Reflections on Reciprocity
Reflections on Reciprocity
A Late Medieval Islamic Perspective on Christian-Muslim Commitment to Captive Exchange
The captive trade was one of the flourishing businesses along the coasts of North Africa and eastern Spain during the Middle Ages. Yet, while war, fear, or profit was behind the enslavement of Christians and Muslims, the act of rescuing these captives proved to be a distinctly different form of interaction. Ironically, the relationship between captives and captors, and between the Christian and Muslim middlemen who negotiated their release, was collaborative, and often personal. Using Islamic legal texts, this chapter examines the formal and informal institutions that supported these redemptive practices in the western Mediterranean. More specifically, it addresses the incentives and justifications given by a prominent Muslim religious scholar in fifteenth-century Malaga for his community’s long-standing collaboration with Christians and his view of the consequences of abusing both the contractual nature and the spirit of this relationship.
Keywords: captive, enslavement, Christian, Muslim, Malaga, North Africa, Spain, western Mediterranean, Middle Ages
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