Are Houris Heavenly Concubines?

The chapter considers the figure of the hur’in (houri), a female denizen of Islamic paradise referenced in the Quran and thus widely discussed in early and medieval Islamic literary and religious sources. It investigates Islamic gendered relationships outside the institution of marriage and the ways in which male–female companionship was configured in Islamic religious and social practice. The intense focus in medieval and modern scholarship on gender relations through marriage detracts from the fact that Muslim men did not only experience feminine companionship through marriage. The possession of slave girls (jawari) and singing girls (qiyan) was another kind of gendered relationship not reflected in theological literature, but was displayed and celebrated frequently in courtly literature (adab).