Voluntary enslavement in an Abbasid-era papyrus letter

Abstract

Central to this article is an Arabic letter written on papyrus in an Egyptian prison in the late ninth or early tenth century ce. The author complains that he and his companions are being kept in terrible conditions and that they have received insufficient support from outside prison. Interestingly, he indicates that there is a strong inclination among the group to offer themselves as slaves in order to find relief from their crushing living conditions. By doing so, they would have transgressed Islamic law of that time, which forbade the enslavement of free inhabitants of the Realm of Islam. The letter is a unique source for the social history of slavery, especially self-enslavement, in Abbasid society. This article presents, translates, and annotates this letter and offers a detailed study of its contents.

Who is in a worse spot, in a more hopeless situation, in a more impotent condition than he who was free, in full control of himself, and made himself a slave (fa-ṣayyara nafsahu ʿabdan), the property of someone else (mamlūkan li-ghayrihi), choosing slavery without having been captured or being subjected by force?

Al-Jāḥiẓ¹

In his epistle on ‘Concealing Secrets and Holding the Tongue’, the source of the quote above, the well-known Abbasid-era author al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255 ah/868 ce) uses self-enslavement as a metaphor for letting somebody in on a secret: according to him, a person wields excessive power over someone else when he knows one of his secrets. The metaphor derives its force from a combination of third/ninth-century and later Islamic law and a general notion of a slave's inferior position vis-à-vis a freeman in society. Unlike the first two Islamic centuries, when legal authorities had permitted the (often temporary) enslavement of free persons,² by al-Jāḥiẓ's time Muslim jurists held that free inhabitants of the Realm of Islam, whether Muslim or not, in general could not be reduced to a state of slavery. According to the few sources that say something about the legitimisation of slavery in Islamic law, slave status, and the social inferiority that came with it, was a punishment for those who had refused to become subject to Islam.³ Despite such statements as ‘freedom is the original human condition’ (al-aṣl huwa al-ḥurriyya), occasionally found articulated in fourth/tenth-century and later legal literature but never found thoroughly analysed,⁴ Muslim jurists saw no conflict between such notions of man's free origins and the institution of slavery, and embracing Islam after enslavement did not result in one's return to freedom. In fact, their discussions of legal cases in which the boundaries between slavery and freedom were blurred, concentrated on developing slavery into an ever more sophisticated institution.⁵ Unsurprisingly, freedom was considered a very precious legal status that one would fiercely protect.⁶ Hence al-Jāḥiẓ's statement that voluntary enslavement, that is, the wilful but illegal surrendering of one's freedom and acceptance of social inferiority, must be a sign of profound misery.

How al-Jāḥiẓ's statement relates to actual self-enslavement among Abbasid-era Muslims remains very poorly understood. Sources for the history of slavery in that period only incidentally refer to the enslavement of free persons.⁷ Because the topic mostly turns up in the largely theoretical discussions of juridical texts, voluntary enslavement has hardly been studied beyond its legal parameters, while its social, economic, and other contexts are often neglected.⁸ Complicating the study of self-enslavement, the texts often used for studying the history of early Islamic slavery contain little information about the possible prospects of self-enslaved persons. By and large, most historical texts and works of adab (often translated as ‘belles-lettres’) present us with images of individuals owned by a relatively small class of urban elites, especially those serving them as entertainers, concubines, and soldiers. Even when these sources can be used to study particular forms or aspects of slavery associated with elite circles of Muslim society,⁹ they are almost completely silent about the reality of slavery as experienced by the vast majority of slaves in the Abbasid empire: the thousands of men, women, and children forced into serving affluent households as domestic slaves.¹⁰ Using these sources alone makes it nearly impossible to know what may have motivated free people to give up their freedom.

In light of this lack of information about actual self-enslavement and its contexts, an until now unstudied Arabic papyrus letter deserves our full attention. Uniquely, its unnamed third/ninth- or fourth/tenth-century author writes of his strong inclination towards self-enslavement. Writing from an Egyptian prison, the author complains about his and his nine companions’ bad living conditions, asks the addressee for financial support, and warns that he and his companions will offer themselves as slaves if the addressee refuses to support them. This letter, then, offers us an unparalleled opportunity to study conditions that could lead to the (illegal) enslavement of free individuals in the Abbasid empire. Not written with the aim of meeting certain literary expectations, the letter preserves the concerns and considerations of one of those Abbasid-era Muslims whose voices are hardly ever heard in historical, legal, or other sources. Although the choice of the letter's author and his companions to give up their freedom must have been a deeply personal one, on a more general level the letter speaks to the vulnerability of those who are dependent on others and the existential insecurity that could arise when these relationships are disturbed. In addition, it raises questions about the rigidity of legal institutional boundaries and about the use of legal status for upward social and economic mobility. This article offers an analysis of this letter. But before we turn to this, we will first look at the actual document and its contents.

P.CtYBR inv. 1873 qua: text, translation, and commentary

The letter in question, currently kept in Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library under the inventory number P.CtYBR inv. 1873 qua, has been written on an almost entirely preserved light-brown papyrus sheet measuring 34.6 by 11.5 cm (see Figure 1). Its cutting lines are preserved on all sides except at the top, which has been broken off without damaging the beginning of the text. Of the four lines of a postscript written in the papyrus's upper margin, only the first letters are preserved. With the exception of this broken-off top, the upper third of the papyrus (up to line 7) exhibits hardly any damage. There are many holes in the middle third, causing damage to lines 7–11 and line 13. This damage is concentrated in the right half of these lines. There is hardly any damage in the lower third of the papyrus. A tear runs through lines 14–20, which does not affect the text's legibility. The papyrus bears traces of horizontal folding. At least five horizontal folds are still visible in the lower half of the papyrus. The distance between two of these folds ranges between 1.6 and 1.9 cm. The regular distribution of holes in lines 9 and 10 reveals that two more horizontal folds ran through these lines. Many irregularly distributed folds are visible in the upper half of the papyrus. These are likely to be secondary, that is, the result of folding the papyrus when it was discarded.

Figure 1. P.CtYBR inv. 1873 qua. Source: Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The author wrote the standard opening and closing sections of his letter (lines 1–3 and 19–20) in a quite regular and neat third/ninth- or fourth/tenth-century hand, thus graphically distinguishing these parts of the letter from its core.¹¹ The author used this style for the first words of line 4 as well. From approximately line 7, the script becomes noticeably more cursive, with more ligatures and a less neat appearance. Compare, for example, the execution of the words in lines 6 and 15. This part of the letter frequently exhibits abusive ligatures, such as in in line 11, and in line 12, and in 16. The author wrote the poorly preserved postscript in the upper margin at a right angle to the rest of the letter. The text contains no date, but its script and layout allow it to be dated to the second half of the third/ninth or the first half of the fourth/tenth century.¹²

The back of the letter is empty. Although the author may have written the letter's address in the now broken-off top of the papyrus, most addresses of third/ninth- and fourth/tenth-century letters stood approximately at the same height as the basmala on the other side of the papyrus.¹³ It is most likely that our text never had an address and was despatched together with other letters or goods sent to the addressee.

Text

Text in top margin

Diacritical dots

3. , ; 4. ; 5. , (twice); 6. , , , ; 7. ; 8. , 9. (twice), , , ; 10. ; 11. , , (cf. comm.), , ; 12. ; 13. , ; 14. , ; 15. ; 16. ; 17. .

Translation

In the name of God, Merciful and Compassionate.

May God prolong your life; perpetuate your glory, honour, support and happiness; and may He extend His grace and benevolence to you.

You know—may God render you glorious—what we have had to endure because of (our) imprisonment and the distress we are in. We are still despoiled of our property and all our wealth has been taken. We have no one who attends to or remembers us. We needed you to remind Abū al-Ḍaḥḥāk—may God prolong his life—of our affair and to inform him of our condition. We are obedient servants, ten in number. Some of us are slaves, the others are freemen. We will make ourselves slaves so that he¹⁴ becomes desirous of owning them¹⁵ and you (two) hasten to deal with our affair so that we may be freed from the distress we are in. Nothing remains of the alms that we were given. We are still destitute,¹⁶ with no one to feed or clothe us.

Be so kind—may God render you glorious—to send us money, for we have no one who attends to us. When you have heard news about …,¹⁷ my patroness, do inform us about it so that our minds be at ease or else so that we can act in an appropriate manner, God willing.

May God prolong your life; render you glorious; make you honourable; and may He extend His grace and benevolence to you.

Translation of text in top margin

… and … and Abū al-ʿAbbās … greetings …

Commentary

1. 4. The words are a conventional opening of an exposition. For other attestations, see Werner Diem, ‘Philologisches zu arabischen Dokumenten der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien’, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 101 (2011), pp. 75–140 at p. 128, no. 1 (third/ninth century); P.Ryl.Arab. I § VI 10 (not dated);¹⁸ and P.Vind.Arab. III 23 (fourth/tenth century or later). See also P.Hamb.Arab. II 43 (third/ninth century) and P.Vind.Arab. II 32 (fourth/tenth century), in which appears in restored lacunas. The early fourth/tenth-century exercise of a letter opening P.Vind.Arab. III 17.a starts with these words as well. Note that the exposition of the third/ninth-century petition P.Khalili I 16 starts with a semantically related expression: innahu lam yukhfā ʿalā al-amīr … mā ḥaṣala binā fī hādhihi al-sana, ‘the amīr … is aware of what has befallen us this year’ (lines 4–5).

2. 5. With the exception of a slightly faded first letter, the word is quite legible (the individual letters are undotted). Considering the context of this word, and especially the author's remark that all his and his companions’ wealth has been taken from them, the word probably means ‘being despoiled of property’; cf. ḥaraba, ‘to despoil (someone) of (his) property’; aḥraba, ‘to find (someone) to be despoiled of (his) property’; and iḥtaraba, ‘to be despoiled of one's property’. The dictionaries of Kazimirski, Dozy, and Lane do not record the existence of the verb taḥarraba, but Middle Arabic texts attest to the use of reflexive verb stems for expressing the passive.¹⁹

3. 7. The dhāl in ends unusually low, making the letter resemble a rāʾ/zāy.

   In the current corpus of published Arabic papyri, men named Abū al-Ḍaḥḥāk also appear in the fourth/tenth-century P.Vind.Arab. I 57 and in P.Vind.Arab. III 28, dated to the fifth/eleventh century. If our author and his companions were imprisoned in a state prison during the governorate of Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn, or that of his son and successor Khumārawayh, our author may be referring to Abū al-Ḍaḥḥāk Maḥbūb b. Rajāʾ al-Ḥaḍārī, personal scribe to these governors. This Abū al-Ḍaḥḥāk was known for his eloquence and noble character, and had direct access to the court.²⁰ He would have been able to bring these prisoners to the governor's attention.

4. 8. The reconstruction of is based on the observation that the lacuna is too large for a single letter and that the final alif is connected to a preceding letter. Traces of the top and bottom of the wāw in are still visible. Very faint traces of the tāʾ are visible.

5. 11. The beginning of the word can be read with considerable certainty. The word starts with a clearly dotted yāʾ, which is followed by another denticle and an ʿayn or ghayn. One of the latter two letters is preferred over reading a fāʾ or qāf because the author usually closes the loop of the fāʾ/qāf (cf. in line 2, in line 9, and in line 10) and leaves the loops of many ʿayns/ghayns open (for example, in line 3, in lines 6 and 15, and in line 16). What follows in that word is less clear. A hole removes the end of the verb from our sight and a small letter, such as a denticle, may have been lost in the lacuna. If intended, the dotting of the letters at the end of the word is confusing. Among the words that fit what is legible, , ‘he becomes desirous of owning them’²¹ fits the context best. If the author intended a fāʾ instead of a ghayn, , ‘he throws them out’, would also fit.

   The tāʾ of is dotted. A large dot stands on top of the first wāw at the same height as the denticle that follows. Although the author did not write the dot on top of the denticle (as he usually did elsewhere in his letter), it is most likely that he intended the second person plural instead of the third person plural (, ‘and they hasten to deal with …’) because the author only refers to Abū al-Ḍaḥḥāk and the addressee as those who are able to influence his and his companions’ stay in prison. Note that the author used the plural instead of the dual classical Arabic grammar demands in this context.²²

   The palaeography of does not resemble these letters in in lines 9 and 10 and looks more like . There seems no doubt, however, that the author meant مما .

6. 13. The author initially wrote the kāf of in an unclear way, making it possible to read the letter as a fāʾ or qāf. He subsequently added a little oblique stroke to clarify his writing. A less likely alternative reading is . In this reading, the author meant to write , ‘he gave us to drink’; in this scenario, he crossed out the misplaced qāf with the oblique stroke but did not correct his mistake.

7. 14. The reading of the words is not entirely certain. As noted above, the author leaves the loop of most of his ʿayns/ghayns open and closes those of the fāʾ and qāf. In , the ʿayn is closed. Note that the author (unintentionally?) wrote a dot below the denticle in . The mīm in is only visible in the sharp point that connects the bottom of the alif with the preceding letter. Compare the distinctively different palaeography of an alif following a denticle in and in lines 6 and 15, for example. As in , the mīm is hardly visible before an upward stroke in (line 8) and (line 17) too. After an explicit reference to the lack of money in lines 12 and 13, a request for financial support does not seem misplaced.

8. 16. What precedes the clearly legible is the name of the author's patroness. The dotted tāʾ in , ‘my patroness’, leaves no doubt that we are dealing with a woman, but medieval onomastic literature does not mention a female name that fits what the author wrote: a sīn/shīn, a denticle, and a final bāʾ/tāʾ/thāʾ. Perhaps the author intended to write the female name ‘Sutayt’ but wrote one instead of two denticles.²³

9. 17. Rather than more common seems to have been the expression . See P.Heid.Arab. II 62 (fourth/tenth century), recto line 4 and P.Vind.Arab. II 12 (sixth/twelfth century), line 5.

10. 19. The letter ends with a very common series of blessings, starting with aṭāla allāh baqāʾaka, ‘may God prolong your life’. In that blessing, a clearly legible and unconnected letter precedes . This letter cannot be part of allāh, the word that usually precedes it. The letter looks like a free-standing wāw (compare the wāws in on the same line). Two letters that closely resemble a denticle or short lām and a final hāʾ precede it. A tear removes from our sight one or two letters that originally preceded these letters. Because there is space for only one word between the preserved alif of allāh and the letter preceding , the most likely reading of the beginning of this line is , in which the writer of the letter wrote a wāw by mistake (perhaps because he wanted to write wa-aʿazzaka before he realised that the first blessing was not yet complete).

Crushing living conditions in prison

The author modelled his letter after contemporary petitions, adopting their structure and using their formulas. He took care to visually separate the letter's various parts, which, indeed, neatly correspond with the parts of third/ninth-century petitions.²⁴ He graphically marked the conventional opening of his letter: the invocation of God and opening blessings on the addressee (lines 1–3). Beside starting the invocation above the line, he separated this part of the letter from the following part by adding an empty line after line 3.²⁵ Lines 4–13 contain the letter's exposition, in which the author describes his and his companions’ troubling situation. He starts this part of his letter with a verb built on the root ʿ-l-m, which is frequently used at the beginning of an exposition in contemporary documents,²⁶ including at the beginning of the exposition of petitions.²⁷ Rather than the more often found uʿlimuka, ‘I inform you’, the author of our letter has chosen to start his exposition with the equally conventional words anta taʿlimu, ‘you know’,²⁸ highlighting the addressee's acquaintance with the author's situation and perhaps adding to the exposition a moral appeal. Because in most lines the author used the entire width of the papyrus for his letter, the free space at the end of line 13, in addition to an empty line that follows, signals that the end of the exposition has been reached. Following the structure of the petition, lines 14–18 contain two request clauses, the first starting with the common petition formula in raʾayta an, ‘be so kind to …’.²⁹ The elongation of the shīn in shāʾa in line 18 and the empty space at the end of that line graphically separate this part of the letter from the closing blessings in lines 19–20.³⁰ The afterthought written in the top margin at a right angle to the text below it includes the request to convey greetings to others and/or greetings the author had been asked to convey on behalf of the acquaintances they have in common. The presence of this afterthought reveals that the document must be considered a letter and not an actual petition.

The format of the petition fits well with the author's primary reason for contacting the addressee: requesting immediate financial help. At the beginning of the letter's exposition, the sender reminds the addressee that he and his nine companions have been imprisoned and are being kept in very poor conditions (lines 4–5). The letter gives no information about the reason for their imprisonment or the type of prison in which they are being kept.³¹ Considering the fact that the author shares in his companions’ unhappy fate and that he is aware of their situation, the letter gives the impression that the ten of them have been imprisoned together in a collective cell. At the beginning of the exposition, the author emphasises the ‘distress’ (ḍīq) he and his companions are experiencing in prison (line 5, also line 12). Descriptions of the general living conditions in Abbasid-era prisons may explain why their imprisonment caused distress.³² Historical sources indicate that a serious lack of hygiene, a lot of vermin, and intense promiscuity were common characteristics of collective cells.³³ Graphically illustrating the unhygienic and possibly dangerous living conditions in a late third/ninth-century Egyptian prison, the History of the Patriarchs reports that a prisoner who wished to kill a severely injured inmate took ‘the prison's filth and the grim which formed on its ceilings from the foul air’ and rubbed it into the man's wounds.³⁴

However, what seems to have particularly aggravated the situation of the letter's author and his companions is that their possessions, including their money (lines 5–6), have been confiscated. The letter does not state why their possessions were taken from them. Without information about why the group was imprisoned, various reasons can be speculated upon. Contemporary legal texts, mostly discussing imprisonment in the context of disputes about debts, for example, write that a legal authority could confiscate someone's property in order to investigate his solvency and, if necessary, to sell (part of) it.³⁵ Historical sources report the seizure of property of those accused of having embezzled state funds.³⁶ They also relate that powerful members of society, including political authorities, at times imprisoned someone who had provoked their anger and confiscated his possessions, most likely to increase his discomfort.³⁷ Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn (in office 254–270/868–884), for example, reportedly justified the long imprisonment of one of his scribes by declaring that the latter was lucky not to share in the fate of ‘those whose property I confiscated and whom I subjected to evil (al-makrūh) so that no one would hear about them and so that they would disappear without a trace’.³⁸ Even when authorities were intent on returning someone's seized possessions after they been released from prison,³⁹ confiscating a prisoner's possessions directly increased his dependence on the goodwill of others to maintain him. As is well known, prisoners had to supply their basic needs themselves,⁴⁰ despite the fact that jurists advised political and legal authorities to provide their prisoners with food and adequate clothing. Legal texts stipulate that prisoners whose belongings have been confiscated should remain able to provide for their basic needs and those of their dependants for a limited period of time.⁴¹ Lacking the means to maintain oneself in prison was a serious cause of distress. The third/ninth-century letter P.Heid.Arab. II 8 illustrates this well when its impoverished author writes that ‘if I will be incarcerated, I will starve to death’. The author of our letter seems to have had similar fears. At the end of the exposition, he writes that the alms (ṣadaqa) he and his companions received had been insufficient and that no one had brought them food or clothing (lines 12–13).

After this complaint about neglect and poor living conditions, the author further indicates that no one ‘remembers’ them (line 6). Here, he expresses his fear about being forgotten in prison. Occupying six lines, this is a major theme in the letter—and understandably so. Lack of support from outside prison could drastically impact on an inmate's living conditions and could result in lifelong imprisonment or death. The first/seventh-century senders of the Coptic P.Mon.Epiph. 177, for example, accuse their addressees of having ‘forgotten us in the captivity wherein we are’ and urge them to send money and food or else ‘there will no life be left in us’.⁴² Using similar words, an Egyptian governor of the 150s/770s allegedly said that individuals whose detention was no longer on the authorities’ minds ‘joined the dead’ while they were still alive.⁴³ Despite the fact that qāḍīs and jailers are likely to have kept registers listing their prisoners and stating the reasons for and the date of their incarceration,⁴⁴ historical sources give the impression that the risk of being forgotten was high for those imprisoned for criminal offences or political reasons.⁴⁵ In Egypt, Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn was known to have frequently lost interest in his prisoners, that is, those he did not incarcerate in oubliettes especially designed for this purpose.⁴⁶ According to the fourth/tenth-century Ibn al-Dāya, he took care of (yurāʿī) a prisoner for the duration of only one year, ‘and after the year had passed he would not remember him (lam yadhkurhu)’.⁴⁷

Relief through self-enslavement

At this point in the letter, the author provides information about himself and his companions. He gives his and his companions’ legal status and number. He had hoped that the addressee would have brought their situation to the attention of one Abū al-Ḍaḥḥāk (lines 7–8), who seems to have been someone who could help them get out of prison,⁴⁸ but the addressee apparently did not do so. Because the author makes it clear that it is now too late for intercession and that his group is in direct need of sustenance, it is unlikely that this information was meant to help prison authorities identify the group. As we will see, the author gives this information in order to underscore their immediate need of help.

The sender couches his and his companions’ identity in terms that refer to dependency relationships. Anticipating the warning that the group's current situation will force them to enslave themselves so as to escape their misery, with which the author concludes the exposition (lines 10–12), he states in lines 8–10 that his group consists of ‘obedient servants’ (ghilmān mamālīk), among whom are both freemen (aḥrār) and slaves (mamālīk). The passage calls for reflection on the terminology the author uses. First, he seems to use ghilmān (sg. ghulām) not in the meaning of boys or adolescents, but in the sense of people who hold some kind of subservient position in society.⁴⁹ Immediately following ghilmān, the word mamālīk, which literally means ‘owned persons’ or ‘slaves’ but is here used metaphorically, emphasises their obedience and subordination.⁵⁰ When governed by forms of patronage, the ties that bound these ghilmān to their superiors often created (mutual) obligations, demanding loyalty, services, and protection. These social obligations formed important bases of a ghulām's inclusion in his superior's extended household.⁵¹ Importantly, our author himself occupied exactly such a position. In lines 15–16, he asks the addressee to forward information about his patroness (mawlāt). The author indicates that he wishes to meet the social obligations that come with his client status. He states that he is willing to ‘act in an appropriate manner’ if the addressee has bad news about his patroness (lines 17–18). The author uses an idiom of patronage, too, when he states his reason for turning to the addressee for help. Referring to solicitude (ʿināya) offered in return for loyalty,⁵² he writes in lines 6 and 15 that ‘we have no one who attends (yuʿnā) to us’. These words may well mean that the author believed that others neglected, or were unable to meet, their social obligations towards him and his companions.

Second, the author's use of the word mamālīk in the sense of ‘slaves’ is noteworthy. In contrast to the word ghilmān, which was used for free as well as enslaved individuals, and the metaphorical use of mamālīk to express obedience in line 9, the author uses the word mamālīk (sg. mamlūk) twice, at the end of line 9 and in line 10, in its literal and legal meaning, unambiguously designating those to whom it refers as someone else's property. Because of its explicit reference to slave status and inferiority, this use of the word was unpopular. Possibly following an allegedly prophetic prohibition on using this and other explicit references to a person's slave status,⁵³ the word mamlūk appears very infrequently in early Islamic letters. In published papyrus and early paper documents, its use is mostly linked to legal contexts.⁵⁴ It is therefore significant that our author uses the word twice in its literal meaning of ‘slaves’ in addition to its antonym aḥrār, ‘freemen’—a legal term too. Doubtlessly, in anticipation of his warning at the end of the exposition, he needs the addressee to know the legal status of the members of his group and, in particular, that some of them are freemen.

The author's description of the prospect of him and his companions having to offer themselves as slaves is an unambiguous expression of their despair; compare al-Jāḥiẓ's words cited at the beginning of this article. As noted above, third/ninth-century and later Islamic law forbade the enslavement, including self-enslavement, of free men and women within the Islamic polity.⁵⁵ Contemporary jurists made only a few exceptions. For example, they allowed the full enslavement of men and women whose legal status lay somewhere between being free and enslaved (such as a slave with an emancipation contract or a slave promised freedom after his master's death), the re-enslavement of a freedman whose former master was unable to pay off his debts, and, according to some jurists, the enslavement of a person whose legal status was unknown.⁵⁶ Nevertheless, free people who found themselves in very straitened situations are occasionally recorded as having used slavery as a means to save themselves and/or their dependants from worse. Mostly, sources report the sale of spouses and children during famines or in times of extreme financial stress,⁵⁷ but self-sales can be found as well.⁵⁸ For example, in his description of a horrific famine and outbreak of plague in Egypt in 597–598/1200–1202, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī writes,

Often, women and good-looking young boys would throw themselves at people's feet, wanting to be bought or sold by them. This was deemed lawful by a great many people, and those sold into captivity were dispersed to Iraq, deepest Khurasan, and elsewhere.⁵⁹

Without doubt, those who sold themselves under such circumstances believed that self-sale would lead to the fulfilment of their immediate need for sustenance. The cash they may have received in return for their freedom enabled them to buy food, although in theory their new masters could confiscate that property.⁶⁰ Equally if not more important, entering into slavery enabled them also to secure maintenance beyond their immediate needs and offered them a longer term perspective—an attractive prospect relative to their circumstances. According to legal theory, slave owners were obliged to provide their slaves with food, clothing, and shelter, and were not to overexploit them.⁶¹ The really destitute may have considered slavery an institution from which they could benefit. In fact, the responsibility of slave owners to maintain their slaves did not remove from the latter their entitlement to charity when their owners failed to meet their legal obligations towards them or for other reasons. Besides the poor and needy, the Qurʾān mentions slaves as rightful beneficiaries of charity.⁶² Although most later exegetes interpreted the relevant verses as only referring to slaves with an emancipation (kitāba) contract,⁶³ documents contemporary with our letter show that Muslims, at times at least, sympathised with (impoverished?) ‘servants’—some of whom have slave names—with whom they were acquainted and gave them charity.⁶⁴

Because of the security of maintenance and support slave status offered in theory, not all slaves wished to be set free, perceiving emancipation as an existential threat that could reduce them to beggary.⁶⁵ For example, the fourth/tenth-century historian al-Kindī reports a slave with an emancipation contract who had not found the means to pay a single instalment and wished to remain enslaved after hearing the Egyptian qāḍī Tawba b. Namir (in office 115–120/733–738) decree that he should fulfil his contract within one year.⁶⁶ Expressing a similar concern for support, a slave owned by the sender of P.Hamb.Arab. II 41 (fifth/eleventh-century) ‘asked to receive an emancipation contract and requested information about his relationship with me and my care for him (riʿāyatī lahu) and my solicitude (ʿināya)’. The sender reports that he had advised him ‘to trust the benevolence towards him and the solicitude towards his affairs that makes the decision for this emancipation contract fruitful’.

Likewise, free people in seemingly hopeless or pressing situations, such as the author of our letter, may have thought of slavery as an institution that offered them and/or their dependants relief and prospects for which it was worth transgressing contemporary Islamic law.⁶⁷ Our author's emphasis on his lack of food and clothing (line 13) suggests, indeed, that it is the theoretical security of sustenance offered by slave status that may have motivated him and his companions to consider giving up their freedom and to use an illegal change of their legal status for their social and economic advancement. Uniquely attesting to this use of slavery, our letter illustrates the possible tension between the reality of slavery (including enslavement) in Abbasid society and contemporary slavery laws in spheres of human interaction that lay beyond the purview of legal magistrates—tensions that are at present imperfectly understood.⁶⁸ But above all, the letter underscores its author's and his companions’ despair. They must have been aware of the social inequality between master and slave, the risk of being sold and transported to unknown regions, the harsh treatment slaves could receive, their frequent loss of choice and agency, and—not least important—the difficulty of regaining their freedom.⁶⁹

Concluding remarks

The letter presented and studied in this article speaks to various forms of ‘unfreedom’: physical detainment and an inmate's dependence on support from outside prison, the Islamic patronate and its social and other obligations, and self-enslavement under duress. But at the heart of its author's troubling situation lies a disturbed patron-client relationship. Under normal circumstances, such a relationship, which formed the legal basis of a client's integration into Muslim society, involved mutual loyalty and support. Importantly, however, it did not constitute an egalitarian relationship between patron and client. Clients often remained dependent on their patron for financial or other support and, as a result, are frequently found maintaining a close relationship with their patron and his family, such as working for them or living in their vicinity.⁷⁰ Their primary dependence on their patron made clients vulnerable people who had to fend for themselves when their patron-client relationship was disturbed. A telling example comes from a third/ninth-century petition addressed to an unknown amīr. Its author, a freedman, writes that his relationship with his former master had deteriorated after his emancipation. Because he was cut off from his primary source of support, the freedman turns to the amīr for financial help because he is no longer able to maintain his dependants.⁷¹

The relationship between the sender of our letter and his patroness, too, seems to have been disturbed (although the letter does not state why). As noted above, he makes it abundantly clear that he and his nine companions did not receive the support they expected after they were imprisoned. Having lost touch with his patroness (see lines 15–18), the author turns to the addressee for support, first asking him to intercede with one Abū al-Ḍaḥḥāk (line 14) and then, by way of the letter presented above, asking him for financial help. The author's and his companions’ self-enslavement must be understood most probably in this context as well. Because in third/ninth-century and later Islamic law a bond of patronage could not be dissolved or transferred to others before the patron's death,⁷² the author of our letter may have seen self-enslavement as the only means available to him to break loose from his current patroness and to establish a more advantageous relationship with another ‘patron’, in this case a slaveholder able to provide for him in his current circumstances. Surrendering their freedom in desperation, the author and his group apparently hope that this action will induce Abū al-Ḍaḥḥāk to take them under his patronage (line 11) and force him and the addressee to ‘hasten to deal with our affair so that we may be freed from the distress we are in’ (lines 11–12).