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Glite Dictionary
🕊️ A freed slave 🤝 A client ally 🕌 A convert
mawali

mawali

9.9
A non-Arab person attached to an Arab tribe for protection and support
  • noun
  • Archaic
translation icon : mawali
  • The relationship between the mawali and their Arab patrons was crucial for social and political integration.

I think there's got to be some mawali discontent.

Examples

  • As a result, W. M. Watt says, "the Abbasids satisfied the aspirations of the mawali by ceasing to make any juridical distinction between Arab and non-Arab."

    Academic text (1994)

  • For example, the Mawali population of Basra was estimated at the time of the Umayyad governor Ubaydallah ibn Ziyad (64 A.H./684 A.D.) to have been 150,000.

    Academic text (1994)

  • I think there's got to be some mawali discontent.

    YaleCourses

  • The Umayyads distinguished between Arab and non-Arab Muslims, the mawali.

    Academic text (1994)

  • The mawali were often seen as essential contributors to the growth of early Islamic society.

  • In early Islamic communities, many non-Arab Muslims identified as mawali, fostering a unique cultural blend.

Surface Forms

mawali singular
mawali plural

Etymology

Mawali comes from the Arabic word mawlā, which meant a 'client' or someone tied to a tribe for help and protection. So mawali came to mean a non-Arab ally or client attached to an Arab tribe by that patronage relationship.