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This book has looked at women belonging to and living under medieval Islamic dynasties by comprehensively covering women under the Fatimid dynasty. To this dynasty were linked those women who, on account of the power they commanded, were to become among the most famous female personalities of the medieval Islamic world: Sitt al-Mulk, the Sulayhid queens of the Yemen and the mother of the imam-caliph al-Mustansir. Court women marked their status and influence by way of grand-scale architectural patronage for the use of propaganda. The Fatimids were forerunners in the practice of frequently appointing heirs as children born of concubines rather than those born of wives. Being culturally and doctrinally ‘foreigners’ themselves in the regions they ruled, the imam-caliphs encouraged diversity when, for instance, appointing Berbers and Turks, Christians and Jews as their viziers, secretaries and military commanders. Another focus of this book has been the interconnectedness between Fatimids, women and trade.

Prior scholarship on the rise of David in 1 Samuel 1–2, Samuel 8 and the period of the Judges in the book of Judges tends to treat each as separate literary entities. An analysis of both of these bodies of literature indicates a common interest in pointing to Davidic interests in the presentation of Israel's origins. The Samuel traditions emphasize YHWH's favor for David as monarch over against Saul, and the book of Judges is organized to emphasize that the Judges from the northern tribes are flawed in comparison to the Judean Othniel. Rather than appendices to the Judges narrative, Judges 17–21 represent the culmination of the book of Judges, insofar as these chapters portray the foundation of the northern temple at Dan by a corrupt man who steals money from his own mother and the outrageous crime of the Benjaminites at Gibeah, Saul's home town, in raping and murdering a Judean Levite's concubine. These narratives were written to justify the Hezekian edition's contention that the house of David should rule all Israel, and they later functioned as part of the Josianic and Exilic editions of the DtrH.

This chapter explores the second phase of Richard Blechynden’s relationship with Charlotte. This phase illustrates the differences of opinion about proper conduct, particularly the conflict between kin and concubines. This chapter discusses the arrival of Blechynden’s seafaring cousin William Marmaduke Blechynden together with his mistress Sally Everell, their son, and some other shipmates at Blechynden’s house. It highlights Charlotte’s conflict with Marmaduke and Sally and Blechynden’s decision to send her away. Though Blechynden’s household was rather vulgar and fractious at that time, it was defined by kinship, judged by friends, and nurtured by servants.

Having successfully fought against the Aghlabids, in 297/909 the Fatimids established themselves in the Aghlabids' former royal city of Raqqada by taking over their palaces and all the other buildings the city contained. Raqqada was to be the Fatimids' first ‘royal city’. Only a few years later, al-Mahdi took the decision to build a strategically more secure and appropriate seat for the growing needs of the newly-established dynasty. Having inherited from the Aghlabids a powerful navy, in 304/916 al-Mahdi ordered to build on the coast, 200 kilometres south of Tunis, what was to become known as al-Mahdiyya, ‘the city of the Mahdi’. This chapter explores court life at palaces during the Fatimid dynasty. It first focuses on the court harems and concubines and slave-girls in the harems. It then examines women's voices from the harem, female staff at the palace, the ‘politics’ of dress in the palace, and entertainment at the palace including court poetry, music and dance. Weddings and funerals were also held at the palace, along with religious and secular ceremonies.

Legal cases document a wide range of brideprices in wife sales, which usually constituted very substantial sums for the people involved (equivalent to several years’ grain supply or wages for agricultural labor, or to the price of two or three head of cattle). Wife sale was a relatively inexpensive way to acquire a wife, because most sellers had to accept the first offer. The low end of the price scale represents extreme desperation; the high end, the market for concubines and prostitutes. Most prices fell in the broad mid-range illustrated by Nanbu County’s cases. Terms of child custody also influenced prices. Dowry was not a factor in wife sales, which were part of a spectrum of brideprice-heavy marriage practices.

One of the most fundamental characteristics of ancient slavery was the slave's lack of control over his or her own body. Slaves ‘were sexually available and completely subject to the will of their owners’. Even if they were not forced to work as commercial prostitutes, they would nevertheless serve as the functional equivalent of prostitutes as far as the owner himself, his family members, and his friends were concerned. The sexual exploitation to which they were subjected was similar in both cases. Graeco-Roman literary sources from Homer's Iliad to late antiquity provide ample testimony on this aspect of slave-master relationships. Members of the slave-owning strata of society did not need to frequent brothels: they had their own or their friends' private prostitutes available at all times.

During the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), when the Manchus ruled China, palace women played a significant role in maintaining Manchu ethnic identity and constructing a multiethnic empire. They can be divided into two categories: imperial consorts (empresses and concubines), who entered the palace through marriage, and Aisin Gioro daughters, who received imperial membership by birth. Starting in the eighteenth century, imperial consorts were selected exclusively from the hereditary military units known as banners. As for imperial daughters, the emperors usually married them to Manchu high officials or to the elite of other ethnic groups in order to buy support and cooperation. Imperial daughters thus played a significant role in shaping Qing territory and stabilizing Manchu rule. When examining imperial marriage from the perspective of the interaction of gender, ethnicity, and social status, one can see that in taking wives the Qing court was more concerned with ethnicity, while giving wives social status became a more significant consideration.

During the nineteenth century, a messenger named Fujinami made a career of working for the shogun; bringing this young woman into the palace was one way of recruiting new staff. In the common parlance of the time, they were called servants of the inner quarters or palace women. Fujinami lived and worked in women's quarters for the Tokugawa shoguns called the “Great Interior”. By the time Fujinami started working at the Edo Castle around 1837, the Tokugawa shogunate had ruled Japan for more than two hundred years. Founded in 1603, it developed administrative structures, including those for the Great Interior, by the middle of the seventeenth century. The eighth shogun Yoshimune oversaw their reform in the 1720s. One result was a diminution in the power of concubines, to the advantage of wives and administrators. This chapter focuses on the period after Yoshimune's reform, the Great Interior of Edo Castle, and the women who worked for the shogunate.

In contrast to the few imperial palaces with dozens of wives and concubines, most polygynous households in the Aztec period were probably much more modest. Spain's conquest of the Aztec Empire changed much of Aztec culture: ancient Mexico's land and riches came under Spanish control, and its native people were converted to Christianity—and obliged to obey marriage laws that demanded monogamous unions. This change in marriage practices had severe economic consequences for the Aztec nobility, because Aztec women wove cloth, and cloth was so highly valued that it was a form of money. Therefore, a household with many wives produced much wealth, and one with only one wife was much poorer. The secondary wives, the “concubines,” held a status of respect because of the prosperity they generated. This chapter traces the relationship between marriage patterns and wealth in textiles through three successive periods in Mexican history: the Late Postclassic period heyday of the Aztec Empire (ca. 1430–1521), the Early Colonial period (1521–1620), and the Middle Colonial period (1621–1720).

This chapterk presents preliminary historical geographic evidence from three sites discovered in and near the ancient city-state of Kano, in northern Nigeria, that shows that as early as the 1500s, royal concubines in the Kano palace held exclusive rights over the production of indigo-dyed cloth; and that they did so because of indigo blue's association with human and earthly fertility over which royalty was understood to have control. The data suggest that over subsequent centuries, royal women and non-royal women across Hausaland (a linguistic region straddling Nigeria and Niger of which Kano was a leading economic and cultural part) began producing indigo-dyed cloth for domestic and commercial purposes. It was only after a reformist jihad in the 1800s that men effectively wrested industry control away from royal and non-royal women alike. The findings indicate that while the gendered makeup of Kano's nineteenth-century indigo dyeing industry was indeed anomalous in West Africa, it was so for only a relatively brief period of time.

This book offers a comparative view of the women who lived, worked, and served in royal courts around the globe. It discusses the importance of palaces in providing the setting for the theater of rule, as well as the relations between the monarch and the women closest to him. Most women who lived in palaces, even members of the nobility, worked as servants in one capacity or another, although servants could become relatives if they bore the ruler's children. Conversely, it can also be said that all women, including mothers, served the monarchy. Concubines were often privileged in art, literature, and the popular imagination, but unless they managed to bear children, they too are best classified as servants. This book highlights palace women's productive rather than reproductive roles, including their participation in the arts of entertainment and literature. It concludes with an chapter on the connections between popular culture and the royal family in France, just one example of how monarchs and their women have fared in the court of public opinion.

This chapter argues that while the religious leaders of Timbuktu and Jenne enjoyed unrivaled prestige, there were other actors who, though receiving scant attention in the secondary materials, were nonetheless significant figures. Specifically, holy men associated with the Mori Koyra community played influential roles, as did royal women, including, and especially, the royal concubines. Indeed, women were a critical component of the askia's strategy in realizing an ethnic pluralism that would transform relations between the clan and the state, such that loyalties to the former could be accommodated within the latter. Buoyed by a resurgent economy, stellar scholarship, and the reconfiguration of political fealty, Songhay experienced a new age of cosmopolitanism. With so many accomplishments, it is little wonder Askia Muḥammad is revered as one of the most important leaders in West African history, his policies a template for Muslim reformers for centuries to come.

This chapter discusses the huge and rapid military expansion of the Arab Umayyads and its impact on genders. It resulted in the creation of massive numbers of women taken as slaves- sabaya- which was permitted according to the classical reading of the Qur’an. Men on the other hand, refuse to apply the same right of women according to the Qur’an. The only woman to come forward to fight Umayyad invasion, was Queen Dihya of the Berbers in North Africa. The Umayyad failed to learn from such model, and Muslims who came afterwards did not attempt to follow such example of women rulers. The Umayyads tried to follow the Prophet’s model of political marriage to boost their rule, using women as a trophy. Caliph al-Walid II created his realm of desires gathering thousands of concubines around him, which some had limited political influence. On the other hands, one see the usage of eunuchs as guards to the harem section, following the Prophet’s model.

In this chapter, one examines the rise of concubines to power, and becomes de facto ruler of the empire as royal mothers. One analyse the authority of Queenship described by N. Abbott, and the term queen mother applied by H. Kennedy, which is more favourable. One see the power of concubine Khayzuran who killed her son, the caliph and replace him with another, al-Rashid. She became the de facto ruler for three years. Also the phenomenal concubine, Shaghab in 10^th century who ruled in the name of her boy caliph. That is with the network of allies, like Qahramanas. For example, Um Musa who ousted the vizier, and Thumal who took the unprecedented judicial post of Nazar al-Mazalim. In addition, queen mother allied with the eunuch commander of the army to protect her son’s interests. One do criticize the gendered opinion of F. El-Mernissi who described the age as (revolution of the harem) which is far from historical analyses and facts. The chapter examines in detail, the changing opinion of rulers about the participation of women in politics, and how public in general, and chroniclers in particular perceived such role.