This paper studies family letters, legal records, and responsa from the Cairo Geniza between the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries and analyzes how female domestic slavery impacted the honor and social prestige of free women in Jewish Egyptian households. Bills of sale and letters concerning slave transactions reflect that women often initiated the acquisition of new household slaves, or deputized others to do so on their behalf. Women’s motivations for acquiring slaves were varied. While some interests centered on practical concerns, others were more interested in using slaves to project their own social positions and legacies. Family letters and deathbed inheritance declarations describe the diverse roles performed by slaves. These roles including serving as caretakers for both children and for their ill mistresses in the stead of absent kin. The domestic labor that slaves performed did more than simply alleviate the burden of household chores that were routinely expected of free women. Slaves protected the appearance of their owners’ modesty and honor by venturing forth into mixed, public spaces to run errands on their mistresses’ behalf. Yet the presence of slave women in the domestic sphere could also compromise the dignity and security of free women. Petitions to local authorities and legal queries sent to Egyptian Jewish jurists reveal a persistent social practice that defied communal norms. Jewish men bought slaves and used them as concubines despite the fact that Jewish law expressly prohibited slave concubinage. In some instances, wives and children were abandoned by husbands who absconded with their wives’ possessions and took up residence with their slave women. In others, slaves became pawns in protracted marital disputes between estranged spouses. While it has long been acknowledged that male desire for concubines played a substantive role in the demand for slaves in the Islamic world, less attention has been paid to the role played by free women’s demands for slaves. This paper aims to illustrate how free women played an active role in shaping the meaning of medieval domestic slavery in the Middle East as well as how this system of slavery could undermine their own interests.