Life
Aḥmad Bābā was born on October 26, 1556, inLegacy
A fair amount of the work he was noted for was written while he was in Morocco, including the biography of Muhammad Abd al-Karim al-Maghili, a scholar and jurist responsible for much of the traditional religious law of the area. A biographical note was translated by M.A. Cherbonneau in 1855, and became one of the principal texts for study of the legal history of the Western Sudan. Ahmad Baba's surviving works remain the best sources for the study of al-Maghili and the generation that succeeded him. Ahmad Baba was considered the Mujjadid (reviver of religion) of the century. The only public library in Timbuktu, theStance on Race
Ahmad Baba made an effort to end racial slavery and criticised the association of Black Africans with slaves, particularly criticising some Muslims adopting the narrative of the Curse of Ham, found in the book of Genesis. However, Ahmad Baba was not an advocate for ending the slave trade generally. Rather, in writing the Mi'raj al Su'ud ila nayl hukm mujallab al-Sud, he sought only to reform the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade with the goal of preventing Muslims from enslaving other Muslims. According to William Phillips, al-Timbukti essentially advocated religion-based slavery instead of racial-slavery, with Muslims of any ethnicity being immune from being enslaved.Stance on Slavery
In regards to the enslavement of Africans in 1615, Ahmad Bābā discussed the legitimate reasons of how and why one could become a slave. The driving force, mainly being religious and ethnic, were that if one came from a country with a Muslim government, or identified with specific Muslim ethnic groups, then they could not be slaves. He claimed that if a person was an unbeliever or a kafara, then that is the sole factor for their enslavement, along with that being “the will of God.” In the piece ''Ahmad Bābā and the Ethics of Slavery'', he claims that his beliefs fueled the thought that those who identified as Muslim no longer had to be enslaved, but anyone that was an outsider (or nonbeliever) would then be enslaved by Muslims. These were not simply beliefs these were the rules that are given by God Most High, who knows best. Even in the case that the people of the country were believers but their belief was shallow then those people could still be enslaved with no questions asked. According to Ahmad Bābā, it was known that the people of Kumbe were shallow in their beliefs. He goes on to use the analogy that when one country is conquered and contains nonbelievers, then those persons could be enslaved as part of his stance on any other outsider or religion besides Islam. This is a different kind of thinking in comparison to the works of William D. Phillips Jr., who wrote ''The Middle Ages Series: Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia''. In his piece, the main factor that distinguished a slave from an ordinary person would be their religious differences. This ties into Ahmad Bābā's ideas about enslavement involving everyone except those who practiced Islam. More specifically to his ideas on slavery, Phillips discussed how Christians enslaved Muslims, and Muslims enslaved Christians. However, Ahmad Bābā's hope was to end the enslaving of Muslims entirely and instead have other religious groups be enslaved, as they were considered to be unbelievers of the Muslim faith. Another contradicting idea, discussed in the article ''Slavery in Africa'' by Suzanne Meirs and Igor Kopytoff, was that enslavement was based on people who are forced out of their homeland into a completely foreign area, tying into Ahmad's beliefs. Meirs and Kopytoff discuss the possibility of being accepted into a community through means of earning their freedom, being granted freedom by their owner, or being born into freedom. But in Ahmad Bābā's perspective, if one converted to Islam and were once an “unbeliever” before being enslaved, then that individual would still hold that title of being a slave. An unbeliever was classified as anyone who was Christian, Jewish, etc. however Ahmad Bābā states that there are no differences between unbelievers regardless of their different religious beliefs of Christianity, Persian, Jews, etc.See also
*Notes
References
* * *Hunqick J. and Harrak F. (2000). "''Mi'raj al-su'ud: Ahmad Baba's Replies on Slavery"''. pp 30-33. *Meirs S. and Kopytoff I. (1993). "''Slavery in Africa"''. pp 264 –276. *Phillips W.D. (2013). ''"The Middle Ages Series: Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia''". pp 1–27. {{DEFAULTSORT:Massufi, Ahmad Baba al 1556 births 1627 deaths 16th-century Berber people 17th-century Berber people Malian Berbers Berber Muslims Berber scholars Malian scholars People from Tombouctou Region People from Timbuktu Massufa People from the Songhai Empire History of slavery in the Muslim world Proslavery activists History of slavery Maliki fiqh scholars Zarma-Songhai people T