Masalat Man Bay al-Ahrar - ضمن "Athar al-Mualimi
- Author died
- 1386 AH
- Editions
- Dar Alam al-Fawa'id lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzi'
Mas’alat Man’ Bay’ al-Ahrar (The Issue of Prohibiting the Sale of Free Persons) is a jurisprudential treatise by the Yemeni scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Muallimi al-Yamani (d. 1386 AH / 1966 CE) addressing the illicit enslavement and sale of free individuals and refuting contemporary judicial practices surrounding confessions of slavery.
Background and Context
Al-Mu'allimi composed this treatise while serving in the judiciary under the ruler of the Idrisid state, Sayyid Muhammad ibn Ali al-Idrisi. The impetus for writing was a widespread social abuse in which free individuals were seized and sold into servitude without legal proof or witness testimony, often being coerced or induced into confessing that they were slaves. Judges of the time routinely upheld these sales based strictly on the apparent confession, refusing to admit subsequent claims of freedom or community testimonies (shahadat al-hisbah).
Al-Mu'allimi addressed the issue four separate times due to its gravity, presenting each version with a distinct style, introduction, and preamble, and submitting his work to al-Idrisi in order to prompt a decisive ruling barring the practice and instructing judges to admit claims of freedom and hisbah testimony.
Contents and Legal Arguments
The author begins by underscoring the sanctity and virtue of freedom and manumission in the Quran and Sunnah, citing verses such as فَلَا اقْتَحَمَ الْعَقَبَةَ وَمَا أَدْرَاكَ مَا الْعَقَبَةُ فَكُّ رَقَبَةٍ ("Yet he has not embarked upon the steep pass. And what will make you realize what the steep pass is? It is the freeing of a slave"). He explains that lawful slavery originally arises only from unbelief through captivity or war spoils, conditions that had become exceedingly rare or non-existent in his time, making original freedom (al-asl) the default assumption for people.
Al-Mu'allimi discusses the legal ruling regarding imported female slaves (al-ima al-majlubah) of uncertain status, stating that purchasing or selling them in states of ignorance is impermissible, citing the legal verifications of Taqi al-Din al-Subki. He examines the avenues through which slavery is legally established—namely physical possession, clear proof (bayyinah), and confession (iqrar)—and analyzes the conditions governing each.
Critiquing judges who relied uncritically on confessions, al-Mu'allimi draws upon passages from Shafi'i jurisprudence to demonstrate that a confession of servitude in an environment rife with coercion, ignorance, and financial manipulation holds no legal force. He concludes that any enslaved person claiming freedom must have their statement accepted upon taking an oath, whether or not a prior confession had been extracted, unless the claimant of ownership produces definitive proof of enslavement.
Manuscript and Publication
A manuscript of the treatise is preserved in the Library of the Holy Mosque in Mecca (Maktabat al-Haram al-Makki) under shelf number 4696. It was edited and published as the twenty-first treatise in the collected works edition Athar al-Mu'allimi (within volume 17).
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