Source: ‘No One Sees and Every Man Does as He Sees Fit’: Slavery and Masculinity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt
The sources below pertain to controversies over slave-owning by Jewish men and women in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Egypt. While slave concubinage was legal in Islamic law, medieval Jewish law did not allow men to have sexual relationships with their enslaved women. The children of Jewish men and enslaved women were also born with slave status in contrast to the Islamic law of umm walad. Despite legal prohibitions, Jewish men still purchased women to use for sex; they also exploited enslaved household servants for sex.
In legal queries and answers (responsa), petitions to communal officials, and in court testimonies, some Jews expressed views about Jewish men’s use of enslaved women that reveal a range of reactions from confusion to condemnation. Jewish women, some of them slave owners themselves, and children were also impacted by Jewish men’s use of enslaved women.
This collection of sources and their discussion questions are meant to steer readers to analyze the ways in which male competition over who had the power and authority to control enslaved women was one domain in which Jewish men constituted masculinity in a political and social environment in which they were subordinate to Muslims.
Translated from the Judeo-Arabic by S.D. Goitein, Craig Perry, and Oded Zinger. These translations CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Source 1 – A Legal Query to Abraham Maimonides and His Response
Source 2 – A Petition by the Wife of Abū al-Faraj
Source 3 – Comments on Medieval Masculinity by Ruth Karras and Oded Zinger
Source 4 – A Court Deposition from ʿAydhāb
Source 5 – A Legal Query to Moses Maimonides
Discussion Questions
- According to the above sources, what were the motivations and stakes for the different parties with interests in Jewish men’s use of enslaved women?
- To what extent might the arguments made by Karras and Zinger (Source 3) apply to these cases?
Related Primary Sources
- Demandes de Libertat: Enslaved Mothers Suing for Freedom in Late Medieval Iberia
- Felix Fabri’s Wanderings in the Holy Land
- Warfare in Illinois Indian Culture
- Yagur, M. (2019). Saʿāda the enslaved woman: immersion and oblivion, T-S 12.872. [Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month, August 2019].