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chained_bear commented on the word milk payment
"Migrants and indigenous peoples alike farmed and tended herds. They often exchanged animals, rugs, and grain for livestock--horses, camels, cattle--or slaves, a distinct social group. Children put up for adoption constituted a group between slaves and free people. Sometimes the adoptive parents made a payment, usually a horse, called a 'milk payment.' If they did so, then the new family member joined the family as an equal. But if no milk payment was made, then the adopted child was treated as a slave.
"Women participated fully in this economy. They initiated transactions, served as witnesses, brought disputes to the attention of officials, and owned land. They could adopt children and give them away, too. One woman put her son up for adoption and received a camel as milk payment. When she discovered that her birth son's master was treating him as a slave, she took her son back and sued his adoptive father in court. The court found in her favor yet returned her son to his adoptive father, stipulating that the father henceforth had to treat the boy as his son and not a slave."
--Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2012), 48
December 30, 2016