Lombards and Calabrians, whether domestic staff, agricultural workers (Ibn Bassām, 1998, vol. I, p. 198), soldiers, miners or craftsmen, were deployed in all areas of economic and social activity (Ibn al-Kūtiyya, op. cit., pp. 94-5). Obviously, it was primarily women who were sought as servants, nurses or simply objects of sexual pleasure, and they succeeding in becoming more involved with the rest of Hispanic-Islamic society. This peculiarity could be explained in part by a provision specific to Muslim law regarding the concubine who has a child by her master. Theoretically, despite the differences between legal schools, in the event of recognition by the father of the child, the enslaved woman, known as umm walad, could no longer be sold or transferred. She became free, ipso jure, following the death of her master, but apart from this specific condition and the procedures of manumission or redemption of freedom, some enslaved individuals with remarkable talents and faculties were able to exert a notable influence in Iberian society. Among the most outstanding examples were the famous women who arrived in Spain to whom Arab chroniclers attributed incomparable qualities, such as 'Áida al-Madaniyya, the concubine of Habīb ibn al-Walīd al-Marwānī, called Dahūn. The latter had fallen in love with her during a pilgrimage to Arabia and had her brought back with him to Spain. She came from Medina and had very black skin. She was one of the most cultured women of her time. She knew how to recite from memory ten thousand hadiths, collected from Mālik ibn Anas (d. 179 AH/796 CE), the leader of the school of Medina and author of al-Muwatṭā', the first corpus of Muslim law that has been preserved for us. The texts mention other cases such as Fadll, 'Alam and Kalam. Of Basque origin, the latter was a very erudite captive, a poetess with an admirable mastery of the arts of singing and composition. To these few examples of exceptional women, we should probably add the emblematic figure of a fugitive from slavery