Slavery and freedom

Family: Peoples, minorities and protected groups · 10 entries

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Entries on this theme

Person

• Sumayya bint Khayyat

  c. 560 CEAn elderly woman of the first converts, tortured in Mecca for her faith; the tradition counts her the first martyr of Islam, mother of the Companion Ammar ibn Yasir.

• Umm Ayman (Baraka bint Tha'laba)

  c. 560 (approx.) CEAn Abyssinian freedwoman of the Prophet's family who cared for him as a child and again after his mother's death, and is counted among the Companions.

• Salman al-Farisi

  c. 568 CEA Persian seeker who passed through Zoroastrianism and Christianity before reaching Muhammad; freed from slavery in Medina, he is remembered for proposing the trench at the siege of 627.

• Umayya ibn Khalaf

  c. 570 CEA headman of the clan of Jumah remembered above all as the owner who tortured Bilal — one of the named persecutors of the weak converts, killed at Badr.

• Bilal ibn Rabah

  c. 580 CEAn Abyssinian-born slave in Mecca, among the earliest converts; freed by Abu Bakr and remembered as the first muezzin of Islam — the voice that called the community to prayer.

• Zayd ibn Haritha

  c. 580 (approx.) CEA freedman of the Prophet, once adopted by him, who became one of the earliest Muslims and commanded the expedition to Mu'ta, where he was killed; the only Companion named in the Qur'an.

• Wahshi ibn Harb

  c. 600 CEAn Abyssinian slave famous for his javelin: promised his freedom for killing Hamza at Uhud, he later became a Muslim and, in the tradition's account, also killed the false prophet Musaylima at Yamama.

• Abu Bakra Nufay' ibn al-Harith

  A slave of Thaqif who descended from the besieged fortress of Ta'if on a pulley (bakra) in response to the Prophet's proclamation of freedom; the Prophet manumitted him as a 'freeman of God', and he became a prominent Companion and hadith transmitter in Basra.

• Thawban, freedman of the Prophet

  A well-known Companion said to be of the Hakam ibn Sa'd of Himyar, or from the Sarat; the Prophet bought and freed him, and he served him until his death, then lived in al-Ramla and Homs, where he died in 54 AH.

Concept

• Emancipation of enemy slaves upon fleeing to Muslim lines

  A legal principle in Islamic law of war established during the siege of Ta'if when the Prophet proclaimed: 'Whichever slave descends from the fortress to us is a free man', freeing over a dozen men including Abu Bakra as 'freemen of God' and refusing to return them upon Ta'if's submission.

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Controversial topics

• Sexuality and gender diversity
• Converts and those who leave
• Images and figural art
• Takfir and its critics
• Dissent, heresy and freethought
• Conquest and its debates
• Violent extremism and the Muslim response
• Islam and atheism or secular thought