Concubinage in Islam

The Banu Thaqif and Banu Hawazin tribes decided to go to war against Muhammad under the leadership of Malik ibn Awf.[49] Malik had the idea of bringing the women, children and livestock with his army.[50] He believed that by bringing their women and children with the army, all his soldiers would fight more courageously to defend them.[49][51]

The Muslim army defeated the Hawazin and captured their women and children. The pagan soldiers fled.[52] The war booty which the Muslims obtained was 24,000 camels, more than 40,000 goats, 160,000 dirhams worth of silver and 6,000 women and children.[53] Muhammad waited ten days for the Hawazin to repent and reclaim their families and properties. However, none of them came. Finally, Muhammad distributed the war booty among the Muslim soldiers.[54] The Muslim soldiers initially hesitated to have sex with the married female captives, until a verse was revealed giving them permission to have sex with them:[55] Imam Ahmad recorded that Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri said, "We captured some women from the area of Awtas who were already married, and we disliked having sexual relations with them because they already had husbands. So, we asked the Prophet about this matter, and this Ayah (verse) was revealed, Also (forbidden are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess). Consequently, we had sexual relations with these women."

A ruling from Muhammed also was reveled stating that:

Abu Sa’id Al Khudri traced to Prophet (ﷺ) the following statement regarding the captives taken at Atwas. There must be no intercourse with pregnant woman till she gives birth to her child or with the one who is not pregnant till she has had one menstrual period.[56]

Muhammad gave a girl called Zaynab bint Hayyan to Uthman ibn Affan. Uthman had sexual intercourse with her. A woman was given to Abdurrahman ibn Awf. He didn't having sexual intercourse with her until her menses were over and then he had sex with her. Jubayr bin Mu'tim also received a slave girl, who was not impregnated. Talha ibn Ubaydullah had sexual intercourse with the female captive given to him. Abu Ubaydah ibn Jarrah impregnated the slave girl he was given.[57]

A delegation later on from the Hawazin tribe came to Muhammad and converted to Islam. Once they had given allegiance to Muhammad they asked about their captured families and property. They said "Those who you have brought as captives are our mothers, sisters and aunts and they alone bring disgrace to peoples. O Prophet, we ask for your kindness and generosity. Free our women." Muhammad gave them a choice between reclaiming their property or their women and children.[58] The Hawazin tribesmen responded that if they had to choose between reclaiming their property or their honor, they would choose their honor (their womenfolk).[59] Muhammad returned their women and children to them.[59] The girl who had been given to Abdurrahman ibn Awf was given a choice to stay with him or return to her family she chose her family. Likewise, the girls given to Talha, Uthman, Ibn Umar and Safwan bin Umayya were also returned to their families. However, the girl who had been given to Saad ibn Abi Waqas chose to stay with him.[60][61][62][63][62]

The royals and nobles during the Abbasid Caliphate kept large numbers of concubines. The Caliph Harun al-Rashid possessed hundreds of concubines. The Caliph al-Mutawakkil was reported to have owned four thousand concubines.[78] Slaves for pleasure were costly and were a luxury for wealthy men. In his sex manual, Ali ibn Nasr promoted experimental sex with female slaves on the basis that free wives were respectable and would feel humiliated by the use of the sex positions described in his book because they show low esteem and a lack of love from the man.[1] Women preferred that their husbands keep concubines instead of taking a second wife. This was because a co-wife represented a greater threat to their position. Owning many concubines was perhaps more common than having many wives.[79]

In Muslim society in general, monogamy was common because keeping multiple wives and concubines was not affordable for many households.[80] The practice of keeping concubines was common in the Muslim upper class. Muslim rulers preferred having children with concubines because it helped them avoid the social and political complexities arising from marriage and kept their lineages separate from the other lineages in society.[81] One Umayyad ruler, Abd al-Rahman III, was known to have possessed more than 6000 concubines.[78]

The Ottoman rulers would keep hundreds, even thousands, of concubines. Female war captives were often turned into concubines for the Ottoman rulers. Ambitious slave families associated with the palace would also frequently offer their daughters up as concubines.[82] Slave traders would abduct and sell Circassian girls.[83] The Circassian and Georgian women were systematically trafficked to eastern harems. This practice lasted into the 1890s.[82] Fynes Moryson noted that some Muslim men would keep their wives in various cities while others would keep them in a single house and would keep adding as many women as their lusts permitted. He wrote that "They buy free women to be their wives, or they buy "conquered women" at a lesser price to be their concubines."[84] Ottoman society had provided avenues for men who wished to have extramarital sex. They could either marry more wives while wealthy men could possess slaves and use them for sex.[85]

Since the late 1300s Ottoman sultans would only permit heirs born from concubines to inherit their throne. Each concubine was only permitted to have one son. Once a concubine would bear a son she would spend the rest of her life plotting in favor of her son. If her son was to successfully become the next Sultan, she would become an unquestionable ruler. After the 1450s the Sultans stopped marrying altogether. Because of this there was great surprise when Sultan Sulayman fell in love with his concubine and married her. An Ottoman Sultan would have sexual relationships with only some women from his large collection of slave girls. This meant that a lot of the concubines were not given a family life if they were not desired by the Sultan. Some of these women would break the sharia by having homosexual relations.[78]

Research into Ottoman records show that polygamy was absent or rare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[87] Concubinage and polygamy were quite uncommon outside the elite. Goitein says that monogamy was a feature of the "progressive middle class" Muslims.[88] Elite men were required to leave their wives and concubines if they wished to marry an Ottoman princess.[89] The Mamluk governor of Baghdad, Umar Pasha, died childless because his wife prevented him from having a concubine.[69] Writing in the early 18th century, one visitor noted that from among the Ottoman courtiers, only the imperial treasurer kept female slaves for sex and others thought of him as a lustful person.[89] Edward Lane, who visited Egypt in the 1830s, noted that very few Egyptian men were polygamous and most of the men with only one wife did not keep concubines, usually for the sake of domestic peace. However, some kept Abyssinian slaves who were less costly than maintaining a wife. While white slave-girls would be in the keep of wealthy Turks, the concubines kept by upper and middle class Egyptians were usually Abyssinians.[90]

Ovington, a voyager who wrote about his journey to Surat, stated that Muslim men had an "extraordinary liberty for women" and kept as many concubines as they could afford.[91] Akbar had a harem of at least 5000 women and Aurangzeb's harem was even larger.[92] The nobles in India could possess as many concubines as they wanted.[93] Ismail Quli Khan, a Mughal noble, possessed 1200 girls. Another nobleman, Said, had many wives and concubines from whom he fathered 60 sons in just four years.[94] Francisco Pelseart describes that noblemen would visit a different wife each night, who would welcome him along with the slave girls. If he felt attracted to any slave-girl he would call her to him for his enjoyment while the wife would not dare to show her anger. The wife would punish the slave-girl later.[95]

Lower class Muslims were generally monogamous. Since they hardly had any rivals, women of the lower and middle class sections of society fared better than upper-class women who had to contend with their husbands' other wives, slave-girls and concubines.[96] Shireen Moosvi has discovered Muslim marriage contracts from Surat, dating back to the 1650s. One stipulation in these marriage contracts was that the husband was not to marry a second wife. Another stipulation was that the husband would not take a slave girl. These stipulations were common among middle-class Muslims in Surat. If the husband took a second wife the first wife would gain an automatic right of divorce, thus indicating the preference for monogamy among the merchants of Surat. If the husband took a slave-girl the wife could sell, free or give away that slave-girl, thereby separating the female slave from her husband.[97]

There is no evidence that concubinage was practiced in Kashmir where, unlike the rest of the medieval Muslim world, slavery was abhorred and not widespread. Except for the Sultans, there is no evidence that the Kashmiri nobility or merchants kept slaves.[98] In medieval Punjab the Muslim peasants, artisans, small tradesmen, shopkeepers, clerks and minor officials could not afford concubines or slaves.[99] But the Muslim nobility of medieval Punjab, such as the Khans and Maliks, kept concubines and slaves.[100] Female slaves were used for concubinage in many wealthy Muslim households of Punjab.[101]

Colonial court cases from 19th century Punjab show that the courts recognised the legitimate status of children born to Muslim zamindars (landlords) from their concubines.[102] The Muslim rulers of Indian princely states, such as the Nawab of Junagadh, also kept slave girls.[103] The Nawab of Bahawalpur, according to a Pakistani journalist, kept 390 concubines.[104] Marathas captured during their wars with the Mughals had been given to the soldiers of the Mughal Army from the Baloch Bugti tribe. The descendants of these captives became known as "Mrattas" and their women were traditionally used as concubines by the Bugtis. They became equal citizens of Pakistan in 1947.[105]

In Andalus the concubines of the Muslim elite were usually non-Muslim women from the Christian areas of the Iberian peninsula. Many of these had been captured in raids or wars and were then gifted to the elite Muslim soldiers as war booty or were sold as slaves in Muslim markets.[81] Most slaves in the Ottoman harem comprised women who had been kidnapped from Christian lands. Some had been abducted during raids by the Tatars while others had been captured by maritime pirates.[108] Berber pirates trafficked French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese women to North Africa. Christian females were enslaved more than any other religious demographic.[109] It is difficult to track down the experienced of European female slaves because they would have accounted for 5 percent of the slaves trafficked to North Africa and even fewer women were freed from slavery than men between the 16th and 19th centuries. During those centuries, at least 50,000 to 75,000 European girls were forcibly taken and most of them never returned home.[110] One male English slave narrated an account of a young English girl who was given as concubine to the Moroccan king, Mulley Ismail.[111]

Enslaved European men also narrated accounts of women who "apostasised." The life stories of these women were similar to Roxelana, who rose from being a Christian slave-girl into the chief advisor of her husband, Sultan Suleyman of the Ottoman Empire. There are several accounts of such women of humble birth who associated with powerful Muslim men. While the associations were initially forced, the captivity gave women a taste for access to power. Diplomats wrote with disappointment about apostate women who wielded political influence over their masters-turned-husbands. Christian male slaves also recorded the presence of authoritative convert women in Muslim families. Christian women who converted to Islam and then became politically assertive and tyrannical were regarded by Europeans as traitors to the faith.[112] Enslaved Christian women lost all hope of returning home through ransom once they entered a Muslim household.[113]

The Muslim Sultanates in India before the Mughal Empire captured large numbers of non-Muslims from the Deccan. The Muslim masters would impregnate their non-Muslim slaves and the children they fathered would be raised as Muslims. Non-Muslim girls were socially ostracised by their own communities for the sexual relationships Muslim soldiers and nobles would have with them, therefore, many of them preferred to convert to Islam.[114] When Muslims would surround Rajput citadels, the Rajput women would commit jauhar (collective suicide) to save themselves from being dishonored by their enemies. In 1296 approximately 16,000 women committed jauhar to save themselves from Alauddin Khalji's army.[115] Rajput women would commit it when they saw that defeat and enslavement was imminent for their people.[116] In 1533 in Chittorgarh nearly 13,000 women and children killed themselves instead of being taken captive by Bahadur Shah's army.[117] For them sexual intercourse was the worst form of humiliation. Rajputs practiced jauhar mainly when their opponents were Muslims.[118]

The womenfolk of enemies were captured both to humiliate their men and to use the beautiful maidens for various purposes.[119][120] After the period of Akbar's rule enslavement of women continued to be used to punish their men. Jahangir explicitly ordered the destruction of the domain of the rebellious zamindar of Jaitpur and the capture of his women. Thus, his daughters and wives were captured and brought to the harem.[92] Aurangzeb would enslave rebellious peasants.[121] Ahmad Shah Abdali's army captured Maratha women to fill Afghan harems.[122] The Sikhs attacked Abdali and rescued 2,2000 Maratha girls.[123]

Muslim historical sources see the capture and concubinage of non-Muslim women as legitimate violence against women. The capture and enslavement of non-muslim women is described in a matter-of-fact way in the Muslim sources. However, the same practice was criticised when Christians captured Muslim women. In the eleventh century Christians began an aggressive policy towards Muslims in Andalus. Christian military leaders captured Muslim women and included eight year old Muslim virgins as part of their war booty.[126] When Granada passed from Muslim rule to Christian rule, thousands of Moorish women were enslaved and trafficked to Europe.[109] Muslim families tried to ransom their daughters, mothers and wives who had been captured and enslaved.[127] Muslim women were kept as concubines by Christian men.[128]

For both Christians and Muslims, the capture of women from the other religion was a show of power, while the capture and sexual use of their own women by men of the other religion was a cause of shame. Many women would convert to their master's religion.[81] In one case an Algerian woman, Fatima, was captured and enslaved. She converted to Christianity and refused the ransom which the Turks had sent for her release. Other enslaved Muslim women had more "harrowing" experiences in being converted to Christianity.[129]

In India, the Hindu elites and rulers would take revenge by taking Muslim women into their own harems.[120] Rana Kumbha captured Muslim women. Under Medini Rai in Malwa, the Rajputs took Muslim women as slave girls.[130] According to Manucci, the Marathas and Sikhs would also capture Muslim women because 'the Mohammedans had interfered with Hindu women.'[120]

Islamic jurists had completely forbidden the enslavement of Muslims. However, some Muslims have still at times enslaved Muslims from other ethnic groups.[131] The Umayyad caliph Muhammad II of Córdoba gave orders that the Berber houses in Cordoba be looted and that Berber women be captured and sold in Dar-al Banat.[132] In another case the Andalusian ruler of Malaga, Ibn Hassun, unsuccessfully attempted to kill his female relatives before the Berber Almohads could capture them. He committed suicide but his daughters survived. These girls were then sold and some of them were taken as concubines by Almohad military commanders.[133]

In India attitudes towards women ignored their religious background if they belonged to enemies or rebels. Ferishta narrates that Baban captured female supporters of the rebellious noble Tughral. The atrocities of Alauddin Khilji on women have been documented in Tabaqat-i-Akbari by Nizamuddin Ahmad. Khusrau Khan humiliated Sultan Qutb ud din Mubarak by marrying his widow and allowing Hindus to take away his other female relatives. Abu Fazl records atrocities by Kamran on the female relatives of Humayun's supporters. Sher Shah was reported to have sold the wives of rebellious zamindars.[134]

Kurds in the Ottoman-Persian frontier would enslave both Shias and Yazidis. The Ottoman jurist Ebu Su'ud upheld the permissibility of wars against the Shia but he forbade the taking of Shias as captives. In particular, he also declared that sexual intercourse with Shia female captives was unlawful. However, he endorsed enslavement of Shias in a later fatwa.[135] In 1786-7 an Ottoman general enslaved the wives and children of Mamluk emirs. In the region of modern day Chad, Muslim women and children from Bagirmi were enslaved by the ruler of Wadai around 1800.[136]

Armenians underwent a genocide in the Ottoman Empire, which climaxed around 1915-16. It has been accepted as the first genocide of the 20th century by scholars of genocide and historians of the late Ottoman period.[163] The Ottomans had intended to destroy the Armenians.[164] Derderuan notes that after being separated from their men who were killed, the Armenian women and children were raped, forcibly converted to Islam Eliz Sanasarian also notes the involvement of Turkish women in perpetrating violence against Armenian women by selling them into slavery.[165] Women who were deemed beautiful were sold as slaves to military officials. The remaining women would be beaten and killed.[166] The women were also often forced into prostitution or forcibly married with non-Armenians.[167]

Kidnapped Armenian girls were sorted on the basis of their age, beauty and marital status. The "first choice" was given to high-level Ottoman officials. Outside Mezre, purchasers asked doctors to check the girls for diseases and to verify their virginity. One German reported the sale of girls in Ras al-Ayn and testified that the policemen carried out the trade in girls.[168] A few slave markets were set up in the vicinity of government buildings while Armenian captive slaves were kept in the Red Crescent Hospital in Trebizond.[169] The fact that before the genocide the Armenian leaders had appealed to outside powers, to press the Ottomans to make reforms for the Christians, was cited as a violation of their contract with the state.[170] Hence, one Palestinian shaykh ruled that Muslims could buy the Christian girls from the slave markets in the Levant.[171]

A large number of free Muslim Baloch women were kidnapped in the first half of the 20th century by slave traders and sold across the Persian Gulf. For example, Yuri bint Lapek was abducted after raiders killed her husband.[172] Another notable case was that of Marzuq who was kidnapped from Makran and sold in Sharjah. Marzuq was purchased by Rashid bin Ali who had sex with her. When she became pregnant he married her off to another Baluchi to avoid taking responsibility for the child.[173] Many slave owners arranged marriages for their female slaves, just so they would not have to take responsibility for impregnating their slaves.[174]

The most widespread raptio in modern times was the kidnapping of tens of thousands of girls during the Partition of India.[175] These women were kept as captives or forced wives[176] and concubines.[177] For instance, one account from Kirpal Singh mentions how Pakistani soldiers in Kamoke took 50 Hindu girls after killing most of their men.[178] After being taken, Hindu and Sikh girls would be forcibly converted to Islam.[175] Pashtun tribesmen captured a large number of non-Muslim girls from Kashmir and sold them as slave-girls in West Punjab.[179] In Mirpur, many of the Hindu women captured by Pakistani soldiers committed jauhar, the old practice of Hindu women to escape Muslim soldiers.[180] [181] The non-Muslim girls from Punjab and Kashmir were sold in different parts of Pakistan and the Middle East and were forced into concubinage.[182] They were forcibly converted to Islam as soon as they fell into the hands of their Muslim captors.[183] During the fighting in Kashmir, the government put 600 Hindu women in the Kunja camp in West Punjab. before returning them to India.[184] Gopalaswami Ayyangar accused the Pakistani government of holding 2000 Hindu women.[185]

An even larger number of Muslim women were taken by Sikh jathas.[186] Muslim girls in East Punjab would be distributed among the jathas, Indian military and police and many were then sold multiple times.[187] The Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan complained that Muslim women in Jammu had been taken as sex-slaves by Sikhs.[188] The Maharaja of Patiala was reported to be holding a Muslim girl from a reputable family.[179] Meo men were expelled to Pakistan and their lands taken.[189] About the conflict with Meos, a captain from the Alwar State Army would later recall "We took away the women. That was the system."[190] The governments of India and Pakistan later agreed to restore Hindu and Sikh women to India and Muslim women to Pakistan.[186] Many women feared how they would be treated by their relatives if they returned, so some refused to return and chose to convert to the religion of their captors.[176] However, most of those women who returned were accepted by their fathers and husbands.[191] Some girls fell in love with their captors and consequently did not want to return.[181]

The Pakistani elite blamed the Hindus for the Bengali revolt in 1971[192] so Pakistani army officers operated with an intent to drive out the Hindus.[193] [194] Tikka Khan ordered that Hindu Bengalis be turned into "slaves".[195] [196][197] The Pakistani Army and their allies mostly raped Hindu women.[198][199] The rape of Hindu captive girls was part of a policy to "dilute" their "religious community's bloodline."[200]

In Afghanistan the Taliban has committed atrocities against the Shia population. One of its atrocities has been to enslave Shia Hazara women and use them for concubinage.[201] The Taliban either took beautiful young women from other ethnic groups as concubines or forcibly married them.[202] In 1998 eyewitnesses in Mazar e Sharif reported the abduction of hundreds of Shia girls who were used by Taliban fighters as concubines.[203] The number of Hazara women taken as concubines by the Taliban was 400.[204]S

The evidence strongly demonstrates that the government of Sudan had revived slavery and made it as important as it was in the previous century.[205] The Sudanese army had a central role in the revival of slavery.[206] The slavery in Sudan was a result of the conflict between North Sudan's Arab Muslims and South Sudan's black Christians.[207] Christian prisoners of war in the Sudanese civil war were often enslaved. The female captives were used sexually.[201] Sudan's Arab government had recruited Arab troops. One component consisted of militias and the other component of their forces, called the Popular Defense Forces, consisted of the Sudanese Army. This was a mainly jihadi force fighting the SPLA which they considered to be an "enemy of Islam and the Arabs."[208] Arab raiders destroyed black Christian villages, executed all their males and then took away the women and children as slaves.[207]

Regular soldiers also abducted women and children. The Sudanese government allowed soldiers to take booty to supplement their low salaries. The first slave raid on the Dinka took place on February 1986.[209] Two thousand women and children were taken. In a second raid on February 1987 one thousand women and children were taken. Once the raiders acquired enough booty they would distribute the captives between their selves and their families. Slave raids continued every year after 1985.[210] Dinka girls kept in Arab households were used as sex-slaves.[211] Some of them were sold to Arab men in Libya, It has been alleged that slave markets were set up in Sudan. Western visitors noted that five or even more slaves could be bought for one rifle. Near the peak of the civil war in 1989 female black slaves were sold for 90 dollars at the slave markets. Several years later, when there was an abundance of slaves, the price of an average female black slave had dropped to $15. Many Western organizations traveled to Sudan with funds collected for the purpose of purchasing these slaves to emancipate them.[207]