Marilyn Booth holds the Iraq Chair in Arabic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is author of May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt, and books and essays on Arabic vernacular poetry, modern Arabic fiction, constructions of masculinity in early Arabic gender discourse, and the theory and practice of literary translation. She is an award-winning translator of contemporary Arabic fiction.

HAREM HISTORIES

Envisioning Places and Living Spaces

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2010 Duke University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-4858-0

Contents

I NORMATIVE IMAGES AND SHIFTING SPACES………………………………………………………………………………………………….23one Early Women Exemplars and the Construction of Gendered Space (RE-) DEFINING FEMININE MORAL EXCELLENCE Asma [Afsaruddin………………………49two Normative Notions of Public and Private in Early Islamic Culture Yaseen Noorani…………………………………………………………69II ROOMS AND THRESHOLDS Harems as Spaces, Socialities, and Law……………………………………………………………………………87four Caliphal Harems, Household Harems BAGHDAD IN THE FOURTH CENTURY OF THE ISLAMIC ERA Nadia Maria El Cheikh………………………………….104five Domesticating Sexuality HAREM CULTURE IN OTTOMAN IMPERIAL LAW Leslie Peirce……………………………………………………………136six Panoptic Bodies BLACK EUNUCHS AS GUARDIANS OF THE TOPKAPI HAREM Jateen Lad……………………………………………………………..177seven Where Elites Meet HAREM VISITS, SEA BATHING, AND SOCIABILITIES IN PRECOLONIAL TUNISIA, C. 1800-1881 Julia Clancy-Smith…………………….211III HAREMS ENVISIONED…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………239nine Harem/House/Set DOMESTIC INTERIORS IN PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE LATE OTTOMAN WORLD Nancy Micklewright…………………………………………261ten Dress and Undress CLOTHING AND EROTICISM IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HAREM Joan DelPlato……………………………290eleven Harems, Women, and Political Tyranny in the Works of Jurji Zaydan Orit Bashkin……………………………………………………….319twelve The Harem as the Seat of Middle-class Industry and Morality THE FICTION OF AHMET MIDHAT EFENDI A. Holly Shissler…………………………342thirteen Between Harem and Houseboat “FALLENNESS,” GENDERED SPACES, AND THE FEMALE NATIONAL SUBJECT IN 1920S EGYPT Marilyn Booth…………………375Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………401Contributors…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………405

Chapter One

EARLY WOMEN EXEMPLARS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDERED SPACE

(Re-)Defining Feminine Moral Excellence

Asma Afsaruddin

Muslim women’s presence in what is conventionally described as the public sphere—along with their right to be there—has been a highly fraught issue throughout much of Islamic social and cultural history. It is a question that has occupied the minds of jurists and theologians of different stripes, who sought to clearly demarcate the spatial boundaries of acceptable feminine conduct and determine its legal and moral valence. To judge by biographical literature and advice manuals composed for women after the second century of Islam (the eighth century of the common era), it is clear that women’s visibility and activity outside the home became highly contested issues in juridical and theological circles. A literary cult of domesticity apparently grounded in religious texts and hallowed praxis came to be propagated in these circles, and seclusion in the home was promoted as the defining feature of feminine moral excellence. To a considerable extent, the legal and theological hermeneutics of these scholars on this matter were based on appeals to the normative behavioral precedents set by the Sahabiyyat (singular, Sahabiyya), the female Companions of the Prophet Muhammad. As the Prophet’s closest female associates and relatives, their conduct and actions as recorded for us in official biographies were deemed to have met with Muhammad’s approval, and thus they were held up as morally exemplary and prescriptive for later generations of Muslim women. Biographies through time remain, therefore, an invaluable source for assessing how the Sahabiyyat were invoked as role models through the centuries. Furthermore, they allow us to plot the transformations that occurred in the progressive recounting of these accounts, and to evaluate the significance of these transformations.

As our ensuing discussion demonstrates, early biographers (roughly, those before the fifth/eleventh century) when discussing the lives of the Sahabiyyat showed relatively little concern for general moralizing about the desirability or undesirability of women’s access to the public sphere. Instead, early biographers tended to provide a more factual, straightforward recounting of relevant details of the women’s lives. After all, the harem did not yet exist in the time of the female Companions, and these early biographers in general showed little inclination to inscribe the restrictions of this later institution onto the bodies of these first-generation Muslim women. It is worthy of note that the Arabic word harim does not occur in these early biographical works. In comparison, biographers writing after the fifth/eleventh century exercised quite a bit of poetic license to ensure that the gendered notions of space that had hardened into near-dogma by their time found anachronistic reflection in the lives of the earliest Muslim women, in order to validate and mandate the institution of the harem.

This chapter focuses on certain prominent female personalities from the first generation of Muslims, considering how the details of their lives— particularly their entry into the public sphere as warriors, relief workers, and religious leaders—are depicted primarily in two major biographical works from different eras. The women selected for this study are not among the Prophet’s female relatives and wives, the best-known female Companions, but are lesser-known ones who have earned their right to be in these biographical works through the invocation of specific criteria. This chapter thus deliberately eschews entries on the traditional “First Ladies of Islam,” so to speak, since their kinship with Muhammad through blood and marriage would have been the paramount criterion undergirding their selection as Companions and would have automatically guaranteed their inclusion in the biographical works. Two purposes of this study are to determine what specific factors, in the absence of such kinship, contributed to the valorization of these women as distinguished members of the first generation of Muslims, and to investigate whether gender played a significant role in the criteria invoked to assess their moral excellence. Another objective is to plot the transformations occurring over time in the conceptualization of women’s roles and their access to the public sphere, which increasingly came to be regarded as an almost exclusively masculine domain.

The two well-known biographical works used in this study are the Kitab al-Tabaqat al-kubra (the book of the great generations), by Muhammad Ibn Sa’d (d. 230/844–45), and al-Isaba fi tamyiz al-sahaba (the correct apprehension of the distinctive status of the Companions”), by Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani (d. 852/1449). A third biographical work occasionally referred to herein is al-Isti’ab fi ma’rifat al-ashab (grasping the knowledge of the Companions”), by the Cordoban scholar Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr (d. 463/1070). Ibn Sa’d lived and worked during the heyday of the Abbasid era (133/750– 648/1250) as did Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr, although physically and culturally the latter belongs to the Andalusian environment, while Ibn Hajar was a product of the Mamluk era (648/1250–992/1517). These three biographical dictionaries are probably the most frequently consulted works dealing with the Companions and have accordingly played a foundational role in shaping popular perceptions of these moral exemplars who lived in the first century of Islam. Comparing their portrayals of specific Sahabiyyat, I will focus on how certain details of these portrayals were amended or reworked (or not) over time, and what the resulting insights can tell us about changing conceptions of women’s moral excellence and their public roles in Muslim societies through the late medieval period.

In conjunction with biographical works, prescriptive manuals composed in the late Seljuk and Mamluk periods which instruct women on “proper” behavior are instructive. Such manuals are highly important indices of societal attitudes concerning women’s presence in the public sphere at this time; they allow us to further plot critical transformations in the conceptualization of women’s roles when compared to the earliest period of Islam. Tellingly, such manuals, which focused on reinforcing the harem as the locus par excellence for the virtuous female, are not to be found in the earlier period.

TELLING LIVES: WOMEN EMIGRANTS FROM MECCA TO MEDINA

We begin by glimpsing the recorded lives of select women from among the Meccan emigrants to Medina—who are known in Arabic as al-muhajirat— many of whom were fleeing from the persecution of the pagan Meccans opposed to the propagation of Islam. The following women are among those who appear in the section in Ibn Sa’d’s Tabaqat titled “Naming the Women Who Pledged Allegiance from among the Quraysh, Their Allies [hulafa’ihim], Their Clients [mawalihim], and Relatively Unknown Women from among the Arabs in General [wa-ghara’ib nisa’ al-‘arab].” I will not discuss each biographical entry as a whole but rather will select certain points that I find to be illuminating of the central concerns of this chapter.

Umm Ayman was the nurse and a freedwoman of the Prophet; she later married Zayd b. Haritha, Muhammad’s adopted son and freedman. Her exceptionally high standing among the Companions is indicated in the following two hadiths. In the first one, an unnamed shaykh from the Banu Sa’d b. Bakr reports: “The Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, used to address Umm Ayman as ‘my mother.’ And when he would look at her, he would say, ‘This lady is what remains of my family [baqiyyat ahl bayti].'” The second hadith is reported by Sufyan b. ‘Uqba, who said: “The Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, said, ‘Whoever wishes to marry a woman from among the dwellers of heaven, let him marry Umm Ayman.'”

Ibn Sa’d highlights Umm Ayman’s participation in several of the major battles in early Islam. She was present on the battlefield at Uhud in 4/625, where she is said to have fed the thirsty and nursed the wounded, and she witnessed the battle of Khaybar (7/628) as well. She is also said to have been present at the battle of Hunayn (8/630), where she invoked God’s curse on the opposing army, for which she was gently rebuked by the Prophet.

Umm Kulthum bt. ‘Uqba’s preeminence in early Islam is signaled in the following way. She is said to have accepted Islam in Mecca and given her allegiance (bay’a) to the Prophet before the emigration from Mecca to Medina. She is described as having been the first woman to emigrate from Mecca to Medina, escaping immediately after the Prophet. As Ibn Sa’d puts it, Umm Kulthum’s particular claim to distinction lies in the fact that “we know of no female Qurayshi other than Umm Kulthum bt. ‘Uqba who left her parents as a Muslim woman, emigrating to God and His Messenger.”

The dramatic circumstances in which Umm Kulthum made her escape throw into relief her unusual courage, and these circumstances are said to have occasioned the revelation of a specific Qur’anic verse. As related by Ibn Sa’d, Umm Kulthum left Mecca by herself and arrived in Medina at the time of the treaty of al-Hudaybiyya (6/627–28), accompanied at this time by an unnamed man from the tribe of Khuza’a. Her two brothers, al-Walid and ‘Umara, who were opposed to her emigration, set out in hot pursuit of her and reached Medina the morning after her arrival. They implored the Prophet to return her to them, according to the terms of the treaty of al-Hudaybiyya. As is well known, those terms stipulated that any Meccan wishing to join the Muslims in Medina would have to be returned to Mecca, whereas anyone from Medina who went over to the Meccans would not have to be returned to the Muslims. On hearing her brothers’ request, Umm Kulthum is quoted as responding: “O Messenger of God, I am a woman, and a woman’s situation as you know is [similar to] that of the weak. If you were to return me to the unbelievers, they might torture me on account of my religion and I would not be able to endure it.” The Qur’anic revelation is then said to have come down, allowing for a special dispensation for the women refugees from Mecca, who would be allowed to remain in Medina after their sincerity of purpose and firm conversion to Islam had been ascertained. This particular Qur’anic verse, part of Surat al-Mumtahana (Qur’an 60:10), says: “O those who believe, whenever believing women come to you as refugees, examine them, God knows best of their faith, so if you recognize them to be believing women, do not send them back to the unbelievers; such women are not lawful for them nor are such men lawful for them.”

After this revelation, women were not sent back to Mecca but rather were queried regarding their intentions in emigrating. Ibn Sa’d reports that the Prophet is said to have addressed some of these remarkable women emigrants thus: “Nothing but love for God, His Messenger, and Islam has brought you out [of your homes], and you have not come out [seeking] a husband or wealth.” Umm Kulthum’s situation thus provides the sabab al-nuzul (the occasion of revelation) for this particular verse. Biographical accounts that point to this occasion of revelation in turn highlight Umm Kulthum’s exemplary piety and courage.

Umayya[?] bt. Qays accepted Islam after the emigration to Medina and, in the words of Ibn Sa’d, “witnessed Khaybar with the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him.” Ibn Sa’d preserves an account from Umayya herself, in which she relates that she, along with a group of women from her tribe, the Banu Ghifar, asked permission of the Prophet to “go out with you to this destination of yours, that is Khaybar, so that we may tend to the wounded and help the Muslims to the best of our ability.” The Prophet replied, “With the blessing of God,” and therefore she and the other women set off for Khaybar. Umayya is described at this time as a young girl who had just reached puberty. Due to her participation in the battle, she won a share of the booty, which was a necklace that the Prophet himself fastened around her neck.

Umm Sinan al-Aslamiyya accepted Islam and gave her allegiance to the Prophet after the hijra. When she offered her allegiance, she relates, Muhammad glanced at her hand and remarked that women should not alter the appearance of their hands—an incident that I will discuss further below. She is reported as saying that only women who were apparently past marriageable age would emerge for the Friday congregational prayer (al-jum’a) and the two ‘Id prayers in her time. This remark is noteworthy, for it highlights an interesting paradox in some of these depictions of the Sahabiyyat: apparently women who enthusiastically departed for the battlefield primarily populated by men did not [or could not] attend congregational prayers in the Prophet’s mosque, a point to which we will return later.

Umm Sinan is also said to have requested permission to go to Khaybar with the Prophet, primarily to tend the sick and the wounded. The Prophet granted permission in practically the identical words spoken to Umayya, telling Umm Sinan: “Go with the blessing of God.” When she expressed a preference to be with the Prophet rather than with members of her tribe (qawmiha), he told her: “Be with Umm Salama, my wife.” This statement makes it clear that Umm Salama also accompanied the Prophet to Khaybar.

Ku’ayba bt. Sa’d al-Aslamiyya gave her allegiance to the Prophet after the emigration to Medina, and she is said to have had a tent set up for her in the mosque at Medina, where she tended to the sick and the wounded. Sa’d b. Mu’adh is said to have received treatment at her hands after he was wounded at Khandaq, until he died. Ku’ayba is also said to have been present at Khaybar. This additional example of a woman being present on the battlefield suffices to show that this was not an exceptional activity for the Sahabiyyat.

Compared to the above accounts, it is interesting to note the case of Umm Kabsha, who is described by Ibn Sa’d simply as a “woman from [the tribe of ] Quda’a.” She is said to have accepted Islam (we may assume somewhat late, since the time period is not specifically mentioned and early conversion was a matter of pride) and related a hadith from the Prophet. The reason her entry particularly catches our eye is that she is said to have requested permission from the Prophet to go into battle with him (an taghzu ma’ahu), and he refused. She then implored: “O Messenger of God, I will take care of the wounded and tend to the sick.” But the Prophet told her: “Stay behind, so that people may not say that Muhammad fights alongside women.” Ibn Sa’d does not mention which specific battle provides the backdrop to this account. However, when we look at Ibn Hajar’s entry on Umm Kabsha, we find more details regarding the event which allow him, and us, to evaluate the significance of this report and its subtext. We shall return to this important subject later.

Sometimes the entries on individual women are very short, but they convey the most relevant details about the life and justify the woman’s inclusion in these works. Umm Habiba bt. Nabati al-Asadi earns only one sentence from Ibn Sa’d, in which he states that she accepted Islam, pledged allegiance to the Prophet, and emigrated to Medina along with other family members. Short and pithy though this entry is, it clearly establishes this subject’s claim to priority or precedence in Islam (in Arabic, sabiqa), a very important concept in early Islam, about which more will be said later.

The Women Of Medina

The Ansar, or “helpers” of the Meccan emigrants in Medina, were those living in and around Medina who accepted Islam either before or soon after 622 CE, the year the hijra to Medina began, and they included quite a number of celebrated females. Like many of the muhajirat, these women helpers win their place in the biographical collections on account of their personal piety and meritorious deeds.

Nusayba bt. Ka’b was better known as Umm ‘Umara, a celebrated figure from the Banu Najjar. Ibn Sa’d devotes what amounts to three and a half pages of print to the recounting of her exploits. According to him, Umm ‘Umara gave her allegiance to the Prophet on the night of ‘Aqaba, and eventually witnessed several key events of early Islam: she was present at the battles of Uhud (4/625), al-Hudaybiyya (6/627–28), Khaybar (7/628), Hunayn (8/630), and al-Yamama (12/633–34). At Uhud, she was with her husband, Ghaziyya b. ‘Amr, and her two sons. Ibn Sa’d tells us that the valiant Umm ‘Umara had headed for Uhud with the intention of quenching the thirst of the combatants but soon found herself fighting against the enemy. In the course of the battle, she is said to have sustained twelve wounds to her body, inflicted by either a spear or a sword.

(Continues…)

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