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<jats:p>Freedom is the secret topic of this essay—a topic political theorists can scarce let alone. Hence the following exploration into African kingship and slavery should be understood as part of a dialectic of freedom, as seen through its opposites.</jats:p><jats:p>The passing references to Western thinkers are meant to put the African ideas in a perspective of general intellectual history, which is permissible if only because the great tradition of political philosophy, after it was eradicated in the West, was preserved by the Arabic and Jewish scholars of Africa, Asia Minor, and Andalusia. Subsequently some versions of this tradition were diffused throughout Africa with the spread of Islam and Christianity.</jats:p>