By Sumaya Hussain
Edited by Sonika Birdi and Mark Potter
The participation of women in economic life during Medieval Islam was diverse and varied.
Differences of participation varied on the status of women: from elites to slaves, coupled with
the geographical location: either rural or urban communities. By definition ‘participation’
means taking part and being involved in something. It is imperative to think about participation in a broad sense because we often confine women to a narrow vision of participation in terms of their involvement within economic means. By obtaining a narrow vision of female economic participation, society often confines them into the domestic sphere of the household. Women’s role, however, was much more than this. There are challenges faced when studying this topic since there is a great disparity over time and place. There are forms of economic participation broadly defined that women were involved in, but because they are not necessarily jobs or businesses, we do not always view women’s work as economic participation. Women sustained an economic cycle through fuelling consumption allowing men in the household to go to work. Thus, by looking at participation in a broad way we see more of women’s contributions. There was a wide range of forms of economic participation such as in labour, agricultural production, material possessions, charitable giving, trade and commerce etc. Yet, this participation was conditioned by gendered norms. For instance, women were excluded from some professions, sometimes local (patriarchal) custom dispossessed women of the property they were entitled to inherit and there were limitations on what they could do with their own property. Later medieval period societies were fragmented to numerous empires and polities, so there were vast disparities in economic and social custom throughout these places. Nonetheless, women also challenged these restrictions in miscellaneous ways as will be deliberated in this essay.
Khadija, the first wife of Prophet Muhammad, was a businesswoman: a key contributor to the economy. One of our earliest sources for Muhammad’s life and deeds comes from Alfred
Guillaume’s The Life of Muhammad: A translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, written around the mid-8th century. Khadija would engage in commerce by appointing men from the Quraysh to ‘carry merchandise outside the country on a profit-sharing basis’.[1] She is depicted as being the ‘best born woman in Quraysh’ as well as ‘the richest’.[2] Muhammad worked for Khadijah by moving her goods to Syria to trade there.[3] It is notable to regard that Muhammed, a key figure in Islam who Muslims aspire to emulate, took guidance and instructions from a woman. This clearly tackles the disparity among historians who question the role of women at the time, as Khadijah was a key figure who managed commerce and thereby contributed significantly to the economy. Nevertheless, historian Leila Ahmed would posit that Khadija’s economic independence echoed Jahiliya conventions compared to Islamic as Khadijah was a mature woman who lived most of her life in pre-Islamic Arabia which allowed her to economically flourish.[4] This animates historian Judith Tucker’s notion that women from the early Muslim community are ‘not fully Muslim’ because they lived majority of their lives as pre-Islamic Jahiliya women.[5] Thus, reigniting the debate on whether this economic participation in the early Islamic period is notable.
Women participated in economic life through property and inheritance. The Qur’an states that both men and women have the right to inherit: ‘men have a share in what parents and relatives leave behind at death and women have a share in what parents and relatives leave behind’ (Q 4:8).[6] Therefore, the Qur’an rewards shares of the estate to mothers, wives, daughters and sisters. This is reinforced in verse 4:32 ‘to men is allowed what they earn, and to women what they earn’, thus establishing women’s rights to preserve property or maintain profits of particularly what they earn. Ultimately, the Qur’an establishes property rights for women, notwithstanding provisional ones as women’s share of property is half that of their male relatives. Additionally, higher socioeconomic class women engaged in commercial activity such as money lending, management of property, investing property and raising revenue. Women were able to gain property from mahr (marriage gift) which was gifted to the bride from her husband, providing a vital source of revenue for women. At this point Maya Shatzmiller is correct to argue that property ownership was a significant ‘economic tool in empowering women’.[7] Historian David Powers posits that even though Islamic law stipulates that women were entitled to inherit property from their parents/relatives (albeit a smaller part than their brothers/male relatives), in some places, this legal right was systematically eroded. An example of a local patriarchal custom subverting women’s property rights was in the Maghreb where Berber (Imazighen) tribes’ customs (which prioritised male inheritance) overrode the norms of Islamic law. This encapsulates how although Islamic law states guidelines, it does not mean that it is applied everywhere. In the late medieval Maghreb, Powers found that tribal custom - which aims to ensure that land pertaining to tribal members remains within the patrilineal family - was systematically disinheriting women by denying them their share of property.[8] It was considered problematic for women to inherit property as this would mean passing the land to a male, presumably their husbands, who existed outside the confines of the tribe/family. This is because a ‘stranger’ would obtain entry to the property of a patrilineal descent group other than the tribes.[9] Subsequently, for centuries, local patriarchal customs long standing systems of inheritance were triumphing over women’s inheritance rights within Islamic law. Though, this differs in different parts of the Islamic world.
The deathbed testaments from the late fourteenth century, in Jerusalem - when it was under
Mamluk rule - provides us with a rich source of information about the way that women
accumulated property. The document simply lists properties to make sure that all of the correct inheritance laws are followed. They aid us in having an insight of the property women amassed during their lifetimes, across different socioeconomic classes. For instance, the testament of Nafisa bint Ali ibn Jami Muharram 796. Nafisa possessed extravagant luxuries such as a ‘white cotton embroidered over-coat, cotton carpet and embroidered veil.[10] She also retained property in ‘the grape vines in the land of Dayr Abi Thawr’ as well as a black female slave named Mubaraka.[11] Accordingly, we get an insight into the lives of women who were rich and had accumulated a large amount of material possessions. A way woman lost their property was by giving it away to charitable causes, often through waqf (religious/charitable donation) – mostly by women of a mature age. For charity, Nafisa left ‘100 dirhamas to be distributed by her...husband’.[12] Henceforth, we gain glimpses into women’s property because we have sources from Jerusalem from this period to display what property women possessed. Though, we have a fragmentary glimpse into these lives as these materials were recorded after her death, so we have to try and extrapolate that what we are seeing through the sources are probably only a fragment of what was actually going on, so we have to use our judgement to make bigger subjects. Overall, this demonstrates Muslim women as acting with agency as they had a choice when it came to how to spend and dispose of their resources as illustrated by the deathbed testaments, as they spent money on themselves.
Muslim women from different societies used waqf laws to sidestep some of the restrictions
placed on what they could do with their property. As waqf is controlled by Islamic regulation
and comes under the influence of the Islamic court, waqfs offered supplementary lawful
authorisation and shelter to women’s proprietorship and agency. Women made numerous uses of the courts and emerge in the sources as both defendants and plaintiffs. Benefaction of waqfs was a method utilised by elite women to preserve some of their property and its income from intrusion by family members such as brothers, guardians or husbands. Subsequently, by doing this woman successfully secured their property from relatives as well as profiting from the revenue formed by the waqf throughout their lifespan.[13] This safeguarded their prerogative to administrate their property and to pass it on to their chosen heirs. I agree with historian Leslie Peirce that women expanded their control of property within an environment of restrictions and opportunities.[14] This is because the court was available to them in their efforts to fight exploitations. For instance, in the Ottoman Aintab court records of August 17, 1541, Ayse bt Isa who was able to record the endowment of her part of a conjointly held house to her local mosque.[15] Also, Ministry of Awqaf archives illustrate that 3,316 records throughout the whole Ottoman era were associated to waqf cases.[16] This articulates that women were able to act independently with agency in the economic realm. Waqf was crucial in maintaining cultural and social networks that shaped Islamic societies’ infrastructure, as governments could barely have operated without
them.[17] The urban infrastructure of Aintab was the result of generations of local waqfs.[18] Thereby, women participated greatly in the medieval economy as a 1546 Istanbul waqf survey illustrates that women contributed to one-third of the benefactions registered.[19] Although, women’s capability to use the courts to affirm their legal rights differed extensively, depending on social structure. This meant that if you were of great standing, you were more prosperous within the system because these women knew how to negotiate. It is
interesting to see how the court worked for and against women. Women were able to manipulate the equivocality of the legal system – jurists frequently ruled in preference of
women to counterweigh their social limitations. Thus, medieval women disregarded the
assumptions of the larger economic system and display themselves having economic liberty,
rather than becoming just passive cogs in the system.
Women partook an active role in economic life across all levels of society through professions. Wage labour and commercial activities reveal a high level of economic participation. Wage earning professions for women included teaching, midwifery, hairdressing and secretary work. These professions were vital in perpetuating and fulfilling the economic demands of society. Some of these professions were gendered, for example, wet nurses. This was an occupation which allowed Muslim women to earn their own wage as, in the Medieval world, a mother’s milk was the only way to feed babies - a profession only a woman could fulfil.[20] An undated Maliki fatwa from al-Andalus deliberates a husband’s right to share his wife’s earning from her wet nursing career.[21] This serves to highlight how men attempted to limit women’s wages and reinforces that a wife had evident rights over her body and the wages she earned from this. Wage earning can be perceived as supported in the Qur’an which proclaims: ‘if you wish to engage a wet nurse you may do so if you pay her an agreed amount as is customary’.[22]
Though, there is a clear urban-rural divide among professions women occupied in. For
instance, in rural community’s women participated in the cottage industry producing and
selling vinegar, wool and oils etc. This encapsulates how women’s economic participation
relied on what share of the Islamic world they were in. Presumably, women played an active
role in crop cultivation and raising livestock as women made up fifty percent of the population. It is very difficult for historians to own evidence of women working in farming due to moderately rarer records for women in the countryside. Nonetheless, women monopolised the urban textile industry.[23] This is convincing as women dominated numerous jobs like embroidery, spinning and dying which was part of the market-oriented industry of the Muslim metropolises.[24] The fact that there were gendered professions generated opportunities for women, thus enables them to do things that men cannot participate in. This simultaneously facilitated female networking. For instance, in terms of education we see women excluded from madrasas, so do not have access to standard forms of education, but because they were in females-only employment spheres, there was a passing on of knowledge. There was education in diverse ways such as medicine and literacy passed on between women outside of the standard education system. Thereby, this was an interesting feature of the kind of opportunities these forms of economic participation created for female networking, education and building economic and social networks. Overall, there were many professions for women to obtain in wage labour and they monopolised the textile business, encapsulating their economic participation in the Islamic world.
Contrarily, there was rising concerns about women’s participation in food production as people feared menstruation meant women were too impure to be involved. Wage labour was often perceived in a negative perspective as this economic independence posed a threat to male scholars. This is evident by fourteenth century Cairo Salafi scholar Ibn Hajj in his Ethical treatise of Ibn al-Hajj. Ibn al-Hajj advocated the exclusion of women from public market spaces describing women as being ‘the origin of all chaos and corruption in
society’.[25] This is valuable in revealing male anxieties to women in the public and economic domains, as the female presence threatened androcentric societal order as he insinuated that women were the perpetrators for disorder. This implies that in principle women were allowed to participate in labour, yet in practice this was challenging due to the types of segregations ongoing in society. Interestingly, this negative outlook did not apply to women participating in commercial activity as commerce was looked highly upon. This suggests that there was a support for commerce and disdain for manual work.
Ultimately, women played a very significant role in economic life by participating through the diverse ways aforementioned, across different medieval Islamic societies. Despite this, forms of participation were often limited by patriarchal norms and gendering of many professions. Absence of archival evidence means my research was dependant on court cases and deathbed testaments. A frequent assumption about women in Medieval; societies is that patriarchal structures and practices have prevented them from access to their legal property or from appealing to the law over abuses of their property rights. Whilst considering these limitations, this essay proves that women did ultimately have a large impact on economic life, albeit sometimes threatened. Even when women’s property rights were threatened, they were able to use the court as a tool to emancipate them from their oppression. Incredibly, though restricted, women’s participation must be viewed in a broader sense due to societal spheres being abundant, leading to an absence of archival material. Women’s economic participation is intricate, contingent, and formed by gendered beliefs of social roles.
Notes
[1] Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 82.
[2] Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, p. 82.
[3] Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, p. 82.
[4] Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, (United States: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 42.
[5] El Cheikh, Nadia Maria, Women, Islam, and Abbasid identity, (United States: Harvard University Press, 2015), p. 11.
[6] David Powers, Law and Custom in the Maghrib, 1475-1500: On the Disinheritance of Women, in Ron Shaham (ed.), Law, Custom and Stature in the Muslim World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 19.
[7] Maya Shatzmiller, ‘Women and Wage Labour in the Medieval Islamic West: Legal Issues in an Economic Context’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 40/2 (1997), pp. 174-206.
[8] Powers, p. 24.
[9] Powers, p. 24.
[10] Deathbed Testaments of Women of Late 14th Century Jerusalem, from Huda Lutfi, al-Quds al-Mamlukiyya, A History of Mamluk Jerusalem based on the Haram Documents (Berlin, 1985), p. 55.
[11] Deathbed Testaments of Women of Late 14th Century Jerusalem.
[12] Deathbed Testaments of Women of Late 14th Century Jerusalem, p. 56.
[13] Mary Ann Fay, ‘Women and Waqf: Toward a Reconsideration of Women's Place in the Mamluk Household’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 29/1 (1997), pp. 33-51.
[14] Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 210.
[15] Peirce, p. 225.
[16] Fay, p. 37.
[17] Peirce, p. 236.
[18] Peirce, p. 236.
[19] Peirce, p. 237.
[20] Shatzmiller, p. 182.
[21] Shatzmiller, p. 181.
[22] Shatzmiller, p. 181.
[23] Yossef Rapoport, Marriage, Money and divorce in Medieval Islamic Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 31.
[24] Shatzmiller, p. 177.
[25] Ed. Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron, Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting boundaries in Sex and Gender, (Yale: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 100.
Bibliography
Primary sources
Deathbed Testaments of Women of Late 14th Century Jerusalem, from Huda Lutfi, al-Quds al-Mamlukiyya, A History of Mamluk Jerusalem based on the Haram Documents. Berlin. 1985
Secondary sources
Ahmed, Leila, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992
Cheikh, El and Maria, Nadia, Women, Islam, and Abbasid identity. USA: Harvard University
Press, 2015
Fay, Mary Ann, ‘Women and Waqf: Toward a Reconsideration of Women's Place in the
Mamluk Household’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 29/1, 1997
Guillaume, Alfred, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah. Oxford: Oxford University press, 1955
Keddie, Nikki R. and Baron, Beth, Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting boundaries in Sex and Gender. United States: Yale University Press, 2008
Peirce, Leslie, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003
Powers, David, Law and Custom in the Maghrib, 1475-1500: On the Disinheritance of Women, in Ron Shaham (ed.), Law, Custom and Stature in the Muslim World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007
Rapoport, Yossef, Marriage, Money and divorce in Medieval Islamic Society. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005
Shatzmiller, Maya, ‘Women and Wage Labour in the Medieval Islamic West: Legal Issues in
an Economic Context’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 40/2, 1997
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