Women in the Mosque

This is an extremely detailed, nuanced and precise account of women's presence in the mosque over the centuries.

Extraordinary... a rich, in-depth, and often amusing analysis of the legal debates and social records of women's mosque attendance from the eighth to the early twenty-first century.

The book is of great importance to those interested in Muslim women's status, religious rights, and practice.... Highly recommended.

A highly scholarly work on an important but oft-ignored aspect of women in Islam.

Intisar A. Rabb, Harvard Law School, and director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program:
Marion Holmes Katz brings to light and adds context to the fascinating history of women's access to mosques through a dexterous presentation of a wide range of legal sources, travel accounts, contemporaneous Christian and Jewish accounts, literature, and a unique sixteenth-century manuscript recounting when women contested the ruling authorities' attempt to ban them from Islam's most sacred mosque in Mecca. A must-read for anyone interested in a solid historical account related to issues of women and gender in Islam.

Kevin Reinhart, Dartmouth College:
Women in the Mosque will become an essential part of the library of every scholar concerned with Islamic ritual law, women in religion, women in Islam, and even religious architecture. There is something here for students of Islamic law, Ottoman history, Arab social history, and modern Muslim intellectual history.

Jonathan Brown, Georgetown University:
A scholarly milestone. Women in the Mosque is a comprehensive, categorical treatment of the question of women's mosque access in Islamic law and history. Marion Holmes Katz is one of the most widely respected scholars of Islamic law and ritual in the West, and, in its scope and detail, this work is peerless to my knowledge.