The mukātab/a's Labour in Premodern Ḥanafī Jurisprudence

Emunds, Laura (15 September 2022). The mukātab/a's Labour in Premodern Ḥanafī Jurisprudence (Unpublished). In: Slavery, Gender and the Shaping of the Family in Medieval Islam. Madrid. 15.-16.09.2022.

Full text not available from this repository.

A mukātab/a is a slave who signed a bilateral contractual agreement in which he or she agreed to pay a fixed amount of money in instalments to their owner to obtain freedom after the contract has been fulfilled (Ar. kitāba). In the proposed paper, I aim to examine this specific form of Islamicate slavery with a focus on the means necessary to fulfil the contractual obligations: the slave’s labour. Through looking at the pre-modern discourse of ḥanafī jurisprudence, I will approach this phenomenon from two angles: firstly, I will investigate whether this kind of enslaved labour was discussed in any specific form departing from the labour conducted by free persons. Secondly, I will look at the mukātab/a as a labourer, asking on the one hand if the jurists discussed any conditions or limitations regarding the access to entering into a kitāba-contract. Here, I will pay attention on the interplay of the intersecting axes gender, race, marital status, class, age and educational background. Did, for example, the family structure of which the slave was part affect the kitāba? On the other hand, I will ask whether the jurists discussed any employment sectors or occupations in particular with reference to the mukātab/a’s labour.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Division/Institute:

06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institut für Studien zum Nahen Osten und zu muslimischen Gesellschaften

Graduate School:

Graduate School of the Arts and Humanities (GSAH)

UniBE Contributor:

Emunds, Laura

Subjects:

200 Religion > 290 Other religions
900 History > 950 History of Asia
900 History > 960 History of Africa

Language:

English

Submitter:

Laura Emunds

Date Deposited:

27 Jan 2023 14:30

Last Modified:

27 Jan 2023 23:27

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/176737

Actions (login required)

Edit item Edit item
Provide Feedback