"Although indigenous conceptions of bondage did not include a sharp antithesis between the categories of slave and free, the conditions of the age of commerce may have encouraged movement in that direction.... The constant influx of new captives and imports created a market situation which needed to be regulated. Moreover, many members of the slave-owning merchant class had strong roots in the Islamic world, which had a clear body of law on slaves as property. The legal codes drawn up in Southeast Asian cities therefore paid considerable attention to slaves. Malay codes of law typically devoted about a quarter of their total attention to questions of slavery."