Islamic Jurisprudence and Social Dependency in a Premodern Saharan Oasis Society.

This paper investigates the role of Islamic jurisprudence in creating and sustaining forms of social dependency in the oases of Tuwāt (in present-day southern Algeria). Drawing upon a series of fatwā s collections compiled between 1750 and 1850, I examine how Saharan legal scholars reinforced the structural hegemony of local elites and ensured their control over servile and semi-servile groups, particularly the Haratin population. The materials reveal that jurisprudential techniques and arguments were instrumental in fostering practices of subordination, most notably through the defense of exploitative sharecropping arrangements. The tendency of local jurists to uphold individual property rights de facto worked in favor of descent groups claiming genealogical and cultural superiority. It significantly contributed to the maintenance of unequal relationships between individuals and social groups in a society profoundly shaped by the trans-Saharan slave trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]