Slavery, Gender, and the Image in Medieval Islam 

Dr. Lamia Balafrej, Associate Professor, Arts of the Islamic World 

University of California Los Angeles 

Images of female slaves abound in medieval Islamic art, whether in manuscript painting or on portable objects; they depict servants, musicians, dancers, or concubines. Free women, by contrast, were seldom represented, a discrepancy that has received little scholarly attention. Why this emphasis on the enslaved in medieval Islamic art, and what was unfree women's role in visual representation?