Conference | workshop
Motherhood and Unfreedom in the Islamicate World
- Date
- Wednesday 4 June 2025
- Address
- Allard Pierson
Oude Turfmarkt 127-129
Amsterdam - Room
- volgt
Workshop
The intersection between slavery and gender shaped the history of early Islam; the seventh-century conquests brought a large number of slaves into the Islamicate world. Over the course of subsequent centuries these women gave birth to an increasingly large number of elite Muslim children, whose birth-circumstances had far-reaching implications for family structure, gender roles, and rulership. Simultaneously, the emergence of Islam brought changes to enslaved women, who, unlike their pre-Islamic counterparts, had clearer rights in terms of their children's paternity, could not be sold once they bore children, and were theoretically granted freedom upon their master's death. By the mid-eighth century, the Abbasid caliphs, Umayyad amīrs of al-Andalus, and Twelver Shi’i Imams were predominantly born to concubine mothers. Endogamous marriage (marrying within one’s family) amongst elites further represents a shift away from the maternal family and prosopographical research has shown a sharp increase in concubinage, especially in genealogical records.
Call for papers
This workshop aims to bring together scholars working on women, unfreedom, gender, and households in the Islamicate world (and beyond) to explore how these factors intersected and shaped women’s lives. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the workshop will interrogate the roles that enslaved and free women played in shaping power dynamics, kinship structures, and societal norms. By focusing on both the visible and invisible contributions of women, the workshop seeks to reevaluate the historical record and push the boundaries of current scholarship. Given the collaboration of the Allard Pierson (Amsterdam) we strongly encourage the participation of researchers who engage with material culture in order to shed light on the dynamics of unfreedom. We invite applications from scholars working inside and outside the field of Islamic studies and welcome contributions investigating unfreedom and motherhood from comparative perspectives (Byzantine, Latin Christendom, Indian Ocean, Central Asia etc.)
Some guiding questions include: How did enslaved women influence family structures, societal views on marriage and sexuality, and ideologies of rulership? How did genealogical shifts challenge notions of Arab nobility? What role did the maternal family play, and is there evidence for matrilineal influence in early Islamic society? What was the experience of unfree mothers? What legal avenues existed for enslaved women to assert agency, and how do male-written sources depict or omit their presence? How did enslavement and multi-lingualism interact?
Ultimately, this workshop hopes to open new pathways for understanding gender, slavery, and the household, contributing to a more nuanced history of early Islam.
Please submit abstracts of up to 500 words to this email address no later than March 15: embodiedimamate@gmail.com
Organizers
This workshop is organized by Dr. Zahra Azhar and Dr. Leone Pecorini-Goodall, and supported by ERC Horizon Starting Grant Project, “Embodied Imamate: Mapping the Development of the Early Shiʿi Community 700-900 CE (ImBod),” grant number 101077946, led by Dr. Edmund Hayes with the generous support of the Allard Pierson and their collaborative partner, the National Slavery Museum.
For more information on the project, please see our website: https://embodiedimamate.hcommons.org/