The possibilities of what it meant to be a concubine in a late medieval setting were several. Conventional Wisdom holds that concubinage was a gendered function of slavery----that is, a legal arrangement in which slave owners enjoyed licit sexual relations With their female property. Although this was certainly the view of Muslim jurists and a historical reality for many enslaved Women, this understanding of concubinage fails to take into account the -different ways in which it was practiced in history.