Article

2. Introduction
3. As is well known, one of the most important engines of social and religious change in the early Islamic period were unions between Muslim men and non-Muslim women. According to the Qurʾan (cf. Q. 5.5) and early Islamic law, Muslim men were entitled to take up to four wives, including Jews and Christians (Antoine Fattal, Le statut légal des non-musulmans en pays d’Islam (Beirut: Imprimerie catholique, 1958), 129–37; Yohanan Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 160–93; Anna Marie Chrysostomides, “Ties that Bind: The Role of Family Dynamics in the Islamization of the Central Islamic Lands, 700–900 CE,” D.Phil thesis, University of Oxford, 2017; Christian C. Sahner, Christian Martyrs under Islam: Religious Violence and the Making of the Muslim World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 59–77; Jack Tannous, The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, Society, and Simple Believers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 437–56; Lev E. Weitz, Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 201–20; Uriel Simonsohn, Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East).
4. Muslim men were also entitled to take as many concubines as they pleased and could afford. In the early period, most of these were captives from non-Arabian, non-Muslim backgrounds, namely women who were rounded up during the conquest of new territories and then converted to Islam when they joined Muslim households (Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn A. Hain, ed., Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Elizabeth Urban, Conquered Populations in Early Islam: Non-Arabs, Slaves, and the Sons of Slave Mothers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 106–39; cf. Taef El-Azhari, Queens, Eunuchs, and Concubines in Islamic History, 661–1257 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), esp. 57–141).

In both contexts, that of marriage and slavery, Muslim men and non-Muslim women often had children together. Though officially Muslims under the law, these children were raised between religions and cultures, with a foot in the worlds of both their fathers and their mothers to varying degrees. Thus, within the first few generations after the Prophet’s death, marriage and concubinage helped build cultural and social bridges between the Muslim rulers and their far more numerous non-Muslim subjects. For our purposes, they are interesting for three main reasons: First, these women tell us something important about how Muslims related to the pre-conquest elite of the territories they governed. At times, as new rulers trying to expand their base of power, they used elite women to cement alliances with the indigenous rulers of the lands they now controlled. But at other times, as vengeful conquerors trying to humiliate vanquished enemies, they used elite women to abase the pre-existing aristocracy. Second, whatever their basis in reality, stories about high-status non-Muslim women who entered Muslim households often became extremely elaborate over time, even legendary. As such, they tell us something significant about how aristocratic, non-Muslim lineage was remembered and manipulated by later generations of Muslim writers, including by those who claimed to possess such prestigious lineages themselves. Third, stories of high-ranking non-Muslim women demonstrate that early Muslim society considered maternal lineage to be very important.

Sara the Goth: a Visigothic Princess among the Early Muslim Elite

When it comes to marriage with elite non-Muslim women – as opposed to concubinage – perhaps the finest example in early Islamic history is Sara the Goth, a Christian and one of the outstanding characters from the conquest of al-Andalus (modern-day Spain and Portugal) (Ann Christys, Christians in al-Andalus (711–1000) (Richmond: Curzon, 2002), 163–83; Daniel König, “Rückbindung an die westgotische Vergangenheit. Zur Interpretation der Genealogie des Ibn al-Qūṭiyya,” In Integration und Disintegration der Kulturen im europäischen Mittelalter, ed., Michael Borgolte, Julia Dücker, Marcel Müllerburg, and Bernd Schneidmüller (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011), 127–37; Denise K. Filios, “Playing the Goth Card in Tenth-Century Córdoba: Ibn al-Qūṭīya’s Family Traditions,” La corónica 43 (2015): 57–84). We know about Sara mainly through the work of her descendant, the historian Ibn al-Qūṭiyya (d. 367/977, “the son of the Gothic woman”), who devoted several pages to her life at the start of his famous account of the arrival of Islam in the Iberian Peninsula (Luis Molina, “Ibn al-Qūṭiyya,” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE (henceforth EI3), ed., Kate Fleet, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007–present) [online: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3]; Maribel Fierro, “La obra histórica de Ibn al-Qūṭiyya,” Al-Qanṭara 10 (1989): 485–512).

The key to understanding Sara’s career is the identity of her father, Almund. This Almund was the son of one of the last Visigothic kings, Witiza (d. ca. 710), who reigned immediately before the Islamic conquest of al-Andalus (92/711). In the first part of this story, Ibn al-Qūṭiyya is describing a dispute among rival factions within the Visigothic elite, in which Almund and his children (including Sara) were pitted against his brother Arṭabāsh (their uncle) for control of land and power. The descendants of Witiza are portrayed as allies of the Muslims, going so far as to leverage their relationship with the conquerors to take revenge on Arṭabāsh and repossess their lands. The centerpiece of Sara’s own story, of course, is her journey to Syria, then the seat of the Umayyad caliphate. Not only did Sara reportedly win the support of the caliph Hishām himself, but in so doing, she entered into a relationship with him like that of a vassal. This did not entail conversion – as was often customary with high-status vassals in this period – but Hishām sealed their alliance by arranging for her marriage to a Muslim, a mawlā (a non-Arab client) named ʿĪsā b. Muzāḥim, who accompanied her back to al-Andalus. There, they succeeded in reclaiming the lands that had been lost to Arṭabāsh – in effect, transferring Visigothic royal territory to the Umayyads, who were now bound to the descendants of Witiza through the ties of marriage.

So much for the literary significance of Sara the Goth. But if we also imagine her as a reflection of social realities in the eighth century itself, she seems to be emblematic of a type of pre-Islamic elite who profited by associating with the new Muslim ruling class, above all, by contracting marriage alliances with them. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement: as Simon Barton argued, it legitimized the act of conquest by embedding the new rulers within networks of old elites, and it kept old elites relevant by making them kinsmen of the new rulers of a given region (Simon Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 17).

Umm Jarīr, the Christian Mother of Khālid al-Qasrī: a Daughter of Kings?

The story of Sara the Goth is not mainly about religion; it is about elite politics and the creation of a hybrid aristocracy, part of which happened to be Christian, part of which happened to be Muslim. If we wish to understand the potential impact of high-status non-Muslim mothers on the religious outlook of their children, we should look east to the Fertile Crescent and the life of Khālid b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī (d. 126/743–44), an Umayyad governor of Mecca and Iraq who served under the aforementioned caliph Hishām. Khālid’s mother was a Christian – on account of which he was known as “Ibn al-Naṣrāniyya,” or “the son of the Christian woman” – and she seems to have had noble blood (G.R. Hawting, “Khālid b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḳasrī,” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second Edition (hereafter EI2), ed. Peri Bearman, et al.(Leiden: Brill, 1954–2009)[online: https://reference/ works.brillonline.com/browse/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2]; Steve C. Judd,“Khālid al-Qasrī,” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three, ed. Kate Fleet, et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007–present) [online: https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3]; for further comment on Khālid’s Christian mother, see Tannous, Making of the Medieval Middle East, 449–50. The phenomenon of elite Muslims with Christian mothers attracted the attention of medieval writers, e.g., Ibn Rusta, Abū ʿAlī Aḥmad b. ʿUmar, Kitāb al-Aʿlāq al-Nafīsa, ed. M.J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1892), 213).

In some respects, Khālid spent his career acting like a conventionally pious Muslim: according to early Arabic sources, he adorned the Kaʿba with gold, reorganized the rites of the Meccan pilgrimage, and busied himself suppressing “heretical” Muslim groups, including various Khārijīs and Shīʿīs. But in other respects, Khālid’s conduct was very unusual, indeed. He is said to have built a church for his mother behind the congregational mosque in Kūfa and to have invited a priest – not an imam – to bless the fountain in the courtyard of the mosque. He is also said to have favored Christians (and Zoroastrians) for government offices. Finally, he allegedly declared, “Their religion [i.e., Christianity] is better than ours.” Khālid was deeply (and perniciously) influenced by his Christian mother. We do not know much about the origins of Khālid’s mother, but we do know she was adamant about her religion, at one point defending her decision not to convert to Islam in a pointed letter she wrote to her son (Al-Balādhurī, Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, 26 vols., Maḥmūd al-Firdaws al-ʿAẓm, ed. (Damascus: Dār al-Yaqẓa, 1996–), here: vii, 408–10; , Liber expugnationis regionum, M.J. de Goeje, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1866), 286; al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ, 23 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1981–88), here: v, 427).

The Anonymity of the Typical Female Slave

1. The most common way in which elite non-Muslim women appear in the sources is as captives and concubines – not necessarily as wives.
2. One assumes that most concubines – whether they belonged to caliphs or not – had little status or prestige before they entered captivity. Like the vast majority of people alive at the time, they had probably been peasants before being enslaved. Many had probably also been children when they were captured. What is key is how these women attained high status – and thus an identity in the eyes of later authors – as a direct consequence of joining the households of powerful Muslims; whatever happened before was more or less irrelevant. For example, the littérateur Ibn al-Sāʿī (d. 674/1276) described the following concubines of foreign origin in his famous account of the consorts who were associated with caliphs and their ministers. Medieval Muslims were not indifferent to the ethnic or cultural origins of slaves: witness the numerous, often unflattering stereotypes that attached to slaves from different regions of the world, as recorded in various medieval Arabic and Persian texts (Ibn Buṭlān, al-Mukhtār b. al-Ḥasan, Shirā al-Raqīq, translated in Bernard Lewis, ed. and tr., Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, 2 vols. (New York: Walker and Company, 1974), here: ii, 245–51). These women did not endure social death like the typical slave, but preserved elements of their old identities and were valued precisely for their pre-Islamic social capital. Only by appreciating this contrast can we grasp what made them and their memorialization so unusual.

The Fate of the Daughters of Vanquished Enemies

Enslaving and exploiting the women of a vanquished foe has been a longstanding weapon of war and one that is sadly still with us today. Indeed, the humiliation of an enemy on the battlefield often continued with the humiliation of the women, including his wives and daughters, in the bedroom (as the epigraph from Genghis Khan at the start of this article makes clear) (see Christian Lamb, Our Bodies, their Battlefield: What War does to Women). The Umayyad and early ʿAbbasid periods offer numerous examples of this, including of close female relatives of defeated elites who were captured and forced to join the harems of high-ranking Muslim men. In late-seventh/early-eighth-century North Africa, for example, the Berber chieftain Kusayla launched a famous revolt against the Muslim conquerors that led to the temporary establishment of Berber rule over the broader region (M. Talbi, “Kusayla,” EI2; Yves Modéran, “Kusayla, l’Afrique et les Arabes,” In Identités et culture dans l’Algérie antique, ed. Claude Briand-Ponsart (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Publications des universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2005), 423–57). Kusayla was originally a Christian but seems to have converted to Islam shortly before his uprising; some sources hint that he reverted to Christianity during the rebellion, but this is a matter of speculation. The Umayyads fought back, and according to some sources, Kusayla was eventually defeated in Morocco by Marwān, the son of the great Arab general Mūsā b. Nuṣayr (d. 98/716–17).

This anecdote – which differs from most other traditions about the death of Kusayla, which place events in present-day eastern Algeria, not Morocco – is significant for several reasons. First, if it has any basis in reality, it suggests that Kusayla’s daughter became a victory trophy for the Muslim conquerors. In other words, they celebrated the defeat of the great Berber chieftain by pressing his daughter into the sexual service of the very man who had defeated him. Second, although it is hard to look past the overriding message of Kusayla’s humiliation, the reality is that the union between Marwān b. Mūsā and Kusayla’s unnamed daughter meant that the bloodline of the famous Berber chieftain would survive within the new Muslim elite. Third and most interestingly, we know that the child of this union – ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān – would go onto have a distinguished career, serving as the last Umayyad governor of Egypt before the ʿAbbasid Revolution.

It is important to note here that the sexual exploitation of daughters was only half the story. While elite non-Muslim women were often placed in the caliphal harem, their brothers (or other male relatives) were commonly enrolled in the caliphal army and/or administration. There are hints that this also happened, for example, with the sons of Kusayla and Khūrshīd (Kusayla: Anonymous, al-Imāma wa-ʾl-Siyāsa, ii, 96), and it is clear that this happened with the sons of Ustādhsīs, Bābak, and Māzyar (see Crone, Nativist Prophets, 71–72, 156, 158–59. For Māzyār, see al-Balādhurī, Liber expugnationis regionum, 134 (cf. English trans. in The Origins of the Islamic State, tr. Philip Khûri Ḥitti [New York: Columbia University Press, 1916], 206); al-Ṭabarī, Annales, iii, 1449, 1508, 1533–34 (cf. English trans. in The History of al-Ṭabarī (Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk). Volume XXXIV: Incipient Decline, tr. Joel L. Kraemer [Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989], 167; The History of al-Ṭabarī (Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk). Volume XXXV: The Crisis of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate). In the words of Patricia Crone, “The caliph would use the reproductive capacities of the daughters of defeated rebels for the procreation of children for his own family, and the muscle power of their sons for the killing of his own enemies. It comes across as the ultimate humiliation one could inflict on an enemy” (Crone, Nativist Prophets, 156).

The Myth of the Captive Sasanian Princess

All of the first four caliphs and nearly all of the Umayyad caliphs were the sons of free-born Arab women, while nearly all of their early ʿAbbasid successors were the sons of non-Arab concubines (Khalil ʿAthamina, “How did Islam Contribute to Change the Legal Status of Women: The Case of the Jawārī, or the Female Slaves,” Al-Qanṭara 28 (2007): 383–408, here: 394–98; Urban, Conquered Populations, 125; cf. Majied Robinson, “Statistical Approaches to the Rise of Concubinage in Islam,” in Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History, ed. Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn A. Hain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 11–26).