A lucid account of the development of women's dress from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century. This is set in the broader context of social and economic background of the Ottoman Empire, giving the subject a new and fascinating slant.

The historical and cultural richness of the Near and Middle East is reflected visually in its costume. In this book, Jennifer Scarce makes brilliant use of years or research to provide a lucid acount of the development of women's dress from the fourteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Her study of costume is set in th ebroader context of the social and economic background of the Ottoman Empire, giving the subject a new an fascinating slant. A detailed discussion of cut and construction is accompanied by pattern layouts and numerous photographs which clearly illustrate the different styles of dress through the centuries. Women's costume of the Near and Middle East is a hitherto sadly neglected subject. After years of original research across the world, this gap has been admirably filled by Jennifer Scarce's scholarly readable study.

Considers how the languages of dress in the region connect with other social practices, and with political and religious conformity in particular. Treating cases as diverse as practices of veiling in Oman and dress reform laws in Turkey, these ethnographic studies extend from Malta to the ME and Caucasus.

A passionate manifesto decrying misogyny in the Arab world, by an Egyptian American journalist and activist When the Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy published an article in Foreign Policy magazine in 2012 titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" it provoked a firestorm of controversy. The response it generated, with more than four thousand posts on the website, broke all records for the magazine, prompted dozens of follow-up interviews on radio and television, and made it clear that misogyny in the Arab world is an explosive issue, one that engages and often enrages the public. In Headscarves and Hymens, Eltahawy takes her argument further. Drawing on her years as a campaigner and commentator on women's issues in the Middle East, she explains that since the Arab Spring began, women in the Arab world have had two revolutions to undertake: one fought with men against oppressive regimes, and another fought against an entire political and economic system that treats women in countries from Yemen and Saudi Arabia to Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya as second-class citizens. Eltahawy has traveled across the Middle East and North Africa, meeting with women and listening to their stories. Her book is a plea for outrage and action on their behalf, confronting the "toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend." A manifesto motivated by hope and fury in equal measure, Headscarves and Hymens is as illuminating as it is incendiary.

Written by a pioneer in the field of Middle Eastern women's history, Women in the Middle East is a concise, comprehensive, and authoritative history of the lives of the region's women since the rise of Islam. Nikki Keddie shows why hostile or apologetic responses are completely inadequate to the diversity and richness of the lives of Middle Eastern women, and she provides a unique overview of their past and rapidly changing present. The book also includes a brief autobiography that recounts Keddie's political activism as one of the first women in Middle East Studies. Positioning women within their individual economic situations, identities, families, and geographies, Women in the Middle East examines the experiences of women in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, in Iran, and in all the Arab countries. Keddie discusses the interaction of a changing Islam with political, cultural, and socioeconomic developments. In doing so, she shows that, like other major religions, Islam incorporated ideas and practices of male superiority but also provoked challenges to them. Keddie breaks with notions of Middle Eastern women as faceless victims, and assesses their involvement in the rise of modern nationalist, socialist, and Islamist movements. While acknowledging that conservative trends are strong, she notes that there have been significant improvements in Middle Eastern women's suffrage, education, marital choice, and health.

Now with a new Preface and Afterword by the author “Outstanding . . . [Isobel Coleman] takes us into remote villages and urban bureaucracies to find the brave men and women working to create change in the Middle East.”—Los Angeles Times In this timely and important book, Isobel Coleman shows how Muslim women and men across the Middle East are working within Islam to fight for women’s rights in a growing movement of Islamic feminism. Journeying through Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Coleman introduces the reader to influential Islamic feminist thinkers and successful grassroots activists working to create economic, political, and educational opportunities for women. Their advocacy for women’s rights based on more progressive interpretations of Islam are critical to bridging the conflict between those championing reform and those seeking to oppress women in the name of religious tradition. Socially, culturally, economically, and politically, the future of the region depends on finding ways to accommodate human rights, and in particular women’s rights, with Islamic law. These reformers—and thousands of others—are the people leading the way forward. Featuring new material that addresses how the Arab uprisings and other recent events have affected the social and political landscape of the region, Paradise Beneath Her Feet offers a message of hope: Change is coming to the Middle East—and more often than not, it is being led by women. Praise for Paradise Beneath Her Feet “Clearly written, deeply moving, and wonderfully enlightening.”—Reza Aslan, author of No god but God “[An] engrossing portrait of real Muslim women that reveals how Islamic feminists . . . are working with and within the culture, rather than against it . . . to forge ‘a legitimate Islamic alternative to the current repressive system.’ Coleman doesn’t diminish the enormity of the struggle, but she argues convincingly that it might yet rewrite Islam’s future.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A nuanced view of Islam’s role in public life that is cautiously hopeful.”—The Economist “Eye-opening . . . Deeply religious, profoundly determined and modern in every way, these are twenty-first-century women bent on change. Hear them roar and see a future being born before our eyes.”—Booklist

Across centuries, the Islamic Middle East hosted large populations of Christians and Jews in addition to Muslims. Today, this diversity is mostly absent. In this book, Heather J. Sharkey examines the history that Muslims, Christians, and Jews once shared against the shifting backdrop of state policies. Focusing on the Ottoman Middle East before World War I, Sharkey offers a vivid and lively analysis of everyday social contacts, dress, music, food, bathing, and more, as they brought people together or pushed them apart. Historically, Islamic traditions of statecraft and law, which the Ottoman Empire maintained and adapted, treated Christians and Jews as protected subordinates to Muslims while prescribing limits to social mixing. Sharkey shows how, amid the pivotal changes of the modern era, efforts to simultaneously preserve and dismantle these hierarchies heightened tensions along religious lines and set the stage for the twentieth-century Middle East.

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.

تتناول هذه الدراسة بالتحليل والبحث تاريخ الأزياء والألبسة العربية والإسلامية منذ ما قبل الإسلام حتى أواخر القرن العشرين في شتى الأقطار والأصقاع الإسلامية عند الخلفاء والسلاطين والنخب الحاكمة وصفوة المجتمع والطبقة الكادحة علاوة على ملابس الشرطة وعسس الأسواق والجواري والمطربات وألبسة أهل الذمة والأقليات الأخرى في المجتمعات الإسلامية. بالإضافة إلى الملابس العسكرية والأزياء ذات الطبيعة الإحتفالية والطقوسية مثل الملابس الكهنوتية وملابس رجال الدين الإسلامي.

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.