Islamic scholarship owes an immense and often unrecognized debt to non-Arabs and freed slaves, a truth that may surprise those who assume the earliest Muslim scholars were predominantly Arab. Central to understanding this contribution is the term mawālī, which in the early Islamic period carried two related meanings: it referred both to freed slaves and to non-Arabs who had been integrated into the Arab tribal structure. To appreciate how this category arose and how it shaped the transmission of sacred knowledge, one must first understand the tribal system of the Arabian Peninsula and the reality of slavery in the seventh century.
It is important not to overstate the numerical dominance of non-Arab scholars. A common claim holds that non-Arabs vastly outnumbered Arab scholars, yet this is not entirely accurate. A random sample of over one thousand scholars who died in or before 400 AH/1010 CE, spanning the five main branches of learning—ḥadīth, tafsīr, qirāʾa, naḥw, and fiqh—found that fifty-one percent were Arabs and forty-nine percent non-Arabs. In the first century of Islam, Arabs outnumbered non-Arabs ninety to ten, but by the fourth century the ratio had reversed to sixty-five percent non-Arab and thirty-five percent Arab. Another study, drawing on Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī's (d. 476/1083) Ṭabaqāt al-Fuqahāʾ, found varying ratios across regions in the first two centuries. Arabs thus played an essential role, particularly early on when most Muslims were Arab. The point is not that Arabs contributed little, but rather that Islam's teaching that piety and knowledge, not race, determine a scholar's standing created an atmosphere in which all could participate.
To understand slavery in seventh-century Arabia, one must resist reading it through the lens of American chattel slavery, whose racial basis, expansiveness, and oppressiveness are not representative of the varied forms slavery has taken across human history. Slaves in Arabia lived within their owners' households as members of the family rather than being housed apart and worked in fields. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ emphasized clothing, feeding, and housing slaves humanely and treating them as brothers and sisters. This is captured in the report of al-Maʿrūr ibn Suwayd (d. 82/701), who saw Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī wearing a cloak identical to his slave's. Abū Dharr related that when he had insulted a man by reproaching his mother, the Prophet ﷺ told him, "Your slaves are your brethren upon whom Allah has given you authority. So, if one has one's brethren under one's control, one should feed them with the like of what one eats and clothe them with the like of what one wears," and further instructed that they not be overburdened.
Although Islam did not prohibit slavery, it came very close to doing so by strongly encouraging emancipation and mandating it as expiation for certain sins. One of the earliest chapters revealed refers to freeing slaves as a sign of piety. Slaves could gain freedom through a contract of manumission (mukātaba), whereby they earned their freedom over time or through an agreed sum, which required owners to allow them to earn. A female slave who bore her owner's child, known as umm walad, became free upon his death. The Prophet ﷺ also taught that a slave declared free became free, even if the statement were made in error or in jest. Involuntary manslaughter, among other sins, required freeing a slave. Consequently, slaves were rarely enslaved for life, and no consistent slave class persisted in society. The Prophet ﷺ himself was gifted dozens of slaves during his lifetime and freed every one of them—at a time when slavery was not deemed immoral and nearly every middle-class household owned a slave—demonstrating clearly that he did not favor the institution. This is presented not as apology but as historical fact.
Islam challenged the tribal order by insisting on the equality of all human beings before God and demanding justice even against one's kin. The Qur'an declares, "O you who believe, uphold justice and bear witness to God, even if it is against yourselves, your parents, or your close relatives... If you distort or neglect justice, God is fully aware of what you do" (4:135). Women, orphans, and slaves were the most vulnerable, and the Prophet ﷺ, upon hearing of a violently treated elderly woman, said, "How would God sanctify a nation that does not protect its underprivileged from its powerful?" He also called the government "the guardian of those who have no guardian." This transformation from tribalism to a universal community was gradual, unfolding over years.
The tribal system offered a mechanism for integrating outsiders: foreigners and unattached individuals could become affiliates (mawlā, plural mawālī) of a tribe, as could freed slaves, who retained affiliation without originally belonging. As Islam spread beyond Arabia, both meanings expanded through a patronage system attaching non-Arab converts to Arab patrons. Amid the extensive slavery of the conquered Mediterranean and Persian lands, early Muslims, following the Qur'an and Sunnah, freed many slaves, so that a large portion of the new mawālī were former slaves or their descendants. Sulaymān ibn Yasār (d. 107/725), of Persian origin and freed slave of the Prophet's wife Maymūna bint al-Ḥārith, became one of the seven famous jurists of Medina.
This Umayyad-era mawlā policy was initially controversial, retaining tribal prejudice by ranking non-Arab Muslims below Arabs, contradicting the Qur'anic affirmation of equality. The state's fiscal interest led it to continue levying the jizya on converts, prompting objection from the ʿulamāʾ and pious Muslims. The caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (d. 101/720) ended discriminatory laws against the mawālī. Notably, Jamal Juda has argued that the notion converts still paid jizya stems from the term's dual use for both the poll tax and land taxes imposed on all, a matter ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz simplified by decreeing land taxes uniform regardless of the owner's faith. By the 720s the mawālī were largely Arabic-speaking, intermarrying, and prominent, and the Abbasids eliminated the remaining distinctions.
The mawālī rose to leadership in scholarship. The caliph ʿUmar, learning that Ibn Abzā, a mawlā, had been placed over Mecca because "he recites God's book and is knowledgeable about the obligations," affirmed the Prophet's words: "God elevates [some] people with this religion and lowers others." When Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 124/742) named the religious leaders of the regions to ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān (d. 86/705), nearly all were mawālī save Ibrahīm al-Nakhaʿī (d. 96/717) in Kufa; the caliph fretted that the mawālī would lead the Arabs from the pulpits, to which al-Zuhrī replied that religion belongs to whoever preserves it. Al-Zuhrī later admitted, "Knowledge has been taken over by the mawālī," and Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406) observed that those who carried Islamic knowledge were mostly non-Arabs, a point the Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher echoed. All six compilers of the famous hadith collections were non-Arab, and nearly half their narrators were mawālī. Ibn Khaldūn attributed this partly to the literacy of converted populations. The mawālī thus shaped fiqh, hadith, tafsīr, theology, and grammar—figures such as ʿIkrima, Ṭāwūs ibn Kaysān, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Ibn Sīrīn, ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ, Nāfiʿ, Sībawayhi, Ibn al-Mubārak, and Abū Ḥanīfa—leaving Islamic scholarship forever in their debt, an environment made possible chiefly by Islam's call to equality.