1 Among the most important characteristics of post-emancipation societies are struggles over the meanings attributed to freedom and citizenship after slavery (Cooper, Holt, and Scott 2000). In Mauritania and southern Morocco, as in other parts of the circum-Saharan world, the social identity and economic position of former slaves and their descendants are subjects of contestation. Local constructions of race have been used in these societies to identify people with slave pasts and to buttress forms of discrimination that keep most descendants of slaves in socially inferior positions. Former slaves and their descendants have responded to racialized discourse directed at them by engaging actively in struggles to redefine their place as citizens of the post-colonial states in which they live. It is the particularity of these struggles in the context of a wider post-emancipatory framework that accounts for the diversity of experiences among the descendants of slaves revealed in the interviews carried out by Ann McDougall and her team in Mauritania and southern Morocco that this essay addresses.

2 There is a lot of local variation in the terminology used to describe the stratum of people presumed to be descended from slaves and often labeled as “blacks”. Most terms, like the word ḥarāṭīn, have a direct semantic relationship to blackness. Chouki El Hamel has argued that the word ḥarṭāni – the singular form of the collective noun – is derived from the Berber word ahardan, which is connected to dark skin color. Other terms such as gnawa, or isouqqiyn used in southern Morocco to identify “blacks” more or less interchangeably with the term ḥarāṭīn, also have etymologies connecting them to blackness (El Hamel 2002 : 38-39). There are some who argue that autochthonous black populations lived in places like the Dra Valley in southern Morocco before the arrival of Berbers in the area, and therefore that today’s black populations in northern Sahara are not necessarily – or entirely – descended from slaves (El Hamel 2008 : 244). Even if this is true, it is clear that as the Saharan and trans-Saharan slave trade of sub-Saharan Africans developed and became an important source of labor in North Africa after the eighth century (Savage 1997 : 73-75 ; Savage 1992 : 351-368), and as southern Saharan pastoralist groups expanded their use of sub-Saharan African slaves from the West African Sahel zone in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Webb 1995), a slaveholder ideology developed in the circum-Saharan world which closely tied blackness to the identity of slaves (Hall 2011 : 69-104). While some of the history of the relationship between race and slavery in the circum-Sahara is the subject of continuing academic debate, there can be little doubt that the connection between blackness and slave status has followed the ḥarāṭīn in their different struggles for a place in post-emancipation Mauritania and Morocco (Brhane 1997 ; Ensel 1999 ; Ruff 1999 ; Ould Ahmed Salem 2004 ; El Hamel 2012 : 270-296). As such, it is very difficult for ḥarāṭīn to escape the implication that they are descended from enslaved people, and that they therefore stand in some way in relation to a slave past.

3 If we understand Mauritania and Morocco as post-emancipation societies, we should expect that the rhetoric around slavery would continue to be important, although also dangerous and perhaps taboo. It is essential then that we come to grips with the uses to which memory of slavery is put or, to say it another way, how the memory of slavery is actively remembered, invoked and/or denied in different contexts. It is important to emphasize that there is no necessary way in which ḥarāṭīn raise the issue of slavery. When it is brought up as an issue, it is the product of active choices made by social actors meant to accomplish particular ends. The question then is : how is slavery invoked, when and for what purposes ?

4 In my reflection on the interviews with ḥarāṭīn in Morocco and Mauritania, I will explore how the memory of slavery is deployed by ḥarāṭīn to make arguments about what I will call ‘Muslim citizenship’ in Mauritania and southern Morocco (Glassman 1995 : 23) [1]. What I mean by Muslim citizenship in the context of modern Morocco and Mauritania is the achievement of full civil rights and the personal status of a free Muslim, both de jure and de facto. I trace three ways in which slavery is invoked in these interviews. For some, it is narrated as a form of dishonorable violence unleashed on defenseless enslaved women by male masters. For others, slavery is made to explain ḥarāṭīn backwardness in terms of economic status and consequently, why it is necessary for ḥarāṭīn to achieve independence from former masters. Finally, for yet others, slavery is used to explain ignorance among ḥarāṭīn. In this last instance, by failing to fulfill their religiously-obligated role to educate slaves about islam, masters are accused of denying slaves access to knowledge which would permit them to achieve full Muslim citizenship. Here, full personhood is defined in religious terms and slavery is condemned not so much as an oppressive institution in and of itself, but as one affected by the failure of masters to behave in islamically-prescribed ways to bring enslaved people to islam. The continuing failure of masters to live up to their religiously-defined obligations to treat ḥarāṭīn as equals is what makes ḥarāṭīn autonomy and independence so necessary.

Memories of Violence

5 In many of the interviews from Morocco, slavery is invoked as a kind of collective memory signifying generalized injustice and oppression, rather than as a past lived experience of individuals. However, in the interviews done in Mauritania, there are accounts of particular instances of violence associated with slavery. In one case, a run-away pregnant woman is helped by some informants :

6

Pouvez-vous nous parler du N’Diambour ? Comment se faisait l’accueil des gens sur place ? Qui se chargeait des arrivants ?
R. Pour ce qui est de cette histoire, voilà, un jour nous étions trois hommes à marcher sur la route entre Kiffa et Kouroudiel, on transportait du grain et de l’arachide. Et puis tout à coup on a vu venir vers nous une femme, une ḥartānīyya toute nue, qui courait, elle était enceinte et elle nous suppliait de la laisser mourir car ses maîtres allaient la rattraper, elle était dans un état pitoyable, ses ongles étaient très longs, on n’a pas pu la laisser comme ça. L’un de nous est allé chercher de l’eau pour elle, vers le crépuscule elle a accouché d’un petit garçon, on lui a donné un petit couteau pour couper le cordon. Et puis mon ami a déchiré son turban en deux pour y mettre l’enfant et pour qu’elle se couvre un peu. Ensuite on l’a mise à dos d’âne sur un tapis de prière comme selle, et on l’a conduite elle et son bébé jusqu’à Kiffa, chez les Ähl Djenva, ce sont des gens chez qui allaient les esclaves qui fuyaient les maîtres. Donc on l’a remise à eux et on est parti. Une semaine après, on a été abordés par deux hommes qui nous demandaient si c’était bien nous qui avions aidé leur esclave à fuir. On leur a dit oui et qu’elle était chez les Djenva. L’un deux a voulu aller chez ces derniers mais il est vite revenu à la raison

7 We see a similar account of the abuses inflicted on a female slave by her master in an interview with M. O. B. in Kankossa. Explaining that his sister had died because of mistreatment by her master, the interviewee offered this account of slavery :

8

C’était quoi cet incident ?
R. Elle est morte ! A l’époque, les esclaves étaient maltraités et subissaient toutes sortes de mépris et de torture. On les traitait comme les ânes et en ce temps-là nous étions petits, on ne connaissait rien.
Q. Elle a été frappée ?
R. Elle a été bastonnée, elle a reçu un coup très dur par son maître et on ne sait pas si les autorités de l’époque ont été informées de ça ou non.
Q. Qui l’a bastonnée ?
R. C’est son « maître » qui l’a bastonnée. Elle n’avait pas d’hommes pour la défendre

9 The horror of these incidents lies not only in the violence that they recount, but also in the fact that these were women who were largely defenseless. As such, masters who inflicted this kind of violence on female slaves demeaned themselves and their own honor by attacking and killing women under their power. Their actions bear witness to transgressions of the virtue and correct behavior expected of noble men in most of the societies of the West Africa Sahel (Klein 1998 : 2). In this way, violence stands as proof of the unfitness of these masters to own slaves, and indirectly perhaps, of the legitimacy of slavery itself in these cases.

Post-Emancipation Belonging and Autonomy

10 In the interviews, people refer repeatedly to goals of independence from former masters, or from bīđ̣ān or amazigh more generally. Perhaps this reflects the reality of many ḥarāṭīn today, where relationships associated with former masters or dominant groups have weakened or disappeared altogether. It may also be the product of migration that has permitted some ḥarāṭīn to gain economic independence. One respondent in southern Morocco explained that younger ḥarāṭīn [isouqqiyn] had become more politicized and demanding of greater respect after having migrated to work in northern Morocco.

11

Qu’est ce qui caractérise cette ère nouvelle ?
R. La montée des jeunes ; plus de liberté d’association, de réunion ; plus de libertés aux élections, etc.
Q. Cette liberté acquise est due à quoi ?
R. Aux jeunes, surtout ceux qui avaient travaillé et vécu pour un temps dans les villes du nord. Ils y avaient vu comment les choses se passaient. Ils avaient pris conscience des droits de l’homme

12 The way in which these changes are narrated invokes a wider language of human rights more commonly associated with anti-colonial nationalism. Here, the political struggle of Morocco to regain its independence is aligned with the struggle of ḥarāṭīn for freedom from oppression by masters. According to A. B., a respondent in southern Morocco :

13

Voilà un aspect de la « colonisation locale » dont j’ai parlé au début. Il y avait la colonisation française de tout le Maroc, et celle de ces familles sur le plan local. On ne pouvait rien contre elles alors, car elles étaient associées au colonisateur et pouvaient vous causer du tort alors. Mais depuis l’indépendance et la venue des droits de l’homme (ḥuqū;q al-insān), les gens se sentaient plus libres dans leurs paroles et leurs actions, et n’acceptaient plus ce genre de mainmise. Les gens ne sont plus « obligés » de voter pour un candidat imposé par les notables (imazighen) du village. Certains sont devenus riches et ne sont plus des ḫammas. Si tu visites la maison de mon frère ici, tu te croirais dans une maison de Casablanca !

14 Like the violence inflicted on slaves by masters, the association with French colonialism also besmirches the moral standing of slaveholders (Klein 1998 : 238-240) [2].

15 The language of autonomy or independence from former masters may strike us as the natural response of an oppressed person. However, at least ideologically, slavery was a system in the circum-Saharan world that led to cultural and religious acculturation and eventual manumission, often social promotion to junior-client status in the family of a slave’s master. From the perspective of Muslim scholars, manumission of a slave was in no way the same thing as granting him or her ‘freedom’. A manumitted slave was expected to maintain a relationship with his or her former master/s in a form of clientship (walāˀ). I can cite one example of how these issues were written about in the legal literature of this region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The arabophone Kunta scholar Shaykh Bay al-Kunti (d. 1929), and who lived most of his life in the remote hamlet of Telaya, in the Adrar-n-Ifoghas in the extreme north-west of what is today Northern Mali, wrote that the relationship between a master and his manumitted slave should be as follows :

16

“He is his brother, so what remains between brothers are good deeds, and the aspects of the ties of contiguous kinship that are permanent between them. That is, if the emancipated slave is a rightly-guided person. When there is no discourse like this for [the emancipated slave], he goes and lives where he likes, and he does with himself and his property as he wishes. There is nobody to protest about it, or about the need to restrict him or prevent him from going where he wishes. This is matter subject to numerous grave offenses. It is in the authenticated hadith : ‘Your sparks (sharār) who are not manumitted freely, they glow for him in the end.’ [The Prophet Muhammad] said : ‘Any of them who manumit [their slave] should then employ him. If [the emancipated slave] wants to leave them, they should claim him as their slave.’” [3]

17 What is striking in the jurisprudential literature on slavery is the conditional nature of manumission. Former masters are held responsible for the moral behavior of their former slaves ; manumitted slaves become members of their master’s family.

18 Elsewhere, Shaykh Bay explained how the manumitted slave becomes a client of his former master’s family and does not obtain full legal status as a freeman :

19 Know that you are, when you manumit your slave, still there for him and that he continues to have restrictions on his legal competence. He becomes like a cousin according to the indication of [the Prophet’s] statement : “Clientage (walāˀ) is [a form] of kinship like the kinship of lineage. He can not be sold, and he can not be given as a present.” […] The gist is that the manumitted slave… is brought by the manumitter… to the rank of the cousin on the paternal side, enjoying paternal relations in blood money, in which each one of them acts on behalf of the others. The manumitter… inherits from the manumitted slave but not the other way around [4].

20 This opinion represents a particular discourse associated with the historical role of the Kunta lineage in slaveholding and in its position as leader of a Sufi order committed to spreading islam. But it also stands for a wider justification of slavery and the correct practice of manumission as a ‘tool’ of moral uplift. The ways that islam, slavery and social hierarchy were ideologically intertwined in circum-Saharan societies suggest that the language of clientage, and the idea that slavery is a process of social promotion which could lead to a higher status for former slaves as junior clients in their master’s families and kin units, were shared by slaves and masters alike (Hall 2011 : 279-297). This does not mean that the historical, lived reality of slavery was benign but it highlights the fact that this ideal patron-client framework for master-slave relationships was drawn upon by masters, slaves, and freed slaves alike in their various struggles with each other.

21 In an interview carried out in the village of M., in T. in Morocco, this seems to be part of the logic of the person who claimed that freed slaves have a higher status than ḥarāṭīn because they retain some relationship with their former masters, and because they can make claims to have been officially manumitted.

22

Y a-t-il aussi des isouqqiyn (terme berbère pour ḥarāṭīn) ?
R. Oui, depuis plusieurs générations.
Q. Comment distingue-t-on dans ton village ḥarāṭīn et isemgān (esclaves), puisqu’ils sont tous noirs ?
R. Les deux, ḥarāṭīn et isemgān, vivent au village depuis des générations. Tu sais, en fait les ḥarāṭīn n’existent pas. Il n’y a que ḥurr [homme libre] et ˤabd [esclave]. Pas d’autre statut. Les ḥarāṭīn sont ceux parmi les esclaves qui n’avaient pas été légalement affranchis par leurs maîtres.
Q. Donc, si je comprends bien, un isemg (esclave non affranchi légalement) serait un ḥarṭāni, c’est ça ?
R. Oui, s’il ne possède pas de preuve reconnue de son affranchissement, il est un simple ḥarṭāni, pas un « vrai » isemg. C’est comme mes oncles maternels. Ils sont des ḥarāṭīn. Ils étaient des isemgān, mais non [légalement] affranchis. Ils sont donc restés ḥarāṭīn et on les considère comme tel.
Q. C’est donc l’affranchissement qui fait la différence entre les deux statuts, n’est-ce pas ?
R. Tout à fait. Celui qui n’est pas [légalement] affranchi reste un simple ḥarṭāni. C’est tasderfiyt qui en fait un vrai ˤabd.
Q. Donc tous ces Noirs qui travaillent dans la palmeraie d’A., seraient des esclaves non [légalement] affranchis ?
R. Que peuvent-ils être d’autre ? Nous avons une autre façon de reconnaître qui est isemg/isemgān. Ce sont ceux qui proviennent des régions du Soudan. Tous les Noirs sont normalement originaires du Soudan, mais ceux qui avaient été légalement affranchis sont de vrais [purs ?] isemgān, les autres sont restés de simples isouqqiyn.
Q. Vous faites donc une nette distinction entre isouqqiyn et isemgān ?
R. Regardez ! Même dans la sharīˤa, un esclave qui a été légalement affranchi peut être qādī ou présider la prière commune (imam de « ṣāla al-jamˤaa (prière collective) »). Mais s’il n’est pas reconnu comme étant affranchi, il n’est pas autorisé à occuper ces fonctions. C’est de là qu’on peut déceler cette distinction et voir qu’un esclave [légalement] affranchi est mieux placé que celui qui n’est pas affranchi.
Q. Mais on voit bien des isouqqiyn diriger la prière !
R. Oui, mais c’est parce que les gens ne respectent plus la sharīˤa…

23 This idea that legal manumission by masters renders one a ‘full Muslim’, whereas people of slave descent who were never officially freed by their masters, even though slavery is no longer legal or recognized as a personal status category in the country, is found in other parts of the circum-Saharan world. Among the Fulbe in Mali for example, former slaves have sought to buy their own freedom from their masters, long after slavery was outlawed officially (Berndt 2007 : 332-333). It suggests that full freedom, or citizenship, is defined by this informant in Muslim terms that accepts a legitimate role for enslavement of non-believers, not in the modernist language of human rights which denies the validity of slavery altogether (Ould Ahmed Salem 2009 : 156-177 ; McDougall 2010 : 259-286).

Education and Muslim Citizenship

24 Because the relationship between master and slave had religious sanction in the circum-Saharan world, it is not surprising that one of the ways that slavery is invoked in contemporary Mauritania, and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, is as an explanation for present backwardness and lack of education among the descendants of slaves. Widely held slaveholder ideology in Muslim Africa justified the practice of slavery as a punishment for unbelief and a rejection of islam on the part of those enslaved (Hunwick and Powell 2002 : 23) [5]. Although masters were required to give their slaves religious instruction that would bring them into the fold of islam, slaves were often stereotyped as the antithesis of Muslims, people who lacked personal honor and behaved in licentious ways (Meillassoux 1991 : 121-123 ; Sikainga 1996 : 117-118 ; Klein 2005 : 840-842).

25 The literature on slavery in Muslim parts of Africa often highlights this ideological tension between the proselytizing ideals of islam and the difficulty slaves faced in gaining recognition as Muslims. In the life stories of ex-slaves and their descendants in the West African Sahel, for example, an aspiration for islamic education is frequently invoked (Klein 2005 : 832 ; Hanretta 2009 : 221). Former slaves often reported that their masters denied them the opportunity to learn with their free age-mates because of a fear that access to religious knowledge would undermine slaveholders’ domination over their slaves. In one of the interviews that took place at Garalla-Paris in Mauritania with D. O. S., the denial of islamic education by masters is specifically invoked :

26

Moi, quand j’étais enfant mes maîtres sont venus me prendre chez mes parents et leur ont dit que c’était pour me faire instruire en Coran. Je suis donc parti avec eux. Ils m’ont juste enseigné les lettres de l’alphabet, ensuite ils m’ont dit c’est fini, tu vas garder le troupeau. Comme je refusais, ils m’ont battu, mais je refusais toujours et puis un jour, je me suis enfui…

27 Islamic education has been a means by which former slaves and their descendants have sought to achieve social respectability denied them by their slave past (Ruff 1999 : 262-263 ; Brhane 2002 : 195-196, 200-202). Roger Botte described how descendants of slaves who had memorized the Qur’ān in the Futa Jallon region of Guinea in the 1970s struggled to be able to take the honorific title of “ceerno”, which had previously been limited to successful ‘noble’ students (Botte 1990 : 48-49). Among the Haalpulaar in Mauritania in the 1990s, Ousmane Kamara showed that former slaves were more likely to send their children to qur’ānic schools than people of noble status, who increasingly preferred secular state schools. Islamic education was important to former slaves because it helped to negate their slave identity (Kamara 2000 : 284-285).

28 Some former slaves who have pursued islamic education have used their knowledge to challenge the practice of slavery – or at least the legacy of nobility and servility – in their societies. Jeremy Berndt demonstrated how some former slaves in the rural Malian region of the Gimbala were successful in gaining islamic education beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. A common line of argument made by former slaves who managed to achieve a sophisticated level of islamic knowledge was to accept the legitimacy of slavery in principle, while denying its validity in the present time because of the corruption and immorality of local nobles and slave owners. As one former slave-scholar in Gimbala put it : “noble people, all that they have is the name. You are noble, but you steal, you lie, you betray. Well, now you are not a master.” (Berndt 2007 : 333). Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem has shown similar efforts at delegitimizing slavery by former slaves who managed to become imams in their own mosques in Nouakchott, Mauritania. One such imam, Mbareck Ould Mahmoud, issued a religious opinion (fatwā) in 2009, in which he argued that slavery is illegal in islam :

29 The islamic state freed people from slavery and from oppression and it is because of that that slaves of the unfaithful took refuge there and asked for protection, but not so that the [islamic] state could enslave them. This is what the Prophet and his prestigious companions created. Islam has defended the oppressed and even the unfaithful enslaved illegally… So, how then can a Muslim enslave his Muslim brother ? The Prophet said, “Every Muslim is sacred to the Muslim : his blood, his property, his honor.” [6]

30 Mbareck Ould Mahmoud relies on classical islamic sources as the authority for his conclusion. To him, islam means justice and protection from oppression for all Muslims, which he interprets to be the complete antithesis of slavery.

31 These kinds of argument against slavery are best understood as a product of the circumstances and struggles of post-emancipation societies in Africa where social status continues to be defined by the culture and social memory of slavery (Hanretta 2009 : 224). Similar challenges have been made to other practices associated with slavery. Muslim women of slave descent, for example, have sometimes provoked anger from nobles by insisting on wearing headscarves, veils and other apparel explicitly intended to mark their modesty and, in this context, assert a noble Muslim status. In the sumptuary traditions of Muslim parts of Africa, slave women were not permitted to veil themselves in public (Hall 2011 : 239). Other struggles have involved controversies over the possibility that people of noble descent would pray behind an imam of slave background (Ould Ahmed Salem, 2013). In the traditional jurisprudence of Muslim West Africa, even freed slaves were not permitted to lead the freeborn in prayers (Hall 2011 : 238). In twentieth-century Senegal and Mauritania, former slaves were often expected to pay the zakāt, or Muslim tithe meant for the poor, to their masters. Martin Klein argued that this practice became a source of conflict between former slaves and their masters in the twentieth century. Former slaves often resorted to islamic arguments about the illegality of this practice (Klein 2005 : 832 ; Hall 2011 : 228-229).

32 During the colonial and postcolonial periods, Muslim former slaves and their descendants have used knowledge of islam as a tool to dispute the social and cultural disadvantages that their slave past subjects them to. It seems clear in a number of these interviews that islamic education and status are important ways in which some ḥarāṭīn claim what I have been calling Muslim citizenship. It is not just that ḥarāṭīn are Muslims like everyone else, they make claims to be Muslims equal in status to those of non-slave descent. This is evident in the attention paid to islamic education, to building mosques, and to ḥarāṭīn filling the office of imam.

33 The Mauritanian ḥarāṭīn from Sawab make this very clear. Sawab is a community created by a ḥarāṭīn migration in 2007 away from the town of Fraiwa, which they shared with their former masters. Because of a conflict between ḥarāṭīn and bīđ̣ān youths that resulted in the arrest and jailing of five ḥarāṭīn, the ḥarāṭīn community decided to leave Fraiwa in order to form an autonomous community at Sawab. One of the themes of the interview with R. O. M. S., the headman of Sawab, is the equality of the ḥarāṭīn in Sawab with their former masters in Fraiwa in matters of religion.

34

Quel genre de rapport gardez-vous avec vos anciens maîtres ?
R. De notre part, nous gardons les rapports habituels entre musulmans. Nous nous échangeons les salutations, et si nous savons que quelqu’un parmi eux est hospitalisé, nous lui rendons visite. Nous ne mettons pas de barrières entre nous. Malgré tout, ils resteront nos frères.
Q. C’est vous l’imam de cette mosquée ?
R. Oui, j’ai construit difficilement cette petite mosquée, avec de l’argent collecté chez les bienfaiteurs à Nouakchott et dans différents villages voisins. Le parti islamiste Tawassoul a aussi contribué financièrement à la construction de la mosquée.
Q. Y donnez-vous des cours de religion ?
R. Oui, je fais de mon mieux, mais je sais que ce n’est pas parfait ! (avec modestie). De temps à autre, nous recevons des enseignants de la grande école coranique Teyssier

35 The insistence both that good relations are maintained with their former masters, as befits good Muslims, is a claim to full Muslim citizenship by the ḥarāṭīn of Sawab. That one of the ḥarāṭīn is able to act as imam of the mosque, and teach religious courses, is further proof of this.

36 In the interviews carried out for this project, the memory of slavery was invoked by ḥarāṭīn in order to make claims for position and status in the present. The achievement of what I have called Muslim citizenship has often been elusive for the descendants of slaves in the circum-Saharan world. But for the ḥarāṭīn, it is clear that the means of achieving greater levels of equality lies not with turning to a discourse of universal human rights which will have limited resonance in the wider societies of Mauritania and Morocco, but in engaging with the organic legal and moral traditions of islam in these places.