Editing Concubinage (section)

=== Mesopotamia ===
{{Expand section |date=September 2020}}
In [[Mesopotamia]], it was customary for a sterile wife to give her husband a slave as a concubine to bear children. The status of such concubines was ambiguous; they normally could not be sold but they remained the slave of the wife.<ref name=Orlando1>{{cite book |title=Slavery and Social Death |first1=Orlando |last1=Peterson |page=230 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]]|quote=Many societies in addition to those advocating Islam automatically freed the concubine, especially after she had had a child. About a third of all non-Islamic societies fall into this category.}}</ref> However, in the late Babylonian period, there are reports that concubines could be sold.<ref name=Orlando1/>
;Old Assyrian Period (20th–18th centuries BC)
In general, marriage was monogamous.{{efn|During the Old Assyrian Period, Assyrian marriages were generally monogamous. But if a merchant had two homes, one in Anatolia and another in Assyria, he was allowed to have a wife in each city.<ref name=CompanionToAssyria-85/>}} "If after two or three years of marriage the wife had not given birth to any children, the husband was allowed to buy a slave (who could also be chosen by the wife) in order to produce heirs. This woman, however, remained a slave and never gained the status of a second wife."<ref name=CompanionToAssyria-85>{{citation |title=A Companion to Assyria |editor-first1=Eckart |editor-last1=Frahm |author-first1=Cécile |author-last1=Michel |page=85 |chapter=Chapter 4. Economy, Society, and Daily Life in the Old Assyrian Period |isbn=978-1444335934 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |date=2017}}</ref>
;Middle Assyrian Period (14th–11th centuries BC)
In the Middle Assyrian Period, the main wife (''assatu'') wore a veil in the street, as could a concubine (''esirtu'') if she were accompanying the main wife, or if she were married.<ref name=CompanionToAssyria-157>{{citation |title=A Companion to Assyria |editor-first1=Eckart |editor-last1=Frahm |author-first1=Stefan |author-last1=Jacob |pages=157–58 |chapter=Chapter 7. Economy, Society, and Daily Life in the Middle Assyrian Period |isbn=978-1444335934 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |date=2017}}</ref><ref name=CompanionToAssyria-412>{{citation |title=A Companion to Assyria |editor-first1=Eckart |editor-last1=Frahm |author-first1=Frederick Mario |author-last1=Fales |pages=412–13 |chapter=Chapter 22. Assyrian Legal Traditions |isbn=978-1444335934 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |date=2017}}</ref> "If a man veils his concubine in public, by declaring 'she is my wife,' this woman shall be his wife."<ref name=CompanionToAssyria-157/> It was illegal for unmarried women, prostitutes and slave women to wear a veil in the street.<ref name=CompanionToAssyria-157/> "The children of a concubine were lower in rank than the descendants of a wife, but they could inherit if the marriage of the latter remained childless."<ref name=CompanionToAssyria-157/>