This book reconstructs the role of midwives in medieval to early modern Islamic history through a careful reading of a wide range of classical and medieval Arabic sources. The author casts the midwife's social status in premodern Islam as a privileged position from which she could mediate between male authority in patriarchal society and female reproductive power within the family. This study also takes a broader historical view of midwifery in the Middle East by examining the tensions between learned medicine (male) and popular, medico-religious practices (female) from early Islam into the Ottoman period and addressing the confrontation between traditional midwifery and Western obstetrics in the first half of the nineteenth century.

This book reconstructs the role of midwives in medieval to early modern Islamic history through a careful reading of a wide range of classical and medieval Arabic sources. The author casts the midwife's social status in premodern Islam as a privileged position from which she could mediate between male authority in patriarchal society and female reproductive power within the family. This study also takes a broader historical view of midwifery in the Middle East by examining the tensions between learned medicine (male) and popular, medico-religious practices (female) from early Islam into the Ottoman period and addressing the confrontation between traditional midwifery and Western obstetrics in the first half of the nineteenth century.

This volume examines early Islamic theories and practices of breastfeeding, their long-term social implications and their impact on the lives of women and children. In the light of the impediments to marriage created, according to Islamic law, by nonmaternal breastfeeding, the author also explores the role they have played in wider circles of social life: how they influenced the way relations between different families were established, reduced the occurence of endogamous marriages, and created semiprivate spaces.
This is the first comprehensive research, within western Islamology, devoted to the subject, serving as it were as a link between Women's History and History of Childhood. It is based on a wide range of religious sources - from Qur'an, Qur'an exegesis, through "hadith to legal writings - as well as on medieval Arabic medical compilations.