The Fatwa That Ended Timbuktu's Slave Trade

Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History · May 7, 2026 · 5m · transcript

In 1615, the scholar Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti issued a fatwa that challenged the very foundations of the trans-Saharan slave trade. Writing from exile in Marrakesh, where he had been taken after the Moroccan invasion of Songhai, Ahmad Baba produced 'Mi'raj al-Su'ud' — a legal treatise that systematically dismantled the justifications for enslaving West African Muslims. Drawing on Maliki jurisprudence and his own vast network of sources, he argued that many of the enslaved people brought to North Africa were, in fact, freeborn Muslims who had been illegally captured. His…