16th century – 17th century
Songhay Empire and Nigerian Sudan
Ahmad Baba was a Muslim scholar and author whose legal pamphlet Mi‘rad al-Suhud, written between 1593 and 1616, addressed the enslavement of populations from the Songhay Empire. Responding to merchants from Tuat, he used Islamic legal reasoning to defend people subjected to unlawful capture and sale. His account also described the region’s religious diversity, retreating Islam, political disorder, and dependence on the trans-Saharan slave trade during the early seventeenth century.
Continue exploring
The Story
Ahmad Baba lived through the upheavals caused by the Moroccan conquest of Songhay and the intensification of slavery at the turn of the seventeenth century. His pamphlet, generally known as Mi‘rad al-Suhud, was written between 1593 and 1616. It offers a perspective on the social and religious disorder that followed the disappearance of Songhay’s political framework.
Merchants from Tuat asked Ahmad Baba to give a legal opinion, or fatwa, on the subjugation and sale into slavery of certain populations of the Songhay Empire. Rather than treating the matter narrowly, he described the wider social and religious situation of the Nigerian Sudan. His aim was to defend populations who had been victims of lawless capture, using standards presented as consistent with Islamic ethics.
The account identified the trans-Saharan trade in enslaved Black people as a principal basis of contemporary economic activity. It also drew attention to varying degrees of Islamization and to the retreat of Muslim religion after the collapse of Songhay and the Moroccan occupation. Ahmad Baba’s intervention is consequently valuable both as a legal defense of enslaved populations and as a description of regional transformation.
16th century – 17th century
Songhay Empire and Nigerian Sudan
Ahmad Baba was a Muslim scholar and author whose legal pamphlet Mi‘rad al-Suhud, written between 1593 and 1616, addressed the enslavement of populations from the Songhay Empire. Responding to merchants from Tuat, he used Islamic legal reasoning to defend people subjected to unlawful capture and sale. His account also described the region’s religious diversity, retreating Islam, political disorder, and dependence on the trans-Saharan slave trade during the early seventeenth century.
Continue exploring
The Story
Ahmad Baba lived through the upheavals caused by the Moroccan conquest of Songhay and the intensification of slavery at the turn of the seventeenth century. His pamphlet, generally known as Mi‘rad al-Suhud, was written between 1593 and 1616. It offers a perspective on the social and religious disorder that followed the disappearance of Songhay’s political framework.
Merchants from Tuat asked Ahmad Baba to give a legal opinion, or fatwa, on the subjugation and sale into slavery of certain populations of the Songhay Empire. Rather than treating the matter narrowly, he described the wider social and religious situation of the Nigerian Sudan. His aim was to defend populations who had been victims of lawless capture, using standards presented as consistent with Islamic ethics.
The account identified the trans-Saharan trade in enslaved Black people as a principal basis of contemporary economic activity. It also drew attention to varying degrees of Islamization and to the retreat of Muslim religion after the collapse of Songhay and the Moroccan occupation. Ahmad Baba’s intervention is consequently valuable both as a legal defense of enslaved populations and as a description of regional transformation.