Mawla

Mawlā (مَوْلَى, plural mawālī مَوَالِي), is a polysemous Arabic word, whose meaning varied in different periods and contexts. Before the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the term originally applied to any form of tribal association. In the Quran and hadiths it is used in a number of senses, including 'Lord', 'guardian', 'trustee', and 'helper'. After Muhammad's death, this institution was adapted by the Umayyad dynasty to incorporate new converts to Islam into Arab-Muslim society and the word mawali gained currency as an appellation for converted non-Arab Muslims in the early Islamic caliphates. The word mawla is derived from the root و ل ي w-l-y , meaning "to be close to", "to be friends with", or "to have power over". Mawla can have reciprocal meanings, depending on whether it is used in the active or passive voice: "master" or "slave/freedman", "patron" or "client", "uncle" or "nephew", or simply friend. Originally, mawāli were clients of an Arab tribe, but with the advent of Islam, the term came to refer to non-Arab Muslims and other client allies of the Muslim community. The term originated in the pre-Islamic Arabia to refer to a politically-active class of slaves and freedmen, Daniel Pipes argued that the first indication of the Mamluk military class were rooted from the practice of early Muslims such as Zubayr ibn al-Awwam and Uthman ibn Affan of owning massive number of slaves and practice of this Islamic manumission of slaves. The Zubayrids army under Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, son of Zubayr, has practiced these freed slave retainers during the second civil war. Later it gained more prominence during Umayyad Caliphate, as many non-Arab subjects converted to Islam. The influx of non-Arab converts to Islam created a new difficulty in incorporating them into tribal Arab society. The solution appeared to be the creation of a contract, a wala', through which the non-Arab Muslims acquired an Arab patron (mawla). They continued to pay a similar tax that was required from the people of the book and were generally excluded from government and the military until the end of the Umayyad Caliphate.