Table Of ContentGender and Succession in Medieval
and Early Modern Islam
The Early and Medieval Islamic World
Published in collaboration with the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean
As recent scholarship resoundingly attests, the medieval Mediterranean and Middle East
bore witness to a prolonged period of flourishing intellectual and cultural diversity. Seeking
to contribute to this ever-more nuanced and contextual picture, The Early and Medieval
Islamic World book series promotes innovative research on the period 500–1500 AD with
the Islamic world, as it ebbed and flowed from Marrakesh to Palermo and Cairo to Kabul, as
the central pivot. Thematic focus within this remit is broad, from the cultural and social to
the political and economic, with preference given to studies of societies and cultures from
a socio-historical perspective. It will foster a community of unique voices on the medieval
Islamic world, shining light into its lesser-studied corners.
Series editor
Professor Roy Mottahedeh, Harvard University
Advisors
Professor Amira Bennison, University of Cambridge
Professor Farhad Daftary, Institute of Ismaili Studies
Professor Simon Doubleday, Hofstra University
Professor Frank Griffel, Yale University
Professor Remke Kruk, Leiden University
Professor Beatrice Manz, Tufts University
Dr Bernard O’Kane, American University in Cairo
Professor Andrew Peacock, University of St Andrews
Dr Yossef Rapoport, Queen Mary University of London
New and forthcoming titles
Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World: Christian Identity and Practice under
Muslim Rule, Charles Tieszen (Fuller Theological Seminary/Simpson University)
Power and Knowledge in Medieval Islam: Shiʾi and Sunni Encounters in Baghdad,
Tariq al-Jamil (Swathmore College)
The Eastern Frontier: Limits of Empire in Late Antique and Early Medieval Central Asia,
Robert Haug (University of Cincinnati)
Writing History in the Medieval Islamic World: The Value of Chronicles as Archives,
Fozia Bora (University of Leeds)
Gypsies in the Medieval Islamic World: The History of a People, Kristina Richardson
(City University, New York)
Narrating Muslim Sicily: War and Peace in the Medieval Mediterranean World,
William Granara (Harvard University)
Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam: Bilateral Descent and the
Legacy of Fatima,
Alyssa Gabbay (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Gender and Succession in Medieval
and Early Modern Islam
Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima
Alyssa Gabbay
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For my mother
And in memory of my father and grandparents
vi
Contents
List of illustrations viii
Preface and acknowledgements ix
Transliteration, periodization and dates xii
Introduction: Redrawing family trees 1
Part One Mothers
1 Umms and wombs: How and (maybe) why Shi‘is reckoned
descent through Fatima 17
2 Other mothers, other sons 49
Part Two Heiresses
3 Heiress to the Prophet: Fatima, Fadak and female inheritance 79
4 Endowing agency: Daughters, waqfs and semi-matrilineal inheritance 102
Part Three Successors
5 Speaking in her father’s name: Fatima as successor to the Prophet
Muhammad 123
6 Fatima’s royal shadow: Muslim female rulers’ quest for legitimacy
and sovereignty 153
Epilogue: Whither Fatima? 185
Notes 189
Bibliography 243
Index 263
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Genealogy chart showing lines of descent among early Shi‘i and
Shi‘i-affiliated groups 55
5.1 The Prophet Muhammad presiding over the marriage of Fatima
and ‘Ali, from the Siyer-i Nebī 124
5.2 Twentieth-century poster by Iranian artist Mohammad Khazā’ī
depicting Fatima as a soldier 140
Tables
3.1 Inheritance Divisions for Deceased Who Leaves Behind a
Paternal Grandfather, a Wife and a Daughter 88
3.2 Inheritance Divisions for Deceased Who Leaves Behind a
Paternal Uncle, a Uterine Brother and a Daughter’s Son 88
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 contin-
ued 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
