In an undated letter, written sometime during his reign between 1837 and 1842, Abūbakar Atikū, ‘Uthmān b. Fodiye's son, and the third Sarkin Musulmi of the Sokoto Caliphate responded to a query by the scholar Sīdī Mahmūd on the status of a ransom negotiation. The letter does not go into specifics, but Atikū wrote that he too was very concerned about the prisoners, that he also wanted them to be ransomed, and that he was waiting for the return of the mediator in order to conclude the affair. The previous chapters discussed ransoming in its legal and political context in Muslim West Africa and the state-level policy of using ransoming as a way to protect freeborn Muslims from unlawful enslavement according to local interpretations of law. As has been demonstrated, not only was ransoming viewed as a moral and legal obligation (which became especially important during the jihad era) but policies permitting the ransoming of Muslims varied over time. This chapter focuses on ransoming practices. It does so by concentrating on individual cases to illustrate how ransoms were negotiated, the factors that led to successful negotiations, and why they sometimes failed. Historians such as Sandra Greene and Eve Troutt Powell, among others, have demonstrated that an emphasis on individual experiences with enslavement provides a better understanding of how enslaved women and men negotiated the complex legal, social, economic, and cultural milieus in which they found themselves and therefore provides a better understanding of slavery. Likewise, by focusing on individual cases, this chapter illustrates how prisoners and their loved ones used ransoming norms to navigate the legal, social, and emotional worlds in which they found themselves in order to regain their freedom before they could be enslaved. A focus on the individual/micro level demonstrates how ransoming actually worked instead of what ought to have happened according to policies and procedures.

The existence of the letter by Atikū to Sīdī Mahmūd hints at key elements in successful ransom negotiations. As will be discussed below, these include the individual motives for participating in ransoming, the importance of communication links between captors and payers of ransom, and the role of mediators in ransom negotiations.