GAVIN R. G. HAMBLY, ED., Women in theMedieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety, The New Middle Ages (New York:St. Martin's Press, 1998). Pp. 566.

Abstract

The historical study of women and gender in the Middle East and Islamic world has come of age. Not so long ago, it was difficult to find good monographs or collections of essays on women's experiences in the past, even as studies of women and gender in the contemporary Islamic world proliferated. As a result, our ability to make sense of women's lives and experiences in the late 20th century suffered from a lack of historical perspective. An enormous amount of work still confronts us in recovering women's experiences, but exciting historical studies, solidly grounded in primary sources, are already changing the way we think about women in Islamic and Middle Eastern history—and, indeed, in some cases they are changing the way we look at that history as a whole. The greatest gains have occurred in the study of the 19th and 20th centuries, when changes in women's lives were particularly visible and the wealth of sources has allowed us to deal with a range of important questions. What we know about women in the early modern period, especially in the Ottoman Empire, is also expanding rapidly. The absence of work and the huge gaps in our knowledge of earlier periods, despite important works such as those by Denise Spellberg and Leila Ahmed, remains a serious problem, however. This collection of essays, Women in the Medieval Islamic World, edited by Gavin Hambly, is therefore a very welcome addition to the literature on the history of Muslim women in the pre-modern era.