West African Intellectuals and the Problem of Illegal Enslavement in the Nineteenth Century

Issues surrounding legal and illegal enslavement had been debated in Muslim West African societies since at least the seventeenth century. Issues of debate included who was considered to be a Muslim, the onus for proving freeborn Muslim status, and the fate of illegally-captive individuals. Whereas the legally correct response to an illegally captive individual was to release the individual, this was not always practical. Even though, a freeborn Muslim ought to have been granted free release upon their status being verified, this was difficult to enforce.  Instead, policy-makers condoned the ransoming of freeborn Muslims. In this paper, I will examine intellectual responses to the issue of illegal enslavement in the Sahel/Sudan and to the strategy of ransoming in the seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries.