Enfance et Jeunesse dans le Monde Musulman / Childhood and Youth in the Muslim World”, by François Georgeon, Klaus Kreiser (eds.), (book review), New Perspectives on Turkey, vol. 38, Spring 2008, pp. 275-79. (original) (raw)
Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, 2019
This is the final version of the manuscript. Please directly write me for an offprint. ERRATUM: "female teachers' schools" (p. 19 of the manuscript and p. 40 of the journal article) should be read "schools run by female teachers." I am very sorry for the confusion. The present article focuses on Muslim girls' education in Ottoman Istanbul during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through the extensive use of archival and narrative sources, it demonstrates that girls in pre-Tanzimat Istanbul enjoyed ample opportunities for elementary education. Two registers of the distribution of imperial gifts to schools in Istanbul, one in the 1780s and the other in 1811, reveal the existence of a substantial number of girls' schools run by female teachers. Many of these schools presumably operated in teachers' private homes, but there were vakıf-funded girls' schools as well. Additionally, girls benefited from coeducational schools. Drawing on these findings, I estimate that, in 1811, approximately one-fifth of the girls living in Istanbul received elementary schooling, and that there were about 100 female teachers in Istanbul. The increasing visibility of girls' schools and female teachers can be considered in the context of social change in the eighteenth century.
Debating Gender : A study on Status of Women in Medieval Islam
The status of women in today’s Muslim world continues to spur debates regarding their role not just today but during the entire history of Islam. It also raises questions as to whether Muslim women have experienced greater or declining rights and benefits along with that history. A critical checkpoint for this debate takes place in medieval times, as between the ninth and the thirteenth-century thoughts and views about women were shaped by scholars such as al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Taymiyya. The school of al-Ghazālī’ emerged from the Ash’ari school of religious thought, and is considered the representative of Al-Ash’ari in today’s primary scholastic school in the Muslim world, Al-Azhar. Ibn Rushd is viewed as a progressive thinker among Muslim and Western scholars, and, by al-Ghazālī’’s followers, as a rival. This is largely a result of his book Tahafut al-Tahafut, which Ibn Rushd wrote in response to al- Ghazālī’’s Tahafut al-Falasifa. Whereas the debate took the form of refuting or not refuting philosophy in the first place, it continued among followers from both schools into what each of the scholars (al-Ghazālī’ and Ibn Rushd) stood for, and thus refuted or supported all of what one student preached or taught. In this sense, many Islamic scholars didn’t do justice to the thought of Ibn Rushd that was beyond the Tahafut, and hence, much of his thought stayed in the unopened drawer of “different” discourse. Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness is demonstrated not in his jurisprudence books. In many ways, he adapted in his case law, and his fatwa’s to the general line of Islamic law voice of his time. His philosophical works, however, were a demonstration of his true ideals. His views on women were challenging then, and still, are challenging in today’s Islamic world. His view on the development of the society as a whole is portrayed from a growing understanding that was far from application in his time. It is true, however, that his views were mainly a revision, as well as influenced by his predecessors such as Ibn Sina and Al-Kindi, a school of thought that integrate Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic thought. Ibn Taymiyya, on the other hand, leaves behind him a school at the opposite extreme of Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness, one that in today’s religious approach is followed by Salafists and Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. His followers include Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama’a1, the same branch of Islamic schools that stands opposite the Shiite2. Ibn Taymiyya, according to his supporters, is considered the “Man of Awakening.” It was his view that many a stream of Muslims, mainly in Arab countries, decided to take after the failure of Arab Nationalism following the Arab defeat in the 1967 war. The importance of these three thinkers’ work lies in their continuing effect on today’s Islamic lifestyle, and that includes the perception of women in the Islamic world. This study attempts to discuss and explore the following: 1) the status of Muslim women in that period of al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Rushd (ninth through thirteenth centuries), with particular focus on these men’s views on women, and 2) comparing the effect of their views on today’s thought in regards to women, through a) discussing the general status of Muslim women today, and b) examining different Islamic feminist scholars, namely Fatima Mernissi, who in her works has excessively criticized al-Ghazālī’’s views on 1 When mentioning Ahl al-Sunna, it also includes the same stream that al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd come from. 2 After the death of the Prophet, and by the time Ali ibn Abi Talib became caliph. Split among the Islamic world started when Shiite; those who believed that Ali is the natural heir of the Prophet since he was his cousin, the first to believe in him, and his son-in-law. And those who came from the Umayyad tribe, led by Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, who saw that their strong tribal ties and the power they acquired in the Levant made them the deserving caliphs of Islam. From that moment on Islam was firmly fractioned between Shiites and Sunnis. Their faith in what defines Islam as religion is the same. The differences are not in the belief but certain behaviors in the schools of jurisprudence. But originally their difference is political. Women, and Nawal Sa’dawi, who has discussed women’s status from a different perspective relevant to the medieval era and its scholars. And last, but not least, this paper will attempt to show the effects of the teachings of al- Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd and Ibn Tamiya on the role of woman in Muslim societies, This research will highlight the thought of both Mernissi and Sa’dawi, measuring their direct discourse against medieval thought and how it shaped women’s status.
The Continuing Vitality of the Tradition: A Classical Muslim Paradigm of Children and Family
2015
Sustained reflection on the nature of children has animated intellectual and socio-cultural history in a number of arenas: the Ancient world, the European West, Byzantium. Yet, little work has been done in the Islamic context. However, even a survey of relevant, though disparate and scattered texts, shows that children were for Muslims a serious intellectual and moral concern. The work of abū Hāmid Muhammad al-Ghazālī (d. 505 A.H./1111 CE) provides important data from which to reconstruct a theory of childhood as a distinct stage in the "ages of life," a period that imposed special duties upon parents. The current study examines and constructs a Ghazālian theory of the child and childhood. His thought delineates in clear relief societal ideals and behavio-ral norms that combined to facilitate the social goal of rearing morally upright, educated, empathetic, and civic-minded young people. My research discovers, reconstructs, and explains the genesis of childhood within Isla...
Education and Learning in the Early Islamic World, edited by Claude Gilliot
Ilahiyat Studies, 2015
First paragraph: This is a hefty collection (381 pages) of nineteen essays edited by Claude Gilliot, a scholar of medieval Islam. The essays have been written by Western Orientalist scholars on the topic of Education and Learning in the Islamic World between 600 to 950 CE. The editor divided the collection into five parts: 1) Pedagogical Tradition, 2) Scholarship and Attestation, 3) Orality and Literacy, 4) Authorship and Transmission, and 5) Libraries. The authors included in the volume are: Ignaz Goldziher, Christopher Melchert, Albert Dietrich, Richard Bulliet, Sebastian Guenther, Johannes Pedersen, Gilliot himself, Jan Just Witkam and Georges Vajda, Fritz Krenkow, Stefan Leder, Richard Walzer, Johann Fuch, Isabel Fierro, Adolph Grohmann, Ruth Mackensen, David Wasserstein, Max Weisweiler, and Manuela Marin. All these articles have been published before. Gilliot appends a fairly lengthy Introduction to the volume in which he provides an overview of Orientalist scholarship on education and learning in Islam and includes, perhaps less explicably, a discussion of the early history of the Arabic script. The editor provides a helpful bibliography at the end of the volume on medieval Islamic education which includes sources in Arabic and Western languages. Sources in Persian and Turkish, however, are conspicuously missing which is a pity since they would have considerably enhanced the usefulness of the bibliography.
The status of women in today’s Muslim world continues to spur debates regarding their role not just today but during the entire history of Islam. It also raises questions as to whether Muslim women have experienced greater or declining rights and benefits along with that history. A critical checkpoint for this debate takes place in medieval times, as between the ninth and the thirteenth-century thoughts and views about women were shaped by scholars such as al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Taymiyya. The school of al-Ghazālī’ emerged from the Ash’ari school of religious thought, and is considered the representative of Al-Ash’ari in today’s primary scholastic school in the Muslim world, Al-Azhar. Ibn Rushd is viewed as a progressive thinker among Muslim and Western scholars, and, by al-Ghazālī’’s followers, as a rival. This is largely a result of his book Tahafut al-Tahafut, which Ibn Rushd wrote in response to al- Ghazālī’’s Tahafut al-Falasifa. Whereas the debate took the form of refuting or not refuting philosophy in the first place, it continued among followers from both schools into what each of the scholars (al-Ghazālī’ and Ibn Rushd) stood for, and thus refuted or supported all of what one student preached or taught. In this sense, many Islamic scholars didn’t do justice to the thought of Ibn Rushd that was beyond the Tahafut, and hence, much of his thought stayed in the unopened drawer of “different” discourse. Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness is demonstrated not in his jurisprudence books. In many ways, he adapted in his jurisprudence, and his fatwa’s to the general line of Islamic law voice of his time. His philosophical works, however, were a demonstration of his true ideals. His views on women were challenging then, and still, are challenging in today’s Islamic world. His view on the development of the society as a whole is portrayed from a growing understanding that was far from application in his time. It is true, however, that his views were mainly a revision, as well as influenced by his predecessors such as Ibn Sina and Al-Kindi, a school of thought that integrate Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic thought. Ibn Taymiyya, on the other hand, leaves behind him a school at the opposite extreme of Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness, one that in today’s religious approach is followed by Salafists and Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. His followers include Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama’a1, the same branch of Islamic schools that stands opposite the Shiite2. Ibn Taymiyya, according to his followers, is considered the “Man of Awakening.” It was his view that many a stream of Muslims, mainly in Arab countries, decided to take after the failure of Arab Nationalism following the Arab defeat in the 1967 war. The importance of these three thinkers’ work lies in their continuing effect on today’s Islamic lifestyle, and that includes the perception of women in the Islamic world. This study attempts to discuss and explore the following: 1) the status of Muslim women in that period of al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Rushd (ninth through thirteenth centuries), with particular focus on these men’s views on women, and 2) comparing the effect of their views on today’s thought in regards to women, through a) discussing the general status of Muslim women today, and b) examining different Islamic feminist scholars, namely Fatima Mernissi, who in her works has excessively criticized al-Ghazālī’’s views on 1 When mentioning Ahl al-Sunna, it also includes the same stream that al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd come from. 2 After the death of the Prophet, and by the time Ali ibn Abi Talib became caliph. Split among the Islamic world started when Shiite; those who believed that Ali is the natural heir of the Prophet since he was his cousin, the first to believe in him, and his son-in-law. And those who came from the Umayyad tribe, led by Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, who saw that their strong tribal ties and the power they acquired in the Levant made them the deserving caliphs of Islam. From that moment on Islam was firmly fractioned between Shiites and Sunnis. Their faith in what defines Islam as religion is the same. The differences are not in the belief but certain behaviors in the schools of jurisprudence. But originally their difference is political. Women, and Nawal Sa’dawi, who has discussed women’s status from a different perspective relevant to the medieval era and its scholars. And last, but not least, this paper will attempt to show the effects of the teachings of al- Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd on the role of woman in Muslim societies, and how the lessons of earlier Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle influenced their views. To accomplish this, the background of this paper will briefly look at the views of Plato and Aristotle regarding women in Ancient Greek and will try to shed light on the resemblance or influence, if any, of Plato’s and Aristotle’s schools on the thoughts of the medieval era of Islam. This research will highlight the thought of both Mernissi and Sa’dawi, measuring their direct discourse against medieval thought and how it shaped women’s status.
Women's Position during the Flourishing of Islamic Civilization (Ages 2-6 AH
The Divine religions and teachings of God's messengers have always explained true role of women in the world creation. Meanwhile, Islam and its transcendental culture cared human rights of women more than all schools and enshrined in all dimensions of life according to their capabilities and needs. Unfortunately, today, it has been accused of ignoring women's rights. However, with the brief explanation of the status of women in human history, the importance of Islam which have posed for women to be recognized. About the character of the holy women of Islam, virtue and perfection has been quoted in a variety of circumstances and their traditions. Quran mentioned some merit women are termed such as: Sareh (wife of Ibrahim (AS)), Mary (SA)( mother of Jesus), Pharaoh's wife (Asiah). In some Ahadith of the Prophet (PBUH), master of women in the paradise (and in other Ahadith, world) are four: Mary (mother of Jesus), Asia (wife of Pharaoh), Khadija and Fatima. And the most perfect one is Fatima. These Contents in the teaching of Islam itself indicate possibility of growth and excellence in female personalities to the top of humanity virtues. Since Islam has deep attention to the stability of family foundation, has always considered the growth and transcendence of women in all aspects with its teachings and laws. So that women in addition to the natural and innate tasks, not only as mother, sister or wife share as partner in men's scientific services but also deal with learning and teaching of sciences and participate in community services. Research and evaluation in Islamic civilization indicates that women in some periods of the Islamic history have been able to achieve great status in various fields. In the early Islamic period, in the age of Omayyad, moral values got weak and the face of Islamic government changed and due to this unfavorable situation, dignity and magnitude of women fell down and men and women communication stood at guile and cunning and hatred instead of truth and sincerity, and since men suspected to women, kept them at home and prohibited from participating in society, abuse of women began gradually and introduced poems and stories of the guile and cunning of women. (Zidan) The tendencies of Omayyad's period continued in Abbasid rules with gradual evolution. With formation of Islamic civilization of the second century (AH) Throughout the Muslim lands had witnessed prosperity of science and literature development and growth of many scientists and scholars. One of the great and remarkable achievements of Islamic civilization is the participation of women in various and multiple dimensions. So that existence of scholar women can be considered as one of the most important component of development. There have been so many women scientists in some cities such as Bukhara, Nayshabur, Shiraz, Isfahan, Samarqand Toos, Andalusia Balkh and Marv, who were experts and scholars of their eras. In many conquered cities by Muslims in the early centuries before the arrival of Islam, the women did not enjoy of their prestige and dignities, but the teachings of Quran and Islam's rich and unique culture gave them better position Certainly, the way of prevailing thinking in these societies are also important and effective on this downturn or speed and sometimes these impacts has had ups and downs. This article tries to review the present status of women in Islamic history, the efforts of science, art and mysticism of the early centuries to the sixth century AH. In the works of historians and researchers such as Belazori(2-3 centuries AH), Yaaghubi (3rd century AH) Samaani (506-562 AH) Ibn Asaker (499-571 AH) and Khatib Baghdadi, along scholar men names, some women with high position have been mentioned. Also, in many books such as the Aalam Alnesa, by Omar R. Kahhalah, Riyahin Alshariah, written by Sheikh Zabihollah Mahallati, the Alnesa’ Almomenat, by Hassoun, many women have been introduced during the fourteen centuries of Islamic history.
Muslim women in the early modern era
The Cambridge History of Turkey
In the Ottoman East as in other societies, women's lived experience and society's representation of women seldom coincided. In early modern Istanbul and Damascus, as in London and Lyons, or for that matter ancient Rome and Athens, women's lives were more complex and varied than their contemporaries were ready to concede. In Western and Mediterranean literary traditions, women's daily lives, like the lives of most men, went unremarked. But unlike men, women tended to be aggregated into idealised or deplored versions of a collective self -women as they should be, set against the dire potential of the Eve within. 1 It is not that real women, individual and identified, lacked social validity in Ottoman consciousness. Rather, the integral category of 'womankind', though undifferentiated by class, vocation, or creed, was more fully realised and answered larger cultural needs. 'Womankind' comprehended a stock of images expressive of society's anxieties and aspirations. Sometimes very good, sometimes very bad, women as womankind were staples of moralists and belletrists alike. In those rare instances when ordinary women were permitted to touch ground in the literature, they were customarily limited to sexualised or domestic preoccupations. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the depiction of Ottoman Muslim women did not differ significantly from their representation in earlier times. All in all, it was a story that was rarely told, at least for the written record. Even the genre of the privileged, that of illustrious women, is thin in comparison to its counterparts in early Islamic and contemporaneous European societies; few women are included at all, within a scant few categories
Debating Gender: A Study of Medieval and Contemporary Discussions in Islam.
The status of women in today’s Muslim world continues to spur debates regarding their role not just today but during the entire history of Islam. It also raises questions as to whether Muslim women have experienced greater or declining rights and benefits along that history. An important checkpoint for this debate takes place in medieval times, as between the ninth and the thirteenth century thoughts and views about women were shaped by scholars such as al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Taymiyya. The school of al-Ghazālī’ emerged from the Ash’ari school of religious thought, and is considered the representative of al-Ash’ari in today’s major scholastic school in the Muslim world, Al-Azhar. Ibn Rushd is viewed as a progressive thinker among Muslim and Western scholars, and, by al-Ghazālī’’s followers, as a rival. This is largely a result of his book Tahafut al-Tahafut, which Ibn Rushd wrote in response to al-Ghazālī’’s Tahafut al-Falasifa. Whereas the debate took the form of refuting or not refuting philosophy in the first place, it continued among followers from both schools into what each of the scholars (al-Ghazālī’ and Ibn Rushd) stood for, and thus refuted or supported all of what one scholar preached or taught. In this sense, many Islamic scholars didn’t do justice to the thought of Ibn Rushd that was beyond the Tahafut, and hence, much of his thought stayed in the unopened drawer of “different” discourse. Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness is demonstrated not in his jurisprudence books. In many ways he adapted in his jurisprudence and his fatwa’s to the general line of Islamic jurisprudence voice of his time. His philosophical works, however, were a demonstration of his true ideals. His views on women were challenging then, and still are challenging in today’s Islamic world. His view on the development of the society as a whole is portrayed from a progressive understanding that was far from application in his time. It is true, however, that his views were mainly a revision, as well as influenced by his predecessors 2 such as Ibn Sina and al-Kindi, a school of thought that integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic thought. Ibn Taymiyya, on the other hand, leaves behind him a school at the opposite extreme of Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness, one that in today’s religious approach is followed by Salafists and Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. His followers include Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama’a1, the same branch of Islamic schools that stands opposite the Shiite2. Ibn Taymiyya, according to his followers, is considered the “Man of Awakening.” It was his view that many a stream of Muslims, mainly in Arab countries, decided to take after the failure of Arab Nationalism following the Arab defeat of the 1967 war. The importance of these three thinkers’ work lies in their continuing effect on today’s Islamic lifestyle, and that includes the perception of women in the Islamic world. This study attempts to discuss and explore the following: 1) the status of Muslim women in that period of al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Rushd (ninth through thirteenth centuries), with special focus on these men’s views on women, and 2) comparing the effect of their views on today’s thought in regards to women, through a) discussing the general status of Muslim women today, and b) examining different Islamic feminist scholars, namely Fatima Mernissi, who in her works has excessively criticized al- Ghazālī’’s views on women, and Nawal El Saadawi, who has discussed women’s status from a different perspective relevant to the medieval era and its scholars. This research will highlight the thought of both Mernissi and Saadawi, measuring their direct discourse against medieval thought and how it shaped women’s status.
A Study of Medieval and Contemporary Discussions in Islam.docx
A Study of Medieval and Contemporary Discussions in Islam, 2019
The status of women in today’s Muslim world continues to spur debates regarding their role not just today but during the entire history of Islam. It also raises questions as to whether Muslim women have experienced greater or declining rights and benefits along that history. An important checkpoint for this debate takes place in medieval times, as between the ninth and the thirteenth century thoughts and views about women were shaped by scholars such as al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Taymiyya. The school of al-Ghazālī’ emerged from the Ash’ari school of religious thought, and is considered the representative of al-Ash’ari in today’s major scholastic school in the Muslim world, Al-Azhar. Ibn Rushd is viewed as a progressive thinker among Muslim and Western scholars, and, by al-Ghazālī’’s followers, as a rival. This is largely a result of his book Tahafut al-Tahafut, which Ibn Rushd wrote in response to al- Ghazālī’’s Tahafut al-Falasifa. Whereas the debate took the form of refuting or not refuting philosophy in the first place, it continued among followers from both schools into what each of the scholars (al-Ghazālī’ and Ibn Rushd) stood for, and thus refuted or supported all of what one scholar preached or taught. In this sense, many Islamic scholars didn’t do justice to the thought of Ibn Rushd that was beyond the Tahafut, and hence, much of his thought stayed in the unopened drawer of “different” discourse . Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness is demonstrated not in his jurisprudence books. In many ways he adapted in his jurisprudence and his fatwa’s to the general line of Islamic jurisprudence voice of his time. His philosophical works, however, were a demonstration of his true ideals. His views on women were challenging then, and still are challenging in today’s Islamic world. His view on the development of the society as a whole is portrayed from a progressive understanding that was far from application in his time. It is true, however, that his views were mainly a revision, as well as influenced by his predecessors such as Ibn Sina and al-Kindi, a school of thought that integrated Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic thought. Ibn Taymiyya, on the other hand, leaves behind him a school at the opposite extreme of Ibn Rushd’s progressiveness, one that in today’s religious approach is followed by Salafists and Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. His followers include Ahl al-Sunna wal Jama’a1, the same branch of Islamic schools that stands opposite the Shiite2. Ibn Taymiyya, according to his followers, is considered the “Man of Awakening.” It was his view that many a stream of Muslims, mainly in Arab countries, decided to take after the failure of Arab Nationalism following the Arab defeat of the 1967 war. The importance of these three thinkers’ work lies in their continuing effect on today’s Islamic lifestyle, and that includes the perception of women in the Islamic world. This study attempts to discuss and explore the following: 1) the status of Muslim women in that period of al-Ghazālī’, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Rushd (ninth through thirteenth centuries), with special focus on these men’s views on women, and 2) comparing the effect of their views on today’s thought in regards to women, through a) discussing the general status of Muslim women today, and b) examining different Islamic feminist scholars, namely Fatima Mernissi, who in her works has excessively criticized al-Ghazālī’’s views on 1 When mentioning Ahl al-Sunna, it also includes the same stream that al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd come from. 2 After the death of the Prophet, and by the time Ali ibn Abi Talib became caliph. Split among the Islamic world started when Shiite; those who believed that Ali is the natural heir of the Prophet, since he was his cousin, the first to believe in him, and his son-in-law. And those who came from the Umayyad tribe, led by Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufian, who saw that their strong tribal ties and the power they acquired in the Levant made them the deserving caliphs of Islam. From that moment on Islam was strongly fractioned between Shiites and Sunnis. Their faith in what defines Islam as religion is the same. The differences are not in the belief but in certain behaviors in the schools of jurisprudence. But originally their difference is political. women, and Nawal Sa’dawi, who has discussed women’s status from a different perspective relevant to the medieval era and its scholars. And last ,but not least ,this paper will attempt to show the effects of the teachings of al- Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd on the role of woman in Muslim societies, and how the teachings of earlier Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle influenced their views. To accomplish this, the background of this paper will briefly look at the views of Plato and Aristotle regarding women in Ancient Greek and will try to shed light on the resemblance or influence, if any, of Plato’s and Aristotle’s schools on the thoughts of the medieval era of Islam. This research will highlight the thought of both Mernissi and Sa’dawi, measuring their direct discourse against medieval thought and how it shaped women’s status.