EMANCIPATION OF SLAVES

The emancipation of slaves was not unknown in pre-Islamic Arabia.  Slaves could gain their freedom in several ways.  One way, and a very common one, of course, was that they were ransomed by their relatives.  Another was when a master granted his slave a free and unconditional emancipation (�itq).  There were two other forms of emancipation: tadbir and kitabah.  In the first, the master declared that on his death his slaves would be free.  In the second, slaves who were not ransomed by their relatives obtained their master�s permission to earn their ransom by work.

We have already seen how HakIm b. HizAm �freed one hundred slaves� (225) even before he became a Muslim.  We have also observed that it was an old custom among the Arabs of more pious disposition to will that their slaves would be freed at their death, a practice which was opposed in some cases by Muhammad because he did not want such emancipations to take place at the expense of the heirs and relatives of the masters.  On the whole, however, Muhammad�s response to the practice was positive, but this did not make him into a Messiah of the slaves.  On the other hand, he saw the time when the meek and the lowly would inherit the earth as a portent of the approaching end of the world.  �When the slave-girl will give birth to her master, when the naked, barefooted would become the chiefs of the people-these are some of the signs of Doom,� according to him (4).

To Muhammad, the freeing of a slave was an act of charity on the part of the master, not a matter of justice.  In any case, a slave should not seek his emancipation by running away.  �The slave who fled from his master committed an act of infidelity so long as he would not return to him,� says Muhammad (129).

author : ram swarup