Īlmost all Abbasid caliphs were born to concubines and several Twelver Shia imams were also born to concubines. Among societies that did not legally require the manumission of concubines, it was often done anyway. The children of concubines in Islamic societies were generally declared as legitimate.
In Islamic culture, a slave who bore a child to a free man was known as an umm al-walad, could not be sold, and, in most circumstances, at her owner's death, was freed. Concubines were typically freed after giving birth in the Muslim world, as in about one-third of non-Islamic slave-holding societies. In slave-owning societies, most concubines were slaves, but not all. Some scholars recommended holding a banquet ( walima) to celebrate the concubinage relationship, though not required by the teachings of Islam. While scholars exhorted masters to treat their slaves equally, a master was allowed to show favoritism towards a concubine. Most Islamic schools of thought restricted concubinage to a relationship where the female slave was required to be monogamous to her master. Abu Hanifa and others argued for the extension of Islamic modesty practices to concubines, recommending that the concubine be established in the home and their chastity be protected from friends or kin. The concubines of Islamic rulers could achieve considerable power, and often enjoyed higher status than other slaves. As slaves for pleasure were expensive, they were typically the preserve of privileged elites. While Muslim soldiers in the early Islamic conquests were given female captives as a reward for military participation, they were later frequently purchased and men were permitted to have as many concubines as they could afford. To have a large number of concubines became a symbol of status. The expansion of various Muslim dynasties resulted in the acquisitions of concubines, through purchase, gifts from other rulers, and captives of war. Royal concubinage, where concubines became consorts to the ruler and perpetuated the royal bloodline and politics and reproduction were deeply intertwined, including under the Abbasids and in the Ottoman empire and concubinage as a patriarchal function where concubines were of low status and the children of concubines became permanently inferior to the children of wives, such as in Mughal India. The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology gives four distinct forms of concubinage, three of which are applicable to the Muslim Word: 'elite concubinage', where concubine ownership was primarily related to social status, such as under the Umayyads Concubinage has also been categorised in terms of form and function, which in the Islamic world varied between times and places. In one reading, there are three cultural patterns of concubinage: European, Islamic and Asian.
When using a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo check the safe search settings where you can exclude adult content sites from your search results Īsk your internet service provider if they offer additional filters īe responsible, know what your children are doing online.Women of the Harem by Jules Laurens, circa 1847Ĭlassifications of concubinage often define practices in Islamic societies as a distinct variant. Use family filters of your operating systems and/or browsers Other steps you can take to protect your children are: More information about the RTA Label and compatible services can be found here.
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