Gender 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 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Alyssa Gabbay, 2020 Alyssa Gabbay has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series design by www.paulsmithdesign.com Cover image: From the Siyer-i Nebī, CBL T 419, fol. 40v. (© The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-8386-0231-4 ePDF: 978-1-8386-0234-5 eBook: 978-1-8386-0233-8 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. 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