This book examines the economic, cultural, political and social positions of Muslim women in medieval India. It explores the changes that took place with the advent of Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Tartars, Afghans and Persians whose customs and traditions influenced the existing Islamic society. Though Islam improved the position of women by instituting many reforms, the Islamic religious texts laid down the minutest code of conduct for women, the slightest deviation from which was considered irreligious. Such rigidity, coupled with the apathy of the ulemas, led to the weakening of position of women. The book goes on to show how the diktats of the Quran were subjected to many interpretations down the ages, affecting the status of women in various ways.

Women often appear invisible in what is widely perceived as the male-oriented society of Islam. This work seeks to redress the balance with a series of essays on women in the pre-modern phase of Islamic history. The reader will encounter here rulers, politicians, poets and patrons, as well as some larger than life fictitious females from the pages of Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature. There are also accounts of quiet or troubled lives of ordinary women preserved in the court records of Mamluk Egypt and Ottoman Turkey, reminders that historical research can resuscitate the lives of subaltern as well as elite women from the past.

Family, Law and Politics, Volume II of the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, brings together over 360 entries on women, family, law, politics, and Islamic cultures around the world.

Offers an annotated source for the study of the public and private lives of South Asian Muslim women.

This highly interesting book studies the cultural context of modernisation of middle-class Muslim women in late 19th- and 20th-century Bengal. Its frames of reference are the Bengal 'Awakening', the Reform Movements -- Brahmo/Hindi and Muslim -- and the Women's Question as articulated in material and ideological terms throughout the period. Tracing the emergence of the modern Muslim gentlewomen, the bhadramahilā, starting in 1876 when Nawab Faizunnesa Chaudhurani published her first book and ending with the foundation in 1939 of The Lady Brabourne College, the book gives an excellent analysis of the rise of a Muslim woman's public sphere and broadens our knowledge of Bengali social history in the colonial period.

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is an indictment of a mindset that has justified all manner of foreign interference, including military invasion, in the name of rescuing women from Islam. It offers a detailed, moving portrait of the actual experiences of ordinary Muslim women, and of the contingencies with which they live.

When thinking of intrepid travelers from past centuries, we don't usually put Muslim women at the top of the list. And yet, the stunning firsthand accounts in this collection completely upend preconceived notions of who was exploring the world. Editors Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma recover, translate, annotate, and provide historical and cultural context for the 17th- to 20th-century writings of Muslim women travelers in ten different languages. Queens and captives, pilgrims and provocateurs, these women are diverse. Their connection to Islam is wide-ranging as well, from the devout to those who distanced themselves from religion. What unites these adventurers is a concern for other women they encounter, their willingness to record their experiences, and the constant thoughts they cast homeward even as they traveled a world that was not always prepared to welcome them. Perfect for readers interested in gender, Islam, travel writing, and global history, Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women provides invaluable insight into how these daring women experienced the world—in their own voices.

This comprehensive history analyses the role of labour in the medieval Islamic economy, studies women's and minority labour structures and explores doctrinal and religious approaches to labour. It includes an extensive dictionary of trade and occupational terms.

A cross-cultural and ethno-historical perspective exploring the lives and legacies of several Muslim women rulers from medieval to modern times.