In Islamic law, a mukatabah/ or mukataba (مكاتبة) is a contract of manumission whereby a master agrees to free a slave only if the latter pays a pre-specified amount of money during a certain period. In this sense, mukatabah is a paid manumission. Historically, mukatib earned his/her freedom after having agreed to make a future payment to the master. That is, the freed slave usually entered into a sort of agreement with the master so that a specific amount of money was to be paid by the former to the latter during a specific period of time at the end of which the former was finally freed from slavery. Otherwise, the salve would keep his/her status as a slave as long as he/she owed his/her master even a single dirham.

Mukataba (affranchisement) is a bilateral agreement that involves an exchange (freedom for money), and as such it differs from the unilateral act of release from slavery in which the owner frees their slaves for nothing in return, or where the owner does so at the request of a third party who stands ready to pay the owner for such a release.