ABSTRACT
Concubinage was one of the social features of slavery which existed concurrently with the institution of marriage in both Muslim and nonMuslim societies in Africa and the Middle East. A concubine is neither a wife nor a mistress. A concubine is regarded as a legal category in Muslim societies because her children occupy the same status with the children of wives. In non-Muslim societies, concubines may not occupy any legal status. This is, however, subject to debate because no serious study of concubinage has been done in non-Muslim societies. The system in Muslim societies was an arrangement in which a slave woman lived with a man as his wife without being married to him in a civil or the normal way. This affiliation was only considered lawful if the woman was a slave who was captured in a holy war (jihad) or born to slave parents. Slave status is fundamental to the phenomenon of concubinage.
