In the context of Islamic law, a concubine is a man's slave-woman with whom he has a sexual relationship. The classical Arabic term for it is surriyya, although the terms jariya, ama, mamluka could also refer to a concubine. Surriyya comes from sirr, meaning secrecy, as the concubine was secluded in private quarters.
Most Western scholarship translates surriyya as "concubine," though some use the term "slave-concubine." Neither the word surriyya nor any dedicated term for a concubine or female slave appears in the Qur'an, which only uses the phrase ma malakat aymanukum in broad reference to slaves in general.
In classical Islamic law, a concubine was an unmarried slave-woman with whom her master engaged in sexual relations. Concubinage was widely accepted by Muslim scholars until the abolition of slavery in the 20th century.
Concubinage was a custom practiced in both pre-Islamic Arabia and the wider Near East and Mediterranean. The Quran allowed this custom by requiring a man not to have sexual relations with anyone except for his wife or concubine.
Muhammad had a concubine Maria the Copt who had been given to him as a gift by al-Muqawqis with whom he had a son. Some sources say he later freed and married her, while others dispute this. Classical Islamic jurists did not place any limits on how many concubines a man could have. Prostitution of concubines was prohibited.
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The Slave Market by Jean-Léon Gérôme, depicting a scene reminiscent of historical slave trading practices.
Similarities and Differences in Concubinage
There are similarities and differences in concubinage in Islam and other communities. Whereas in Islam the children of concubines (if acknowledged by the father) were automatically legitimate this was not necessarily the case in Sassanian Persia or among the Mazdeans. Instead the Sassanian shah chose a chief wife and only her children were legitimate. Similarly, Christians living in Persia did not see the children of slave concubine as legitimate.
Concubinage practiced by Romans was generally monogamous, whereas Islam did not place limits on number of concubines. In pre-Islamic Arabia concubinage was practiced. The child of a concubine remained a slave unless liberated by the father. The child would also not be considered a member of the tribe unless liberated by the father; pre-Islamic Arab fathers were reluctant to recognize their children from black concubines.
By contrast under Islam recognizing children of concubines as tribe members became mandatory. Bernard Lewis argues that many pre-Islamic Arabs were born of concubines. By contrast, Majied Robinson argues that concubinage was not widely practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia.
The verses of the Quran that refer to concubinage are Meccan, and restrict sexual relations to wives (23:5-6, 70:29-30). The Medinan verses instead promote marriage to free women (4:25), marriage to slaves (24:32, 2:221) and recommend abstinence (4:25, 24:30). Jonathan Brockopp sees this as a chronological progression, where the later ethic appears to limit sexual relations to marriage only.
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Muhammad Asad believes the Qur'an does not recognize concubinage, instead restricting sexual relations to marriage only. Muhammad had no concubines for most of his life when he was married monogamously to Khadija.
Muhammad was sent two women as a gift from the Byzantine ruler of Alexandria and he took one of them, Mariyya, as a concubine. According to some sources he later freed her after they had a child, and married her.
One source of high esteem for concubines was the assertion that Muhammad's tribe descended from Hagar the concubine, whereas it was the Jews who descended from Sarah the wife. In one disputed hadith, Muhammad declares that the son of concubine could be a prophet had the son not died in childhood.
However, this hadith is contested by the Sunnis who believe there can be no prophets after Muhammad.
The Sahaba are known to have had intercourse with female prisoners after battles. After the battle against the Banu Mustaliq, a hadith reports that the sahaba took the female captives as concubines and asked Muhammad whether it was permissible to practice coitus interruptus with them. Muhammad is believed to have responded in the affirmative.
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Muhammad then freed and married one of the captives, Juwayriyya bint al-Harith, thus making all the other captives related to Muhammad by marriage. As a result, the sahaba freed their captives as well. The sahaba are similarly known to have had sexual relations with the Hawazin women captured at the Battle of Hunayn.
Islamic Law and Concubinage
Classical Islamic law attempted to address issues of concubinage and slavery. Its main sources were the Qur'an, the sunnah of Muhammad and ijma or consensus. Muslim scholars debated whether it was permissible to have concubines, and if so, how many. The majority of pre-modern Islamic scholars accepted the institution of concubinage. However, some scholars dissented.
Most scholars did not place any limits on the number of concubines a man could have. Not all female slaves could become concubines. A master could have sexual relations with a slave who was already married prior to acquisition because their marriage is nullified by virtue of their entry into Islamic nations.
A man could not have two sisters simultaneously as wives or concubines. Only slaves that were Muslim, Jewish or Christian could be concubines; sexual intercourse was not allowed with polytheist or Zoroastrian slaves. Many scholars recommended converting a polytheist slave to Islam, by coercion if necessary, before any sexual relations took place.
However, Caliph Umar argued a slave could not be forcibly converted to Islam on the basis of verse 2:256. Scholars differed as to what constituted conversion.
Concubines in Islamic law had a limited set of rights. Slave mothers had the right not to be separated from their children. This rule applied until the child turned six. The Hanbali school held that separating other levels of family members (e.g.
The master's ability to have sexual relations with her was one of the defining characteristics of a concubine. A man could not immediately have sexual relations with a concubine. He had to wait one menstrual cycle (known as istebra) before he could have sexual relations with her.
One reason was to avoid any doubts of the paternity of a child borne to the concubine. A man was allowed to practice coitus interruptus with his concubine for contraceptive purposes. Prostitution of concubines was prohibited.
However de facto prostitution, by buying and selling concubines, was not prohibited. Modern scholars have debated on whether the consent of the concubine was important in sexual relations.
A Hasan graded Hadith of Muhammad talks about the consent of the concubine in sexual relations. Salamah ibn al-Muhabbiq reported: A man had intercourse with the servant girl of his wife, so the matter was referred to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. The Prophet said, "If she had done so willingly, then she belongs to him and he must pay the likes of her price.
However, it is not confirmed whether this ruling refers specifically to sexual relations with female slaves that one does not own, or female slaves in general. According to Kecia Ali, the Qurʾanic passages on slavery differ strikingly in terms of their terminology and main preoccupations compared to the jurisprudential texts, that the text of the Qurʾan does not permit sexual access simply by the virtue of her being a milk al-yamīn or concubine and that this can be a defensible theological claim.
These rules had a tremendous impact on the nature of slavery in the Muslim world. Children borne to slaves often rose to leadership positions in the family and community. According to one estimate, 34 out 37 Abbasid Caliphate rulers had been borne to a slave. Islamic jurists also grappled with the issue of conclusively determining who the father of the concubine's child was.
The first option was for the owner to acknowledge his paternity. This was the usual case, and was also done by many Abbasid Caliphs. If the owner denied ever having intercourse with his concubine, she would have to mount a legal defense against him. The third case was when the owner had not made an explicit declaration either way.
A Reclining Odalisque, painted by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, c.
Scholars differed from what the awrah of a concubine was, owing to her slave status. Both wives and concubines could inherit from a man; however, whereas the wife got a guaranteed inheritance, the concubine's inheritance was dependent on the man's bequest.
The Abolition of Concubinage
Islamic thinkers have applied a variety of methods to argue against concubinage and slavery. The abolition of slavery in the Muslim world was a process that mainly took place in the 19th and 20th centuries, though there were some early abolitionist precursors among Muslims in Africa.
In 1841, the ruler of Tunisia, himself the son of a concubine, abolished slavery by decreeing that all slaves requesting freedom must be released. In 1848, Shia ulema in Najaf allowed the Iranian Shah to declare slavery illegal. In the Indian subcontinent, early anti-slavery views came from Syed Ahmad Khan.
Many early Islamic abolition movements were opposed by conservative clergy. William Clarence-Smith has argued that "Islamic abolitionism" was indigenous and rooted in Islamic tradition. Ehud R.
Chattel slavery, and thus the existence of concubines, lasted longer in some Islamic states. By this time, the Arab world was the only region in the world where chattel slavery was still legal. The report of the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery (ACE) about Hadhramaut in Yemen in the 1930s described the existence of Chinese girls (Mui tsai) trafficked from Singapore for enslavement as concubines, and the King and Imam of Yemen, Ahmad bin Yahya (r.
Sultan Said bin Taimur of Oman (r. King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia (r. 1932-1953) are known to have had a harem of twenty-two women, many of them concubines. Baraka Al Yamaniyah (died 22 August 2018), for example, was the concubine of King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia (r.
Jonathan Brown argues concubinage in Sharia should be abolished on the basis of consent. As mentioned earlier, Verse 33:50 was used by Muslims to take female prisoners as "spoils of war" in history and questions arise whether it could be used today. Some have argued that this verse only applied during the time of Muhammad and has not applied since then.
Yet Islamic scholars in history have applied this verse. A different argument is that what constitutes "spoils of war" is a matter of custom which can change with time. Some modern Muslim argue that the concubinage allowed by Islam bore no resemblance to American chattel slavery. The permission to have sexual relations with female captives, they argue, was a way of integrating them and their children into society.
But Kecia Ali responds that the argument does not apply to the case of the women from the Banu Mustaliq with whom the Muslims practiced coitus interruptus, as pregnancy would have spoiled the chance of ransom. Some Muslims then respond by arguing this account cannot be accurate as it contradicts the Islamic legal requirement to wait one menstrual period before having intercourse with slaves.
Kecia Ali writes that a hadith of Muhammad indeed prohibits sexual relations before a menstrual period, but cautions that Islamic jurisprudence did not always correlate with Muhammad's example. Mahmoud Abd al-Wahab Fayid argues that concubinage restricted sexual relations to a monogamous relationship between the concubine and her master, therefore preventing the spread of "immorality" in the Muslim community.
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Moroccan Arabic: The Beauty of "Zwina"
In Moroccan Arabic, the word "zwina" (or "zine" in the masculine form) means "beautiful" or "pretty." It's a versatile word used to describe anything aesthetically pleasing. It can be used to describe food, weather, or anything else that is considered beautiful.
- Labaas? Literally: How are you? This phrase is the Moroccan version of “How are you?” and it functions the same way. The expression works as a greeting, a question, and an answer.
- Arguably the most common word in Moroccan Arabic, it floats from open windows in the medina during Friday couscous and around the city during dinner (which is usually eaten between 9:00 -11:00 PM). My host mother, in the midst of a heated conversation on the phone, pauses often to point at food, motion toward my plate, and exclaim “Koolee egg. Koolee bread.
- My favorite phrase in Moroccan Arabic, wiliwiliwiliwiliwili is often more a high-pitched shriek than an actual word. Usually expressed in surprise, disbelief, or astonishment, this phrase is as common as “Oh my God,” in English, but a lot more fun to say.
- Literally: God is the greatest. This simple sentence can be heard five times a day from each mosque in the city. The muezzin stands on the minaret (tower which stretches upward from each mosque), speaks into a microphone and the line reverberates throughout the medina and over the new city.
- This question is thrown around casually when walking through the suq on the way to school, buying toilet paper at the local convenience store, or hailing a taxi.
- This is the mother of all Darija words needed to communicate with Moroccans. Examples: Do you speak Arabic? Did you like the liver couscous tonight? Are you married?
- Zwina is one of the most beautiful (ha) words in the Arabic language, in part because it can describe literally everything - the food is zwina, the weather’s zwina, this class is zwina. The idea of food being beautiful or tasting beautiful is a strange expression in English, but is common and complimentary in Darija.
In Rabat, Morocco, the world is zwina - the people, the ancient city, the cafés on the corners and morning call to prayer. The weather is a sunny 75 degrees, and coastal breeze blows in each evening from the sea.
The word gained a lot of popularity across the world a few years ago when it was the title of a hit song that saw massive success across the Middle East. We leave with the link to, enjoy Zina by the group Babylone!
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