities who shaped the law and whose rulings were enforced through reputation mechanisms. 15 Saharan merchants were reliant upon paper (imported in much larger quantities in the nineteenth century) to document their economic transactions for purposes of accounting, accountability and to uphold their property rights. Until the last decade of the nineteenth century, a semblance of economic order was maintained across a large area of Muslim West Africa based on what I have called elsewhere a ‘paper economy of faith.’^16
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Islamic Law and Slavery Although this article focuses on transactions in slaves, a word must be said about local justifications for slavery. For centuries, traders and consumers of slaves in the Muslim world based their actions on a number of ill-defined assumptions couched in religious terms. Conventional wisdom maintained that the only lawful means to generate slaves in Islam was through the capture during a jihad of non-Muslims who refused to convert. Indeed, a theological argument was used to justify the act of enslaving unbelievers as part of a
proselytizing mission to expand the frontiers of belief or D ā r al-
Isl ā m.^17 Several scholars argue, however, that the sources of Islamic
law do not justify enslavement, while manumission was recommended.^18 To be sure, since the time of the Prophet’s original seventh-century jihad , the sources of Islamic law often have been reinterpreted to justify acts of enslavement. Muslim scholars throughout the ages debated slavery from various angles. For example, a fifteenth-century Egyptian jurist from
the panafī school of law wrote a treatise advising traders on how best
to select purchased slaves through careful inspection.^19 In West Africa, the best known legal opinions or fatwas on the lawful enslavement of
Africans were written by the celebrated Muslim scholar A mad Bābā
ibn Mu ammad Aqīt who lived in sixteenth-and early seventeenth- century Timbuktu.^20 But even this author writes with the assumption that non-Muslims could be lawfully enslaved. His reply to a Maghribi
of Tuwāt, who was seeking to identify the non-Muslims subject to lawful enslavement, was entitled “The Ladder of Ascent Towards Grasping the Law Concerning Transported Blacks.” In his answer, which reads like an ethnographic account, the scholar mapped the limits of the known Muslim world beyond which he considered it permissible to enslave Africans.^21 His legal opinions seem to have held wide currency among Muslim scholars from Morocco to Hausaland.^22 With the expansion of the frontiers of Islam in the nineteenth
century, many contemporary scholars such as the Moroccan A mad
ibn Khālid Al-NāÑirī would question, on legal and racial grounds, the legitimacy of enslaving Africans indiscriminately. 23 That trans- Saharan slave dealers were concerned with lawfully carrying out their
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boys between the ages of ten and fourteen, while the equivalent for
girls of similar age was ama (plur. im ā ’ ). Some traders used sad ā s , a
word which I suspect stems from the Arabic “sixth,” for young boys
and the equivalent sad ā siya for young girls. 27 This last term was
common among traders from Libya and the markets of Hausaland and Bornu servicing the eastern branches of trans-Saharan trade. 28 Moreover, male slaves or freed slaves working as commercial agents
and couriers for merchants of Ghadāmis and Ghāt, commonly were
ascribed the epithet of ghul ā m or sometimes sayd.
Sources of Mālikī Law
By the end of the nineteenth century, a majority of West Africans in the region of present-day Mali and Mauritania were Muslim and they followed the doctrine of Islamic law founded by
Imām Mālik Ibn Anas.^29 There the main Mālikī references were the
works of two medieval scholars from Africa.^30 The first, entitled “The
Treatise” ( al-Ris ā la ), was written by Abū Mu ammad ‘Abdallah ibn
Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī who lived in tenth century Tunisia.^31 The
second was “The Compendium of Jurisprudence of Imām Mālik’s
Legal Doctrine” ( Mukhta Ñ ar f ī al-fiqh ‘ al ā ma hab al-Im ā m M ā lik ) by
Khalīl ibn Isā q al-Jundī, a fourteenth century Egyptian scholar.^32 The
Mukhta Ñ ar was the most popular legal code, perhaps because it was
written later, but mainly because it was concise and designed to be
memorized and passed down orally.^33 Moreover, Khalīl’s version is
more technical on commercial transactions, while Ibn Abī Zayd’s
abridgement is written in narrative style. West African Muslim jurists based their decisions on such works, and wrote commentaries on other commentaries. 34 They also referred to them while engaging in daily jurisprudence that was tailored to the particular circumstances of the day by writing legal opinions and shorter replies, as examined in the next section.
Overall, the compendia of Ibn Abī Zayd and Khalīl, both based
on the fundamental texts of Mālikī fiqh (jurisprudence), held similar positions on slave transactions. Imām Mālik’s principle contribution,
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the Muwa ÓÓ a’ (or “The Well-Trodden Path”), a collection of Prophetic
sayings and legal questions compiled in eighth-century Medina, was the first source of reference.^35 Of its sixty-one chapters, containing over two-hundred references to slaves, the most relevant discussion of
slavery is the one on business transactions ( kit ā b al-mu‘ ā ml ā t ).^36 The
second Mālikī reference manual is the Mudawwana (“The Book of
Law”) by Sa nūn ibn Sa’īd who, like Ibn Abī Zayd, was from the city
of Qayrawān in Tunisia. While this text was well-known, its sixteen
volumes were not readily available in the libraries of nineteenth-
century West Africa. More so than Imām Mālik’s text, the
Mudawwana was extremely detailed on the rules of commercial exchange and the question of sales.^37
Exchanges in Slaves and Animals
With notable exceptions examined below, Mālikī law treated transactions involving slaves similarly to those of animals. The two primary rules of trade in Islam, which were plainly linked, were the interdict on usury and the requirement that transactions take place simultaneously.^38 Selling a good with a delay was considered usurious simply because that delay was worth something to the seller. However, the sale with anticipated payment, a practice known as salam, was considered lawful only for slaves, animals, foodstuffs as well as real estate and land as long as terms and prices were agreed upon and payment occurred prior to delivery.^39 Selling slaves in bulk was also forbidden since like animals they could be priced individually. Moreover, they also could be sold in portions or shares.^40 As with animals, slaves were loaned out temporarily or rented.^41 In these cases, if the slave became pregnant during the loan period, the progeny belonged to the owner, not the borrower. 42 It also was unlawful to sell “the fish that are in streams and ponds, the fetus in the belly of his mother, what is in the belly of animals, the future litter of the female camel, or a male camel’s potential to produce offspring.” 43 Finally, unlike domestic animals that constituted perpetual property, slaves could be manumitted or they could be allowed to purchase their freedom_._^44
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the possibility of parentage. 53 The female slave purchased on stipulation of a legal period was placed in the custody of a third party, which had to be a woman, who reported when and if the slave menstruated. The third-party supervision was obligatory whether the seller recognized having had sexual relations with the slave or not. For, if the slave bore a child, the buyer was not allowed to separate mother and child until the stipulated growing-up time, which according to Ibn Abī Zayd was after the second teething period (in
approximately the sixth year).^54 The actual purchase took place when the reproductive state of the slave had so been determined.^55 The rules were strict about the unlawfulness of certain transactions considered risky and uncertain. These included the sale of runaway slaves, for it was prohibited to sell “a slave in flight, [like] a bird in the air, [or] a fish in the water.”^56 When a slave with possessions was sold, her/his possessions remained the property of the seller unless otherwise specified in the bill of sale. 57 In addition, Māliki scholars wrote long lists of conditions that could either
adversely affect a slave’s price (such as circumcision, broken teeth, varicose veins, transgender behavior or a tendency to wet the bed), or increase his/her value, including a slave’s capacity to read and count.^58 As for credit transactions (which had to be free of obvious and exploitative interest), everything could be loaned except for slave girls ( ama ) and silver dust.^59
Pawnship The modalities of pawning, or the pledging of property as a
security for a loan, were carefully discussed by Mālikī scholars and
were more explicitly detailed in the work of Khalīl.^60 Pawned objects
were simply guarantees for future loan repayments, but in the case of pawned slaves the labor performed by the slave during the loan period benefited the creditor, representing, in effect, interest on the principal loan.^61 This can be compared to the pawning of domestic animals (cows, camels), as well as trees and arable land that could be exploited for a profit. At the same time, the upkeep and maintenance of pawns was the responsibility of the creditor. In principle, most everything could be pawned with notable exceptions. It was illegal, for instance, to pawn items with uncertain
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ownership, such as a runaway slave. 62 Moreover, the pawning of slave-girls and young women was discouraged, and to be lawful, a creditor’s planned cohabitation with a female pawn had to be specified in the contract.^63 If a child was born to a female pawn during the loan period, the child remained the property of the debtor, unless a prior arrangement had been convened.^64 The subsequent loaning of the pawn by the creditor was prohibited, and s/he lost the financial privilege if s/he loaned the pawn back to the original owner for a profit. But if a debtor failed to pay back the loan, the slave or part of the slave could be sold to cover the original debt.^65 Finally, if the pawn committed a misdemeanor, a crime, or if s/he came to perish, the creditor was held responsible.
Enslaved Trade Agents Use of slaves as commercial representatives and couriers was
quite common in Africa as elsewhere.^66 In this particular case, Mālikī law stipulated that “the slave who is authorized to trade cannot be sold to cover debts he incurred.” 67 Here, as in all cases, masters remained liable for all acts committed by enslaved trade agents or caravan workers. Indeed, slave owners were held accountable for all damages caused by their slaves, and if the amount covering the cost of the damage exceeded the value or original price of the slave, the slave simply changed hands.^68
As noted earlier, the compendia of Ibn Abī Zayd and Khalīl hold similar views on exchanges in slaves, but there is one notable exception which has to do with interfaith commerce. Indeed, for
Khalīl it was unlawful for Muslims to sell to non-Muslims copies of
the holy book, Muslim slaves, or even young slaves.^69 Interestingly, he admitted that such slaves could be temporarily pawned but not sold to non-Muslims. Yet he provided seemingly contradictory recommendations about the use of Muslim pawns. On the one hand, he argued that if a pawn converted to Islam during the debt period, the debtor was obligated to renegotiate his guarantee (i.e. provide another non-Muslim pawn). At the same time he stated that a newly converted pawn could still be sold in the absence of the debtor and debt reimbursement. Given that the boundaries between enslavement and Islam were not always clear in the legal arena from the beginning of Islam, such confusion is hardly surprising. For all of these dealings
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cases involving transactions in slaves. I also mined fatwas, attestations, contracts and other commercial records from several private archives. As for the Malian sources, they were collected from family records held in Timbuktu at the Centre de Documentation et de Recherches Ahmad Baba (CEDRAB). The following discussion is therefore based on a varied yet admittedly limited sample of legal and commercial documents.
In his collection of short legal replies ( naw ā zil ), which became the
model for all subsequent Mauritanian jurisprudence, the seventeenth- century jurist Bil-A‘mish provided counsel on a number of slave- related concerns. Yet the only legal discussion I found dealing directly with the conduct of the slave trade was written by one of his
followers, Shaykh Sīdī ‘Abdallah Ibn al-pājj Ibrāhīm (d. 1816).
Concerning the legality of cross-cultural exchange with non-Muslims, he was asked the following: "Is it lawful to sell slaves to another trader knowing that in turn this trader is going to sell the slaves to the
Christians/Europeans ( al-Na Ñā r ā)?” 73 In his elaborate reply, Sīdī
‘Abdallah argued that it was not lawful for a Muslim to sell a slave to another Muslim if the first was aware that the second was a slave dealer who traded with non-Muslims. In other words, one could
purchase from, but not sell slaves to, non-Muslims. Citing Khalīl and
other Mālikī sources, his central argument was that it was the
responsibility of Muslims to initiate slaves to the religion of Islam. Indeed, his opinion that Muslim dealers should only sell slaves to
other Muslims was very much in line with Khalīl’s position discussed
above. It also followed official practice in Morocco, a place Sīdī
‘Abdallah knew well as a guest of the Sultan, where the sale of slaves
to Christians was prohibited based on Islamic legal opinion as expressed in a royally issued fatwa.^74
Enslaved Caravan Workers In the nineteenth century, caravans were often led by hired hands. Typically, caravanning families would place orders and send commercial agents on expeditions equipped with a shopping list detailing goods and terms of trade. Such documents could serve as passports to be presented to potential interceptors or caravan raiders.
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The reputation of certain important traders listed therein would often “protect” the caravan from being ransacked by unscrupulous “road- stoppers.”^75 The following excerpt from such a list, which includes the order of a slave, illustrates the commercial arrangements which prevailed between caravaners. Judging from the mint condition of the paper, this document is, in all likelihood, a copy of the original which traveled with the caravan. It describes an interregional salt caravan primarily destined to exchange salt for millet organized by traders
from ShingīÓi. Based on genealogical inference, the caravan dates to
the first half of the nineteenth century.
Reminder note regarding what the writer can at least expect to receive for his salt. Except three salt bars ( ‘ ad ī la ) which are for the debtor ( ghar ī m ; in this case the lead caravaner) and all of the half bars ( f āÑ) are his as well.^76 The rest of the salt was rented to us at the rate of two salt bars per camel. 77 …and on the camels of Mu ammad Sālam sixty-one salt bars…and for Mu ammad al- panshi’s family fifty-three salt bars, and Mu ammad Mālik’s family thirty-three salt bars and he gives to you (the caravan leader) on behalf of ‘Abdarra mān b. al-Ghāsī one mithq ā l^78 for the purchase of a good-looking unmarried slave girl ( ama ja ī da wa ‘ uzba ) or an ugly but very young one. And six and a half salt bars for the writer, and the salt must be sold for gold at the rate of one mithq ā l per one and a half salt bars… If millet can be found at the price of four mudd,^79 then buy the equivalent of five camel loads and five bars (i.e. a total of 35 bars) and if millet is less than that then buy three camel loads for whatever price you find.^80
As this example conveys, the caravan shareholders commissioned their trade deals in explicit terms, including the purchase of slaves such as the order for a young slave girl, either a nice-looking unmarried and presumably virgin one or one who was very young. When not specified, it was understood that the salt loads were to be exchanged for millet at the current market price. As aforementioned, slaves trained in matters of commerce were employed as trade representatives. Indeed, this may well have been the social status of the agent in charge of the caravan described above. In a document detailing the shares of a caravan loaded with millet
returning from southern markets to the town of Tīshīt, a male slave
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probably produced in the mid-nineteenth century judging from other documents written by the same trader. Aside from a desire to follow the Islamic legal recommendation that sales be put in writing, there are a number of professional reasons why slave dealers would hold tallies, including naming the identity of the sellers of individual slaves.^84 In this particular case, the slave dealer might have been on commission and therefore he would have had to keep a record of the price of each purchased slave. If he was trading for his own account he may have been required to register total expenditures. But in light of the legal deliberations regarding the sale of slaves and guarantees discussed in the previous section, committing purchases to writing provided legal guarantees. For such documents could be referred to in the eventuality that a “defect” was subsequently discovered in individual slaves.
Ailing Slaves with “Defects” At this stage of our research, it is difficult to say whether or not the Malīki principles concerning the three days (for obvious defects)
or one year (for special illnesses) guarantees for slave sales were actually adhered to in the nineteenth century. But the following
example, found in the naw ā zil of seventeenth-century jurist Bil-
A‘mish, sheds some light on the legal procedures concerning the purchase of slaves with “defects.” He was asked to deliberate on the following contested sale:
A man sold a portion of a horse for a young woman slave who was ill … And the buyer [of the horse] told the seller about [the conditions of] the sale in the presence of witnesses. He then disclosed that the slave woman was ill and they both agreed about this fact. And so the seller held the young female slave and she remained with him for four days and then she died. So should the sustenance [for those four days] be at the seller’s expense or not? Or are the sustenance before the death of the young slave girl, when her illness increased, and the expense after her death, equally his responsibility? And are the description of the defect, the explanation that she was sick by her seller, together with the examination of her visible condition [by the purchaser] adequate [enough for the sale to be considered lawful]? 85
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The question posed by the slave buyer and horse co-owner was twofold. First, he sought counsel to determine if his purchase agreement on an avowedly sick slave could be legally revoked on the basis that the illness caused the slave’s death. Second, in either case, he wanted to determine who was responsible for covering the maintenance costs of the slave during the four days, as well as the resultant burial costs. In his elaborate four-page response, where he cited numerous
legal texts including Khalīl, Imām Mālik’s Muwa ÓÓ a’ and Sa nūn’s
Mudawwana, Bil-A‘mish argued the following:
Whoever purchased a sick slave, is informed about his illness, and consents to the deal [was fully responsible and if] the slave came to die…the misfortune is for the purchaser if he knew about it, just like [is the case in sales of] the cow and the sheep...[And if] the seller knows [of the illness] and did not disclose it to the purchaser then he can return it, according to Khalīl.
In other words, the man who purchased the slave had to bear all the costs, including the loss of the ailing slave, since he had agreed to the sale. Evidently, the question of the three day guarantee therefore was naught since the “defect” in question had been acknowledged at the time of purchase.^86 In addition to deliberating on the application of the return policy in this case, Bil-A‘mish was also asked to discuss whether the slave dealer was responsible to reimburse at least part of the purchase price. After considering whether the slave was the only purchased item and whether the sales price was a bargain or not in relationship to the
value of the slave, Bil-A‘mish explained that Mālikī jurists had varying opinions on the subject. He reviewed different scenarios
discussed by Mālikī scholars, such as the case of a seller not fully
disclosing or under-representing the extent of the illness of a slave or animal, or the damages done by a contagious illness. In the end, the legal scholar ruled that “in this case the sickness of the slave girl ( ama ) was known; the seller mentioned it and the purchaser accepted it. If they both knew about it, then it is the purchaser’s loss.” 87 His
judgment was based entirely on Khalīl’s Mukhta Ñ ar , the basic Mālikī
text, “because,” he reasoned, “we people are all “followers of Khalīl”
( Khal ī liyūn ).”^88
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might not have been the subject of contestation had the enslaved mother given birth to male twins.^94 Another similar case, from the late nineteenth century, concerned
the donation of the use of half of a female slave. Mu ammad al-Amīn
agreed to “return half of his slave girl ( ama ) [named] AfayÓum to his mother so that she may use her during her lifetime.”^95 This was the
son of Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Khalīl, a prosperous Saharan long-distance
trader settled in Tīshīt. As the document makes clear, the slave girl
originally had been donated to Mu ammad al-Amīn by his mother.^96
The official recording of these types of donations ensured clarity in property right transfers. Donations could not be revoked by family members, and the documentation would be factored into inheritance procedures.^97 But such contractual precautions did not always guard against the eventuality of family feuds erupting over slave ownership.^98 The evidence of the joint ownership of enslaved individuals illustrates quite vividly the extent to which slaves, like livestock, were crassly valuated and partitioned in the process of exchange. It is difficult to imagine how the management of a co-owned slave would be negotiated, or how she may have been exploited by multiple masters. Undoubtedly, such stressful circumstances would have resulted in additional hardship and alienation for slaves forced to perform for several owners who expected equal rights over their labor as well as their bodies. That these and other types of deliberations were taking place at a time when slaves were supposedly at their cheapest is an indication that the human commodity remained a coveted luxury item in this time period.
Pawned Slaves
As discussed earlier, Mālikī law was very detailed on the modalities of pawning, including that of enslaved people. Indeed, pawnship was common practice in Mali and Mauritania according to both oral and written sources, and was often the subject of contracts dealing with property transactions such as land, real estate and palm trees. 99 Bil-A‘mish, the seventeenth-century Mauritanian jurist, discussed two such cases involving slave pawns. In the first, he ruled,
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citing Khalīl, that a pair of male slaves pawned for an unpaid salt loan could not be sold by the creditor in bulk.^100 In another case, the same jurist was asked whether the fact that a creditor took a given pawn on a caravan expedition effectively cancelled the original debt.^101 Citing
Khalīl and others, he argued that if the creditor had not obtained the debtor’s authorization to travel with his pawned slave, then the latter had a right to cancel the pawnship agreement. Another case involving a slave pawn was an attestation to amend a pawnship contract dating from the second half of the nineteenth century.^102 It concerned a loan negotiated between a creditor named Mu ammad ibn A mad and his debtor A mad ‘Aly. The first had
made a loan to the second who pledged a young female slave as a
guarantee. A third man named payba, who in all probability was of servile status, asked for the pawn to be released to marry or otherwise claim her.^103 The text translates as follows:
This is to inform whoever may come across this that Mu ammad b. A mad testified to me, the writer, that the slave girl ( ama ) which A mad ‘Aly is claiming from him, he will not give her to payba. She will remain in his debt until he obtains it [i.e. the loan from A mad ‘Aly]. And, God willing, A mad ‘Aly will not forbid him from granting her to payba even though she will not [be authorized to] cohabit with him. And this was written by Mu ammad al-Amīn b. Sīdi Mu ammad b. al-pajj ‘Umar.^104
The document stated that Mu ammad ibn A mad, the creditor, would
not liberate the pawned slave girl until the loan had been fully repaid. Nevertheless, he consented to payba, the man who desired her, the
right to have intercourse with the slave girl although they were not
allowed to live together. As is stated in Khalīl, the slave was not to
cohabitate with another slave, even if the couple were pawned together. Therefore, the decision that the pawn was to remain in the
creditor’s household complied with Mālikī rules. That the woman in
question was not named, and apparently had no say in the matter, reflects the dire conditions of slaves in Muslim Africa where generally women were far worse off than their male counterparts.^105
