Women and Slavery in Islamic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), Xi+354 Pp

Book Review Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn Hain, eds., Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), xi+354 pp. ISBN: 978-0-19-062218-3, Price: $99 (Cloth)/Price Varies (E-Book). Kecia Ali Boston University ([email protected]) n this exciting new volume, co-ed- proportion. There are overlapping clusters itors Matthew Gordon and Kathryn of chapters on the Abbasid era; on qiyān— Hain provide scholars and students enslaved singers; on Andalusia; and on Ian important resource for the study of enslaved (or, surprisingly, not) concubines slavery and enslaved women. The book in royal households. comprises fifteen substantive articles A few contributions will be of particular plus a useful introductory overview by interest for those in religious studies, Gordon and an interpretive epilogue by including Nerina Rustomji’s “Are Houris Hain. It ranges from the seventh century Heavenly Concubines?” and Elizabeth through the eighteenth, across Andalusia Urban’s exploration of how mid-eighth- and the Maghreb, through Arabia and the century contests over legitimate authority Levant, to Turkey, Iran, and Central Asia. came to invoke Abraham and Muhammad’s “The shared aim,” Gordon writes, “is a enslaved concubines to “justif[y] the reconstruction of the lives, careers, and political aspirations of the children of representations of women across this same slave mothers” (“Hagar and Mariya: Early expanse of time, social organization, and Islamic Models of Slave Motherhood,” 230). political drama” (“Introduction: Producing In a similar vein, Michael Dann’s “Between Songs and Sons,” 1). History and Hagiography: The Mothers of The contributors, who range from the Imams in Imami Historical Memory” doctoral candidate to full professor, are looks at hagiographical accounts of the mostly historians and literary scholars, but mother of the twelfth imam as part of there is also a musicologist and a librarian. the construction of a theologically and Roughly sixty percent of the contributions politically robust messianic legitimacy. are by women and most of the essays cite Younus Mirza’s “Remembering the Umm secondary scholarship by women in due al-Walad: Ibn Kathir’s Treatise on the Sale Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018): 252-257 253 • KECIA ALI of the Concubine” is the closest the volume though of varying levels of detail and comes to sustained focus on jurisprudence, facticity. We know very little about the although the text on which it focuses numerous enslaved women whom Ibn is not a work of law; it does, however, Battuta, who “never traveled without a address how authoritative precedent is concubine if he could help it” (168), bought, constructed and contested. gave away, used sexually, impregnated, One of the questions that inevitably and occasionally mourned. More often arises in discussions of Islamic history than not, what is true for Ibn Battuta’s is precisely what is “Islamic” about it. enslaved companions is true more broadly: What are the commonalties as well we catch a few telling glimpses of their life as the distinctions among norms and experiences, but these are nearly always implementation of slavery in majority- subordinated to, and told in terms of their Muslim contexts and other contexts? This relevance to, their owners. There are some collection highlights certain recurring exceptions, however. The sources permit patterns—the legal protections governing Betül İpşirli Argıt to give a rich account the umm walad, for instance—but also of early-eighteenth-century Ottoman reveals substantial divergences among concubine turned queen mother Gülnuş forms of concubinage and enslaved Sultan (“A Queen Mother and the Ottoman courtesanship. It also reveals how Imperial Harem: Rabia Gülnuş Emetullah dependent such practices were on local Valide Sultan [1640-1715]”). Captured and contexts and norms as well as the specifics enslaved as a child in Crete, she became a of given historical moments. In “The Ethnic favorite consort of Sultan Mehmed IV. Two Origins of Female Slaves in al-Andalus,” of her sons ruled successively, from 1695– Christina de la Puente tackles the complex 1715. Her skill at networking and making ways that race, ethnic origin, skin color, alliances enabled her participation in and more play into norms about insiders, internal Ottoman politics as well as foreign outsiders, and status. One intriguing affairs. Another set of exceptional women suggestion offered by Gordon (34) is that are certain qiyān, who are the subject of later scholars may have read whiteness multiple chapters, including Matthew or European origins into descriptions of S. Gordon’s “Abbasid Courtesans and the beauty where none are there in original Question of Social Mobility,” Lisa Nielson’s texts. Issues of ethnicity crop up in other “Visibility and Performance: Courtesans in places from time to time; as Marina the Early Islamicate Courts (661-950 CE),” Tolmacheva notes, the fourteenth-century and Dwight F. Reynolds’ “The Qiyan of “Moroccan globetrotter” Ibn Battuta rarely al-Andalus.” names his wives or concubines, typically It is almost a truism among specialists referring in the latter’s case to their that the term “slavery” obscures vital ethnic/geographic origins (“Concubines differences among the array of legal, social, on the Road—Ibn Battuta’s Slave Women,” and personal relationships that fall under 163). its umbrella. Islamicists who write about One of the merits of this volume is the Mamluks or palace concubines often toss number of enslaved women about whom around the phrase “elite slavery” without it presents biographical information— conscious awareness of its oxymoronic Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018) Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn Hain, eds., Concubines and Courtesans • 254 nature. Certain institutions combined legal those whose presence is most visible to us servitude with social prestige, informal— now. (Contributors rely mostly on literary and occasionally formal—power, and and documentary sources, occasionally control over wealth. In her 2003 essay on including formularies and fatwas, both for the Abbasid post of qahramāna, steward/ historical reconstruction and for evidence keeper of the harem, Nadia Maria El Cheikh of mentalités, dynastic propaganda, and mentions the remarkable Thumal, a jāriya hagiography.) of the caliph’s al-Muqtadir’s mother. That While not all qiyān were sexual partners venerable woman placed Thumal in charge for their owners, many were—at least when of the maẓālim courts, causing considerable those owners were male—and their sexual consternation.1 But the blurry boundaries allure was part of the point. Attachments— among status, influence, and power can be and possibilities for manipulation—could even trickier to analyze when sexuality and be enhanced by qiyān and others who had self-determination enter into the equation. resources, including education, networks, Several contributors focus on questions of and social cachet, beyond those of the social mobility for enslaved women, which uprooted women and girls who seem to require negotiating what Marion Katz has have comprised the majority of enslaved called “the avenues of opportunity and concubines. Singer-composers and other forms of constriction that were navigated educated enslaved women (see Jocelyn by individual women.”2 In her epilogue Sharlet’s “Educated Slave Women and Gift (“Avenues to Social Mobility Available to Exchange in Abbasid Culture” as well as Concubines and Courtesans”), Hain points Pernilla Myrne’s “A jariya’s prospects in out that “While slave women in Islamic Abbasid Baghdad,” which follows the poet society could use their wits, charm, talent, Inan al-Natifi) wielded resources beyond and beauty to achieve social mobility, they those of many other concubines. Although remained vulnerable” (336). the two educated women whom Ibn The book’s title highlights the Battuta bought and ultimately returned inescapable sexual dimension to “feminine to their owners themselves had no say in slavery” (2). While authors acknowledge the matter, the men who sold them, and the legal right of (male) masters to have sex then had changes of heart and sought their with any unmarried women they own (e.g., return, seem to have been more attached 78), expectations of seclusion for enslaved to them than Ibn Battuta was to most of girls and women kept as concubines were the women he bought or was given. far more stringent than those attending The variety of terms used throughout enslaved servants assigned household the book to name and discuss enslaved work. At the same time, owing to historians’ women reflects both the diversity of terms available sources, concubines, particularly used in sources from various languages, those in courtly and elite households, are eras, and genres and the different 1. Nadia Maria El-Cheikh, “The Qahramâna in the Abbasid Court: Position and Functions,” Studia Islamica 97 (2003), pp. 41–55. 2. Marion Katz, “Textual Study of Gender,” in Léon Buskens and Annemarie van Sandwijk, eds., Islamic Studies in the Twenty-first Century: Transformations and Continuities (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), 87–108 at 97–98. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018) 255 • KECIA ALI sensibilities of the volume’s contributors. party is legally unfree? Many modern Some, as I have tended to do in the past, Muslims struggle with the institution of use “slaves” and others, as I try to do concubinage—including although not only now, make a point of using “enslaved in prophetic precedent—in part because person.”3 The latter phrase highlights consent has come to take center stage that enslavement is not a natural state in discussions of sex (if not always in its but something that is actively done to practice).5 Yet as Myrne observes, “the one human being by another, who is system of sexual slavery seems to have not simply a “master” or “mistress” but been taken for granted on the part of a “slaveowner.” English terms such as society at large; it is hard to find evidence concubine and courtesan (or borrowed of any sort of opposition” (89).

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