Writing the Feminine: Women in Arab Sources (The Islamic Mediterranean)

Based on original sources, this book questions the conventional wisdom that Mediterranean Muslim women are passive people subjected to the tyranny and misogyny of religion, society and male relatives. Encompassing everything from medieval love poetry to popular literary sources these studies bear witness to the fact that individual women of all social classes play pivotal roles in both the private domains of sociey and in the public realm. Click Of Needles: Polygamy As An Issue In Arabic Popular Epic / Remke Kruk -- Women In Medieval Classical Arab Poetry / Teresa Garulo -- Andalusi Proverbs On Women / Nadia Lachiri -- Palestinian Autobiographies: A Source For Women's History? / Susanne Enderwitz -- Women's Access To Public Space According To Al-muḥallā Bi-l-Āthār / Camilla Adang -- Juridicial Sources For The Study Of Women: Limitations Of The Female's Capacity To Act According To Mālikī Law / Cristina De La Puente -- Abandoned Wives And Their Possibilities For Divorce In Al-andalus: The Evidence Of The Wathāʼiq Works / Amalia Zomeño -- Women's History: A Study Of Al-tanūkhī / Nadia Mari El-cheikh -- Women In Andalusi Biographical Sources / María Luisa Ávila -- A Borrowed Space: Andalusi And Maghribi Women In Chronicles / María Jesús Viguera Molíns -- Women As Prophets In Islam / Maribel Fierro -- Images Of Lālla ʻawīsh: A Holy Woman From Marrakech / Mariëtte Van Beek -- Between Symbol And Reality: The Image Of Women In Twentieth Century Arab Art / Silvia Naef. Edited By Manuela Marín And Randi Deguilhem. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 243-265) And Index. Based on original sources, this book questions the conventional wisdom qualifying the Mediterranean Muslim woman as a passive person subjected to the tyranny and misogyny of her religion, society and male relatives. Yet, research based on primary evidence from the medieval, modern and contemporary Mediterranean Muslim world blows apart this stereotype. The studies in this book, which rely on different types of information coming from many varied regions and time periods - encompassing everything from medieval love poetry to popular literary sources via compilations of fatwa and legal analyses - bear witness to the fact that individual women, not just those from the upper classes, interacted not only with the private domains of sociey but also in the public realm. Specific case studies of Arab, Andalusi and Kabyle women's lives in addition to more generalised views of them expressed within the Mediterranean Muslim world bring to life the roles played by women in different social, cultural, religious, economic, legal and political situations. This book questions the conventional wisdom of the Mediterranean Muslim woman as a passive victim of the tyranny of religion, society, and male relatives. These original essays build on a range of experiences from varied regions and periods--from medieval love poetry to popular literary sources and fatwas and legal analyses--bear witness to the fact that individual women of all social classes play pivotal roles in both the private and public realms of Arab society. -- Publisher description. In her autobiographical The Harem Within: Tales of a Moroccan Childhood, Fatima Mernissi describes her grandfather's polygamous household, a household in which nine wives and concubines had to live together and where the special position of the first wife, her grandfather's paternal cousin, had to be accepted by all.