Muslim Midwives
Author | : Avner Gilʻadi |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 209 |
Release | : 2015 |
Genre | : Health & Fitness |
ISBN | : 1107054214 |
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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.