Welcome to the TraSIS Project
This blog aims to acquaint readers with the research and activities of the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project (grant number 208124) TraSIS: Trajectories of Slavery in Islamicate Societies, based at the University of Bern. As part of our project output, we aim to publish one blog post every month that explores a primary source related to the theme of slavery and coerced labour in Islamic law, broadly conceived. The sources discussed will vary in terms of temporal, geographic, linguistic and sectarian origin, and will reflect the diversity and range of Islamic legal thought and practice. Individual posts may excerpt sources in translation or offer full transcriptions of texts, and will feature some discussion of the provenance and significance of the work in question. We are also interested in questions of race, class, gender and ethnicity, and how these inflect the experience—and juristic conception— of slavery and coerced labour. Intersectionality is a central concern of the TraSIS project. Given the variety of sources presented in our blog, however, this theme will figure more or less prominently, depending on the nature of the text discussed. Moreover, though our project focuses on three key juristic concepts, namely the umm al-walad, mukātaba, and kafāla, our blog posts will explore the full spectrum of unfreedom.
The blog is open to guest contributors not affiliated to the project team. Otherwise, the main contributors will be core members of TraSIS, whose blog posts will typically illustrate some aspect of their project research. New blog posts will appear uppermost on the blog page, with older posts appearing below. Links to all blog posts will be available on the home page, to facilitate smooth navigation of content.
We hope our blog is of interest to readers: we welcome comments, feedback, and proposals for contributions!
The TraSIS Team
Recent Blog Posts:
Tolino, Serena: What Can We Learn about Slavery from a Manual for Judges and Notaries?
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