Scholarlink

This chapter illuminates how Islamic and Mosaic legal traditions provided the earliest theological and legal frameworks for African slavery. The Mosaic Law corpus, through its appropriation by both early patristic and Jewish as well as later medieval Coptic and Ethiopian Christians, provided biblical justification for enslaving neighboring populations, setting an early precedent for the selective use of ‘the Curse of Ham’, Leviticus 25 and related passages to normalize bondage. Meanwhile in West Africa, the gradual adoption of Maliki jurisprudence—most evident in the fatwas of Ahmad Baba and the practices of the Mali and Songhai empires —introduced legal categories that theoretically restricted the enslavement of Muslims but institutionalized the bondage of non-Muslims, a tension that became fraught during the later jihads and entanglement with European traders. These early Middle Eastern and African legal precedents helped shape later emerging Catholic and Protestant theologies of slavery in Europe in the transatlantic and early American contexts.

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

The Early Historical and Theological Development of Mosaic and Islamic Law in West African, Transatlantic and American Slave History

  • 章节

  • 发表日期：

    2026年

查看全文
  • R. Charles Weller

摘要

This chapter illuminates how Islamic and Mosaic legal traditions provided the earliest theological and legal frameworks for African slavery. The Mosaic Law corpus, through its appropriation by both early patristic and Jewish as well as later medieval Coptic and Ethiopian Christians, provided biblical justification for enslaving neighboring populations, setting an early precedent for the selective use of ‘the Curse of Ham’, Leviticus 25 and related passages to normalize bondage. Meanwhile in West Africa, the gradual adoption of Maliki jurisprudence—most evident in the fatwas of Ahmad Baba and the practices of the Mali and Songhai empires —introduced legal categories that theoretically restricted the enslavement of Muslims but institutionalized the bondage of non-Muslims, a tension that became fraught during the later jihads and entanglement with European traders. These early Middle Eastern and African legal precedents helped shape later emerging Catholic and Protestant theologies of slavery in Europe in the transatlantic and early American contexts.