Black Morocco Chapter Summaries

Black Morocco is divided into two parts. The paired chapters of part 1 consider slavery within the broad Islamic legal and moral framework, on the one hand, and, on the other, within a specifically North African and Moroccan context during the medieval and early modern periods. Chapter 1 examines legal and moral perspectives on slavery in the Qur'an, ḥadīth literature, and Sunni legal traditions. El Hamel argues that interpreters of Islamic law chose to accommodate existing institutions of slavery and concubinage, ignoring the Qur'an's counsel against such practices. In chapter 2, the author thinks broadly about notions of color, descent, and servitude in Arab-Islamic thought of the medieval and early modern periods. El Hamel points out longstanding continuities in North African perceptions of racial difference and hierarchy, so that despite the enslavement of many different groups, and the possibility for the child of a male master and an enslaved woman to inherit or attain a high social status, "blackness" came to be associated with servitude. At the
These chapters are the core of the book and its most original contribution. Chapter 4 treats Mawlay Isma'il's conscription of black Moroccans. This conscription, which began in the 1670s, was deeply controversial, in part because it often meant the enslavement of an established, non-slave Muslim population from within Morocco, and in part because it destabilized established relationships of clientage and servitude outside the royal circle. El Hamel deftly traces the debate regarding the legality of Mawlay Isma'il's actions, which brought the sultan into conflict with many of the country's leading religious scholars and in some cases ended with black non-enslaved populations escaping