Resumen de Animosity Against Those 'Drowned in Debt': an Analysis of Legal Texts in the Marīnid Period
This essay discusses social sanctions against a group of people called those 'drowned in debt,' who were deemed collaborators in illegal state tax collection. To do so, I use fatwās relating to a dispute in Marīnid Fez: the question addressed is about if a teacher can receive money from these people as fees for their children’s education. By adopting an opinion of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd, a famous Mālikī jurist of the Almoravid period, a muftī, named al-Qabbāb, argues that such a transaction’s permissibility should be determined on the legal status of the property of the party involved and not on the occupation of specific jobs that relate to tax collection. By doing so, the muftī considers the legal sensibility of the city’s inhabitants who expect sanctions against state tax collectors while avoiding arbitrary legal reasoning by grounding his argument in the authoritative legal opinions of the Mālikī law school.
