When westerners discuss slavery and related institutions in the Islamicate world, the discussion often seems to suggest that there was both something peculiarly Muslim and ineffably alien about it. However, when early Islamic systems of slavery and concubinage are looked at in the context of the period and cross-culturally, other possibilities might emerge. Whether these parallels emerged from a common heritage in the Late Antique Roman world or were the result of similar social situations, other states and social systems that had emerged from what had been the Roman Empire had many similarities to Islamicate patterns on female slavery and concubinage in the years immediately before the emergence of Islam and in its early centuries. One need only, for instance, recall the life of Balthild, an English slave and concubine who rose to become Queen of the Franks as consort and then regent, even achieving sainthood, to see parallels with near contemporary Islamic women. At the same time, similar rules and regulations emerged restricting the freedom of women, whether as slaves or as slave-owners, that bear a striking resemblance to Islamicate practices. This paper will examine female slavery and the trade in women slaves in the first centuries of Islam in the broader context of the post-Roman world. By comparing Islamicate practices with those of their contemporaries and immediate predecessors in the Late Roman and Byzantine Empires as well as in the Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, Lombardic, and Visigothic kingdoms, it is hoped that the institution of slavery and specific aspects of female servitude in the Islamic world will be contextualized. At the same time, such a comparison will enable an attempt to determine whether there were any distinctively Islamic aspects to slavery in this period.