Modern scholarship has often made much of how Islamic societies of the central middle ages (and later) featured large numbers of many types of slaves, including eunuchs, qiyan, mamluks, and concubines, and of the vast extent of slave-raiding and trading in those cultures. It is, perhaps, easy to imagine that slavery was somehow inherent to Islamicate society and many discussions have tended to begin with that as an assumption. In the decades after Muhammad’s death, the Muslims had rapidly conquered much of the Middle East and far beyond. Many of them became wealthy beyond anything they might have earlier imagined. Suddenly, the new elite found themselves owning enormous numbers of slaves. Yet, the world depicted in the Quran and in the oldest layers of Islamic tradition is quite different. While slavery is known, it was far from an essential part of the society of western Arabia. Slaves themselves were rare; only the very wealthiest people in Mecca owned more than two or three slaves. Attitudes towards children born to slave mothers were quite different from those of even a century later while what constituted the work of slaves and the work of the free was also rapidly transformed. Nearly all slaves worked alongside their owners or did basic domestic tasks. By re-reading some of these earliest sources, it is hoped that attitudes towards slavery as well as the lives of slaves in the world into which Islam was born can be understood. Separating the attitudes towards slavery that the first Muslims carried with them from pre-Islamic Arabia along with the teachings and practices of Muhammad from those of the hybrid culture that grew up in the wake of the conquests will help to better understand both.