Download PDF | (The Early and Medieval Islamic World) Alyssa Gabbay_ Roy Mottahedeh - Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam_ Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima-I.B. Tauris (2020).
283 Pages
Preface and acknowledgements
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.1 Of 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 Khusraw 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.
It is a story that, at least in this incarnation, has had a very long gestation and has depended upon the aid of many midwives, to all of whom I owe a deep debt of gratitude. My first conversations about the concept of Fatima as umm abīhā occurred with Karen Ruffle and Firoozeh Papan-Matin during a conference at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2007, where I was then a visiting scholar. Ruffle and I subsequently organized a panel for the Middle East Studies Association annual meeting featuring different cases of bilateral descent in Islamic history – a panel that culminated in the 2011 publication of a special issue of the Journal of Persianate Studies (volume 4, no. 1). I benefited greatly from my conversations with Ruffle and my co-editor of the special issue, Julia Clancy-Smith, as well as from the work of my other fellow panellists, Afshan Bokhari, Christine Isom-Verhaaren and Paul E. Walker, much of whose research informs this volume. In their various capacities at the Journal, Said Arjomand, Habib Borjian and, especially, Sunil Sharma were instrumental in encouraging the project.
I am also grateful to Koninklijke Brill NV for permission to reprint portions of my contributions to the Journal here. At a subsequent panel at a meeting of the Association for Iranian Studies, Firuza Abdullaeva and Charles Melville offered helpful remarks on a paper addressing female agency and succession which was later published in Shahnama Studies III: The Reception of the Shahnama, edited by Melville and Gabrielle van den Berg (2018). I thank each of them and again Brill for the right to reprint here. I appreciate the comments of everyone who participated in a 2014 Princeton University workshop on female religious authority in Shi‘i Islam, especially Karen Bauer, Robert Gleave, Mirjam Künkler, Raffaele Mauriello, Keiko Sakurai and Devin Stewart. Künkler and Stewart later wielded expert skills in editing my contribution to a publication emerging from the workshop, ‘Female Religious Authority in Shi‘i Islam: Past and Present’ (2019). I thank them, as well as Edinburgh University Press for permission to reproduce portions of my contribution here. At this project’s first home, at the University of Washington, Jack Brown, Felicia Hecker, Scott Noegel, Joel Walker and, most especially, Selim Kuru provided valuable encouragement and advice regarding what was at the time a pretty vague idea. Members of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, this project’s second home, were more than generous with their time and feedback; I would particularly like to thank Gregory Grieve, Ellen Haskell, Derek Krueger and Eugene Rogers. The Interlibrary Loan Department at the Jackson Library accomplished near-impossible tasks with effortless good will. I am likewise grateful to the College of Arts and Sciences and to Candace Bernard and Robert Glickman for a fellowship award that gave me time to put the finishing touches on the book, and to members of my two writing groups, Agraphia and Write-on-Site – especially Brooke Kreitinger, Anne Parsons, Paul Silvia and Pauli Tashima – for ensuring that I followed through. Former and current UNCG students, including Hussien Algudaihi, Noor Ghazi and Aaron Menconi, provided invaluable linguistic and technological assistance. At I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, Thomas Stottor and, later, his replacement, Rory Gormley were models of editorial helpfulness as they shepherded the book through the various stages of publication. I also thank my anonymous readers for their thoughtful suggestions, and Roy Mottahedeh as series editor. My adviser, Heshmat Moayyad, did not live to see this book in print, but his memory is imprinted upon its every page. I would also like to acknowledge Ruth Moayyad and members of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, especially Orit Bashkin, Frank Lewis, Holly Shissler, John Perry and John Woods, for their continued interest in and support of my doings. Jafar Fallahi, Christiane Gruber and the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin helped tremendously with images. Asa Eger, Grace Huang and Barbara Moss cheered me on even when the terrain was rough and the finish uncertain. Suzanne Gabbay, Ben Quiseng, Rachel Quiseng and Bradley Quiseng reminded me regularly of the value of family. Finally, this volume is dedicated to Wilma Gabbay and to my antecedents on both sides, who are constant reminders of the power and meaning of bilateral descent. It goes without saying that any mistakes in this book are solely the responsibility of its mother. May any virtues it possesses do its ancestors proud, and bear fruit that continues their lines, both of the East and of the West.
Introduction Redrawing family trees The problem of patrilineal descent
When Iranian mathematician and Stanford University professor Maryam Mirzakhani died of cancer at the age of forty in July 2017, newspaper tributes glowingly enumerated the gender conventions she broke during her brief life. From being the first woman to win the coveted Fields medal (regularly described as mathematics’ Nobel Prize) to inspiring the country’s president and Iranian newspapers to publish photos of her without hijab, Mirzakhani appeared in commemorations as a sort of Wonder Woman of science, capable of puncturing hidebound patriarchal norms with a few deft marks of her pencil.1 Mirzakhani’s most significant legacy, however, could be the smashing of an even bigger convention, one that received far more attention in Iranian than in Western media. The mathematician reportedly wrote in her will that she wanted her young daughter Anahita to receive Iranian citizenship – something current nationality laws prevented the child from doing because Mirzakhani’s widower is not Iranian.2 A few days after Mirzakhani’s death, several members of Iran’s parliament pushed for speeding up reforms of these laws to allow a mother to confer citizenship upon a child, even if that mother is married to a foreigner.3 (Current laws allow fathers married to foreigners to confer citizenship upon their children, but not mothers.) Although little movement on the issue of reforming the laws was reported in succeeding months, if this change indeed happens, it will be a sign that Iran is distancing itself from an important component of patrilineality. Questions of lineage and descent might seem of interest mostly to anthropologists studying far-off tribes, but they have an impact on matters ranging from politics to economics to psychology in all societies. In cultures exhibiting extreme patrilineality, women are often deprived of full opportunities to inherit or take part in public matters, including getting an education. They may not receive custody of their children in case of divorce. Their ability to confer their identity or nationality upon their children is likely also restricted. These limitations can in turn contribute to problems such as ‘brain drains’ and statelessness – matters that affect societies as a whole, not just the women within them.4 Patrilineality has been extremely widespread throughout history, and strains of it – some more virulent than others – linger today in most countries of the world, including most prevalently perhaps in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and Africa.5 Ironically, however, precedents for acknowledging bilateral descent – descent from both males and females – exist in many of these regions, especially but not exclusively in cultures influenced by Shi‘ism. That is, although pre-modern Islamic societies were typically patrilineal, some showed distinct bilateral tendencies. In this book, I draw on collections of hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and other notable figures), 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. I focus on three different, interrelated manifestations of bilateral descent – transmission of lineage, inheritance and successorship – to answer the following questions: What circumstances gave rise to these episodes? How were they justified? What form did they take, and what impact did they have? Finally, what meaning might they have for us today? I carry out this examination primarily, but not exclusively, 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 – although that situation is gradually changing.6 Yet as I demonstrate in this book, her example constitutes a striking precedent for acknowledging bilateral descent in Sunni and Shi‘i societies, with all of its ramifications for inheritance, succession, identity of children and, especially, perceptions of women. Those ramifications are enormous, embracing as they do the very structure and development of societies. Recognition of bilateral descent in pre-modern Islamic societies restores a fundamental reproductive power to women. It facilitates a vision of women as able to create not only children but also meaning. It also helps to dislodge some of the perceptions of misogyny that cling to Islamic societies – a matter of acute importance not only to those who study gender but also to anyone interested in the relationship between Islam and social justice.7 While this book exposes the roots of inegalitarianism as they appear in patrilineal understandings of kinship ties, it also reveals cases in which Muslims reimagined kinship networks – and, indeed, the structure of the family itself – to feature women prominently. Working at the intersection of history, religious studies, anthropology and gender, it uncovers alternative perspectives to patriarchal narratives and determines their significance. In so doing, it builds upon a tradition of studies seeking to dispel the notion that Islam is a ‘monolithic religion with a singular all-embracing gender paradigm’.8 This book also lays bare the pervasiveness of charismatic leadership patterns in pre-modern Islamic societies – both Sunni and Shi‘i – and how these patterns, with their frequent emphasis on family dynasties imbued with special, God-given characteristics, could admit women to leadership roles, especially if an appropriate male was unavailable. Given that women were often seen as transcending their gender when they assumed positions of authority – or even becoming men – these patterns show that the boundaries between the sexes were, in some cases, more permeable than is commonly thought. Finally, this book’s findings will, I hope, provide a foundation for dialogue about reforms of the patrilineal laws that persist in many predominantly Muslim countries. In this respect, the work is both descriptive and prescriptive. That is, I am both offering more nuanced understandings of bilateral descent in pre-modern Islamic societies than those currently available to us and, at select moments, advocating for using these understandings to make changes that will improve conditions for women in contemporary societies. Like the contemporary South African scholar Sa‘diyya Shaikh in her feminist explorations of Sufi narratives, I do not claim ‘dominance or exclusivity’ for my readings of episodes of Islam’s pre-modern, bilateral past, but merely offer them as evidence of diverse and polymorphous systems, which may be used to further egalitarianism.
Patrilineality versus bilateral descent, and a search for agency
That kinship and gender are closely intertwined is a reality long recognized by anthropologists, albeit not an unproblematic one.10 How societies conceive of kinship structures both arises from and influences the roles of men and women in those societies.11 In its configurations of patrilineal and other forms of descent, descent theory shows how these structures operate.12 In their starkest formations, patrilineal societies assign the right to reproduction and lineal succession to men.13 It is fathers who reproduce themselves in their children, not mothers; or, if a woman does contribute to the making of a child, her contribution is considered of lesser or minimal value.14 A man’s role as the creator of his children endows him with a sense of ownership; in case of divorce or death, they remain with him or his relatives.15 In most patrilineal systems the role of successor falls to the (eldest) son – a phenomenon that traditionally invests him with great power. He may inherit the family home, succeed his father to a position of power and become the de facto head of the family. Patrilineal societies also often privilege other male relatives in the paternal line, including younger sons, uncles and cousins, over daughters, especially with regard to inheritance. (Patrilineality was, for example, the muscle behind the legal stipulations that threatened to chase Elizabeth Bennet, her mother and her sisters from their family home in Pride and Prejudice, and the daughters of the Earl of Grantham in the popular television series Downton Abbey. In both of these cases, the properties were to go to a distant male cousin. Though fictional, they are rooted in reality.)16 As the ‘non-reproducing spouse’, the role of women in patrilineal societies is characterized by metaphors of severing and detachment, both from her birth family and that of her marriage.17 As Marilyn Strathern writes in her study of patrilineality in New Guinea, ‘Where ideas of flow and transmission of substance provide idioms of relatedness …, then such systems also have to provide a symbolic counterpart: ideas of blockage and termination.’18 A woman, after marriage, may be seen as cut off from her clan or natal family.19 Likewise, a woman’s contribution to reproduction ‘may have to be [symbolically] obliterated from the children’s bodies, or otherwise set against the connections traced through their father’ – a matter that, as has been noted, has implications for custody.20 The concept of detachment similarly extends to inheritance. Since both the mother and her children have been symbolically cut off from her natal family, neither she nor they would inherit their property.21 To be sure, patrilineality takes many forms, and the ‘cutting off ’ experienced by women may not always be as severe as is sketched out here.22 A woman in a patrilineal society may continue to associate with her natal family and may even live with them, as may her children (albeit with the understanding that they belong to a different clan).23 She may continue to carry her natal identity and the name associated with it, though ‘its demise with her own death has been foreshadowed’.24 And there is also the intangible sense of protection and belonging that patrilineal societies may offer women. Yet the costs of patrilineality can be high. It often stems from, and reinforces, a devaluing of women. I have already spoken about the frequent notion in patrilineal societies that women contribute little to reproduction. Concomitant with this concept often runs a vision of females as deficient in reason, overly emotional, and dangerously sexual, and thus needing to be relegated to ‘the invisible spheres of the private and the domestic’.25 After all, if a woman injudiciously gave herself to the wrong man, her family’s honour could be imperilled – not to mention that any resulting progeny would belong to the lineage of the father, not to her birth family. By depriving women of the economic and other forms of autonomy they might otherwise achieve, patrilineal laws and practices can limit their options and abilities to live full lives. Moreover, in contemporary societies, strict enforcement of patrilineal laws and practices contributes to numerous social and economic problems. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has identified ‘nationality laws which do not grant women equality with men in conferring nationality to their children’ as a ‘cause of statelessness’ – a major concern for the agency.26 Less drastically, but still consequentially, inegalitarian nationality laws may curtail a country’s ability to retain its citizens, especially enterprising ones who study abroad. A woman who marries a man of a different nationality may be reluctant to return to her home country if she knows that her children will not be able to enjoy citizenship there. The so-called brain drain, a pressing problem for Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, is partly the result of these and other inegalitarian laws.27 Patrilineal nationality, custody and guardianship laws can also have seriously negative effects upon families and social networks. Under Iran’s nationality laws, for example, Maryam Mirzakhani’s daughter would have to apply for a visa in order to visit her maternal grandparents in Iran – a long and difficult process for what should be her ‘natural right’ as the daughter of an Iranian.28 Even more painfully, in the event of divorce, many mothers lose custody of their children in countries where patrilineal laws prevail. As the Saudi author in exile, Manal al-Sharif – who herself had to leave her son behind when she left Saudi Arabia because of threats, monitoring and harassment – wrote in an Op-Ed piece, ‘Across the kingdom, mothers fight back tears as they are forced to leave the children they have raised and the homes where their babies took their first steps and said their first prayers.’29 By contrast, bilateral descent allows both women and societies to flourish. A bilateral society is one in which a woman as well as a man may transmit her lineage to her children, who belong both to her family and to that of her husband.30 She may inherit property from her natal family and pass on her inheritance (and, these days, her nationality) to her children. She may also inherit, and show forth, less tangible qualities: intellectual, spiritual or leadership abilities or virtues. In this respect she may act as a successor. All of these roles were fulfilled to some degree by Fatima as depicted in Shi‘i texts. Given that the Prophet Muhammad had no surviving male heirs, Shi‘is believe that Fatima perpetuated his lineage through her sons, Hasan and Husayn, and deserved to inherit his property. Many also believe that she inherited some of the Prophet’s spiritual and temporal authority. Rather than representing severing or detachment, she symbolized abundance. In this book, I demonstrate that Shi‘ism, with Fatima as a model, supports the notion that a daughter can carry on her father’s bloodline, inherit his property and exhibit his attributes. I also show that her example was not an anomaly. Other women, both Shi‘i and Sunni, were envisioned in similar capacities, sometimes with Fatima as inspiration. Analysing bilateral conceptions of Fatima thus encourages us to rethink Islamic perceptions of women and, like some of our forebears, to redraw kinship lines. The functions and roles associated with bilateral descent are closely related and, in many cases, overlap. For the sake of clarity, however, I address them in separate sections in this book. In each section, I first examine how Sunni and Shi‘i texts belonging to Islam’s high textual tradition, including hadith collections, Qur’an commentaries and histories, depict Fatima fulfilling each function. I then show how this function was likewise fulfilled by other women in medieval and early modern Islamic societies. Given the richness and diversity of materials involving bilateral descent, I have cast a wide net in selecting sources and periods to examine for the non-Fatima chapters; genres range from biographical dictionaries to historical chronicles to endowment deeds to poetry, and dynasties from the Fatimids to the Delhi Sultans to the Ottomans. This breadth is in consonance with this book’s intent to act as an exploratory survey on bilateral descent in pre-modern Islamic societies, rather than the final word; it invites and welcomes future research on the topic. To some extent, I also explore pre-Islamic precedents for recognition of bilateral descent. As many scholars have observed, Islam did not arise in a vacuum. It was founded and, later, developed by people who had earlier subscribed to various faiths and taken part in diverse practices, or whose ancestors had done so. It is not completely a surprise, then, to encounter female successorship in Islamic societies founded by groups of Turko-Mongol heritage, given the frequency with which women participated in politics among nomadic steppe peoples; or to find female inheritance emphasized in regions such as Iran where, prior to the rise of Islam, Zoroastrian daughters had some access to it. Providing historical context for the emergence of Islamic bilateral practices deepens our understanding of them. While it may be difficult to pin down actual influence or borrowing – and the implication that such phenomena existed is, in any case, highly charged – nonetheless these contextualizations form a useful backdrop for explorations of Islamic bilateral practice. They demonstrate that recognition of bilateral descent, while rare, did exist; and they gesture towards Islam’s seemingly infinite elasticity and potential for taking different forms in different regions. Although I draw on anthropological concepts such as bilateral descent, this is not a work of anthropology. Nor is it a work of conventional history or a traditional biography of Fatima, though it does invite new ways of understanding her legacy. Rather, my approach involves close reading and analysis of primary sources to discover what they may reveal about descent and kinship in pre-modern societies. I undertake this reading using the tools and perspectives of gender studies, seeking to accomplish what Shaikh has called the ‘creative excavation of women represented at the borders of the texts’.31 One of the main objectives of that search is agency, that analytical category so central to gender studies in the contemporary West. Agency as it is typically understood, however, constitutes a less-than-flexible instrument for discussing pre-modern societies.32 Frequently conceptualized as the ability to act to secure one’s own interests, agency is usually paired in feminist theory with the notion of acting against something, usually repressive or patriarchal structures, with the goal of freeing one’s self from such structures.33 As scholars such as anthropologist Saba Mahmood have pointed out, however, such definitions can be severely restrictive, particularly when considering nonsecular societies. They fail to take into account the fact that freedom from ‘repressive’ norms may not be the highest aspiration for all women, especially those who place greater emphasis on ‘subordination to a transcendent will (and thus, in many instances, to male authority)’.34 Instead, researchers benefit from taking into account the multiple ways that women inhabit norms – and, in so doing, effect change in themselves and in others.35 For example, a woman who cultivates the qualities of patience (ṣabr) and modesty may not appear overly agentic at first glance; in fact, she may seem to embody passivity. For the woman herself, however, such cultivation may constitute a very deliberate act leading to the ultimate goal – a ‘pious character’.36 By enduring hardship without complaint, by refraining from overly bold behaviour, she may see herself (or be seen by others) as participating in a meaningful discourse of Islamic piety. In fact, both the Virgin Mary and Fatima are praised in Islamic discourses for guarding their chastity – an act which, as will be seen, had multiple implications for exerting influence, but which would not automatically fall under the purview of agency. To extend the concept further, motherhood can be construed in a very agentic way. Scholars who recognized in Fatima and other mothers the ability to transmit their natal bloodlines were ascribing to these women a power that carried great weight in medieval societies – a sense of identity, and an ability to perpetuate it. The act of transmission may not be as thunderously impressive as that of overthrowing a patriarchal regime (and the fact that its description normally falls to male scholars, rather than the women themselves – an almost inevitable feature of pre-modern societies – may further diminish its value in the eyes of some), but in its own way, it is quietly revolutionary. In this book, I make use of this broader conception of agency to elicit more complex and nuanced portraits of women in pre-modern Islamic societies.
Defining Shi‘ism
Fatima’s role as a representative of bilateral descent and female agency is intimately tied to the formation of Shi‘ism. Not long after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, his followers divided over the issue of who should lead the Muslim community in his stead. Some felt that leadership belonged to whoever was most qualified, regardless of his kinship ties; they supported the accession of Abū Bakr (d. 634), the Prophet’s father-in-law and close friend, and an early believer in his cause.37 Others, more dynastically inclined, said that leadership rightly belonged to another close friend and early believer, ‘Ali ibn Abū Ṭālib (d. 661), who also had the distinction of being the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law – kinship ties that, in their eyes, qualified him to succeed his relative. These competing ideologies produced considerable conflict, including civil wars. They eventually led to the founding of the two largest sects in Islam: the Sunnis – short for ahl al-sunna wa al-jamā‘a, or the People of the Sunna and the Community; and the Shi‘is – short for shī‘at ‘Alī, the Partisans of ‘Ali. Though Sunnis have tended to dominate, both numerically and in terms of leadership of Islamic states, Shi‘ism has persisted throughout the history of Islamic civilization. Sometimes Shi‘is translated their political ideas into temporal rule; the Islamic Republic of Iran is a contemporary manifestation of such a society. More frequently, they refrained from involvement in politics, but remained nevertheless influential. Like Sunnis, Shi‘is developed extensive ideologies, literatures and juridical systems, many of which contrasted severely with those of their counterparts. Shi‘is believed that leadership, both temporal and spiritual, of the Muslim community properly belonged only to a member of the Prophet’s direct family – that is, to ‘Ali, or his sons Hasan and Husayn – or to one of their descendants who had been specially designated by his predecessor. These men, who became known as the imams, were seen as possessing special God-given knowledge, particularly knowledge of how to interpret the Qur’an.38 Given their abilities, the imams were the only men capable of guiding the Muslim community. In Sunnism, conversely, any number of men could be considered legitimate leaders of the umma. 39 The special position of the members of the household of the Prophet in Shi‘ism was to have marked consequences for the status of females within it. Shi‘is developed and relied upon their own scriptural sources to support their conclusions. Although both Sunnis and Shi‘is derive law from the Qur’an and hadith, the hadith collections compiled by Sunnis and Shi‘is differ conspicuously in form and content. The canonical hadith collections to which Sunnis subscribe contain only sayings or actions of the Prophet. Shi‘i collections, however, contain sayings of the Prophet as well as those of the imams and, as we will see, Fatima. With regard to content, Sunni hadith tend to play down the importance of the Prophet’s direct kin, whereas Shi‘i hadith emphasize those individuals and the concept of the imamate. Sunnis and Shi‘is themselves have witnessed interior divisions. Sunnis tend to follow four different schools of thought in deriving law, each of which places varying emphasis on sources such as the Qur’an, hadith, reason and analogy. In Shi‘ism, differences once more over questions of succession led to the formation of different ideological groups, the largest of which are the Twelver Shi‘is and the Isma‘ilis. In this book, I focus on Fatima’s image in Twelver Shi‘i texts, but I acknowledge as well how she appears in Isma‘ili texts and societies. Likewise, I examine the existence of bilateral descent in both Sunni and Shi‘i societies.
Defining Fatima
Shi‘ism’s championing of the importance of kinship in the succession to the Prophet had special implications for Fatima and women as a whole, affecting how the daughter of the Prophet appeared in the sources and opening the door for greater gender egalitarianism in Islamic societies – even if such consequences were unintended. Had the Prophet left any surviving sons, they would have been his natural successors. Instead, ‘Ali followed by Hasan and Husayn (the Prophet’s grandsons through Fatima and ‘Ali) and their descendants came to fulfil those roles in the eyes of Shi‘is. Fatima thus formed an integral link between the majority of the imams and the Prophet. Those promoting dynastic succession saw it to their advantage to exalt her status. In hadith and other literature, especially later collections, she appeared as one of the highest-ranking women in Islam, and she too was seen as enjoying some of the qualities attributed to the imams. Unlike the later accounts, however, the earliest stories of Fatima provide little indication of her later status. What details they do contain produce the image of a pious, somewhat mournful, occasionally defiant woman who was utterly devoted to her father. One of the four daughters of the Prophet and his first wife, Khadīja, Fatima was born while the Muslims still resided in Mecca, in either about 605 or 615.40 She wept considerably upon her mother’s death in 619, crying, ‘Where is my mother? Where is my mother?’; Gabriel inspired her father to tell her that God had built for Khadīja a beautiful home in Paradise, where she lived free of hardship and clamour.41
Like other members of the nascent Muslim community, Fatima accompanied her father on his monumental Hijra, or emigration, to the city of Medina in 622. It was there that she married ‘Ali, the Prophet’s cousin. Although Abū Bakr and ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (d. 644), another prominent companion, had reportedly asked for her hand in marriage, the Prophet refused them, ‘saying that he was waiting for the moment fixed by destiny’.42 Despite ‘Ali’s fears that he was too poor to press his case, Muhammad reminded him of a coat of mail that the Prophet had given him, which could serve as a dower.43 ‘Ali followed his instructions and – given Fatima’s silent consent – the marriage was completed probably in the first or second year of the Hijra.44 Many stories in early sources describe the poverty of the young couple and the resulting hardships they suffered. Fatima developed blisters from grinding grain; Ali drew water for other people’s land until his chest hurt.45 The couple also apparently did not enjoy perfect marital felicity. Several hadith (some disputed) relate stories of arguments between them, most notably an occasion upon which ‘Ali proposed to take a second wife (a venture rejected with a few choice words by the Prophet himself).46 Nevertheless, they and their four surviving children – Hasan, Husayn, Zaynab and Umm Kulthum – were cherished by the Prophet and stood together in times of difficulty. Though normally taciturn, even timid, Fatima could be roused to action and anger if a member of her family was attacked or threatened. After a member of the Quraysh threw the waste of a slaughtered camel upon the Prophet while he was praying, she removed it, and ‘cursed the one who had done the harm’.47 And, after the Prophet’s death in 632, Fatima became drawn into the fierce struggle over the caliphate, the leadership of which had been claimed by Abū Bakr. Two incidents stand out in the narratives. In one, she bravely confronted Abū Bakr and ‘Umar after they tried to gain entry to her and ‘Ali’s home in the quest of forcing the allegiance of dissidents who had gathered there. According to one account, ‘Ali went forward to meet Abū Bakr with sword drawn. After ‘Umar disarmed him and the group of men were gaining entry, Fatima emerged and angrily told them that if they did not leave, she would uncover her hair – a threat so bold it convinced them to withdraw.48 Other early accounts portray ‘Umar as intending to burn down the house, and Fatima’s resulting fury.49 Another story revolves around Fatima’s quest to regain Fadak, a property she said the Prophet had bequeathed to her as an inheritance, or (in other accounts), had been given to her as a gift, but which Abū Bakr said belonged to the caliphate. The account of Fadak, which receives detailed attention in this study, likewise portrays Fatima as mounting a claim against those whom she believed usurped her rights and those of her family, and were leading the Muslim community astray. Not long after her father’s death, Fatima herself fell ill, dying just a few months after he did. Some sources report that she never reconciled with Abū Bakr, remaining angry with him until her death.50 Given the antipathy between himself and the rulers of the Caliphate, ‘Ali did not publish news of her death and buried her at night.51 Her passing had been predicted by none other than her father himself. While attending to her father on his deathbed, Fatima had cried and then laughed as he said a few words to her. When ‘Ᾱ’isha asked her what those words had been, she said that he had told her that he would die soon, and that she, Fatima, would be ‘the swiftest of my family to join me’. Then Fatima had wept. Then the Prophet said, ‘Are you not content to be the mistress of the women of this community, or the women of the worlds?’ At that, Fatima had laughed.52 Though she is greatly admired by Muslims today of all ideological and sectarian affiliations, Fatima holds a special place in the hearts of Shi‘is, who celebrate her birthday and other holy days associated with her and recount the travails of her and her family in lovingly staged pageants. Craftsmen in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad weave her name into rugs and tapestries, and government administrators issue postage stamps in her honour. To her, moreover, is assigned a host of powers and virtues, including that of heavenly intercession. It is one of the aims of this book to decipher how she came to be portrayed in such an exalted manner, and what the impact of this portrait has been for women, for female agency and for the understanding of family structure.
How this book is organized
This book is divided into three main sections, each of which addresses a different aspect of bilateral descent: ‘Mothers’, ‘Heiresses’ and ‘Successors’. Within each section, pairings of chapters address how Shi‘i (and some Sunni) texts acknowledged a particular manifestation of bilateral descent with regard to Fatima, and then explore how those manifestations resonated in pre-modern Islamic societies. Next, I give a more detailed description of the sections and the chapters within them. Part One, ‘Mothers’, looks at the most basic expression of bilateral descent: the concept that a female can transmit her lineage to her children, and that her children belong to her natal family as well as to that of her husband. Through an examination of hadith and Qur’an commentaries, Chapter 1 explores the diversity of medieval views on generation and lineage, demonstrating how Shi‘i (and some Sunni) depictions of Fatima fit into the less widely acknowledged ‘duo-genetic’ view that acknowledges contributions from both male and female. It explores possible origins for these concepts, including pre-Islamic regional influences and Qur’anic depictions of the Virgin Mary, whose son Jesus belongs to her lineage. Chapter 2 then demonstrates how recognition of bilateral descent in the case of Fatima echoed in similar acknowledgement for other, less notable women in pre-modern Islamic societies. It presents vivid examples of bilateral tendencies as evidenced in biographical dictionaries, hadith collections, historical chronicles, poems and juridical texts. Part Two, ‘Heiresses’, addresses another acutely important manifestation of bilateral descent: inheritance. Laws permitting daughters to inherit property or money from their natal families – and to pass it down to their offspring – confer a degree of economic autonomy upon females, and acknowledge that they both belong to and carry on their lineages. Chapter 3 analyses how Fatima’s claim to Fadak, an ancient oasis town she believed had been bequeathed to her by her father, led to Shi‘i inheritance practices that acknowledged bilateral descent to a greater extent than did Sunni inheritance laws. It shows that just as Shi‘ism redrew kinship lines to include daughters and their offspring, its inheritance laws recognized these dynamics by allocating money and property to daughters and their offspring in a more inclusive fashion than did Sunni. Chapter 4 looks at pre-modern societies – both Sunni and Shi‘i – in which daughters and their offspring inherited to a larger degree than might be predicted by the laws in place, or in which people deployed existing legal institutions to benefit daughters specifically. Drawing primarily on waqfiyyāt, or endowment deeds, as source material, it explores the conditions that allowed these practices to arise. Part Three, ‘Successors’, deals with the aspect of bilateral descent that possesses the most far-reaching consequences for the status of women: successorship, or the idea that a daughter may succeed her father to a position of authority. Chapter 5 examines Shi‘i portrayals of Fatima in which she appears not merely as a receptacle or transmitter of authority but also as a woman who embodies her father’s mission and is capable, at least in some degree, of leading his community. In these portrayals, appearing largely in hadith collections, she transcends the trappings of traditional femininity to emerge as a powerful, outspoken activist. Chapter 6 draws on historical chronicles and poems to investigate many pre-modern Islamic societies – both Sunni and Shi‘i – that witnessed females succeeding their fathers and other male relatives to positions of public importance. It throws light on the multiple solutions to the thorny problem of how women could combine the all-important virtue of chastity (which was often predicated upon hiddenness) with sovereignty (often associated with visibility). As an exemplar of both of these qualities, Fatima figures prominently in these narratives. Finally, the Epilogue brings the discussion into the present by examining recognition of the various aspects of bilateral descent in contemporary Muslim-majority societies. Ultimately, I aim to show that the steps nations such as Iran are taking to free themselves from the shackles of patrilineality are in line with the precepts of their pre-modern pasts.
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