Publications

Books

Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam: Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima

While most pre-modern Islamic societies were patrilineal, many did recognize the ability of a daughter to perpetuate her birth lineage -- a matter of great significance for the status of women. In Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam (I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2020), Alyssa Gabbay draws on collections of hadith, Qur’an commentaries, historical chronicles, poems and other sources to examine episodes in pre-modern Islamic history in which individuals or societies recognized descent from both males and females. She carries out this examination primarily through the lens of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, as depicted in Sunni and Shi‘i texts. Fatima rarely appears as a feminist icon in Western scholarship. Yet as this book demonstrates, her example constitutes a striking precedent for acknowledging bilateral descent in Sunni and Shi‘i societies, with all of its ramifications for female inheritance, succession, and identity. Covering a broad geographical and chronological swath, this book lays bare alternative perspectives to patriarchal narratives. 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 Brookshaw, University of Oxford

For more information about this publication visit the book description on the Bloomsbury Website.

Click here to listen to an interview with Alyssa Gabbay about the book.

Islamic Tolerance: Amir Khusraw and Pluralism (Routledge, 2010)

Although pluralism and religious tolerance are most often associated today with Western Enlightenment thinkers, the roots of these ideologies stretch back to non-Western and pre-modern societies, including many under Muslim rule. This book explores the development of pluralism in Islam in South Asia through the work of the poet, historian and musician Amir Khusraw and sheds new light on how Islam developed its own culture of tolerance.

Countering stereotypes of Islam as intrinsically intolerant, the book provides a better understanding of how rhetorics of pluralism develop, which may aid in identifying and encouraging such discourses in the present. Khusraw, a practicing Muslim who showed great affection toward Hindus and used much indigenous imagery in his poetry, is an ideal figure through whom to explore these issues. Addressing issues of ethnicity, religion and gender in the early medieval period, Alyssa Gabbay demonstrates the pre-modern precedents for pluralism, conveying the broad sweep of Perso-Islamicate culture and the profound transformations it underwent in medieval South Asia.

Accurately depicting the paradoxicality and jaggedness involved in the development of its composite culture, this book has great relevance to scholars and students of Islam in South Asia, gender, religious pluralism, and Persian literature.

“An important landmark in scholarship on classical Persian literature and medieval South Asian literature … meticulously researched and lucidly written.”

–Sunil Sharma, Boston University.

To order Islamic Tolerance visit the Routledge website.

Journal Articles & Other Selected Publications.

For a full list of publications download Alyssa Gabbay’s C.V.

You can read more from Alyssa Gabbay on her blog by clicking the button below