تحفة النظار في غرايب الامصار وعجايب الاسفار 13.84.3

13.84.3

One of their remarkable practices is that they hire themselves out for service in houses for a fixed sum of five dinars or less, their keep being due from the one who hires them; they do not regard this as shameful, and most of their girls do it, so that in the house of a rich man you will find ten or twenty of them. The value of every vessel she breaks is charged to her. When she wishes to move from one house to another, the people of the house to which she is going give her the sum for which she is bound, and she pays it to the people of the house she is leaving, and she then owes it to the others. The chief occupation of these hired women is spinning qanbar.