sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

adds that she managed the money so well that she was able to marry off her three daughters and
bring up one son even 14 years after the death of her husband. 23
In conclusion, the medieval period is a contested area in the debate about Muslim women. The
literature is still largely preoccupied with challenging, not only the myths about Muslim women in
the West, but also the Muslim traditional patriarchal interpretation. Nikki Keddie cautions that the
“tendency of some to idealize past conditions… while being critical of modern developments risks
playing into the hands of patriarchal Islamists who also idealize the past. Relativism is useful insofar
as it means situating practices and ideas in specific contexts‐socioeconomic, political, and
ideological.” 24 The information obtained from obituaries provide evidence of real life situations
involving women as distinguished from the idealized image found in the politico‐religious texts that
allowed for the patriarchal construction of gender in the medieval period. Spellberg recognizes the
significance of providing sources for the debate when she says “I believe that without a quite
detailed knowledge of the pre‐modern origins of the debate about gender in Islamic thought, none of
which is feminist or even written by females, analysts today, whatever their ideological affiliation,
will be ahistorically adrift.” 25 Mohammed Arkoun also describes the medieval reality as weighted
down with layers of customs, beliefs, and representations and then says “so long as this field of
reality remains veiled, and under‐analyzed, it will be difficult to make progress in women’s
emancipation.” 26
The names, titles, functions, occupations, cultural institutions and practices, among other
information brought together by these obituaries situate women in the context of their family and
their surroundings, in addition to other larger social networks; women appear as active individuals,
whether working to support a family or raising future leaders of society. The documentation of real
and productive lives of women in medieval Islamic societies should provide an antidote to the
idealized vision depicted in the contemporary sources.
Keywords: History, Theory, Obituaries, Damascus, Mamluk
Mahmood IBRAHIM
Cal Poly Pomona
mibrahim@cpp.edu
History Department
Notes
1
An example of this literature would be Muhammad ibn Shams al‐Din al‐Jazari. Hawadith alzaman
wa anba’ihi wa wafiyyat al‐Akabir wal ayan min abna’ihi. Edited by Umar Tadmari. Beiurt:
al‐Maktaba al‐Asriyya, 1998. This genre was discussed by Donald Little. An Introduction to
Mamluk historiography: An Analysis of the Arabic annalistic and biographical sources for the reign
of al‐Malik an‐Nasir Mauhammad ibn Qalaun. Montreal: Queens’ University Press, 1970.
2
Suha Sabbagh, “The Debate on Arab Women,” Arab Women: Between Defiance and Restraint,
ed. Suha Sabbagh,( New York.: Olive Branch Press, 1996), xxii.
3
Muhja Kahf. Western Representations of the Muslim Woman. (Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press, 1999), 5.
4
Kahf, Western Representation, 116.
5
Gavin Hambly. “Becoming Visible: Medieval Islamic Women in Historiography,” in Women in the
Medieval Islamic World, ed. Gavin Hambly. (New York: St. Martin’s Press,1999), 4.
6
Jonathan Berkey, “Women in Medieval Islamic Society,” in Women in Medieval Western
European Culture. Edited by Linda E. Mitchell. (New York and London: Garland Press, 1999), 96.
7
Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith, “Women in Islam: The Mother of all Battles,” in Arab Women:
Between Defiance and Restraint, ed. Suha Sabbagh (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1996), 148.
Altogether, the position articulated by Islamist emphasized women’s domestic roles and in