This chapter explores the intersection of gender, sex, and slavery in the medieval dar al-islam (“the lands of Islam). A background survey is provided for sexual ethics, male social reproduction, and female sexual slavery in these societies that illustrates how Islamic sexual ethics, derived from the Quran, and the Islamic legal understanding of legitimacy were very different from those of Roman law, Christianity, late antique Judaism and seventh century Zoroastrianism. Two central questions of the chapter are how was the status of an enslaved woman defined and whether or not the child of an enslaved woman was born with slave-status. In classical Islamic law, the rule of umm al-walad (“mother of child”) meant that an enslaved woman who bore her Muslim owner a child gave birth to a free born person. The status of umm al-walad thus provided enslaved women with limited opportunities to assert their agency.

This chapter analyzes scholarly approaches to the study of slave agency and resistance. It focuses on medieval contexts including Spain, Italy and Venetian Crete, and the Islamic Middle East. Even though legal, economic, and social structures were unfavorable for enslaved people, individuals were able to use law and limited social capital to advance their own interests. At times this allowed enslaved people to resist slavery and to challenge their legal status. In other instances, enslaved people used their rights as slaves (and, for example, sometimes as mothers or members of a confessional group) to seek certain benefits. In the Islamic world, enslaved and freed people could gain high status by virtue of their marriages and roles as mothers (in the case of women) and as a result of their military and political skills (mainly men and eunuchs). Women who were highly skilled musicians and courtesans could also use their talents to achieve reknown and, in exceptional cases, great wealth. Acts of everyday and extreme resistance are also documented for the medieval period, though these activities never resulted in a successful slave revolt despite what some historians have written about the ninth-century Zanj rebellion in Iraq.