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Hearing Other Voices: Christian Women And The Coming Of Islam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Eleanor A. Doumato
Eleanor A. Doumato
Affiliation:
Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on WomenBrown University
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Abstract

The effect of the coming of Islam on the condition of women has long been a subject of debate among scholars with divergent interests in the Muslim world, including Protestant missionaries, anthropologists, Muslim reformists, apologists, and feminists. The central question upon which this subject is focused has been couched in language of mutually exclusive extremes: Did Islam at its inception bring about an improvement in women's condition, or was Islam responsible for bringing about inequalities between men and women in Muslim societies? The purpose of this article is to suggest new directions for exploring the effect of Islam on women, to confront the inadequacy of the sources and methods that are presently brought to bear on the issues, and to introduce Christian sources to a debate that has been carried out within a self-contained Muslim-Arab context

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , May 1991 , pp. 177 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I wish to thank Professor Susan Harvey of Brown University for introducing me to the pre-Islamic Christian sources no women and for her many helpful suggestions.

1 For a discussion of this literature, see Yvonne, Yazbeck Haddad, “Traditional Affirmations Concerning the Role of Women as Found in Contemporary Arab Islamic Literature,” in Jane, Smith, ed., Women in Contemporary Muslim Societies (London: Associated University Presses, 1980), pp. 61–86.Google Scholar

2 For example, Nabia, Abbott, “Women and the State on the Eve of Islam,” American Journal of Semitic Languages, 58, I (01, 1941), 259–84;Google Scholar and Nabia, Abbott, “Women and the State in Early Islam,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1, 1 (01, 1942), 106–26.Google Scholar

3 Fatima, Mernissi, Beyond the Veil, rev. ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar

4 Leila, Ahmed, “Women and the Advent of Islam,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2, 4 (1986), 665–91;Google Scholar see also Gertrude, Stern, “The First Women Converts in Early Islam,” Islamic Culture, 13, 3 (07, 1939), 290–305.Google Scholar

5 See “The Sources,” in Patricia, Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 203–30;Google Scholar and “A Practical Guide to the Study of Islamic Law,” in Patricia, Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 18–34.Google Scholar

6 The earliest extant biographical dictionary is that of Ibn Sa⊂d, who died in A.D. 844.

7 Duri, A. A., “The Iraq School of History in the Ninth Century—A Sketch,” in Bernard, Lewis and Holt, P. M., eds., Historians of the Middle East (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 46–53.Google Scholar

8 1n arguing for a pre-Islamic matriliny in Yemen, Joseph Chelhod points out the importance of considering these geographic distinctions within the Arabian peninsula (Josep, Chelhod, “Du noveau í propos du ‘matriarcat’ arabe,” Arabica, 28, 1 [02, 1981], 76–106).Google Scholar

9 , I;Guidi, ed., “La Lettera di Simeone vescovo di Beth-Arsham sopra i martin omeriti,” in Atti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, ser. 3, Memorie 7(1881), pp. 471–515.Google Scholar

10 Arthur, Jeffery, “Christianity in South Arabia,” The Moslem World, 36, 3 (07, 1946), 193–216.Google Scholar

11 Ignatius, Ya⊂qub III, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, The Himyarite Arab Martyrs in the Syriac Documents (Damascus: The Syrian Patriarchate of Antioch, 1966).Google Scholar

12 Irfan, Shahid, The Martyrs of Najran: New Documents (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1971), pp. 44–64. All citations of Simeon's letter in the text refer to this edition, unless otherwise noted. Brackets placed around words in the quoted texts enclose textual restorations.Google Scholar

13 Axel, Moberg, ed. and trans., The Book of the Himyarites: Fragments of a Hitherto Unknown Syriac Work (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1924).Google Scholar

14 Shahid's analysis, based on comparing several versions of the letter, concludes that 518 is the correct date. Axel Moberg believed it to be 523, based on the Book of the Himyarites. For discussions of the evidence concerning the date of the massacre and the writing of the letters, see Shahid, , Martyrs, pp. 235–42,Google Scholar and Huxley, G. L., “On the Greek Martyrium of the Negranites,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, section C, 80, 3 (1980), 41–55.Google Scholar

15 Not all these topics are actually included in the Book of the Himyarites as it exists today because much of it has been lost. We only know of the book's original contents because the surviving manuscript contains a table of contents.

16 For Shahid's discussion of the “Najranite” language and the Arabness of Najran, see Shahid, , Martyrs, pp. 242–50.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 157–58.

18 Tnimingham, J. Spencer, Christianity among the Arabs in Pre-Islamic Times (London: Longman Group Ltd., 1979), p. 294.Google Scholar

19 Moberg, , Book, p. cxxiii.Google Scholar

20 Shahid, , Martyrs, pp. 44–45Google Scholar

21 Trimingham, , Christianity among the Arabs, p. 298.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 306−7.

23 Shahid, , Martyrs, pp. 132–35.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., p. 62.

25 The third letter is dated July, but the manuscript does not indicate whether the year is 519 or 524 (Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 121).Google Scholar

26 Ibid., pp. 113−28.

27 Moberg, , Book, p. lxviii.Google Scholar

28 Shahid, , Martyrs, pp. 141–43.Google Scholar

29 Susan, Harvey, “Women in Early Byzantine Hagiography: Reversing the Story,” in Coon, L. and Haldane, K., eds., That Gentle Strength: Essays in the Study of Female Spirituality (University of Virginia Press, in press); pp. 2–3 (page numbers refer to the unpublished typescript).Google Scholar

30 Ibid., p. 3.

31 Ibid., p. 7.

32 Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 127.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. 62.

34 Harvey, , “Women in Early Byzantine Hagiography,” p. 16.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., pp. 8–10.

36 Ibid., p. 10.

37 Ibid., pp. 23–24.

38 For Moberg on the historical value of the Book of the Himyarites, see Moberg, , Book, pp. lxvii–lxxvii.Google Scholar

39 For example, Sura 24:31, Sura 24:60, Sura 33:59, and Sura 33:53.

40 For more on the social structure of Najran, see Pigulevskaja, N., “Les rapports sociaux a Najran,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 3 (1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sidney, Smith, “Events in Arabia in the Sixth Century AD.,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 16, 3 (1954), 425–68.Google Scholar

41 The Syriac letters are RHWM. Brock and Harvey vocalize this name as Ruhm (Sebastian, Brock and Susan, A. Harvey, trans. and eds., Holy Women of the Syrian Orient [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987], pp. 111–15).Google Scholar Shahid vocalizes it in a diminutive form, which is the form I have used here for the sake of consistency, as I have used Shahid's translation. For Shahid's argument for the use of the diminutive, see Shahid, , Martyrs, pp. 82–83. Patriarch Ignatius Ya⊂qub vocalizes RHWM as Ruhum.Google Scholar

42 Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 57.Google Scholar

43 For example, Doughty writes: “Women are not seen passing by their streets, in the daytime; but in the evening twilight [when the men sit at coffee] you shall see many veiled forms flitting to their gossips' houses: and they will hastily return, through an empty suk, in the time of the last prayers, whilst the men are praying in the mesjids.” (Charles, Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, 2 vols. [New York: Dover Publications, 1979, reprint of the 3rd ed], vol. 2, p. 376).Google Scholar

44 Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 57.Google Scholar

45 Moberg, , Book, p. cxxix.Google Scholar

46 Shahid, , Martyrs, pp. 57–58.Google Scholar

47 Sura 4:7, among others.

48 Sura 4:11.

49 Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 57.Google Scholar

50 Segal, J. B., Edessa. ‘The Blessed City’ (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 153.Google Scholar The early-9th- century canons of Isho ⊂bar Nun also indicate the right of women to inherit, with the female heir taking precedence over collateral male relatives. In these canons is a stipulation téat when a man becomes a monk, if he has a sister, his entire inheritance from his father is to be given to her (Arthur, Voobus, ed. and trans., “Rules of Isho⊂ bar Nun,” in Arthur, Voobus; ed. and trans., Syriac and Arabic Documents Regarding Legislation Relative to Syrian Asceticism [Stockholm: Estonian Theological Society in Exile, 1960], p. 196).Google Scholar

51 Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 60.Google Scholar

52 Segal, , Edessa, p. 154.Google Scholar

53 Ibid., p. 38.

54 For example, Sura 4:34.

55 Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 54.Google Scholar

56 Ibid., p. 58.

57 Misogynist tendencies in Syriac Christian literature grew out of the 3rd-century movement to glorify the ascetic life and to separate asceticism into a vocation distinct from secular life. While the contempt for the physical rose as a religious value, women came to be portrayed as a source of pollution. See Susan, Harvey, “Women in Early Syrian Christianity,” in Cameran, A. and Kuhrt, A., eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (London, 1983), pp. 288–98.Google Scholar

58 Two examples from the letters of Paul will illustrate the error in citing verses from the Qur⊂an as evidence of a female subordination unique to Islam. Paul, I Cor., xv:34—35: “Let your women keep silent in the church for they have no permission to speak; but they are to be under obedience as is said in the law. And if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church”; Paul, I Cor., xi:3–10:

But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the wife is her husband; and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head; for she is equal to her whose head is shaven. For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also cut off her hair; but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her cover her head. For a man indeed ought not cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man was not created from the woman; but the woman from the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man. For this reason the woman ought to be modest and cover her head as a mark of respect to the angels. Holy Bible from the Ancient Eastern Text. George M. Lamsa's Translations from the Aramaic of the Peshitta (San Francisco: Harper and Row, n.d.).

Female inferiority is also articulated in John, 16:21 (Peshitta): “When a woman is in travail, she is depressed because her day has arrived; but when she has given birth to a son, she no longer remembers her troubles because of the joy that a male child is born into the world.” In the King James translation, the sex of the child is not specified, but it is the Syriac-Aramaic version with which 5th- and 6th- century Syrian, Mesopotamian, and Arabian Christians would have been familiar.

59 Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 60.Google Scholar

60 Ibid., p.61.

61 Ibid., p.49.

62 For a full discussion, see Arthur, Voobus, “The Institution of the Benai Qeiāmā and the Benat Qeiāmā in the Ancient Syrian Church,” Church History, 30 (1961), pp. 19–27.Google Scholar

63 Segal, , Edessa, p. 136.Google Scholar

64 Ibid

65 Arthur, Voobus, “Commands and Admonitions of Mar Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa to the Priests and the Benai Qeiāmā,” in Voobus, , Syriac and Arabic Documents, pp. 36–50.Google Scholar

66 Fatima, Mernissi, “Sex and Marriage before Islam,” in Mernissi, , Beyond the Veil, pp. 65–85. Smith's theory of a patriarchal “marriage of dominion” pre-existing Islam also maintains a considerable following, and the notions of a debased womankind in the pre-Islamic patriarchal family that his theory supports is basic to Islamic apology.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., p. 67.

68 Moberg, , Book, p. cxvi.Google Scholar

69 Other kinds of sources, however, are used to argue for matrilineal descent, matriarchy, polyandry, or all three, in Yemen. See, for example, Chelhod, “Du nouveau í propos du ‘matriarcat’ arabe.”

70 Sura, 2:229,Google ScholarSura, 2:230,Google Scholar and Sura, 4:20.Google Scholar

71 Sura, 4:3.Google Scholar

72 For example, women are given a right to divorce by ransom (Sura, 2:229).Google Scholar

73 Sura, 2:235.Google Scholar

74 Segal, , Edessa, p. 152.Google Scholar An example of a Christian marriage contract with a property settlement executed at Nessana may be seen in Casper, J. Kraemer Jr, Excavations at Nessana, vol. 3 (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1958), pp. 54–59.Google Scholar

75 Matthew 19:3–9 (Peshitta): And the Pharisees came up to him and were tempting him, saying, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause? But he answered, saying to them, Have you not read, that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female? And he said, Because of this, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. Henceforth they are not two, but one body; therefore what God has joined together, let no man separate ‖. but I say to you, whoever leaves his wife without a charge of adultery and marries another commits adultery; and he who marries a woman thus separated commits adultery.

76 Roman law, which recognized several types of marriage and allowed divorce, continued to define the legal basis for marriage after the establishment of Christianity as the state religion (ca. A.D. 380). The “Corpus Iuris Civilis,” redacted under Justinian (527–65), still allowed for divorce, while the Church relied on individual conscience to encourage compliance with Christian ethics, which insisted on the indissolubility of marriage. A systematic canon law of marriage and a court system capable of enforcing it did not develop in the West until the 12th Century (David, Herlihy, Medieval Households [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985], pp. 10–11).Google Scholar

77 According to the rules of Rabbula, 5th-century bishop of Edessa, “no woman shall leave her husband for various causes” (Voobus, , Syriac and Arabic Documents, p.49).Google Scholar In Edessa, adultery was a more serious crime for a woman than for a man. The penalty for a woman who committed adultery was death, and the penalty could be inflicted merely on the basis of allegations (Segal, , Edessa, p. 38).Google Scholar

78 Ibid., pp. 152–53.

79 Ibid.

80 Voobus, , “Rules of lshō⊂bar Nūn,” in Voobus, ; Syriac and Arabic Documents, p. 191.Google Scholar

81 For the full text of the divorce document, see Kraemer, C. J., ed. and trans., Excavations at Nessana, vol. III (Princeton, 1958), PP. 161–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Patricia Croone Cites this document to illustrate the probable influence of provincial law on the formulation of Islamic, law. Roman. Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 97.Google Scholar

82 Kraemer discusses several theories about the possible models for the Nessana divorce procedure in Excavations at Nessana, pp. 162–63.Google Scholar

83 The contract could be written or oral, as in Sura 2:235.

84 Qur⊃an, Sura 2:229.

85 Recommended in the Qur⊃an, Sura 4:35.

86 As in Qur⊃an, Sura 2:229.

87 Sura 2:233.

88 ln each school the age at which children of divorced mothers are removed from their care varies radically. The harshest, from the mother's point of view, is the Shi⊂ite interpretation, which gives a boy to his father as soon as he is weaned and a girl to her father at the age of seven. The Shaflite school allows the child to choose between the parents at the age of seven. The school that allows the mother the greatest advantage in keeping her children is the Malikite, the school of Medina, which allows a mother guardianship of a boy until his puberty, which could be as late as his fifteenth birthday, and of a girl until her marriage (Reuben, Levy, The Social Structure of Islam [Cambridge University Press, 1971], pp. 140–41).Google Scholar

89 Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 57.Google Scholar

90 Patriarch Ya⊂qub translates “deprived of them” as “deprived of giving birth to children,” meaning that a woman is unable to bear children. This is an interpretative translation, however (Ya⊂qub, , Himyarite Martyrs, p. 36)Google Scholar, while Shahid's translation is literal. Brock and Harvey retain the same sense as Shahid does in their translation, “when a woman loses her children” (Brock, and Harvey, , Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, p. 112).Google Scholar

91 This possibility seems remote since the word for children is in the masculine.

92 Sarah, Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity (New York: Schocker Books, 1975), pp. 158–59.Google Scholar

93 For example, Sura 4:3.

94 Gertrude, Stern, Marriage in Early Islam (London, 1939).Google Scholar

95 An exception may be the case of the Byzantine general Constantine, who had defected to the Persians in 504. When he returned to his former allegiance, he brought with him his two wives (Segal, , Edessa, p. 143).Google Scholar Polygyny was practiced in Hellenized Egypt during an era far earlier than the pre-Islamic period we are considering. A marriage contract dated 92 B.C. stipulates that the husband will not bring a second wife into the home, nor keep a concubine or a boy lover (Pomeroy, , Goddesses, pp. 129–30).Google Scholar

96 Concubinage, however, was common and encouraged under Roman law (Robin, Fox, Pagans and Christians [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986], p. 344–45).Google Scholar

97 John, Cairncross, After Polygamy Was Made a Sin: The Social History of Christian Polygamy [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974], p. 1.Google Scholar

98 Polygyny was a common practice among early Germanic Christians, and must have been tolerated in the West until the Church finally asserted monogamy as the only legitimate form of marriage, which was not until the 9th or possibly even the 12th century (Herlihy, , Medieval Households, pp. 52, 62).Google Scholar At certain times polygyny was even endorsed by the Church in the West. Pope Gregory II, for example, stated in a decretal in the year 726 that “when a man has a sick wife who cannot discharge the marital functions, he may take a second one, provided he looks after the first one” (Cairncross, , After Polygamy Was Made a Sin, p.28 n. 2).Google Scholar

99 Bernard, Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 82.Google Scholar

100 Mernissi, , Beyond the Veil, pp. 75–76;Google ScholarAhmed, , “Women and the Advent of Islam,” pp. 668–69.Google Scholar

101 Shahid, , Martyrs, p. 57.Google Scholar

102 The effective definition of the family described here was institutionalized under Roman law, whereby a marriage could be contracted without manus, that is, without transferring the father's control over his daughter to the husband, so that the wife did not become a member of her husband's agnatic family and was excluded from the rites celebrated by her husband and children; moreover; in divorce, children remained with their father (Pomeroy, , Goddesses, p. 158;Google Scholar see also Herlihy, , Medieval Households, pp. 8–9). This is not to suggest that the Muslim family was influenced by Roman law, because the relationship between Roman law and Islamic law is an unsettled question. It does show, however, that the exclusion of the wife from the marital family is not unique to Islam, nor is it necessarily associated with endogomy.Google Scholar

103 The best source for exploring the use of hagiography for the Middle East and also for the most extensive bibliography, is Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient. For a bibliographical survey of general sources for the 7th century, see Sebastian, Brock, “Syriac Sources for SeventhCentury History,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2 (1976), pp. 17–36. A general introduction to the subject of Syrian Christian women is Susan Harvey, “Women in Early Syrian Christianity.”Google Scholar