Emunds, Laura (21 September 2023). Tracing the Kitāba’s Trajectory in Islamic Law: A Labour-Centred Approach (Unpublished). In: Turkologentag 2023 Wien/29. Internationaler DAVO Kongress. Wien. 21.-23.09.2023.
Full text not available from this repository.Up to this date the common understanding of slavery is heavily impacted by the Transatlantic slave trade and the plantation slavery of the Americas. However, when it comes to forms of slavery prevalent in the Islamicate world and especially to the perception of slavery and related forms of unfreedom within the framework of Islamic legal discourses, the closely intertwined notion of an assumed dichotomy of freedom and slavery does not necessarily foster an in-depth understanding of the existing varieties Muslim jurists discussed over the course of time. One possible approach to tackle this problematic dichotomy is to focus on distinctive concepts. One of the concepts that can be traced within the framework of Islamic legal discourses is the kitāba (also: mukātaba), a bilateral contract between an owner and their slaves that prospect manumission if the mukātab/a fulfils certain obligations. These are often referred to as a monetary payment in instalments, but other arrangements such as conducting domestic labour were also frequently discussed my Muslim jurists throughout history. The presented paper discusses a new approach to the study of the kitāba drawing upon a combination of two approaches developed within the field of slavery and dependency studies and global labour history respectively: firstly, applying the concept of ‘strong asymmetrical dependencies’ developed at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (Winnebeck et al. 2023) is presented as a theoretical lens that allows for understanding the owner-slave relationship on a legal level without being confined to questions of ownership. Secondly, centring the mukātab/a’s (ability to conduct) labour with a focus on what labour historian Marcel van der Linden has called ‘three moments of coerced labour’ (van der Linden 2016) is proposed as a methodological tool that allows for obtaining deeper insights into the legal impact of the kitāba on the lives of enslaved persons.
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 for Health Sciences (GHS) |
UniBE Contributor: |
Emunds, Laura |
Subjects: |
200 Religion > 290 Other religions |
Projects: |
[UNSPECIFIED] TraSIS: Trajectories of Slavery in Islamicate Societies. Three Concepts from Islamic Legal Sources |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Laura Emunds |
Date Deposited: |
02 Oct 2023 09:10 |
Last Modified: |
02 Oct 2023 09:10 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/186809 |
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