Illinois Global Institute

As the home to the area and global studies centers and thematic programs at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Illinois Global Institute is dedicated to fostering an environment where international perspectives are integral to teaching and research.

Center for African Studies * Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies * Center for Global Studies * Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies * Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies * Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity * European Union Center * LAS Global Studies * Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies * Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center * The Program in Arms Control and Domestic and International Security

 

Workshop and lunch with Prof. Craig Perry: “Slavery, Abyssinian Diaspora, and the Civilian Elite in 15th-Century Mecca"

Feb 26, 2026   12:00 - 2:00 pm  
English Building 109
Conference/Workshop
Sponsor
Organized by Medieval Studies, Co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and the Program in Jewish Culture and Society.
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Originating Calendar
Middle East Events

Faculty and graduate students are invited to join a discussion of work-in-progress by Craig Perry (Emory University):  “Slavery, Abyssinian Diaspora, and the Civilian Elite in 15th-Century Mecca.” Lunch will be provided. Please contact Carol Symes if you would like to attend: symes@illinois.edu.

This is an article and set of accompanying Arabic to English translations based on a corpus of over 40 short biographies of enslaved and freed women who primarily lived in 15th-century Mecca and were bound to the households of ḥadīth scholars, judges, merchants, and other members of the civilian elite. The overwhelming majority of these women are identified as Abyssinians, though others were trafficked to Mecca from Nubia, India, East Africa, and beyond. Entries for these women are found in the biographical dictionaries of ʿUmar Najm al-Dīn b. Fahd (d. 1466) and Muḥammad al-Sakhāwī (d. 1497), two prominent ḥadīth scholars of their era who were well connected to other well-known authors of their era and to the ruling elites of Mecca. Though many of the individual biographies are terse in their descriptions of women's lives, the article argues that the method of collective biography (prosopography) allows for their greater contextualization and productive analysis. Collectively, these biographies shed light on the geography and geo-politics of the slave trade from Abyssinia to Arabia, the daily lives and socio-cultural roles of unfree women in elite Mecca society, and the ways that free men used slave-ownership to articulate and perform according to multiple masculine ideals. In its conclusions, the article highlights why slavery studies should remain at the center of the study of the medieval Middle East.

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