Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

Khayzuran: Courtesan or Head of State? 57
Khayzuran persuaded al-Mahdi to choose her two sons as royal
heirs. First he officially designated the elder, Musa al-Hadi, as heir
in 159/775. As part of its struggle against slavery, Islam forbade
men to marry a woman slave before freeing her. Once she has been
freed, the man might conclude a marriage contract with her in due
form. Her status, before being freed, is that of umm walad, literally
'mother of a child', in contrast to the free woman, who was called
umm al-banin, mother of sons. One of the innovations introduced
by Islam was to declare that the son of an umm walad, a slave
woman, and a free father was free. And afterwards the slave mother
could be partially liberated by acquiring a status much more advantageous
than that of umm al-banin', her husband could no longer
sell her after the birth of a child and she became free after his
death. The heirs of her master could no longer exclusively inherit
her as they had done before Islam. The children of the umm walad
had the same rights and privileges as those born of a free mother.
They could inherit a share of the father's possessions equal to that
of the other children and according to the prescriptions of the
shari'a. The jawari were also going to make certain that their sons
could inherit everything, even the throne.
In Muslim history the number of caliphs whose mothers were
slaves is more than impressive. The phenomenon deserves an indepth
study, for from it we can learn, beyond the love stories, about
an extremely important aspect of the struggle between classes and
cultures during the Muslim Golden Age - the sexual aspect. Ibn
Hazm remarks that 'among the Abbasids only three caliphs were
sons of a hurra [free woman], and among the Umayyads of Andalusia
not a single son of a free woman succeeded in becoming caliph'. 23
Sallama, the mother of Caliph al-Mansur (the second of the Abbasid
dynasty), who was the father of al-Mahdi, was a Berber slave.
The mothers of caliphs al-Ma'mun (the seventh), al-Muntasir (the
eleventh), al-Musta'in (the twelfth), and al-Muhtadi (the fourteenth)
were Roman slaves; the mother of al-Mutawakkil (the tenth) was
Turkish. 24 However, Khayzuran surpassed all of these by becoming
the mother of two future caliphs. Not satisfied with the naming of
her first son as the heir, she doubled her chances by insisting that
al-Mahdi also name Harun, her second and favourite son, as a royal
heir. In 166/782, seven years after naming Musa al-Hadi as heir,
Caliph al-Mahdi designated Harun al-Rashid as second in line to
succeed. Al-Mahdi adored Khayzuran's children, especially Banuqa,
his daughter by her, whom he loved to such an extent that he did
not want to be separated from her. He dressed her as a boy in