Naming Eunuchs in Islamicate Societies

The variety of words used in Islamicate societies to define different aspects of slavery and dependency in both the pre-modern and the modern period is impressive and largely unexplored. This means that we are also unable to make sense on the one hand of the relevant terminology in different parts of the Islamicate world, and on the other of the ruptures and continuities in declining different forms of slavery over different historical periods. In order to contribute to this discussion, this article focuses on the case of eunuchs in Islamicate societies, to show how such an approach can help us to better conceptualise the social history of slavery in such societies. Looking at the variety of words and concepts used to refer to slaves enables us to draw a much more nuanced picture of the slave. Indeed, sources did not always use the same words to refer to slaves: different documents used different terms in relation to different typologies of slaves, but also to define the same typology of slaves. To reconstruct how eunuchs were named in pre-modern Arabic-speaking Islamicate societies and what this can tell us about their functions, I will look here at three kinds of sources: lexica, manuals of fiqh (jurisprudence) and chronicles that focus on the Fatimid period. With the exception of the lexica, which are partially later sources, the main focus will be on the period from the ninth to the twelfth centuries