Preorders available of Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam

I am very pleased to announce that my new book, Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam: Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima, is now available for preorder with I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury (2020).

Description:

In Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam: Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima, Alyssa Gabbay examines episodes in pre-modern Islamic history in which individuals or societies recognized descent from both men and women. Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, features prominently in this study, for her example constituted a striking precedent for acknowledging bilateral descent in both Sunni and Shi'i societies, with all of its ramifications for female inheritance, succession and identity. 

Covering a broad geographical and chronological swath, Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam presents alternative perspectives to patriarchal narratives, and breaks new ground in its focus upon how people conceived of family structures and bloodlines. In so doing, it builds upon a tradition of studies seeking to dispel monolithic understandings of Islam and gender.

“… will be seen as a major contribution to the discussion of gendered inheritance in Islam, and the mechanisms whereby Muslim female authority was safeguarded and passed on to new generations.” –  Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, University of Oxford

“… inspiring, compassionate, and ... imbued with a deep veneration of the human." – Todd Lawson, University of Toronto

From the Preface:

One dusty afternoon while leafing through manuscripts in the Maulana Azad Library of Aligarh University in India, I came across a short poem in Persian whose contents interested me so deeply I read it several times.  Only five lines, it plainly stated that daughters were better than sons — and gave among its justifications the fact that the Prophet Muhammad’s lineage had continued through his daughter, Fatima. Written by the medieval Indian poet Amīr Khusraw, the poem echoed sentiments I had encountered in other of Khusraw’s works, in which he referred to his young daughter as his “mother” and wrote that he expected to be reborn through her eventual progeny. But it clarified and emphasized those statements in a way that ran forcefully and surprisingly counter to the stereotypical view in Muslim societies of daughters as, at best, burdens to be patiently borne.

Why did Amīr Khusraw say these things? What did he mean by them, and how common among medieval Muslims were his sentiments? The chance encounter made my head buzz with questions. My efforts to answer them produced the book that you now hold in your hands (or that glows upon your screen). The story of bilateral descent in medieval and early modern Islam – that is, the recognition that lineage can be traced through daughters as well as sons – is a story that encompasses many daughters and mothers, and many sons and fathers. Ultimately, however, as Khusraw himself indicated, it is the story of Fatima, the primordial umm abīhā, or mother of her father, whose sons, Hasan and Husayn, renewed the illustrious qualities of their maternal grandfather.

More information can be found on the publisher’s website:

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Receive 35% off with the discount code of GLR TS2.