Latest / Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History / The Timbuktu Scholar Who Debated Slavery Across Empires
Transcript
- Luna: So we've talked a lot about Timbuktu as a center of learning, but I keep coming back to the issue of slavery. How could a city of scholars be so deeply entangled with it? Lucas: That's the tension we have to sit with. Timbuktu was both a marketplace for ideas and a marketplace for human beings. But here's the thing—some of Timbuktu's scholars were acutely aware of that contradiction, and they pushed back. The most famous example is Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti, who wrote a fatwa—a legal opinion—arguing that the trans-Saharan slave trade was enslaving free Muslims illegally. Lucas: Ahmad Baba was born in 1556 in Timbuktu, into a scholarly family from the Kunta clan. He became the leading professor at Sankore University and wrote on everything from astronomy to law. But his most enduring work is Mi'raj al-Su'ud, which means 'The Ladder of Ascension,' a treatise on the legality of enslavement. Luna: Wait—he wrote this while he was a prisoner in Marrakesh, right? Lucas: Exactly. In 1591, the Moroccan sultan Ahmad al-Mansur sent an army across the Sahara under Judar Pasha. They crushed the Songhai army at Tondibi and occupied Timbuktu. Ahmad Baba was among the scholars arrested and deported to Marrakesh, accused of being a potential threat. He spent about a year and a half in prison before being allowed to teach and write. Lucas: While in Marrakesh, he was approached by merchants and scholars who wanted clarity on a burning question: which African people could be legitimately enslaved under Islamic law? Ahmad Baba's answer was radical for its time. He argued that only someone who was born into slavery or captured in a legitimate jihad could be enslaved. And since most of West Africa was Muslim, the mass enslavement of people from the region was illegal. Luna: So he was directly challenging the economic foundation of the Moroccan occupation. Lucas: Exactly. The Moroccans were shipping slaves from the Sahel north to Marrakesh and on to the Mediterranean. Ahmad Baba's fatwa threatened to undermine that trade. He wrote that the people of the Songhai Empire, the Fulani, the Tuareg—they were all Muslim, so they couldn't be enslaved. He even listed specific ethnic groups and said they were protected. Lucas: But here's the nuance—Ahmad Baba wasn't an abolitionist in the modern sense. He accepted slavery as a legal institution within Islamic law. His argument was about the criteria for enslavement, not the morality of slavery itself. He was trying to stop the enslavement of Muslims, not end slavery altogether. Luna: That makes sense. It's more of a legal reform than a moral revolution. Lucas: Right. And his reasoning was rooted in Maliki jurisprudence, which was the dominant school in West Africa. He cited earlier scholars like al-Maghili, who had also written about the limits of enslavement. But Ahmad Baba took it further. He argued that even if someone was captured by a Muslim ruler, that didn't automatically make them a slave—you had to prove they were non-Muslim at the time of capture. Lucas: In Mi'raj al-Su'ud, he wrote about a concept called asl al-'abd, or 'the origin of the slave.' He said that the default assumption should be freedom, not slavery. If you claimed someone was a slave, you had to provide evidence. Otherwise, they were free. That was a huge shift in the burden of proof. Luna: Did the Moroccan authorities actually listen to him? Lucas: Not really. The fatwa was circulated among scholars in Marrakesh and Timbuktu, but the Saadian sultans had no interest in restricting the slave trade. It was too profitable. Ahmad Baba was eventually allowed to return to Timbuktu in 1607, after al-Mansur's death, but the damage was done. The city never recovered its former glory, and the slave trade continued. Lucas: But his ideas didn't die. His writings were copied and preserved by families like the Kunta, who hid them in secret libraries. Centuries later, when scholars rediscovered the Timbuktu manuscripts, they found Ahmad Baba's fatwa. It became a symbol of African intellectual resistance. Luna: So where are those manuscripts now? Lucas: Many are in the Mamma Haidara Library in Timbuktu, named after the scholar who collected them in the 20th century. There's also the Ahmed Baba Institute, which was founded in 1973 and holds thousands of manuscripts. During the 2012 jihadist occupation of Timbuktu, librarians risked their lives to smuggle these manuscripts to safety in Bamako. Luna: It's amazing that a fatwa written in exile could speak so directly to later generations. Lucas: Absolutely. Ahmad Baba's argument was specific to his time and legal framework, but the principle—that the law should protect the vulnerable—transcends it. He saw the contradiction between Timbuktu's scholarly ideals and its reliance on slavery, and he tried to resolve it from within the tradition. That's what makes him a fascinating figure. Lucas: There's also a personal angle. In his writings, he mentions that he had slaves himself. So he wasn't preaching from a position of purity. He was grappling with the system he was part of, trying to reform it rather than destroy it. Luna: That honesty makes his argument even more compelling, I think. Lucas: It does. And it reminds us that history is never black and white. The same city that produced brilliant scholarship also traded in human misery. The same scholar who owned slaves wrote a fatwa that challenged the slave trade. It's complicated. Luna: I want to ask about the specific legal arguments he used. How did he get around the fact that many slave owners claimed their slaves were captured in war? Lucas: Great question. Ahmad Baba distinguished between a legitimate jihad and a razzia—a slave raid. Under Maliki law, a jihad had to be declared by a legitimate ruler, and the target had to be a non-Muslim polity. Most of the slave raiding in West Africa was done by private groups or even Muslim rulers against other Muslim communities. So he argued those raids were illegal, and the people captured in them couldn't be enslaved. Lucas: He also tackled the problem of proof. Since many slaves had been captured generations ago, it was hard to know their origin. He said that if the slave's ancestors were Muslim, the presumption was freedom. That was a powerful tool for anyone trying to claim their freedom. Luna: So his fatwa could have been used in court to free people? Lucas: Theoretically, yes. But in practice, the courts were controlled by the powerful, and the slave trade was too lucrative. Still, the fatwa circulated widely. We know of cases where scholars in Fez cited it. It became part of the legal conversation. Lucas: One thing I find striking is that Ahmad Baba wrote his fatwa in response to specific questions from merchants. He wasn't just theorizing. He was trying to solve a practical moral problem that people in his circle faced. Luna: It's like he was offering a way out of a dilemma that everyone knew was wrong but couldn't escape. Lucas: Exactly. And in that sense, he's a precursor to later abolitionist thinkers in the Islamic world. His work influenced scholars in the 19th century who argued against the slave trade, even if they didn't always credit him. Lucas: If you want to read more, there's an English translation of Mi'raj al-Su'ud by John Hunwick and Fatima Harrak. It's fascinating to see his reasoning laid out step by step. Luna: I'll check that out. So, to wrap up—Ahmad Baba's fatwa was a bold legal argument against the enslavement of Muslims, but it couldn't stop the Moroccan-backed trade. Still, it survived as a document of resistance and a window into Timbuktu's intellectual world. Lucas: That's a good summary. And it reminds us that Timbuktu wasn't just a place of learning—it was a place where scholars wrestled with the hardest questions of their time. Ahmad Baba's voice is one we should remember.