1. Introduction: Deciphering Middle Eastern Women's History

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Preface vii
4. Organization of the Volume ix
5. 1. Introduction: Deciphering Middle Eastern Women's History 1
6. 2. Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective 23
7. I. The First Islamic Centuries
8. 3. Political Action and Public Example: ‘A‘isha and the Battle of the Camel 45
9. 4. Early Islam and the Position of Women: The Problem of Interpretation 58
10. 5. Gendering the Ungendered Body: Hermaphrodites in Medieval Islamic Law 74
11. II. The Mamluk Period
12. 6. Manners and Customs of Fourteenth-Century Cairene Women: Female Anarchy versus Male Shar’i Order in Muslim Prescriptive Treatises 99
13. 7. Class Solidarity versus Gender Gain: Women as Custodians of Property in Later Medieval Egypt 122
14. 8. Women and Islamic Education in the Mamluk Period 143
15. III. Modern Turkey and Iran
16. 9. Ottoman Women, Households, and Textile Manufacturing, 1800-1914 161
17. 10. The Impact of Legal and Educational Reforms on Turkish Women 177
18. 11. The Dynamics of Women's Spheres of Action in Rural Iran 195
19. 12. Political Roles of Aliabad Women: The Public-Private Dichotomy Transcended 215
20. IV. The Modern Arab World
21. 13. Ties That Bound: Women and Family in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth- Century Nablus 233
22. 14. The House of Zainab: Female Authority and Saintly Succession in Colonial Algeria 254
23. 15. The Making and Breaking of Marital Bonds in Modern Egypt 275
24. 16. Artists and Entrepreneurs: Female Singers in Cairo during the 1920s 292
25. 17. Biography and Women's History: On Interpreting Doria Shafik 310
26. Contributors 335
27. Index 337