A Note on Meccan Women in the Fifteenth Century

The history of women in Arabia is a relatively new and unexplored area of research and the place of women in Mecca (Makkah), Islam's holiest city, is particularly shrouded in darkness. From the fifteenth century, however, there has been a stream of biographical works (tabaqat) that shed much light on the women of the city. This note turns scholarly attention on such fifteenth and sixteenth century works as Taqi al-Din al-Fassi's (d. 1429) eight volume Al-'Iqd al-Thamin fi Tarikh al-Balad al-Amin, which dedicates a volume to women, in an effort to continue the scholarly appraisal of women's lives in Muslim societies. Reading such important sources shows how women actively participated in the public life of the city, including its intellectual circles, contrary to Orientalist stereotypes. By exploring the multiple roles of Meccan women in the fifteenth century, the hope is to prompt further study of their significance and its historical implications.Scopu

Saudi women and Islamic discourse, selected examples of Saudi feminisms

Saudi women entered the realm of writing and language only half a century ago through the genres of both creative and journalistic prose. In this paper, I shall take the example of four Saudi female writers who represent a wide range of intellectual pluralism that runs from conservative to liberal to radical conceptions of state and society, represented in this order by, Nura al-Saad, Suhaila Zain al-Abedin Hammad, Fowziyah Abu Khalid and Wajeha al-Huwaider. This paper will try to answer how and why do gender identities change and in response to what, taking into account that the lives of these women and their literary work represent the continuous search and discovery for, and the reinventing of, themselves. It is important to mark these experiences as part of the complexity of Saudi Arabian intellectual discourse, similar to any society in this respect.Scopu