tly whenever circumstances became especially difficult. The custom was not made illegal until AD 374. Abandoned children usually either died or were made slaves. The owners themselves sometimes found the infants, either by accident or design. At other times they received them from finders who knew of their need. But there are also signs in the papyri of the availability of infants on request. Individuals who were part of the slave trade either collected abandoned babies for later sale themselves or bought them from others who found them. Some of the methods that were used in Greco-Roman slavery were also employed in Africa. The earliest slaves were captives taken in warfare. Most slaves appear to have been the property of kings, priests, and temples, and only a relatively small proportion were in private possession. They were employed to till the fields and tend the flocks of their royal and priestly masters but otherwise seem to have played little role in economic production, which was mostly left to small farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers and to artisans and journeymen. As in Greco-Roman slavery, slaves were also acquired by the sale, abandonment, or kidnapping of small children. Free persons could sell themselves or, more frequently, their offspring into slavery. They could be enslaved for insolvency, as could be the persons offered by them as pledges. In the religion of Islam, it was made unlawful for a freeman to sell himself or his children into slavery, and it was no longer permitted for freemen to be enslaved for either debt or crime, as was usual in the Roman world. It became a fundamental principle of Islamic jurisprudence that the natural condition, and therefore the presumed status, of mankind was freedom, just as the basic rule concerning actions is “permittedness”: what is not expressly forbidden is permitted; whoever is not known to be a slave is free. This rule was not always strictly observed. In some regi...
