Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : Producing songs and sons / Matthew S. Gordon -- Statistical approaches to the rise of concubinage in Islam / Majied Robinson -- Abbasid courtesans and the question of social mobility / Matthew S. Gordon -- A jariya's prospects in Abbasid Baghdad / Pernilla Myrne -- Visibility and performance : courtesans in the early Islamicate Courts (661-950 CE) / Lisa Nielson -- The Qiyan of al-Andalus / Dwight F. Reynolds -- The ethnic origins of female slaves in al-Andalus / Cristina de la Puente -- The mothers of the caliph's sons : women as spoils of war in the early Almohad Period / Heather J. Empey -- Concubines on the road : Ibn Battuta's slave women / Marina A. Tolmacheva -- Slaves only in name : free women as royal concubines in late Timurid Iran and Central Asia / Usman Hamid -- A queen mother and the Ottoman imperial harem : Rabia Gülnus Emetullah Valide Sultan (1640-1715) / Betul Ipsirli Argit -- Hagar and Mariya : early Islamic models of slave motherhood / Elizabeth Urban -- Between history and hagiography : the mothers of the imams in Imami historical memory / Michael Dann -- Are houris heavenly concubines? / Nerina Rustomji -- Educated slave women and gift exchange in Abbasid culture / Jocelyn Sharlet -- Remembering the Umm al-Walad : Ibn Kathir's treatise on the sale of the concubine / Younus Y. Mirza -- Epilogue : Avenues to social mobility for courtesans and concubines / Kathryn A.Hain.

Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History contains sixteen essays on enslaved and freed women across medieval and pre-modern Islamic social history. The essays consider questions of slavery, gender, social networking, cultural production, sexuality, Islamic family law, and religion in the shaping of Near Eastern and Islamic society over time.