structural:scholar_edition, information:classification, information:highlighting, information:filtering
Pre-modern Middle East

Scholarship on the Middle East before the 1800s has suffered from the limited number direct records of women's lives during ancient and medieval periods. Since the vast majority of historical information has come from male authors and is primarily focused on men, accounts and data which are authored by and center on women are rare. Much of what has been synthesized has come from art, court records, religious doctrine, and other mentions. Researchers have made particular use of court records from the Ottoman Empire. Despite relative sparseness, valuable sources have been identified, and historians have been able to publish recounts of women's social, economic, political, and cultural involvement. Marten Sol's 1999 Women in the Ancient Near East offers a comprehensive overview of women's lives in ancient Babylonia and Mesopotamia. Topics include, but are not limited to, dress, marriage, slavery, sexual autonomy, employment, and religious involvement. Amira El-Azhary Sonbol's Beyond the Exotic: Women's Histories in Islamic Societies brings together twenty-four historians' essays on sources that can be used to fill gaps in conventional historical narratives. Among the essays, analyses of women's legal statuses, patronage of arts, and religious involvement according to region figure prominently.