What did it mean to be a wife, woman, or slave in a society in which a land-owning woman was forbidden to lay with her male slave but the same slave might be allowed to take concubines? Jurists of the nascent Maliki, Hanafi, and Shafi‘i legal schools frequently compared marriage to purchase and divorce to manumission. Juggling scripture, precedent, and custom on one hand, and the requirements of logical consistency on the other, legal scholars engaged in vigorous debate. The emerging consensus demonstrated a self-perpetuating analogy between a husband’s status as master and a wife’s as slave, even as jurists insisted on the dignity of free women and, increasingly, the masculine rights of enslaved husbands.
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ENDORSEMENTS
“Ali’s main thesis is that the texts of early jurists reveal that they depended on scripture, precedent, custom, and logical consistency all at once to emerge with a consensus that often compared, through analogy, marriage to purchase and divorce to manumission. This premise is lucidly argued and well documented.”
“A significant contribution that transcends the subfields of Islamic law, medieval history, and gender studies.”
“This book has been thoughtfully designed to engage, and will stimulate readers from many fields.”