Feminizing slavery
205
:and prodded by prospective buyers, anywhere from the waist up and from the knees down if the rules were followed, and elsewhere if they were not. 60 That treatment was comparatively genteel- only comparatively - and at least subject to some rules of public propriety, in contrast to the sorting-out inspections administered in enslavement zones under the scrutiny of raiders and their confederates. Like male slaves, female slaves were the personal property of their masters. .Unlike males, however, every female slave, of whatever age or provenance and .by whatever label, was also her master's sexual property. Women had no right of refusal or appeal with regard to their sexuality, although the law forbade owners to use the women for outright prostitution. The use of males for such purposes was categorically illegal. The notional, if not the legal, line between prostitution and the selling of a female slave to another male, who might sell her to yet another, was whisper thin. Both male and female slaves had recourse to the shari'ah courts if they should suffer a disfiguring or disabling physical injury as a result of a master's intentIonal act. A female slave's sexuality, however, belonged to an alienable category of self. It was not hers to lose, withhold, or contest. Like an injury inflicted by a nonowner on a slave's ann or leg, or the loss of an eye, the loss of virginity counted not as an injury indemnifiable to her but as a loss to her owner. In the winter of 1817, a female owner demanded and received five hundred guruยงes in compensation for the depreciation in value of her young female slave. The girl, a virgin, had been raped by a man who was subsequently identified and brought to court. Because the girl could no longer be sold for the premium price of a virgin, her owner was entitled to commensurate compensation. 61 In the literature of Ottoman juristic opinion (jetvas), the chapters that touch on slavery are filled with questions about past, present, and future access to female slaves' sexuality. Inquiries were asked and answered about disputed paternity, prostitution, adultery, joint ownership of slaves, marriage, childbirth, violation by someone other than a master, and sexual relations with a wife's slave woman with and without wifely consent. 62 Given the problematic interface between the slave condition and the domestic household, a mufti's expertise often provided litigants with an authoritative opinion to bolster their cases in court. o.
60
61 62
On the awra of slave women, see Miiller, Die Kunst, 143-50, 190; Camilla Adang, "Women's Access to Public Space according to al-MuhalHi bi-I-Athar," in Manuela Marin and Randi Deguilhem, eds., Writing the Feminine: Women in Arab Sources (London, 2002), 77-80, 83. Aykut, istanbul Mahkemesi, 121 Numarall, 29. Compare Diirrizade, Netice el-Fetava, 582, 589, for the monetary value of slaves and indemnification for their injuries. Yeni~ehirli Abdullah, Behcet el-Fetava; Diizdag, Seyhiilislam Ebussuud, 119-32. For an analysis of Ottoman ยงeyhiilislams on these matters, see Colin Imber, Studies in Ottoman History and Law (Istanbul, 1996).