1. Khālid Muhammad al-Sa‘‘dāwīī;, Nisā‘‘ mithāliyyāt (Cairo: Maktabat alturāth al-islāmīī;, 1992), 11–15.

2. Deniz Kandiyoti, “Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective,” in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), 23.

3. Dalāl al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā al-dīn wa-al-dawla: al-Islāmiyyuūn wa-iltibāsāt mashrū‘‘ihim (Beirut: Dar al-nahār, 1994), 215, citing F. Azari. Carla Makhlouf, Changing Veils: Women and Modernisation in North Yemen (London: Croom Helm, 1979), 91; William R. Darrow, “Woman's Place and the Place of Women in the Iranian Revolution,” in Women, Religion, and Social Change, ed. Yvonne Y. Haddad and Ellison B. Findly (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), 311–12, 316; Yvonne Y. Haddad, “Islam, Women and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Arab Thought,” pp. 275–306 in Haddad and Findly, Women, 295. Algeria's salafī Islamist thinkers “exhorted women to model their behavior after the virtuous wives and daughters of the founder of Islam and his companions. They circulated biographies of such women that emphasized their religious faith, their sense of duty, and their spirit of sacrifice.” Marnia Lazreg, “Gender and Politics in Algeria: Unraveling the Religious Paradigm,” Signs 15:4 (1990): 763.

4. “Sīī;rat shahīī;rāt al-nisā‘‘: Khadīī;ja bt. Khuwaylid zawjat al-nabīī; ‘‘alayhi al-salāt wa-al-salām,” MI 1:1 (Mar. 25, 1901): 14–16.

5. Thus these life histories by ‘‘A’ءisha ‘‘Abd al-Rahmān (Bint al-Shāti‘‘) hold an exceptional position in my chronological map: first published in the early 1950s in Dār al-Hilāl's monthly series Kitāb al-Hilāl, they have been repeatedly reissued, often with new publishers' prefaces. Other collections from the 1950s have been reprinted: e.g., Sūfī ‘‘Abdallāh, Nisā‘‘ muhāribāt (Cairo: Dār alma‘‘ārif, 1951, 1991). Because my approach emphasizes contexts of material production and reception as key elements of textual meaning, I see these republished collections as acting within both their first publication/reception context (the 1950s) and the 1980s–1990s period. This is particularly true of Bint al-Shāti‘‘'s enormously popular works. While I do not discuss them explicitly, they can be seen as part of the contemporary “Famous Women” biographical scene because of their ubiquity on the market. See Stowasser's analysis of them in her Women in the Qur’ءan, chap. 10, emphasizing a blend of “storytelling” style and emphasis on domesticity (120) that situates them as precursors to the texts I describe here. But I disagree with Stowasser's implication that a “modern focus” and “domesticity” operate as opposing terms in the texts (120).

6. See Talhami, Mobilization, 124.

7. Dalāl al-Bizrīī;, “Al-Mar‘‘a al-lubnāniyya wa-'al-sahwa' al-islāmiyya,” in al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā, 195–226. Emphasizing the modernness of “all 'fundamentalism'”—for it is contemporary discourses that define what are chosen as “fundamental,” Sami Zubaida links the history of political Islam in Egypt to the concept of the nation-state: “In Egypt modern political Islam started in the second half of the nineteenth century in anticipation of a modern state on the European model which it mostly welcomed, but constructed in terms of 'original' Islam, as against the degenerate religion of the dynastic polity it opposed. Subsequent movements in Egypt assumed the model of a modern nation state and sought ways, intellectually and politically, to Islamise this model.” Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State: Essays on Political Ideas and Movements in the Middle East (London: Routledge, 1989), 39; on “fundamentalism” and modernity, 38.

8. Two are undated, but circumstantial evidence suggests they are from the 1980s or 1990s. Khadīī;ja al-Qummah, Nisā‘‘ al-Islām: al-Mujāhidāt fī sabīl Allāh (n.p, n.p. [privately printed], n.d.); Muhammad Ibrāhīī;m al-Kuwayfīī;, Nisā‘‘ fādilāt (n.p.: Manshūrāt Dār al-nasr, n.d.). This is not to imply that collections I discuss are the only ones of this kind. As this book goes to press, I am finding more and more.

9. Government and semiofficial printing houses have produced biographical series for young people that parallel series production by Islamist presses, such as Dār al-da‘‘wa's “Zawjāt al-nabīī;,” al-Markaz al-‘‘arabīī; lil-tawzī‘‘'s “Nisā‘‘ fīī; tarīī;q al-jihād,” and Dār al-i‘‘tisām's “Nisā‘‘ warā‘‘ al-ahdāth.” These all deserve study for which I have no space here. Dār al-ma‘‘ārif's series “Great People Who Lived by Hope” includes Hellen Keller and Elizabeth Barrett Browning among its fourteen (Western and Arab) subjects. Dār al-Hilāl has reissued Mayy Ziyāda's studies of Nāsif and Taymūr (July 1999). See also Nukhba min al-kātibāt wa-al-bāhithāt, Misriyyāt rā‘‘idāt wa-mubdi‘‘āt (Cairo: al-Hay‘‘a al-misriyya al-‘‘āmma lil-kitāb, 1995). These can be construed as attempts to counter the wave of Islamist biography with popular biographies of secular-leaning Egyptian women. Of course, scholarly biographies of such figures and other notable women have appeared; those are not my subject here.

10. Scholars have mentioned the salience of early female Muslim lives to contemporary polemics on gender but have not explored the texts themselves, beyond general comments on the subjects chosen. They include Ahmed, Talhami, Badran, and those mentioned in note 3. Stowasser and Spellberg analyze a few biographies but focus predominantly on the premodern period.

11. Clearly the period 1975–95 is an arbitrarily chosen one within which enormous social and economic change has taken place. But in terms of the history of modern Egypt, this period also exhibits a consistency of ideological, political, and economic direction; moreover, it can be said to embrace two generations of writers. A fuller analysis of these recent works could cover more texts and distinguish among different decades. That is not my purpose here.

12. And: “A universal characteristic of Islamic discourse is its attempt to recreate a homogeneous community, through the reconstruction of a past whose cultural definitions and conflicts have lost their political significance. By selectively appropriating this past, lending it divinity and imposing it on the present, the struggle of socially disadvantaged groups and classes is diverted from the centres of power to 'imagined' areas of conflict.” Hala Shukrallah, “The Impact of the Islamic Movement in Egypt,” Feminist Review 47 (summer 1994): 15–32; quotation on 16.

13. Felski, Gender of Modernity, 3.

14. Ibid., 13, 15.

15. Muhammad b. Sa‘‘d, al-Tabaqāt al-kubrā, 8:15–16.

16. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past.

17. Al-Bizrī, for example, insists on the modernity and “Westernicity” of today's Islamists, while recognizing a great deal of variation within the outlooks and programs of specific groups. Because “Islamists” today function in a different historical moment and therefore must be differently contextualized, it is troublesome to use the same term for an earlier period. However, I have not found a suitable alternative. Here I use “Islamists” rather than “conservatives” as I did earlier to suggest a very specific trajectory linked to contemporary politics.

18. I am certainly not the first to suggest this. Among precedents are the numerous and inspiring works of Margot Badran, Lila Abu-Lughod, Muhammad Tavakoli, and Afsaneh Najmabadi.

19. The use of subtitles emphasizing moral qualities is notable throughout the contemporary collections, although this is perhaps the most striking example. It represents an alternative strategy for stressing to an implied audience the didactic role of the biographies in the collection.

20. Umayma Muhammad ‘‘Alī, Zawjāt al-rasuūl: Ummahāt al-muslimīn: ‘‘Iffa, sharaf, tahāra (Cairo: Dār al-rawda lil-nashr wa-al-tawzīء, n.d. [1993]), 5–6.

21. ‘‘Abd al-‘‘Azīī;z al-Shinnāwīī;, Zawjāt al-sahāba (Mansūra: Maktabat al-īī;mān, n.d.), 5. Al-Shinnāwīī; follows a different strategy in his collections of biographies of the wives and daughters of Muhammad. He prefaces them with carefully chosen excerpts from the Qur’ءān: from Sūrat al-Ahzāb v. 28–29, where God tells the Prophet to tell his wives they can have either the life of the world with its adornment or God and his prophets; and that the muhsināt will be rewarded; ‘‘Abd al-‘‘Azīī;zal-Shinnāwī, Zawjāt al-rasuūl (Mansūra: Maktabat al-īī;mān, n.d. [1994]), 3; and v. 59, telling the Prophet to advise women of the believers to draw their coverings about them; ‘‘Abd al-‘‘Azīī;z al-Shinnāwīī;, Banāt al-rasuūl (Mansūra: Maktabat al-īī;mān, n.d. [1995]), 3.

22. Republished as “Qabas min mu‘‘mināt,” in Al-Dā‘‘ā’ءiya Zaynab alGhazālī: Masīrat jihād wa-hadīth min al-dhikrayāt min khilāl kitābātihā, ed. Ibn al-Hāshimīī; (Cairo: Dār al-i‘‘tisām, n.d. [1409/1988]), 169–88. On page 226 are dates of journal issues in which sketches appeared (in a different order than in the republished version). These consist of seven profiles of women of the early community, a three-part life of Khawla bt. al-Azwar, and (published later) a sketch of Hagar.

23. For example, as quoted in al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā, 236–37.

24. Al-Dā‘‘ā’ءiya, 169. There is a discrepancy between calling this the first publication and the dates listed. I have not been able to locate issues of this journal to compare texts or corroborate dating.

25. Booth, “al-Mar’ءa fī al-Islām.”

26. Similarly in this author's Ummahāt al-sahāba: “The book Mothers of the Companions which I present to the readers offers examples of women whom Islam elevated, that they may be a lantern, an example to be imitated. The fault is not the sun's if the blind person does not see it” (5).

27. ‘‘Abd Ghālib Ahmad ‘‘Isā, Nisā‘‘ mu’ءmināt (Beirut: Dār Ibn Zaydūn, 1987), 50–51 (published in Beirut, this circulates in Cairo). Or see al-Sa‘‘dāwīī;'s introduction to his life of Khadīī;ja: “So come, all, let us get to know this believing personality” (Nisā‘‘ mithāliyyāt, 11). And the end: “Does she not deserve our unwavering esteem and respect?” (17).

28. These collections can be grouped stylistically into ones that rely almost entirely on passages from Hadith and to a lesser extent the Qur’ءān; and those crafted as fictional narratives with heavy reliance on dialogue. (Of course, many Hadith contain or consist of dialogue, as does much of the Qur’ءān, so those that follow these sources closely are not devoid of dialogue.) Of those that use the former strategy, some gloss heavily, making it clear that they assume an audience ignorant of much Qur’ءān and Hadith vocabulary. ‘‘Isā (Nisā‘‘ mu’ءmināt) takes this furthest, footnoting difficult vocabulary and explaining even basic terms such as munāfiquūn (22), sahāba (38), and ansār (40).

29. ‘‘Isā, Nisā‘‘ mu’ءmināt, 26–27. This is offered in the context of narrating ‘‘A‘‘isha's life. The biography ends with examples of her great piety in her old age and makes no mention of her politically controversial activities. Cf. Spellberg, Politics, on the ability of commentators through the ages to ignore ‘‘A‘‘isha's politics or controversial events in her life when expedient.

30. See my later comments on the role of male players as characters in these biographies. In the earlier period the father's role was stressed, as we saw, while now the husband is predominant. I speculate that this parallels an emphasis early in the century in nationalist rhetoric on childhood formation and the importance of early training to adult success as contrasted with a greater emphasis in contemporary Islamist polemics on adult social roles as impermeable.

31. This is in line with the rhetorical practice of many contemporary Islamists who claim for themselves the authority to speak by eliding the distinction between “Islam” and “Islamism” (see, e.g., al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā, 232–36). Recall that most of these collections are by men.

32. This articulates Islamists' emphasis on propagating their authority through understanding, through persuasion rather than by force (al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā, 205–6).

33. Bint al-Hudā, Butuūlat al-mar’ءa al-muslima. This work bears no date, place of publication, or publisher; part of a series (no. 10), it is numbered pp. 207–36.

34. Negative models otherwise are rare, not surprising in a genre of exemplary lives, and as in the earlier period. Negative models often reinforce the message conveyed by exemplary lives: “As there are among men lost ones, blinded to the truth even when in enlightened hands, so there are women, those too haughty to accept guidance. These two women [the wives of Noah and Lot] were in the house of prophecy, each the wife of an honorable messenger whose home was filled with the light of God, . . . but she did not benefit from this light, instead turning away from her husband” (Khattāb, ‘‘Ishruūna imrā‘‘a, 12; emphasis mine). Note that this is couched in terms of women rejecting guidance; it is their husbands (not God) from whom they “turn away”—an indication of the inseparability of social and religious duty (obeying husbands is a religious duty).

35. Khattāb, ‘‘Ishruūna imrā‘‘a, 7.

36. Majdīī; Fathīī; al-Sayyid, Nisā‘‘ ‘‘arafna Allāh: Qissat islām thalātha ‘‘ashrata imrā’ءatan min shahīrāt Urubbā (Tantā: Dār al-Sahāba lil-turāth, 1992).

37. Lila Abu-Lughod, “Movie Stars and Islamic Moralism in Egypt,” Social Text 42 (1995): 53–67.

38. Muhammad Mukhtār Yūnus, “Bint al-Azwar,” NN 2:11 (June 1, 1923): 299.

39. See, e.g., ‘‘Isā, Nisā‘‘ mu’ءmināt: “If only every Muslim man and woman would peruse this blessed, fine life history it would be for him a light by which to be guided” (5).

40. If of a later time they are almost invariably of Arab ancestry. An exception that seems to prove the rule is al-Kuwayfīī;'s Nisā‘‘ fādilāt, which includes a few women of Perso-Indian ancestry; out of seventy-two women featured in this collection, one—Marie Curie—is neither Muslim nor “Eastern.”

41. A‘‘lām al-nisā‘‘ fī ءālamay al-‘‘arab wa-al-islām, 5 vols. (Beirut: Mu‘‘assasat al-Risāla, 1984).

42. al-Kuwayfīī;, Nisā‘‘ fādilāt, 5. Indeed, his biographies tend to be exact or near-exact copies of those in al-Kahhāla, omitting the different variants from Hadith that al-Kahhāla scrupulously gives and therefore creating a more straightforward, “readable,” narrative. The question of authors' use of sources here, as for the earlier period, is a fascinating one. In particular, these authors' use of and/or expressed attitudes toward the works of al-Kahhāla and ‘‘A’ءisha ‘‘Abd al-Rahmān are worth exploring further, but this is impossible here due to space constraints. This issue is entangled with the question of attitudes toward or construction of implied audiences. Al-Kuwayfīī; is typical in wanting to reach “the greatest number of girls and mothers” [sic—and of course this terminology is significant!]. Other authors show this construction of a popular audience by taking care to use a simple, straightforward style and to explain words taken from the Hadithand Qur’ءān.

43. See the quotation from Hudaybīī; in Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, 195.

44. The one exception is al-Sa‘‘dāwīī;'s biography of Kubaysha bt. Ma‘‘n. He emphasizes her service to women in going to Muhammad to ask whether she could remarry: “Look,” says al-Sa‘‘dāwīī;, “here is Kubaysha now, standing before the Messenger of God, telling her story, setting out her problem and that of the daughters of her kind” (42). But as in many of al-Sa‘‘dāwīī;'s biographies, the raison d'être is not to laud a woman for working on behalf of other women as much as it is to illustrate one of asbāb al-nuzuūl, contexts of Qur’ءānic revelations. The point of women's biography here is to instruct readers in the background necessary to read the Qur’ءān intelligently.

The shift from emphasizing the individual to stressing the collectivity is overdetermined. It not only suggests an acceptable ideological justification for women's nondomestic work but also can be seen as a move of cultural resistance against a perceived Western cult of individualism. Moreover, it may fulfill a psychosocial need. As Leila Ahmed has noted, to join an Islamist group promises the “comfort” of community in a context of social and economic alienation (Women and Gender in Islam, 223). In these thickly peopled biographies, there emerges an implicit emphasis on Islam as community. Within this, there is the comfort of having a clearly defined role. Biography can fulfill an important psychological function in offering a supposedly straightforward and “real,” attested, path to felicity, in concert with the reassurance that ideologies of Islamism offer to many (al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā, 203).

45. Zaynab al-Ghazālīī;, Ayyām min hayātī (Beirut: Dār al-shurūq, 1986), first published in 1977 and reissued in multiple printings.

46. Al-Ghazālīī;, Al-Dā‘‘ā’ءiya, 181.

47. Ibid., 182.

48. Ibid., 183.

49. Al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā, 14, 214. This parallels Islamist discourse on women working outside the home: it is justifiable to rectify temporary financial need, or if the movement needs womanpower, but not as a permanent state or for self-fulfillment. Women's political work is glossed as dilettantism (al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā, 210). This theme emerges in the cited essay by Bint al-Hudā.

50. Ibid., 214.

51. Al-Ghazālīī;, Al-Dā‘‘ā’ءiya, 169.

52. Ibid., 171.

53. ‘‘Isā, Nisā‘‘ mu’ءmināt, 36. Al-Kahhāla, A‘‘lām al-nisā‘‘ā’ء 4:110.

54. Al-Sa‘‘dāwīī; emphasizes Umm Salama's opinions as important to her husband Muhammad, beginning his biography with a generalizing statement:

There are those who ignore the opinions of women, and prohibit women from having ideas. To those people I offer the position taken by this [subject]—and a position taken with whom? With the Messenger of God. . . . [There follows description of the situation following the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, when Muhammad has trouble getting his followers to obey his orders.] Here the role of the Muslim woman emerged, as did her influence in resolving this dangerous situation, an honorable role that Islamic history recalls and respects. The Messenger of God came to his wife Umm Salama and told her what had happened. Do you know what position the Mother of the Believers took? Or what her thoughts were? Or her part in this crisis? . . . The Messenger of God relates [the events] to his wife, to a woman, and seeks her advice in a serious matter, and listens to her, and takes her advice, and sees no disgrace in that, when he is the leader of men, and the Prophet of God. . . . My friends, is that not a woman participating, with her thinking and her views, in her society's problems? And the very Messenger of God did not prevent her from doing so! History tells us of many women of opinions, ideas, and principles, who took honorable stands that history has recorded. (Nisā‘‘ mithāliyyāt, 23–25).

55. Talhami, Mobilization, 140.

56. Note the reference to an accepted female role on the battlefield, presented repeatedly, as it was early in the century. Yet, then and now, this role's dominance is tempered by portraits of warrior women—now exclusively Muslim; then they included Boudicca, Jeanne d'Arc, and others.

57. Al-Sa‘‘dāwīī;, Nisā‘‘ mithāliyyāt, 48–49.

58. Comments Talhami, “Women are expected to cooperate with their husbands, for disobeying any head of an institution will destroy its system and disrupt progress” (Mobilization, 131).

59. Ibid., 133, citing the polemicist Mahmoud A. H. Muhammad.

60. Ibid., 133–34.

61. Al-Bizrīī; quotes Muhammad al-Ghazālīī;, speaking in a public forum in 1986: “If the man or children needs food prepared or a reposeful welcome, the woman stays in her home. It is not fitting for her to go to the mosque and leave the house neglected. She will attain the merit/recompense [of a good deed] from the group from which she stayed away for a legitimate [shar‘‘ī] reason” (Dunyā, 210).

62. Al-Sa‘‘dāwīī;, Nisā‘‘ mithāliyyāt, 30.

63. ‘‘Alīī;, Nisā‘‘ al-nabī, 8.

64. At this point comes a comment that seems pointed in today's political climate: “He had returned from his journey in a sound and safe position, and no harm had come to him from the Jews.”

65. ‘‘Alīī;, Nisā‘‘ al-nabī, 9–19.

66. Generalized declarations on women's emotions and practices mark these texts: “She [‘‘A‘‘isha] felt the jealousy that women feel” (al-Shinnāwīī;, Zawjāt al-rasuūl, 49); “She [Sarah] began to scream, and struck her face as women do when they are amazed. She said, 'yā waylata,' which is a word in women's mouths when something that amazes them suddenly comes to them” (‘‘Abd al-Hamīī;d Kishk, Ummahāt al-anbiyā‘‘ [Cairo: Dār al-manār, 1995], 16).

67. Al-Shinnāwīī;, Banāt al-rasuūl, 13. This text also features Zaynab's inner thoughts as emotional confusion. The same story occurs, but without dialogue or dramatic details. Emphasis on internal wondering is also found in alShinnāwīī;'s life of Khadīī;ja bt. Khuwaylid (Zawjāt al-rasuūl, 5).

68. The author then quotes the Hadith in which Umm Sālim asks him to convert as her dowry, and he does so. The rest of the biography centers on how she worked for the happiness of her son, asking Muhammad to pray for him. The evidence that she was highly intelligent is that she took her son to serve the Prophet when he came to Medina (‘‘Isā, Nisā‘‘ mu’ءmināt, 47).

69. Al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā, 199–200.

70. Zaynab al-Ghazālīī;, quoted in Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, 199.

71. Al-Ghazālīī;, al-Dā‘‘ā’ءiya, 177.

72. Ibid,. 178. Similarly, al-Ghazālīī; explains that Rumaysā‘‘, a favorite of contemporary biographers rarely found at the turn of the century, turned down suitors because she wanted to focus on bringing up her son (179–80).

73. Al-Shinnāwīī;, Ummahāt al-sahāba, 5.

74. Ibid., 7, 11. Similarly, Kishk's volume on mothers of the prophets focuses on the stories of the prophets themselves, via the theme of the mother. Women provide a way to tell a story about men. In this context the descriptive strategies of some biographers are almost too good to be true: “The face of the sun hid behind the mountains of Umm al-Qurā [Mecca] like a virgin concealing herself in her bower when the caravan could be seen approaching from Syria, nine hundred burdened mounts. Maysara hurried to the foremost of the ladies of Quraysh to tell her the good news that her caravan had arrived.” Al-Shinnāwīī;, Zawjāt al-rasūl, 4.

75. Kishk, Ummahāt al-anbiyā‘‘, 5.

76. Talhami, Mobilization, 70 ff.

77. Ibid., 137. This is also emphasized by Kandiyoti.

78. It is worth noting here that Kishk's biographies especially (but not exclusively) carry barely veiled allusions to the current political situation in Egypt. Kishk's biography of the mother of Moses envelops a long digression on just rule and God's treatment of oppressive rulers, juxtaposed with a portrait of the good ruler who does not go against God's ruling. Don't think God is ignorant of the corruption in the country, warns the author (19–22). See also 28–30, where the author emphasizes the absolute nature of divine control over events and states the inevitability of undergoing hardship for the cause. Yet punishment of the tyrant is also inevitable; but patience is necessary. In this book, “the believer” is male; woman is “the pious vessel.” Having given birth, she drops out of the picture.

79. Al-Shinnāwīī;, Zawjāt al-sahāba, 5.

80. Talhami, Mobilization, 131–32. This, she says, was linked to disputes over the place of democracy within an Islamist system, with revolutionaries labeling these as antithetical systems.

81. These biographies tend (with some exceptions) to support a somewhat more conservative agenda than is found in the writings of certain “reformist spokesmen” such as Muhammad al-Ghazālīī; (e.g., see Talhami's descriptions of his writings, Mobilization, 125 ff.), in terms of women's confinement to the home, for example, and the lack of desirability of her work outside the home “as a secular vocation” (130). Yet they tend to follow al-Ghazālīī; (who invokes early Muslim women as exemplars) in allowing women to work within the sphere of al-da’ءwa (the Islamic Call) (Talhami, Mobilization, 130–31, 133).

82. As Talhami says, in this polemical writing “the emphasis is not on women's rights but on the relevance of these rights to the social good” (Mobilization, 128). ‘‘Abd al-Mu‘‘izz Khattāb makes this dilemma explicit when he says in his prologue to Twenty Women in Light of the Qur’ءān: “Perhaps my most important aim in this book has been to clarify that woman has a responsibility independent of the man; that she bears the consequences alone whatever her relation to the man, and whether he was prophet or tyrant. For in the face of principle or belief, ties are cut; the human being comes alone before his creator.” Yet, his sketches (more complex than some I have referred to here) still tend to privilege women's domestic roles. Khattāb, ‘‘Ishruūna imra’ءa, 7. This follows a moving dedication to the author's late sister, praised above all for her piety.

83. Mernissi, Forgotton Queens. On Egypt, see my “Coming to Light: Nour Publishing House and the Production of Gendered Knowledge,” Middle East Women's Studies Review 12:1 (March 1997): 7–8. Addressing the Association of Middle East Women's Studies, Soraya Altorki highlighted the roles of Nour and the Women and Memory Forum in producing alternative knowledges of the historical record. Soraya Altorki, “Change from Within: Retrospect and Prospect in the Study of Arab Women” (paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association Thirty-first Annual Meeting, San Francisco, November 22, 1997).

84. E.g., see Muhammad al-Jawādīī;, Mudhakkirāt al-mar’ءa al-misriyya (Cairo: Dār al-shurūq, 1990). See Kallās, al-Haraka al-fikriyya, 38–42.

85. Al-Bizrīī;, Dunyā, 231–233.