Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam By Kecia Ali (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. hbk. 262 pages)

Abstract

Kecia Ali has already acquired a reputation as one of the most important English-
language scholars of Islam and gender of her generation. Her latest book will do nothing to detract from that reputation, and may well solidify her as
the leading scholar of her generation of Islam and gender in the United States.
While the title suggests that its contents exhibit a parallel concern
with slavery and marriage, the work is really devoted to showing how the
formally separate legal institutions of marriage and slave holding shaped
and were shaped by each institution ‒ with their respective doctrines at
times converging, and while at other times, the doctrines diverged. The
book consists of an introduction, five substantial chapters, and a conclusion.
The chapters cover the formation of a marriage and its similarities to
and distinctions from concubinage, the only other legal relationship that
made sexual relations licit. The second chapter treats the interdependency
of claims within marriage, while pointing out the gendered nature of the
claims particular to the husband and the wife. The third chapter focuses on
the wife’s legal claims to her husband’s companionship, particularly in the
context of a polygynous marriage. The fourth chapter deals with the various
modes of dissolving a marriage in Islamic law and compares them with
a master’s power to manumit his slave. The fifth chapter compares and
contrasts marriage and slavery as particular modes of ownership (milk) ...