This panel focuses on the nature of gendered slavery under Islam using the representations of slave women in Arabic texts. The first paper questions women’s cultural roles based on legal status. Slave women are represented as having access to the public sphere, sexually uninhibited, and engaged in the seduction of men through the mastery of poetry and song. Free women are described as more marginalized, confined to the private sphere, austere, pious, and educated in the religious sciences. Less understood are the cultural referents which differentiated between concubines and courtesans. This differentiation informs us on the interaction between slavery, gender, and cultural legitimacy.
The second paper focuses on the life of ‘Inan (d. 814 CE) a slave and poet who lived in Iraq. The analysis will consider the portrayal of ‘Inan, her poetry and her interactions with other poets and with her masters as she negotiates the complex intersection of ideas about elegance (zarf), eloquence and obscenity or bohemianism (mujun). ‘Inan’s life provides a broader look at what it meant to be a slave and a poet.
Our third paper explores the cultural reasons underlying the incorporation of large numbers of foreign slave women to project prestige, power, and wealth. The usual answer is that the Abbasids adopted Persian patterns. This paper argues that the practice ranged more widely, that the Sassanids and the Abbasids sought legitimacy as empires by imitating the huge harems of the T’ang emperors. A number of Abbasid texts show the place held by the T’ang in the imagination of the Iraqi elite. China became a significant influence on Muslim culture, especially in the prominent place of slave women.
The last paper takes a look at master-slave relations glimpsed through the prism of the memoir of Ibn Battuta. These travel sketches provide miniature case studies that enhance our understanding of social history and throw light on the complex dynamics of marriage, family and owner-slave relations. The microcosm of Ibn Battuta’s familial establishment illustrates differences in treatment by the male head of household between free wives and slave concubines; between female and male slaves; and between concubines and female servants.
Combined, these papers contribute to the on-going analysis of the core elements of the slave experience for women in Islam, particularly the differences between slave and free women and between slave concubines and courtesans as well as the cultural patterns of slavery established by the Abbasids which brought numerous slave women into prominent roles.
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Ms. Karen Moukheiber
A trend of scholarship on women in classical Islam has presented the distribution of feminine cultural roles in Abbasid foundational texts as reflecting a double standard based mainly on legal status. Slave women are represented as having access to the public sphere, sexually uninhibited, and engaged in the seduction of men partly through the mastery of poetry and song. Free women are described as confined to the private sphere, austere, pious, and educated in the religious sciences. Scholarship investigating biographical compilations for a better understanding of the cultural roles of slave and free women has nuanced the image of the self-fulfilled slave poetess and/or songstress and the marginalized free woman without, however, calling into question a distribution of women’s cultural roles based on status.
This paper revisits a selection of Abbasid biographical compilations namely Al-tabaqat al-kubra, of Ibn Saad (d.230/845), Tabaqat al-shuara of Ibn al-Mutazz (d.296/908), Kitab al-aghani of al-Isfahani (d.356/975), and Tarikh Baghdad of al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (d.463-5/1071) in order to develop an appreciation of the conceptual framework underlying the representation of the cultural roles of slave women. It argues that biographical compilations differentiate between two categories of slave women: the household concubine as a legitimate sexual partner and producer of offspring and the qayna as a public performer of poetry and song. It further contends that this categorization challenges the distribution of feminine roles as one based on status and reflects instead two contemporaneous appreciations of Islamic culture: on the one hand, an exclusive perception of a cultural heritage which accounts only for what it considers as inherently Islamic; on the other a more inclusive vision which accounts for pre-Islamic fields of cultural production such as music and poetry. The argumentation is based on substantiated answers to the following questions: What was the terminology used by biographical compilations in their entries on slave women? What cultural referents legitimized the differentiation between the roles of slave women as concubines and their roles as performers of poetry and song? What does the differentiation between these two categories of slave women tell us about the authors’ understanding of the cultural roles of women slave and free? More generally, how does this differentiation inform us on the interaction between slavery, gender, and cultural legitimacy?
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Dr. Jocelyn Sharlet
How did pre-modern Arabic writers understand the life and work of ‘Inan (d. 814) as a slave and a poet of Iraq? How are ‘Inan’s views of herself and the elite men who were her masters, their associates, or her poet colleagues presented in the sources? This presentation explores the reception of ‘Inan as a poet and slave in her longer biographies in al-Aghani by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, Nisa’ al-Khulafa’ by Ibn al-Sa’i, al-Mustazraf min Akhbar al-Jawari by al-Suyuti, the context of shorter notices about her sources such as al-Zarf wal-Zurafa’ by al-Washsha’, Tabaqat al-Shu’ara’ al-Muhdathin by Ibn al-Mu’tazz and al-‘Iqd al-Farid by Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi, as well as other sources that mention ‘Inan. The analysis will consider background information on ‘Inan’s masters, their associates, and poets who interacted with her such as Abu Nuwas, Marwan b. Abi Hafsa, ‘Abbas b. al-Ahnaf, the merchant al-Natifi, the caliph al-Rashid, his servant Masrur and his wife Zubayda Umm Ja’far as well as a survey of the transmitters who contribute to the circulation of information about ‘Inan. In particular, this analysis will explore how portrayals of ‘Inan negotiate the complex intersection of ideas about elegance (zarf), eloquence and obscenity or bohemianism (mujun). This project will consider research on elite slave women by scholars such as Hilary Kilpatrick, Matthew Gordon, Pernilla Myrne, Marle Hammond, Kecia Ali, and F. Matthew Caswell as well as work on topics related to ‘Inan’s life such as Abu Nuwas by Philip Kennedy, ‘Abbas b. al-Ahnaf by Susan Enderwitz, women by Nadia Maria El Shaykh and mujun by Zoltan Szombathy. While the analysis will explore ‘Inan’s subjectivity in the pre-modern Arabic sources, it will also aim for a broader look at what it meant for this slave poet to “be somebody” as a historical figure situated among other historical figures in the dynamic sociability of hierarchical, colleague, business and peer relationships in pre-modern Arabic sources.
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Dr. Kathryn Hain
The Abbasid court, especially during the reign of the caliphs of the ninth century ‘Golden Age’, established a pattern for slavery in royal and elite households that would be copied from al-Andalucía to Central Asia for the next millennium. To understand slavery in this era, it is useful to understand the motivation behind the acquisition of numerous enslaved concubines, talented courtesans, and eunuchs. Why did the Abbasid dynasty use huge numbers of slaves to project prestige, power, and wealth? The usual answer references the adoption of Persian cultural patterns. This paper, however, argues that both the Persians and their Abbasid descendants sought legitimacy for their imperial ambitions by their imitation of, and relations with the much larger T’ang Chinese court. The influence of T’ang China on Abbasid culture consisted of more than just porcelain and paper.
Five types of Abbasid literature notably mention China. The question asked of these texts is not the Arabs’ knowledge of China, but rather, is there evidence of their desire to emulate the T’ang. Rihla travelogues, real and imaginary, by Marwazi, the unknown editor of Akhbar a-Sin wal-Hind, Sirafi, etc. show that China proved to be a popular topic. Belles lettres by Jahiz and al-Biruni praise Chinese imports in Baghdad. Texts by all the major historians and geographers, Tabari, Mas’udi, Ibn Khurdadhbih, Al-Maqkisi, Al-Istakhri copy from each other and lost ancient sources to describe China. Traditions of conjectured sayings by Mohammad about China could have been used to quiet Arab traditionalists.
These Arabic sources show the place that the T’ang had in the imagination of the Iraqi elite. They reveal that one influence promoting the caliphs’ accumulation of elite slaves might have been their desire to replicate ancient Asian royal traditions to the level set by the T’ang where royal households reached 30,000 members. Perhaps the Abbasid caliphs who bragged about their two to four thousand concubines were attempting to show that they were players in the global competition for prestige. They were not just competing with the Persians that they had conquered, but more importantly, with the almost mystical wealth and mystique of the T’ang dynasty. Abbasid literature supports the theory that China was a powerful influence on Baghdadi culture, an influence that increased demand for slave women from across the known world but also gave slaves access to elite roles in society.
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This paper takes a look at master-slave relations glimpsed through the prism of travel literature. Specific examples are drawn from the “Rihla” travel memoir of the famed 14th-century Moroccan Ibn Battuta. Analysis is rooted in the studies of Mamluk-era slave trade and frontier studies. The uniqueness of Ibn Battuta’s narrative lies in his multiple roles: the observer, buyer and user of slave women who is both the owner and story-teller. The first-person record places various women on the orbit of the fortune-seeker whose wandering career places him in the military-elite environment of Turco-Mongol courts from Egypt to India. .
The focus is on the lived experience of enslaved women, frequently recent captives and first-generation slaves. After the initial dislocation caused by captivity, the women purchased by “The Traveler of the Arabs” accompanied him across countries, continents, and seas, sometimes at great peril. Travel sketches provide miniature case studies that enhance our understanding of social history and throw light on the complex dynamics of marriage, family and owner-slave relations. Ibn Battuta was not only an observer, but also beneficiary of the ongoing war, raiding, and the resulting influx of captives and slave trade in foreign women, men, and children. He was also trained as a lawyer, so we have in his case an informed slave purchaser and concubine user.
Several distinctions transpire that affect behavior, mobility, gender, and ownership relations. The microcosm of Ibn Battuta’s familial establishment illustrates differences in treatment by the male head of household between free wives and slave concubines; between female and male slaves; between concubines and female servants. The Rihla as an historical source is valued for the information about the women Ibn Battuta encountered, including his learned and royal patronesses. The traveler avails himself of multiple chances to describe and discuss free and famous women. What was mobility for them and Ibn Battuta meant dislocation for the enslaved individuals. Whether in a settled environment or on the road, the women’s histories form a fluid series of individual vignettes that enrich Ibn Battuta’s portrait as husband, father, but also slave-owner, whose concubines and children were driven from country to country or from household to household by the will of their master.
