A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Appendix B/10 and 11
[Sidenote: Maria neither a slave;]
10. (2) Supposing that the Governor of Egypt had sent two Coptic maids, with other presents, to Mohammad, it does not follow necessarily that they were slave-girls. It is never stated in history that they were captives of war, or, if they were so, that they were enslaved subsequently. There is no authority for a haphazard conjecture that they were slave-girls.
[Sidenote: nor a concubine-slave.]
11. (3) Even if it be admitted that Maria the Coptic was a slave-girl, there is no proof that she was a concubine-slave. It is a stereotyped fabrication of traditionists, and the unpardonable blunder on the part of European writers, that they almost always confound female-slaves, and even sometimes captives, with concubine-slaves. None of the six standard collectors of traditions—Imams Bokhari (died 256 A.H.), Muslim (died 261 A.H.), Aboo Daood (died 275 A.H.), Tirmizee (died 279 A.H.), Nasáee (died 303 A.H.), and Ibn Mája (died 273 A.H.)—has narrated that Maria the Coptic was a concubine-slave of the Prophet. Even the early biographers—Ibn Ishak (died 150 A.H.) and Ibn Hisham (died 213 A.H.) have not made any mention to this effect. It is only Mohammad bin Sád, the Secretary to Wákidi, who narrates the tradition,—firstly through Wákidi, Abd-ul-Hamíd, and Jáfar, and secondly through Wákidi, Yakoob bin Mohammad, and Abdullah bin Abdur Rahmán bin Abi Sásáta. These both ascriptions are apocryphal. I have already quoted my authorities against Wákidi and Abd-ul-Hamíd. Yakoob bin Mohammad has been impeached by Abu Zaraá, a critic in the Science of Traditions.[1] Jáfar and Abdullah both flourished after the first century. Their evidence to the supposed fact about a century ago is inadmissible.
In the Biographical Dictionaries of the contemporaries of the Prophet, there are three persons named Maria.[2] One is said to have been a housemaid of the Prophet; the second was a housemaid whose kunniat (patronymic) is given as Omm Rabab (mother of Rabab). The third is called Maria the Coptic. It appears there was only one Maria; she may have been a female servant in the household of the Prophet. The narrators have, by citing different circumstances regarding them, made them three different persons, and one of them a concubine-slave, as they could not think a house or family complete without a slave-girl or a concubine-slave. The biographers often commit such blunders. In giving different anecdotes of really the same persons, they make as many persons as they have anecdotes. That anyone of the Marias was a concubine-slave is a mere conjecture, or a stereotyped form of traditional confusion in mixing up maidservants with slaves or concubine-slaves.