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produce Islam. In both approaches the internal dynamic of Arabian society was dismissed and the
attention instead shifted to an external influence that changed society. Arabian society, as a creative
dynamic society with its own institutions and practices, was absented here too. The end result is a
confused jumble of presumptions and prejudicial positions on the part of both the Orientalists and
the Islamists.
In her study of women in Islam, Leila Ahmad investigated the origins of practices and attitudes
currently associated with Islam, such as veiling, seclusion and the Harem. Veiling, for example, was a
mark of distinction in Byzantine society reserved for the elite while the Harem started as a Persian
Royal practice that spread to the rest of the Persian elite. As for the degrading view of women, Leila
Ahmed says “whatever the cultural source or sources, a fierce misogyny was a distinct ingredient in
Mediterranean and eventually Christian thought in the centuries immediately preceding Islam”. 9
Women as inferior, incapable, weak, causing sexual temptation, veiled and secluded, unable to
engage in religious or legal professions, women as commodities appreciated only for their
reproductive capacities, etc. were already prevalent in the region from the Oxus to the Nile, and
beyond, before the arrival of Islam. These attitudes are associated with patriarchy, particularly the
landed aristocracy who was the dominant social class in the region. It is important to remember then
that the practices, attitudes, mores, and values about women that are considered now to be
peculiarly Islamic originate elsewhere and have nothing to do with religion, as such.
Patriarchal norms and values, however, were not strange to Arabian society. During the 6 th
century C.E. Mecca experienced a series of profound social, economic and political transformations.
Marriage practices, for example, were becoming more in line with patriarchy, particularly the
primacy of the male blood line. The sixth century also brought about accelerated transformations to
Mecca due to the expansion of its market area. Mecca’s prosperity attracted a population of rich and
poor and its growing urban population included Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians who were
merchants, artisans, craftsmen and other professionals catering to a mercantile economy.
It was merchants, not landlords, who were the leaders of this emerging and unique social
formation. 10 Everywhere else in the ancient and medieval world it was the landed aristocracy who
made up the rules and regulations. Not in Arabia, where agricultural land was not sufficient to
support a landed aristocracy of the type that evolved in neighboring river valley civilizations. Using
Deniz Kandiyoti’s term of “patriarchal bargain,” in the sense that not all patriarchies are the same 11 ,
we find that Meccan women could be independent players in this mercantile economy. It was one of
those women who hired Muhammad as her representative. The vestiges of this patriarchy can be
found also in the role women played during Muhammad’s lifetime and the immediate period that
followed. No doubt Islam solidified the trend towards patriarchy and male‐line only kinship and
appeared to give divine sanction to some of their ideals.
Islam allowed Meccan merchants to control a region that by 732 C.E. was the largest land empire
in history, encompassing the territory from central Asia to Spain. But while these Arabs were the
rulers, they were an ethnic minority. Muslims were still a minority even when the Abbasids took
power in 750 C.E.. Umayyad policies had kept the privileges in favor of the Arabs. Berber and Persian
Muslims were not treated equally and this discrimination became one of the factors that led to the
revolt against the Umayyads and the triumph of the Abbasids who advocated Islam, not ethnicity as
the inclusionary factor in society. Consequently, nearly a mass conversion to Islam took place among
the Persians. Richard Bulliet, for example, shows that until 750, nearly a century of Umayyad rule,
barely 5% of the Persians had converted to Islam. By 800, that is only fifty years after the Abbasids
took over, fully 45% of the Persian population, most notably the landed aristocracy, had converted to
Islam. 12 With this influx, the patriarchal ideals of landed aristocracy begin to find resonance with the
changing society. The ethos of the landed aristocracy (conservative and literal) clashed with the