While arguments associating music with immorality are found throughout history and cross-culturally, they are especially prominent in those cultures with an established courtesan/patron dynamic. Because the role of the courtesan linked musical entertainment to physical intimacy, their literary representations are often connected to discussions or criticisms regarding the place of music within the culture. In the early Islamic courts, singing slave girls (pl. qiy?n, sing. qayna) were essential to both private and public entertainments. The most skilled became part of the musician elite and established themselves as courtesans by holding a position of relative autonomy in comparison to other musical concubines (jawari, mughanni). Of the extant early Arabic sources for music, the Censure of Instruments of Diversion by Ibn Abi’l Dunya is considered the first treatise to question the legality of music in Islam. Ibn Abi’l Dunya argued that patronage of singing girls and listening to music for entertainment diverted one from religion, leading to drink, apostasy and physical transformation. In the Censure, singing girls are understood to be sinners already due to their visibility as performers; it is their acting as agents of corruption by encouraging musical patronage that is at issue. A similar argument is used by the jurist and religious scholar al-Ajurri in his Response to a question concerning music. Though not as well known, al-Ajurri’s Response is also among the earliest treatises regarding the question of music in Islam. Like the Censure, the Response links patronage of singing girls and music audition to corruption; concluding that music itself is effeminate and effeminizing and therefore immoral. In this paper, I discuss how both texts use the figure of the singing girl to represent the dangers of music and musical patronage. I begin with a brief summation of the development of a courtesan/patron dynamic within the complicated hierarchy of musicians and musical concubines in ninth- and tenth-century Abbasid court culture. Then, I summarize and compare the arguments of al-Ajurri and Ibn Abi’l Dunya and their place within the growing debates regarding music at the time. I conclude by comparing these arguments to the defamation of courtesans in select cultures as a means to connect singing girls to the broader context of rhetoric surrounding music and music performance.

This paper presents an analysis of the artistic achievements of the early Abbasid qiy?n and jaw?ri? benefiting from recent studies of courtesans in other cultures. The female slaves trained as entertainers constitute a subculture in the early Abbasid Empire, associated not only with a libertine lifestyle, but also with the preservation of cultural heritage in combination with new cultural achievements. The focus of the paper is the biographies and poetic oeuvres of some of the most famous poets among the 900th century qiy?n, whilst acknowledging the challenge of tracing the women’s singularity in texts authored and transmitted by men. As a matter of fact, narratives about these women’s sometimes extraordinary behavior are better preserved than their poetry. The reason for this, the paper suggests, is that literary convention did not allow the qiy?n much individual expression, whereas their ability to use poetry and other cultural accomplishments in order to fashion their own personas was decisive for their success. The women’s self-representation is traced in historical grounded analyses, which also consider the notions of power-relationship and subjectivity.

The conquests of the first century of Islam gave the Arabian tribes access to tens of thousands of captured individuals. Those individuals who were enslaved could find themselves at the heart of the conquest society – none more so than the concubine, or umm walad. Thanks in part to the Islamic practice of children inheriting the legal status of the father, the offspring of these unions soon appeared in every political and religious context; as imams, qadis, governors and caliphs. While these male progeny are often preserved within the historical tradition, their mothers nearly always remain anonymous – in the vast majority of cases we know neither her name nor her place of origin. The approach taken in this paper will provide some context to these women. It will be shown that the richness of the Arab genealogical literary tradition of the 9th century (predominantly the Nasab Quraysh of al-Zubayri and the Jamharat al-Nasab of Ibn al-Kalbi) provides us with the resources to create a database of nearly 3,000 Qurashi individuals for whom we know the status of the mother. By applying statistical and prosopographical methods to this database we can uncover trends indicating changes in the number of umm walads over time, and variations in the ratios of children born to umm walads according to tribal grouping. These trends can then be linked to information preserved in other historical sources to show that a statistically-indicated prejudice against having children by concubines has parallels in outside references. This trend data on concubine unions is an invaluable tool in other types of analysis; accounting for the umm walads (who are completely outside the Arab tribal system) means that we can turn to marriage activity within the tribes to investigate links between endogamous or exogamous behaviour and political or religious affiliations. Finally, it will also be shown that the statistical analysis of the database can provide historiographical insights into the Arab genealogical literary tradition – a tradition which is in many ways unique to Islam.

Are Houris Heavenly Concubines? Concubines, qiyan (singing slave girls), and houris (pure female companions promised to Muslim male believers in Paradise) all operate within the realm of pleasure by serving males, providing entertainment, and offering visual spectacles of feminine beauty. Yet, while some theological texts cast concubines and qiyan as morally dubious, other theological texts celebrate the houri as the embodiment of female beauty who was designed to provide the ultimate pleasure for male believers in Paradise. This paper reflects on how 'Abbasid era texts reconciled the concern with pleasure in earthly life (through the qiyan) with the celebration of pleasure in the promised heavenly life (through the houris) and asks specifically if houris can be understood as heavenly concubines. It argues that within texts of al-Muhasibi (d. 857 C.E.) and al-Qadi (ca. 12th century C.E.), the houris do operate as heavenly qiyan; yet, unlike the earthly concubine and singing girl, the houris' function as female companions is imbued with spiritual purity and denuded of earthly appetitive taint. While the houris' beauty is alluded to in the Qur'an, they are described by metaphors linked with spiritual purity that set the framework for the heavenly realm of pleasure. In hadith collections, descriptions of the houri become more detailed and more sensual. Eschatological manuals build on the foundational texts of Qur'an and hadith and make the houri the most developed and vocal character of Paradise. This paper will demonstrate how these narrative strands of spiritual purity and earthly pleasure became fused in the houri by the emergence of the eschatological narratives of al-Muhasibi’s Kitab al-Tawahhum, Ibn Habib’s (d. 852 C.E.) Wasf al-Firdaws, and al-Qadi’s Daqa’iq al-akhbar fi dhikr al-janna wa-l-nar. In particular, it focuses on one attribute - the houris' capacity to speak with a "melodic voice," which provides the sole musical expression found within Paradise. As a result, the attribute of melodic voices aligns the houri in heaven with the qiyan on earth. The paper will conclude by considering the implications of this vocal convergence and suggests that there is nonetheless a divergence between earthly and heavenly realms of pleasure.