From the Cradle to the Court: Domestic Ties and Legal Agency in the Umm al-Walad’s World

Challenging definitions of slavery derived from Greco-Roman and transatlantic paradigms, in this chapter I argue that slavery in Islamicate contexts cannot be reduced to total social death. Although ownership and othering remained central, enslaved individuals were embedded in households and kinship networks that reshaped relations of domination. The concept of strong asymmetrical dependency helps capture these institutional hierarchies while accounting for limited spaces of negotiation.
The chapter focuses on the figure of the umm al-walad, an enslaved woman who bore her owner’s child, as a lens to analyse the intersection of gender, family, religion, and legal status in premodern Islamicate societies. Islamic law introduced a significant shift within the contemporary regulations on slavery in the premodern period: children born to a free Muslim man and his enslaved partner were free if paternity was acknowledged, and over time Sunni jurists agreed that the umm al-walad could not be sold and would be manumitted upon her owner’s death. Yet debates persisted regarding the acquisition of this status, the effects of miscarriage, her labour and sexual obligations, and especially the consequences of her conversion when owned by a non-Muslim owner.
The chapter situates the umm al-walad within broader debates on slavery, ownership, and dependency, engaging frameworks such as strong asymmetrical dependency, trajectories of slavery, intersectionality, and (inter-)agency.