This examination of the social conditions and life of the women of the early Islamic community has been made on the information to be found in the eighth volume of the Tabaqat al-Kubrq, of Muhammad b. Sa'd and the sixth volume of the Musnad of Ahmad b. Hanbal. Muhammad b. Sa'd and b. Hanbal were contemporaries, - though the latter outlived the former by eleven years, - at a period when Muslim literature and thought were developing in many new directions, namely, the end of the second century and the beginning of the third century of the Muslim era. They both studied tradition and had several teachers in common, yet the knowledge they acquired was utilised for different purposes. This difference in the arrangement of their material has proved most valuable in the present examination, as it has provided a means of verifying the contents of the traditions to a certain extent. The information on the life and career of Muhanmad b. Sa'd b. Mani az-Zuhri Abu 'Abdallah is very limited. He must have been born at Basrah in 167 or 168 A. H., as it is said that he died at Baghdad in 230 A. H. at the age-of sixty- two and was buried in the cemetery of Nab ash-Shams b.

No description available.

The 'Woman question' in Islam, under its various titles - 'women in Islam', 'women's rights in Islam', 'the status of women in Islam', 'gender in Islam' - is one that has been a topic of heated debate for the last century, and continues to be a field of intense debate and thriving scholarship. Likewise, pioneers of modern Islamic reform are often referred to in relation to modern discourses on gender, and the issue of gender is often touched on in discussions of these pioneers' reform projects, but often in a generic and superficial manner. While the Egyptian reformist scholar Muhammad 'Abduh is a figure often referred to in this context, this aspect of his thought has never been studied in detail. This study aims to deepen the study of these two questions - gender and reform - and the intersection between them. Various general books on 'the father of Islamic reform' exist, often devoting a few pages to 'women's reform' (or more commonly referring to the question of women's reform under the few pages devoted to 'Abduh's 'social reform'), creating a rather vague view of this critical figure's views on this topical question, often with unsubstantiated generalisations. This study aims at addressing this through a detailed study and analysis of 'Abduh's own discourse on women in order to discover its themes, distinctive characteristics, the questions it poses and the answers it attempts to give, as well as the tensions and contradictions within it. The study locates the gender question within the bigger context of the reform discourse that emerged in a specific historical context in response to the Muslim world's encounter with modernity. The study further addresses the extent of 'Abduh's influence on subsequent discourses on women and his legacy which continues to be contested and competed over. The study provides, for the first time, a detailed study of 'Abduh's writings on women and gender, based on primary sources, and addresses the overlaps between various rival trends often seen as distinct, pointing to the multiple and diverse roots of the contemporary genre of 'Muslim feminism', which indeed draws influence from the reformist views of 'Abduh, but not necessarily through a single linear and coherent route.

Despite enduring differences between the Abrahamic traditions Islam, Christianity and Judaism, women of these faiths have a shared experience of exclusion from institutional theological enterprises, where women are depicted as silent subjects of faith. This thesis considers women as speaking subjects in the Qur'an within a literary reading to explore an Abrahamic interfeminist dialogue. The thesis compares how women's subjectivity has been interpreted historically in traditional Islamic scholarship with modem feminist deconstruction of androcentric language, in order to consider how women are presented as addressees of the text. Female speaking roles are explored through the language of dispute (jadala) as a thematic feature of the Qur'an, with the surah-title al-mujadilah, 'she who disputes', as pivotal character. The thesis draws on recent literary scholarship that has called for a canonical understanding of the text, whereby the Qur'an is viewed as a literary unit wherein formal structure is seen to have religious significance. The Qur'anic terms of gender and debate are read as part of an internal Qur'anic semiology that develops from the earlier to the later Qur'anic chapters through the expression of Qur'anic Sign. The chronological consideration of the Qur' an's terms of debate presented a model that critiques women's exclusion from the theological process as revealed knowledge while affirming their inclusion in the revelatory scheme not only for the Muslim addressee of Scripture, but for her Jewish and Christian counterparts as well. The thesis thus presents a novel approach of reading biblical texts in light of a Qur'anic model as an Abrahamic theology of women who speak.

Shīʿī aḥādīth, particularly on women, are an immensely understudied area. Studies on Shīʿī aḥādīth on women usually centre on Fāṭimah al-Zahrāʾ, and little research explores pre-Islamic sacred female figures in Shīʿī aḥādīth. At the same time, there an urgent interest in Shīʿism as well as women in Islam, and a desire for new methods to be applied as well as new questions to be asked. This thesis will analyse Shīʿī aḥādīth about women in pre-Islamic sacred history who appear in the Qurʾān (focusing on Eve, Sārah, Hājar, Zulaykhā, Bilqīs, and the Virgin Mary), and apply the methodologies of ideological criticism and feminist hermeneutics (to be explained in Chapter 1) to explore the subtexts about the essential nature and role of women communicated through these narrations. In addition to exploring the roots of these ideas, it will compare them against the contemporary Shīʿī ideology of gender referred to as the ‘separate-but-equal’ ideology to explore how well this ideology corresponds to Shīʿī narrations. (What constitutes an ‘ideology’ will be explored in Chapter 1.) Rather than attempting to derive the ‘authentic’ teachings of the Prophet or the Imāms, this study will take a stance of inauthenticity with respect to narrations and treat narrations as socio-cultural artefacts representing the diversity of views and beliefs of the Shīʿī community. This distinguishes it from other works which either attempt to derive the ‘authentic’ teachings of the Prophet, or else which presume that all narrations equally reflect what the Prophet and Imāms actually said. This avoids the sticky question of which narrations are actually ‘true’ and allows them to be treated equally as cultural artifacts in negotiating a Shīʿī ideology of gender. Because this study focuses on sacred female figures shared with the Judaeo-Christian tradition, it allows for the exploration of how ideas about women from outside the Islamic tradition were integrated into the Shīʿī corpus through isrāʾīlīyāt, particularly through the intertextual synthesis of pre-Islamic material (such as the Bible) with post-Prophetic notions (such as normative paradigms of jurisprudential discourse). Two trends will emerge from these narrations. The first heavily reinforces patriarchal norms, such as women’s seclusion, the need for male authority, and male guardianship over women. These narrations reflect jurisprudential discourse and are largely found in two of the four most prominent books of Shīʿī ḥadīth, al-Kāfī and al-Faqīh. However, in the second, other narrations form a ‘counter-narrative’ in which women and men are portrayed as equals; these narrations invoke the imagery of esoteric Shīʿism and focus on the narrative of wilāyah (loyalty to and love of the Prophet, Fāṭimah al-Zahrāʾ, and the Shīʿī Imāms). Since both sets of narrations address uniquely Shīʿī concerns, such as the Imāmate, it can be deduced that these differing portrayals of women reflect competing concerns in the early and mediaeval Shīʿī communities with respect to determining Shīʿī identity and orthodoxy, and may also reflect the spread of and resistance to Arabization. Lastly, because many narrations attributed to Imam ʿAlī convey strikingly different views about women, the penultimate chapter will explore whether Imam ʿAlī was misogynistic through a comparison of two foundational Shīʿī texts: Kitāb Sulaym ibn Qays al-Hilālī (c. 100 AH) and Nahj al-Balāghah (c. 400 AH).

Cette recherche portant sur Port du voile : représentations et pratiques du corps chez les femmes tunisiennes vise à comprendre les processus qui président à la conversion des femmes tunisiennes, réputées parmi les plus modernes et les plus émancipées du monde musulman, au port de l'une ou l'autre des formes du voile dit islamique. Elle a adopté pour cela une démarche combinant (1) l'analyse socio-anthropologique concernant la production sociale du « corps féminin », l'adoption-adaptation des normes relatives à la conduite féminine dans les sociétés de traditions islamiques, (2) les approches historiques, théologiques et politiques relatives au port du voile dans le contexte actuel de la mondialisation et des crispations identitaires qui en sont le corollaire, (3) l’étude empirique sur la base d’une enquête qualitative auprès de femmes converties au port du voile, pour comprendre leurs motivations, leurs stratégies, les usages qu'elles en font dans différent espaces publics qui leur étaient interdits par les traditions qu'elles mobilisent pour le justifier. Ce travail a permis de saisir, par delà les références et les motivations idéologiques partagées par les adeptes du voile, la diversité du phénomène au niveau de ses formes comme au niveau de ses usages et des significations qui lui sont associées par les acteurs, que ce soit en termes de rapports entre modernité et tradition, sécularisation et réactivation des formes de religiosité, libération et aliénation, affirmation individuelle et réflexe grégaire. / This research sheds lights on veiling: representations and body practices among Tunisian women. the target of this research is to understand the process which reigns the perception of Tunisian women- who are renewed to be the most modern and the most emancipated in the Islamic world – of different forms of veil which is associated to Islam.In order to carry out this research ,she has opted an approach that combines (1) the socio-anthropological analysis concerning the social production of the "female body", adoption, adaptation of standards related to women’s behavior in the societies of Islamic traditions, Historical approaches, theology and policies focusing on veiling in the current context of globalization and identity crises .(3) the empirical study is based on a qualitative survey of women converted to veiling; the main target of this research is to understand their motivations, their strategies, and the practices which are getting different in public spaces. In fact, many practices were forbidden by the traditions are no longer forbidden today and veiled women tend to justify them. This research has allowed us to find out the references and the ideological motivations shared by veiled women and their followers;The research has also shed lights on The diversity of the phenomenon at the level of its forms as well as the uses and the meanings associated to it by the social actors, whether in terms of the relationship between modernity and tradition, secularism and reactivation of religion forms or in terms of liberation and alienation , self-assertion and gregarious reflex.