Abstract
Through a corpus of notarial deeds issued by the maḥākim šarʿiyyah of Algiers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we will tackle the relationship between emancipated slaves and legal authorities. In its daily life, the community of emancipated slaves resorted to the judicial body for many different reasons, first, for the issue of status. In order to become emancipated, the slave had to obtain a deed: a testament or a declaration that justifies his access to this new status. Second, for deeds of civil status, deeds of marriage and divorce, deeds recording property in case of acquisition or transmission, acknowledgements of debts and so forth. If for the majority of people resorting to the legal authorities for questions of civil status, identity, property and other issue is usual, it is different for the community of emancipated slaves as their relationship to the judicial body quite complex. We will use samples of the archives of the legal authorities of the period in order to dissect the daily life of this community, and analyze their complex and confused relationship to the judicial body by tackling the different facets that crystallize this relationship.
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