The Timbuktu Fatwa That Freed Slaves

Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History · May 5, 2026 · 5m · transcript

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the remarkable legal history of Timbuktu through the lens of slavery and emancipation. They focus on a specific fatwa issued by the great scholar Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti in the early 17th century, which declared that Muslims who had been captured and enslaved from the Songhai Empire after the Moroccan invasion were, in fact, free. Lucas explains the legal reasoning behind the fatwa, drawing on Maliki jurisprudence and the concept of asl al-'abd (the default status of a person being free). He also discusses the economic and social pressures that led…