Recordings › Shaykh Dr. Shabir Ally | Juxtaposing the Quran, Jumbling Aisha's age & Jinn Possession | MindTrap#16 · 22 Apr 2020 › Segment 22 of 23
What does the Quran mean by 'what your right hands possess', and did the Prophet have a concubine?
malik ibn anas malik bin anas imam maalik imam malik ibn anas imaam imams prayer leader muftis haraam forbidden quraan al-quran sura soorah surat suwar soora chapter ayah aya ayat ayaat aayah aayat khalifah khalifa caliph khulafa khilafah khilafat khilafa madina al-madinah madeenah yathrib ummah umma ummat nikah nikkah nikaah nikah nama nikahnama salam as-salamu alaykum assalamu alaikum assalamualaikum salaams salam alaykum wa alaykum as-salam peace greetingRapid round: 'what your right hands possess', concubines, and whether Mariya was a wife
Play from 1:42:42
The video loads from YouTube only when you press play. Click a time in the transcript to seek.
Watch the answer
Open on YouTube at 1:42:42The player starts at 1:42:42, where the answer begins.
This segment1:42:42 to 1:49:55 · 7 min 13 sGeneral teaching
The answer in brief
machinesummary, machine-writtenThe guest reads the Quran's 'right-hand possessions' as a category of wife who was not free, since 4:25 speaks of marrying slave girls, and thinks Mariya al-Qibtiyya may have been a wife misunderstood as a concubine. Mufti Abu Layth says Mariya was a wife, as he has taught, and that under trajectory hermeneutics slavery would have become haram.
In more detail
Viewers ask about 'what your right hands possess' and about concubines, which the guest says is one lengthy question on which he has brief answers on his website. In brief, he says one must accept that people owned slaves in the past, including biblical prophets, Ibrahim having the concubine Hajar who bore Ismail; slavery then differed from American slavery, and since women were especially vulnerable, societies developed the concubine as a kind of wife who belonged to one man and had no relations with others, with the distinction that she was not free. The classical commentators describe something similar in early Islam and say the Prophet had such a concubine, Mariya al-Qibtiyya. Reading the Quran to make sense for today, he has come to a slightly different understanding: 4:25 speaks of marrying slave girls when free women cannot be found, so the relationship the Quran envisages is marriage, the right-hand possessions being named separately because they were a different category of person, a sort of wife who was not free. He explains that there were no prisons until Umar's caliphate, so prisoners of war taken when the nascent community defended itself were allotted to families and the men could take the women as concubines. Whether the Prophet himself had a concubine is not clear to him, since marriage then was informal: with Safiyya people waited to see whether he put his cloak over her the next morning to know if she was a wife, so it is possible Mariya was a wife and some misunderstood. Mufti Abu Layth says this has been his teaching too, and that an early biographer of the Prophet's wives from Madinah, a student of Imam Malik [?], places Mariya among the wives in his book Azwaj al-Nabi [?]. He adds his broader view, explained at length elsewhere, that collective consciousness changes with eras, as the recent idea of a right to self-determination shows, and that under trajectory hermeneutics slavery would have become haram as that consciousness changed, just as later generations may wonder how we tolerated governments or paying taxes.
Question as read aloud · questioner not identifiedSomebody has asked about 'what your right hands possess', and somebody on Facebook has asked about concubines.
- Guest speech overlaps this segment
- Some terms in this segment are uncertain
Position stated
Waiting for the speaker checkA guest speaks in this segment and the captions do not say who said what. The view found here is held back until the speaker-separated transcript confirms the words are his, or the channel verifies it. The transcript and recording are published in full.
Kind: general teaching Speakers: host and guest; guest speech is labelled and excluded from positionsTranscript
machine1:42:42 to 1:49:55 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
A guest speaks in this segment. Guest speech is labelled and is excluded from the positions layer.
assuming it may require a very lengthy response but if so maybe another time or if in a few words somebody has asked about right hand possesses no that's a very lengthy discussion in and of itself but when somebody here as asked as well on Facebook as well about concubines which is the same thing so I don't know if you know I you know it yeah I just [ __ ] requires a lengthy discussion I've given some brief answers to similar questions on my website should be rally calm it so one would find the answers there but but just in brief I you know
first of all we should accept that it's the reality that in the past that people owned slaves and if some of the great figures of the Bible who are heroes and prophets in the Bible they had slaves as well ibrahim alaih-is-salaam is said to have had a female concubine Hodja and from it is from her that he had the son Ismael though the way in which slaves were thought about in in the past yeah you know it's different from the way we think about like slaves in American history for example and women in particular were very vulnerable in ancient societies and if a woman was
actually owned by us as a slave then she could be open up to all abuses but somehow the societies developed way in that in which a woman might be taken by the man as his concubine in which case she basically belongs to him as though they were married and so she would not have marital relations with with other persons and and so she was in a way a sort of wife with the distinction that she did not have her freedom she was not a free person and so in the in the early Islamic societies it looks like what the classical
commentators are telling us is that something similar happened and the prophet sallallaahu named himself had such a concubine maria alcapurrias now in in looking at the verses of the Koran very clearly and and and trying to make sense of it all and and trying to in the Quran in a way that will be meaningful to Muslims in our present times I have come to a slightly different understanding the Quran in surah 4 verse number 25 speaks about marrying the slave girls if you cannot find 3 women to get married to so it seems that the relationship that
Quran is talking about it would be one of marriage and and why are they called separately like why does it say your your your wives and your right hand possession it is because the the right hand positions were really a different category of persons at the time but but it's a sort of wife that she's but but must like the wife who is a free woman it is a different sort of wife who is called a concubine in in in like when we look at ancient practices so and if we think of it in the in the way that you know a person just goes and captures a
woman and then makes her his slave then then that's not the way it was if in in the earliest Muslim society there was no prison if prison was invented for the first time during the Caliphate of omar ideologue one where he when he saw that it made sense to have a house where you can house criminals so prior to that people were given all the kinds of punishment including banishment now what will still be done with the prisoners of war you didn't have you know a prison where you put the prisoners of war so when the Muslims were being attacked and they had to defend the nascent Islamic
society then when they were victorious they had captives from the other side just like if I lost some of their people some Muslims would be seized and and taken as captives for the other side now how where Muslims were to treat their captives when they didn't have prisoners and it wasn't even involved that he would keep prisoners of war people were taken as slaves so the women who were taken the slaves were then allotted to families and the men in those families would have the opportunity to take these women as their concubines this seems to be the way the
things are explained from the classical Islamic tradition now whether the prophets of Allah sallam himself had a concubine this now is it's not so very clear in my mind because it seems that the narratives about the Prophet assalam were not so very clear on this issue I'll give you some some something about the wife Sophia the wife of the Prophet saws and the mother of believers so when the Prophet SAW Selim took her into his tent people were and according to Mossad the people were saying okay we're gonna see how she comes up the next morning if
the Prophet SAW said and puts his cloak around her that means she's a wife so that means that the marriage that like we are familiar with a marriage whole ceremony today there's a banquet hall and their formal way of asking and responding acceptance thing I do and so on but the the marriage was not so formal people took like some vague signs as indications whether the person is married or not because the whole spirit of it is that the Kirstie's are together in the presence of witnesses so it is not something done in the corner like people would in an adulterous relationship do so in this case it's a
public affair but then they could not be clear in their minds is this person taken as a wife or as a concubine so it is possible that the Prophet a solemn had Maria as a wife but some people misunderstood that that's also being my teaching shift there and there was a student of Imam Malik one of the earliest people if mr. Bhalla one of the first people to write a biography on the wives of the Prophet and he was in Medina himself and he it's titled so Chatwin of II was watchin ABI and in the he places Mari as well as the wife of
the prophet sallallaahu some and that's been my teaching as well I'm going to just state just very quickly with that shift that on my in my response to this concubine issue I've highlighted that we have to that we have to understand like you've said that the IVA that human human humanity was slightly different in their thinking now slavery did exist but certain mindset certain paradigms weren't yet arrived at like people didn't see certain things the way they do and I've got a very lengthy video where I speak about social consciousness like a collective
consciousness it changes with certain times with certain Eva and then everybody thinks of it so as an example the way today the right to self-determination people think oh we have the right to self-determine have the right to our freedoms this is actually quite a recent way of thinking there was a time when people don't necessarily think like that they don't think Oh everybody like we have a nation we have a as the people we have the right to self-determination we have these things it just did not exist in that way so with slavery as well I too have explained that that when he did change that collective consciousness
Paragraphs overlapping 1:42:42 to 1:49:55. Full text on the recording page.
Cite this segment
Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2020-04-22-S22, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/ksqksrxndnw/s/22/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2020, April 22). What does the Quran mean by 'what your right hands possess', and did the Prophet have a concubine? [Video, segment 2020-04-22-S22, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/ksqksrxndnw/s/22/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2020. "What does the Quran mean by 'what your right hands possess', and did the Prophet have a concubine?" Video, segment 2020-04-22-S22, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded April 22, 2020. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/ksqksrxndnw/s/22/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2020-04-22-S22, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{What does the Quran mean by 'what your right hands possess', and did the Prophet have a concubine?}}, year = {2020}, month = {4}, date = {2020-04-22}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/ksqksrxndnw/s/22/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/ksqksrxndnw/s/22/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2020-04-22-S22, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
Something wrong here?
Tell us what is wrong and it will be checked against the recording. Nothing changes until a person has reviewed it.
Sending a note needs JavaScript, which is off or unavailable in this browser. Nothing has been sent.
No name, email address or account is asked for or stored, and the inbox does not store your IP address. For rate limiting it keeps an unreadable fingerprint of your connection for 48 hours, and our database provider's own logs record connections as every website's do. Only your note, its kind, the page and the moment in the recording are kept, for review.