ABSTRACT
The sources rarely provide information to identify which mawlas had slave origins. Even though the four meanings at hand appear entirely unrelated and mawlas were everywhere in early Islam, a modern researcher usually cannot distinguish between them. This chapter concentrates on developments in the mawla status and describes the social circumstances of mawlas in a specific era. The specific circumstances of Jahili society shaped the mawla status and explain why mawla refers to several little-related social categories; it had a simple basic meaning which could fulfil diverse functions in the changing circumstances of the Jahiliya and early Islam. Tribes dominated Jahili life, performing many of the functions we commonly associate with government and they provided the only forum for political, social, and economic life. Although different in origins, mawla-freedmen and mawla-converts shared much in the Arabian period; their similarity was so great that they can even be regarded as a single group.
