Abbasid harem

The harem system first became fully institutionalized in the Islamic world under the Abbasid caliphate.[1] Although the term harem does not denote women's quarters in the Quran, a number of Quranic verses discussing modesty and seclusion were held up by Quranic commentators as religious rationale for the separation of women from men, including the so-called hijab verse (33:53).[1][2] In modern usage hijab colloquially refers to the religious attire worn by Muslim women, but in this verse it meant "veil" or "curtain" that physically separates female from male space.[3][4] Although classical commentators agreed that the verse spoke about a curtain separating the living quarters of Muhammad's wives from visitors to his house, they usually viewed this practice as providing a model for all Muslim women.[1][5]

In contrast to the earlier era of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the Rashidun Caliphate, women in Umayyad and Abbasid society were ideally kept in seclusion and absent from all arenas of the community's central affairs.[6]

The growing seclusion of women were illustrated by the power struggle between the Caliph Al-Hadi and his mother Al-Khayzuran, who refused to live in seclusion but instead challenged the power of the Caliph by giving her own audiences to male supplicants and officials and thus mixing with men.[7] Her son considered this improper, and he publicly addressed the issue of his mothers public life by assembling his generals and asked them:

'Who is the better among us, you or me?' asked Caliph al-Hadi of his audience.

'Obviously you are the better, Commander of the Faithful,' the assembly replied.

'And whose mother is the better, mine or yours?' continued the caliph.

'Your mother is the better, Commander of the Faithful.'

'Who among you', continued al-Hadi, 'would like to have men spreading news about your mother?'

'No one likes to have his mother talked about,' responded those present.

'Then why do men go to my mother to speak to her?'[7]

Conquests had brought enormous wealth and large numbers of slaves to the Muslim elite. The majority of the slaves were women and children,[8] many of whom had been dependents or harem-members of the defeated Sassanian upper classes.[9] In the wake of the conquests an elite man could potentially own a thousand slaves, and ordinary soldiers could have ten people serving them.[8]

Nabia Abbott, preeminent historian of elite women of the Abbasid Caliphate, describes the lives of harem women as follows.

The choicest women were imprisoned behind heavy curtains and locked doors, the strings and keys of which were entrusted into the hands of that pitiable creature – the eunuch. As the size of the harem grew, men indulged to satiety. Satiety within the individual harem meant boredom for the one man and neglect for the many women. Under these conditions ... satisfaction by perverse and unnatural means crept into society, particularly in its upper classes.[9]

The marketing of human beings, particularly women, as objects for sexual use meant that elite men owned the vast majority of women they interacted with, and related to them as would masters to slaves.[10]

The Abbasid harem established a model of hierarchy and organisation which was to become a standard for Muslim harems for centuries. It was a large institution; during the reign of al-Muqtadir, the harem consisted of 4000 enslaved women and 11.000 enslaved servants.[11]

With the exception of the legal wives and female relatives of the Caliph, the inhabitants of the harem—concubines, entertainers and eunuchs—were all enslaved people. The slaves were either war captives (called sabaya) or bought from slave markets, and the slave women were divided in to the categories jawari and qiyan (singers), mahziyyat (concubines) and qahramanat (stewardesses).[14] The men meant for the harem were all eunuchs; the non eunuch males served the palace outside of the harem.

According to Islamic practice of slavery and slave trade, foreign non-Muslims were free to enslave, and it was preferred that slaves were to be non-Muslims from non-Muslim regions. In accordance with the Ma malakat aymanukum, the principle of concubinage, women could be legally kept as concubines in the harem if they were of non-Muslim origin. The four main ways to enslave a person were by kidnapping, by slave raids, by piracy, or by buying a child from poor parents.

One of the chief regions for the export of slaves to the Abbasid Caliphate came through Persia (Iran), which was a passage area for several slave trade routes: the saqaliba slave trade of Europeans from the Volga trade route; the slave trade of mainly Turks from the Samanid Empire in Central Asia; Christian Greeks, Armenians, and Georgians from the Caucasus by Muslim slavers; and the slave route of Hindu Indians following the Islamic invasion of India from the 8th-century onward.[15] Since many parts of Persia remained Zoroastrian the first centuries after conquest, some non-Muslim "infidel territory" in Persia were also exposed to Muslim slave raids, particularly Daylam in northwestern Iran and the Pagan mountainous region of Ḡūr in central Afghanistan.[15] Two of the twelve caliphs’ mothers whose nationalities are known were European saqaliba; Al-Musta'in's mother Mukhariq, and Al-Mu'tazz's mother Qabiha.[16] A Zoroastrian-Persian background were not uncommon among the qiyan-entertainers and slave concubines in the Caliphate, and some ended up in the Abbasid harem itself; Marājel, concubine of Harun al-Rashid and mother of the future caliph Al-Ma'mun, and Māridah, slave of Harun al-Rashid and mother of the future caliph Al-Mu'tasim, were both Iranians.[17][15]

The Abbasid harem system came to be a role model for the harems of later Islamic rulers, and the same model can be found in subsequent Islamic nations during the Middle Ages, such as the Caliphate of Cordoba and the harem of the Fatimid Caliphate, which also consisted of the model of prominent mothers; slave concubines who became umm walad when giving birth; female Jawaris entertainers, qahramana's and eunuchs.[14] The harem system was fairly the same during the Ottoman Empire, with only minor changes in the model of the Imperial Harem.

• Marilyn Booth Harem Histories: Envisioning Places and Living Spaces
• Maaike van Berkel, Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Hugh Kennedy, Letizia Osti Crisis and Continuity at the Abbasid Court: Formal and Informal Politics
• Jeroen Duindam, Tülay Artan, Metin Kunt Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires: A Global Perspective
• Leigh K. Jenco, Murad Idris, Megan C. Thomas, Megan Christine Thomas The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory

• Ahmed, Leila (1992). Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-05583-2.