This history of Middle Eastern women is the first to survey gender relations in the Middle East from the earliest Islamic period to the present. Outstanding scholars analyze a rich array of sources ranging from histories, biographical dictionaries, law books, prescriptive treatises, and archival records, to the Traditions (hadith) of the Prophet and imaginative works like the Thousand and One Nights, to modern writings by Middle Eastern women and by Western writers. They show that gender boundaries in the Middle East have been neither fixed nor immutable: changes in family patterns, religious rituals, socio-economic necessity, myth and ideology-and not least, women's attitudes-have expanded or circumscribed women's roles and behavior through the ages.
Nikki R. Keddie, professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the author of Roots of Revolution, the editor of Religion and Politics in Iran, and the co-editor of Neither East nor West. Beth Baron, assistant professor of history at City College, City University of New York, has recently completed a book of women intellectuals and society in modern Egypt.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Deciphering Middle Eastern Women's History Chapter 2. Organisation of the Volume Chapter 3. Islam and Patriarchy THE FIRST ISLAMIC CENTURIES (Chapters 4-6) THE MAMLUK PERIOD (Chapters 7-9) MODERN TURKEY AND IRAN (Chapters 10-13) THE MODERN ARAB WORLD (Chapters 14-18) Index.