Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti and his Islamic critique of racial slavery in the Maghrib

Abstract

This essay examines the life of Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti (1556–1627) and his efforts to end racial slavery and to persuade Maghribi scholars to accept the Islamic status of self-professed Muslims in West Africa. Towards this end, Ahmad Baba wrote a legal treatise that criticised the association of ‘Black’ Africans with slaves, especially through the racialised version of the curse of Ham. This treatise, entitled Mi‘raj al-Su‘ud, drew upon a century of jurisprudence produced in Timbuktu and set Islamic standards for enslavement that defined as illicit a substantial portion of the trans-Saharan slave trade as it then existed. However, the treatise also defined much of West Africa as non-Muslim or lightly Islamised, and thereby sanctioned the targeting of these peoples for enslavement. In a similar effort, Ahmad Baba also publicised the scholarly achievements of West African Muslims by compiling a huge biographical dictionary of scholars from West and Northwest Africa. This book, entitled Nayl al-Ibtihaj, could have substantiated the fact that many self-identified Black West Africans had been producing serious Muslim scholarship for at least a century, but it did not. On the contrary, Ahmad Baba included only one Black scholar in his biographical dictionary and instead featured nine scholars from his own ‘Berber’ patriline, including himself. The ironic characteristics of the Mi‘raj al-Su‘ud and Nayl al-Ibtihaj may best be explained by Ahmad Baba's own ambiguous status in Timbuktu and the broader society of Islamic West Africa – as a ‘White’ Berber living in the ‘land of the Blacks'. The fact that his scholarship was ground-breaking, but not radical, facilitated its reception in the Maghrib while perhaps mitigating its practical effect on the slave trade and enslavement in that region as well as in West African trading towns such as Timbuktu.

Keywords:

• slavery
• race
• Islam
• Timbuktu
• Songhay
• Marrakesh
• Morocco
• Maghrib

Notes

1. I dedicate this essay to Mahmoud Zouber and John Hunwick, who pioneered the modern scholarship on Ahmad Baba, and made this essay possible. John Hunwick supervised my dissertation at Northwestern University, and Mahmoud Zouber was the Director of the Ahmed Baba archive in Timbuktu when I first conducted research there in 1991. Both men are kind and generous mentors, as well as academics of the first rank. I would also like to thank Patricia Lorcin, Chouki El Hamel, Daniel Schroeter and Njeri Marekia-Cleaveland for their editorial assistance in the revision of earlier drafts of this essay. And special thanks go to Eric Ross of Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, for creating the map of Saharan trade networks.

2. The ethnic component of Ahmad Baba's identity is examined in greater detail later in this essay. Of course, the name ‘Berber' was a foreign invention applied to people who often referred to themselves as Amazigh or some variation thereof. However, the identities of Berber-speaking peoples varied widely by region and status, and many elites claimed a patrilineal Arab origin even as they strongly embraced their Amazigh cultural heritage. See, for example, Keenan (1977), 1–25, 93–127.

3. The Arabic name Mulay is also sometimes transliterated as Moulay or Mawlay, which are equally legitimate.

4. This essay is concerned with race as a social construct and therefore examines how Muslim scholars categorised people by race and associated particular social, moral and intellectual qualities with different races. It does not assume that there is an objective criterion for defining race.

5. Timbuktu, like many commercial towns in the West African Sahel, maintained a substantial population of unfree residents – slaves, or freed slaves who became clients of their former masters. French Colonial administrators estimated the late nineteenth-century populations of towns such as Timbuktu, Gao, Gumbu, Nioro and Kayes to be at or just under 50% unfree, and a high proportion of these servile communities were female. See Meillassoux (1982), 94–5; and Klein (1983), 68–70.

6. Evidence for the Fulani in Masina comes from the chronicle of al-Sa‘di (1898, reprint 1964). The evidence appears on folio 22, which refers to the edited Arabic edition of al-Sa‘di's text compiled by Houdas. Subsequent references to this chronicle will also include a reference to John Hunwick's English translation of the same text, which appeared in Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire in the 2003 paperback edition. In this case, folio 22 corresponds to page 31 in Hunwick's translation. Al-Sa‘di's statement should probably be interpreted as referring to the scholarly families that became associated with Masina through trade. It may be coincidence that a primarily nomadic group called the ‘Masna' lived in the Tishit region in the nineteenth century, but there is much earlier documentary evidence linking the most prominent families of Tishit and Biru/Walata with various market towns in Masina.

7. Al-Sa‘di (1964). For an English translation, see Hunwick (2003), 37–8, 58. For evidence on the Aqit family's origins, see Norris (1967), 637.

8. Muhammad Salih al-Nasiri (d.1854), Al-Haswa al-baysaniyya fi ‘ilm al-ansab al-hassaniyya. MS 1275, in the Haroun Ould Cheikh Sidia Collection, University of Illinois (Urbana), ff. 22–3.

9. Al-Sa‘di (1964). See Hunwick's (2003), 36–7.

10. Elias Saad spelled this name as ‘al-Kaburi,’ but John Hunwick and Chouki El Hamel spelled it ‘al-Kabari’. For more on Muhammad al-Kabari, see Saad (1983), 60–64.

11. A mithqal equals 4.25 grams. Al-Sa‘di (1964). See Hunwick's (2003), 192.

12. See al-Ifrani's description of Ahmad Baba's experience in Marrakesh, as translated by Hunwick (2003), 314–317.

13. Al-Sa‘di (1964). See Hunwick's (2003), 44.

14. Ahmad Baba's biographical dictionary came in two forms: a long edition entitled Nayl al-Ibtihaj bi Tatriz al-Dibaj (Tarablus: Kulliyyat al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya, 1989) and an abridged edition entitled Kifayat al-Muhtaj li-ma'rifat man laysa fi al-Dibaj, edited by Muhammad Muti’ (Rabat: 2000).

15. Ahmad Baba also provided an alternative title for this same text, al-Kashf wa al-Bayan li Asnaf Majlub al-Sudan, (The Exposition and Explanation Concerning the Varieties of Imported Blacks). The Mi‘raj drew and elaborated upon an earlier exchange of legal questions and answers that the author had recorded during his exile in Marrakesh. This exchange occurred between him and a student named Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Umar al-Isi and is described in Hunwick's (2000), 131–39. The Mi‘raj was translated and briefly analysed by Bernard Barbour and Michelle Jacobs, "The Mi‘raj al-Su‘ud: a Legal Treatise on Slavery by Ahmad Baba," in Willis, ed., Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa vol. I, 125–159. John Hunwick and Fatima Harrak also produced an edited and annotated Arabic edition of this text along with an English translation entitled Mi‘raj al-Su‘ud: Ahmad Baba's Replies on Slavery, (Rabat: University of Mohammed V, 2000). Mohamed Zaouit provided a French translation in his dissertation entitled, L'esclavage au Bilad as-Sudan au XVIème siècle à travers deux consultations juridiques d'Ahmad Baba, Thèse de Doctorat (Paris : Université Paris I Sorbonne, 1997). I only have access to a digital copy of this dissertation, so I cannot provide page numbers for citations. Because the Barbour and Jacobs translation is the most accessible, this essay's citations for the Mi‘raj will refer to this translation, except in cases of discrepancies among the translators.

16. Many scholars have described and analysed Ahmad Baba's Mi‘raj. Two recent analyses are those of Bruce Hall in A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 (Cambridge, 2011) and Hunwick's (1999).

17. See Saad, Social History of Timbuktu, 100–101 and John Hunwick, “Ahmad Baba on Slavery,” 133.

18. In the text, al-Jirari referred to a quotation of this hadith made by Jalal al-Suyuti (1440–1505).

19. There is a growing and somewhat controversial literature on the story of the curse of Ham and the early development of racism. Edith R. Sanders initiated the debate in 1969 with her essay “The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origins and Function in Time Perspective” in the Journal of African History. See also Goldenberg (2003) and Isaac (2004).

20. See for example, Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) and al-Ya‘qubi (d. 897) as translated in Hopkins and Levtzion, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (2000), 15, 20–1; and al-Tabari (839–923) in al-Tabari (1986), Volume II, 21. For a general discussion of this literature, see El Hamel (2013), 60–77.

21. Additional examples of similar statements include: ‘The answer to this is that you should know that the reason for slavery is non-belief and the Sudanese non-believers are like other kafir whether they are Christians, Jews, Persians, Berbers, or any others who stick to non-belief and do not embrace Islam. … This means that there is no difference between all the kafir in this respect.’ “Mi‘raj al-Su‘ud,” 129–130; and ‘The origin of slavery is non-belief and the black kafir are like the Christians, except that they are majus, pagans.” “Mi‘raj al-Su‘ud,” 130.

22. Some key words in this passage are difficult to translate and the three published translations all vary significantly, and in this case, the Barbour/Jacobs translation seems to be the least accurate (134). Instead, the Zaouit and the Hunwick/Harrak translations are preferable. Zaouit translated the text as ‘ … il incite à l'adoption des noirs afin qu'ils ne soient pas abandonnés à cause de leur vice originel et de leur manque d'intelligence … ’. The Hunwick and Harrak translation reads ‘ … there is a command in it to look after them so that people would not dislike them on account of some of their objectionable characteristics, and their general lack of refinement’ (35).

23. Gratien argued that the racial egalitarianism he ascribed to Ahmad Baba also extended to Muslim scholars (fuqaha) more generally, ‘While the fuqaha had long rejected the inferiority of particular races with Qur'anic, historical and scientific justification, the practice of Muslim rulers and slave traders was not as clearly informed by such a worldview’ (Gratien, 461). He seemed to base this view on a misreading of Ibn Khaldun's climate theory of race, which, as we described above, helped Ahmad Baba to discredit the racialised version of the story of Ham's curse. Gratien misinterpreted this climate theory as debunking ideas about race difference, in particular negative stereotypes about Blacks.

24. The Sanhaja were divided into three groups, one of which was the Masufa, sometimes also spelled Massufa, and with a long ‘u’. See Cleaveland (2002), 38, 49–51.

25. For the connections between scholars and traders, see Levtzion (1986, 21–37); and Lydon (2009, 11–12, 65, 384). For estimates of the trans-Saharan slave trade, see Austen (1979, 23–76); and Lydon (2009, 122–130).

26. For variant translations of the Songhay term san-korey, see Hunwick (2003), lviii; and Hall (2011), 244.

27. Ahmad Baba's student, Ahmad ibn Ali al-Susi, declared that his teacher was not Black. See Muhammad al-Qadiri's Nashr al-Mathani, vol. I, 152, as cited by Zouber (1977), 15.

28. Al-Bartayli (1981).

29. Lliteras (2008) mistakenly interpreted Ahmad Baba's Sudani nisba to mean that he identified as Black. This appeared in an essay she adapted and translated from Mahmoud Zouber's Ahmad Baba de Tombouctou (1556–1627): Sa Vie et Son Oeuvre. Zouber never attributed a race to Ahmad Baba but rather described him as self-identifying as Berber. See Susana Molins Lliteras, “Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu (1556–1627): Introduction to his life and works” in Timbuktu Scripts and Scholarship: a catalogue of selected manuscripts from the exhibition, 25.

30. See Ahmad Baba's short autobiography in the Kifaya al-Muhtaj written in 1603, in which he described himself using the nisbas al-Sanhaji, al-Masini and al-Timbukti. This is biography #704 in the edited and annotated edition of Ahmad Baba's text, published by the Moroccan scholar Muhammad Muti‘ under the title Kifayat al-Muhtaj li-ma'rifat man laysa fi al-Dibaj (2000), vol. 2, 281.

31. Ahmad Baba, Kifaya al-Muhtaj. See the edited edition by Muhammad Muti‘, vol. 1, 377.

32. The Nayl al-Ibtihaj has 802 biographies, and the Kifaya al-Muhtaj has 704.

33. Al-Bartayli (1981). See El Hamel's (2002).

34. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Timbuktu and http://www.africanecho.co.uk/africanechonews4-mar24.html.

35. Slavery was also officially outlawed in Algeria under French colonial rule, but about 75 years earlier, though the French allowed the institution to persist into the early twentieth century. In Mauritania, slavery persisted into the late twentieth century, if not to the present.

36. The term ‘Haratin’ or ‘Haratine’ (s. Hartani) seems to be an Arabised Berber term for ‘mixed’ or ‘dark, originally ahardan (pl. ahardanen), and was commonly used in the Maghrib and the northern Sahara, though in the southern Sahara it is hardanen or ashardan. Colin (1971), 230–1; Taine-Cheikh (1989a), 395–396; and Taine-Cheikh (1989b), 90–105. The earliest known written etymology for the term Haratin (which seems to be wrong) is found in Ahmad ibn Khalid al-Nasiri (1835–1893), Kitab al-Istiqsa li-Akhbar duwal al-Maghrib al-Aqsa, E. Fumey, trans. (Paris, 1906), 75. For a history of the Mauritanian Haratin in the colonial and post-colonial period, see Ruf (1999); Brhane (1997); and McDougall (1988).

37. See ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sa‘di, Tarikh al-Sudan, Garcia-Arenal (2009) and Yahya (1981).

38. The following account is based on multiple sources, including Aziz Abdalla Batran, "The Ulama of Fas, M. Isma'il and the Haratin of Fas," in Willis, ed., Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, vol. II, 1–15. See also Meyers (1974), and “Class, Ethnicity, and Slavery: The Origins of the Moroccan ‘Abid,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 10, 3 (1977): 427–442. Arabic documents relating to Mulay Isma'il's ‘slave’ army are archived at the al-Khizana al-‘Amma, in Rabat, Morocco. See also El Hamel (2013).

39. Conscription was not legal according to the dominant interpretation of Islam at this time, and Mulay Ismail was imposing a permanent military service on the conscripts. For these reasons, the Muslim scholars interpreted conscription to be a form of enslavement. Evidence for the stereotypes used by Mulay Ismail and the ultimate scale of the conscription is from Chouki El Hamel (2013, 155–184).

40. This is John Hunwick's translation of Muhammad al-Sanusi ibn Ibrahim al-Jarimi, Tanbih ahl al-tughayan ‘ala hurriyyat al-Sudan (c. 1898), f. 2, ms #1575, Centre de Documentation et de Recherces Historiques Ahmed Baba, Timbuktu.

41. The fatwa by Jasus was translated by Batran (1985), vol. II. Ch. 1 (1–15). The scholar's full name was Abu Muhammad Sidi al-Hajj ‘Abdal Salam ibn Ahmad Jasus, sometimes also spelled Jassus.

42. This is John Hunwick's translation of Abu al-Abbas al-Nasiri (1955), 131. See also E. Fumey's translation (Paris, 1906), and al-Ifrani (1888), and Abu Faris ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Sinhaji al-Fishtali, Manahil al-safa fi ma'athir mawalina al-shurafa. Editor: ‘Abd al-Karim Kurayyim (Rabat, 1973).

43. Formerly known as the Centre de Documentation et de Recherches Historiques Ahmed Baba.

44. See Ennaji (1999), originally published as Soldats, domestiques et concubines, le esclavage au Maroc au XIXeme siècle (Maroc, 1994), and El Hamel (2013).