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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
In his monumental “Introduction to History,” al-Muqaddima, Ibn Khaldun, the well-known Muslim historiographer and philosopher of history (d. 1406 a.d.), dedicates a whole chapter to midwifery (ṣināʿat al-tawlīd) that is as original in conception as it is rich in detail. The chapter is included in Part V, which offers a survey of professions and crafts—“the ‘accidents’ of sedentary culture”—that for Ibn Khaldun reflect the sophistication of urban life. Within this survey, midwifery ranks among the most basic crafts (ummahāt al-ṣanāʾiʿ), being “something necessary in civilization and a matter of general concern, because it assures, as a rule, the life of the newborn child.” Moreover, like “the art of writing, book production, singing, and medicine,” midwifery is regarded as a noble craft because of the subject that is at the heart of it (sharīf bi-l-mawḍūʿ).
Author's note: This article is part of a work in progress on the sociocultural history of midwifery in premodern Muslim societies. While working on this topic, I cannot avoid thinking with sorrow and empathy of those pregnant Palestinian women in the occupied territories whom the Israeli army blocked from getting to the hospital and with horror of the babies who died as a result. I started the research for this project during a sabbatical in Harvard Divinity School, where I enjoyed the kind hospitality and generous support of the Center for the Study of World Religions. I am grateful to Dr. Adrien Leites of the Sorbonne (Paris IV) University and Prof. Meir Malul of the University of Haifa for their advice, as well as my friend Dick Bruggeman for his unstinting help in editing the text.
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2 ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima, ed. E. Quatremère (Paris: Bibliothèque Impériale, 1858), 2:316. Translated by Rosenthal, Franz as The Muqaddima: An Introduction to History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), 2:355–56Google Scholar.
3 Another term still in use today to designate the traditional midwife is dāya, a Persian word meaning “wet nurse” that served as a synonym of qābila as early as the Mamluk period. See Mahmoud Omidsalar and Theresa Omidsalar, “Dāya,” Encyclopaedia Iranica 7 (1996): 164–66. For the use of the term dāya in Egypt see, for instance, Sonbol, Amira El-Azhary, The Creation of a Medical Profession in Egypt, 1800–1922 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 3, 135Google Scholar.
4 Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima, 2:328; trans. Rosenthal, 2:368.
5 On Ibn Khaldun's familiarity with Galen's writings, see Dale, “Ibn Khaldun,” 437.
6 Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima, 2:328; trans. Rosenthal, 2:368.
7 Cf. Shorter, Edward, A History of Women's Bodies (Harmondworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1984), 38Google Scholar.
8 Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima, 2:330; trans. Rosenthal, 2:370. According to Gerrit Bos, the passive role of Muslim male physicians in the treatment of women's diseases due to ethical considerations explains the modest contribution of Arabic medicine to gynecology and obstetrics. See Ibn al-Jazzar on Sexual Diseases and Their Treatment, trans. and study Gerrit Bos (New York: Kegan Paul, 1997), 50–51; Bos, Gerrit, “Ibn al-Jazzār on Women's Diseases and Their Treatment,” Medical History 37 (1993): 312CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
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13 Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima, 2:331–32; trans. Rosenthal, 2:371.
14 Within my research project, the final results of which I plan to publish as a book, I have used a wide range of sources, wider than I could discuss in this paper, including, for instance, classical dictionaries, adab collections, and iconography. Important and interesting work has been done on the transition from traditional to Western–modern midwifery in the Middle East in the 19th and 20th centuries, but, again, this is outside the scope of this article. See, for example, Abugideiri, Hibba, “Off to Work at Home: Egyptian Midwives Blur Public–Private Boundaries,” Hawwa 6 (2008): 254–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fahmy, Khaled, “Women, Medicine, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Abu-Lughod, Lila (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 35–72Google Scholar; Hatem, Mervat F., “The Professionalization of Health and the Control of Women's Bodies as Modern Governmentalities in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” in Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era, ed. Zilfi, Madeline C. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 66–80Google Scholar; Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh, “The Politics of Reproduction: Maternalism and Women's Hygiene in Iran, 1869–1941,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (2006): 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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17 Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Sakhawi, al-Dawʾ al-Lamiʿ li-Ahl al-Qarn al-Tasiʿ (Beirut: Maktabat al-Hayat, n.d.), 12:144, no. 891. Cf. ʿUmar b. Fahd al-Hashimi al-Makki (15th century a.d.), Muʿjam al-Shuyukh, ed. Muhammad al-Zahi (Riyad: Dar al-Yamama, 1982), 304–305. The entry devoted to Umm al-Khayr is the only one in this collection to mention midwifery as a woman's craft.
18 Al-Sakhawi, al-Dawʾ al-Lamiʿ, 12:114, no. 689.
19 Ibid., 12:31, no. 177.
20 Berkey, Jonathan, “Women and Islamic Education in the Mamluk Period,” in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Keddie, Nikki R. and Baron, Beth (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), 143–57Google Scholar; Huda Lutfi, “Al-Sakhawi's Kitab al-Nisaʾ as a Source for the Social and Economic History of Muslim Women during the Fifteenth Century a.d.,” The Muslim World 71 (1981): 104–124, esp. 119–21.
21 Shams al-Din Abu ʿAbdallah Muhammad b. Ibrahim b. Abi Bakr al-Jazari, Taʾrikh Hawadith al-Zaman wa-Anbaʾihi, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salam Tadmuri (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAsriyya, 1998), 3:701.
22 For an observation of an ethnographer who worked in Palestine in the first half of the 20th century on the midwife's preferred age, see Granqvist, Hilma, Birth and Childhood among the Arabs (Helsinki: Söderstorm, 1947), 60–61Google Scholar.
23 Micheau, Françoise, “Great Figures in Arabic Medicine According to Ibn al-Qifṭī,” in Health, Disease, and Healing in Medieval Culture, ed. Campbell, Sh. et al. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), 170–73Google Scholar; Shefer, Miri, “Physicians in Mamluk and Ottoman Courts,” in Mamluks and Ottomans: Studies in Honor of Michael Winter, ed. Wasserstein, David and Ayalon, Ami (New York: Routledge, 2006), 118Google Scholar.
24 al-ʿAbdari, Ibn al-Hajj, al-Madkhal (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1972), 3:297Google Scholar.
25 Ibid., 3:296–310. Cf. Huda Lutfi, “Manners and Customs of Fourteenth-Century Cairene Women: Female Anarchy versus Male Sharʿi Order in Muslim Prescriptive Treatises,” in Women in Middle Eastern History, ed. Keddie and Baron, 99–121.
26 Abu Dawud Sulayman b. Hassan ibn Juljul, Tabaqat al-Atibbaʾ wa-l-Hukamaʾ, ed. Sayyid Fuʾad (Cairo: al-Maʿhad al-ʿIlmi al-Faransi li-l-Athar al-Sharqiyya, 1955). See also A. Dietrich, “Ibn Djuldjul,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New edition (hereafter, E.I. 2), 3:755–56.
27 Jamal al-Din Abu -l-Hasan ʿAli b. Yusuf ibn al-Qifti, Akhbar al-ʿUlamaʾ bi-Akhbar al-Hukamaʾ (Cairo: Matbaʿat Muhammad Ismaʿil, 1908). See also A. Dietrich, “Ibn al-Ḳifṭī,” E.I. 2, 3:840.
28 Ahmad b. al-Qasim ibn Abi Usaybiʿa, ʿUyun al-Anbaʾ fi Tabaqat al-Atibbaʾ, ed. August Müller (Königsberg, Germany: Selbstverlag, 1884). See also J. Vernet, “Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa,” E.I. 2, 3:693–94.
29 Ibn Abi Usaybiʿa, ʿUyun al-Anbaʾ, 1:123. Abu-Bakr, Umayma and Saʿdi, Huda, al-Nisaʾ wa-Mihnat al-Tibb fi al-Mujtamaʿat al-Islamiyya (Cairo: Multaqa al-Marʾa wa-l-Dhakira, 1999), 17, 25Google Scholar. On female occulists in the medieval Middle East, see Pormann, Peter E. and Savage-Smith, Emilie, Medieval Islamic Medicine (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2007), 104Google Scholar. On ophthalmology as a female specialization in medieval south Europe, see Shatzmiller, Joseph, Jews, Medicine and Medieval Society (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1994), 111Google Scholar.
30 Two midwives of the Ibn Zuhr family are mentioned in an entry devoted to Abu Bakr ibn Zuhr al-Hafid of Seville (d. 1198 or 1199 a.d.), Ibn Abi Usaybiʿa, ʿUyun al-Anbaʾ, 2:67–74 (see n. 38). See also R. Arnaldez, “Ibn Zuhr,” E.I. 2, 3:976–79.
31 Cf. McTavish, Lianne, Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005), 2Google Scholar.
32 Ullmann, Manfred, Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden/Köln: E. J. Brill, 1970), 139–40Google Scholar; Hitchcock, R., “Arabic Medicine: The Andalusi Context,” in The Human Embryo: Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions, ed. Dundtan, G. R. (Exeter, U.K.: University of Exeter Press, 1990), 70–78Google Scholar, esp. 70, 75–76. For similar compilations in the Middle East and North Africa, see Giladi, Avner, Children of Islam: Concepts of Childhood in Medieval Muslim Society (Houndmills/London: Macmillan, 1992), 4–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Castells, Margarita, “Medicine in Al-Andalus until the Fall of the Caliphate,” in The Formation of al-Andalus, ed. Fierro, Maribel and Samsó, Julio (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1998), 2:393–402, esp. 397–98Google Scholar.
33 Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, 149–51; E. Savage-Smith, “al-Zahrawi,” E.I. 2, 11:398–99; Pormann and Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 61.
34 Savage-Smith, Emilie, “The Exchange of Medical and Surgical Ideas between Europe and Islam,” in The Diffusion of Greco-Roman Medicine into the Middle East and the Caucasus, ed. Greppin, John A. C. et al. (Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Books, 1999), 39–55Google Scholar.
35 Abucasis on Surgery and Instruments, A Definitive Translation and Commentary by M. S. Spink and G. L. Lewis (London: The Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1973), 2. See also Castells, “Medicine in Al-Andalus,” 398–402.
36 Savage-Smith, “al-Zahrawi.”
37 Al-Zahrawi, in his al-Tasrif, admits, however, that one only rarely finds competent female doctors. See Savage-Smith, Emilie, “Medicine,” in Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, ed. Rashid, R. (London/New York: Routledge, 1996), 3:947Google Scholar.
38 Ibn Abi Usaybiʿa, 2:70. Expert advice of midwives (qawl al-qawābil) is mentioned in a legal treatise by Abu-l-Hasan ʿAli b. Muhammad al-Baq al-Andalusi al-Umawi (d. 1362 a.d.), Kitab Zahrat al-Rawd fi Talkhis Taqdir al-Fard, ed. Rachid El Hour (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 2003), Arabic text 67.
39 Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, al-Durar al-Kamina fi Aʿyan al-Miʾa al-Thamina, ed. Muhammad Sayyid Jad al-Haqq (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Haditha, 1966), 1:195–96 (entry no. 473). Cf. ʿIsa, Ahmad, Taʾrikh al-Bimaristanat fi al-Islam (Damascus: Matbuʿat Jamʿiyyat al-Tamaddun al-Islami, 1939), 15–17Google Scholar.
40 Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib, Al-Ihata fi Akhbar Gharnata, ed. Muhammad ʿAbdallah ʿInan (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, n.d.), 1:438–39. My thanks to Prof. Maribel Fierro and Dr. Maria Luisa Avila for helping me locate al-Tanjali and his daughter in the biographical dictionaries.
41 Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi, Tawq al-Hamama fi al-Ilfa wa-l-Ullaf, ed. Ihsan ʿAbbas. Susa, Tunis: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1992(?), 131. Translated by Arberry, Arthur J. as The Ring of the Dove (London: Luzac, 1953), 74Google Scholar.
42 M. Nabrona–Cárceles, “Women at Court: A Prosopographic Study of the Court of Carlos III of Navarre (1387–1425),” Medieval Prosopography 22 (2001): 31–64. Cited in Monica Green, “Bodies, Gender, Health, Disease: Recent Work on Medieval Women's Medicine,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, n.s. 3, vol. 2 (2005): 14–15, 24–25.
43 Powers, David S., “Four Cases Relating to Women and Divorce in Al-Andalus and the Maghrib, 1100–1500,” in Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and Their Judgments, ed. Masud, Muhammad Khalid et al. (Boston: E. J. Brill, 2006), 390Google Scholar.
44 Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima, 2:330–31; trans. Rosenthal, 2:370.
45 For the historical development of these texts, see Katz, Marion Holmes, The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam (New York: Routledge, 2007), 6–12Google Scholar. For a comparison between the birth of Muhammad and that of Jesus, see Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Salihi (d. 1535 or 1536 a.d.), Subul al-Huda wa-l-Rashad fi Sirat Khayr al-ʿIbad, ed. Mustafa ʿAbd al-Wahid (Cairo: Lajnat Ihyaʾ al-Turath al-Islami, 1972), 1:414.
46 W. Raven, “Sīra,” E.I. 2, 9:660; W. Raven, “Sīra and the Qur'ān,” Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an (hereafter E.Q.), 5:29.
47 Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet, 6, 8–10.
48 Meir J. Kister, “The Sirah Literature,” in Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. Alfred F. L. Beeston et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 354. For a detailed discussion of the motifs of the preexistence of the Prophet and the Light of Muhammad, see Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet, 12–29; Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1995), 37–38; and note 85. See also Adrien Leites, “Temps béni et temps historique. Deux conceptions religieuses du temps dans la Tradition Musulmane,” Studia Islamica 89 (1999): 23–41, esp. 37.
49 Denis Gril, “Le corps du Prophète,” in Le corps et le sacré en Orient musulman, ed. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Bernard Heyberger, Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranées 113/114 (2006): 41.
50 Andrae, Tor, Muhammed: The Man and his Faith (London: Allen & Unwin, 1956), 35Google Scholar. For a detailed survey and discussions of the narrations of the event of the Prophet's birth, see Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet, 32–41.
51 See, for example, Ginzberg, Louis, The Legends of the Jews (Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 1998), 2:262–65Google Scholar.
52 See Sylvie Laurent, “L'accouchement dans l'iconographie médiévale d'après les miniatures de la Bibliothèque Nationale,” Maladies, Médecines et Sociétés, Actes du VIe Colloque d'Histoire au Présent (Paris: L'Harmattan et Histoire au présent, 1993), 1:150. The Qurʾanic story of Jesus’ birth (19:23–26) contains a reference to the pangs of labor only. In Islamic-Shiʿi tradition, Fatima—the Prophet's daughter, wife of ʿAli b. Abi Talib, and mother of al-Hasan and al-Husayn—is described, like Mary, as batūl, a virgin, and as cleansed from the physical impurities of her sex, that is, menstruation and postpartum bleeding. Moreover, her sons, according to one report, were born from her thigh. See Cortese, Delia and Calderini, Simonetta, Women and the Fatimids in the World of Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
53 See Ishaq, Muhammad ibn, Sirat Rasul Allah, ed. Wüstenfeld, Ferdinand (Göttingen, Germany: Dieterichsche Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1858), 1:102–103Google Scholar. Translated by Guillaume, Alfred as The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of (Ibn) Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Karachi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 69–70Google Scholar. For other Muslim scholars who followed Ibn Ishaq's line, see, for instance, Abu Bakr Ahmad b. al-Husayn al-Bayhaqi (d. 1066 a.d.), Dalaʾil al-Nubuwwa (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1985), 1:102–14; Shams al-Din Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Dhahabi (d. 1374 a.d.), Taʾrikh al-Islam wa-Wafayat al-Mashahir wa-l-Aʿlam (Beirut: Dar al-ʿArab al-Islami, 2003), 1:486. See also Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet, 8.
54 A similar description of Muhammad's miraculous birth appears in the early hadith collection of ʿAbd al-Razzaq b. Hammam al-Sanʿani (d. 827 a.d.), al-Musannaf, ed. Habiburrahman al-Aʿzami (Beirut: Majlis ʿIlmi, 1972), 5:318, and in a compilation by Ahmad b. ʿAli al-Tabarsi (a Shiʿi scholar of the 11th to 12th century a.d.), al-Ihtijaj (Najaf, Iraq: Dar al-Nuʿman, 1966), 331. See also Muhammad b. Hibban (d. 965 a.d.), Kitab al-Thiqat (Hayderabad, India: Daʾirat al-Maʿarif al-ʿUthmaniyya, 1923), 1:41. Cf. Leites, Adrien, “Sīra and the Question of Tradition,” in The Biography of Muhammad: The Issue of the Sources, ed. Motzki, Harald (Leiden, Boston & Köln: E. J. Brill, 2000), 49–66Google Scholar, esp. 58, 59, 61–63; Schimmel, Annemarie, “The Prophet Muhammad as a Centre of Muslim Life and Thought,” in We Believe in One God: The Experience of God in Christianity and Islam, ed. Schimmel, Annemarie and Falaturi, Abdoldjavad (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 43Google Scholar.
55 See Burhan al-Din al-Halabi (d. 1635 a.d.), Insan al-ʿUyun fi Sirat al-Amin wa-l-Maʾmun (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Tijariyya al-Kubra, n.d.), 1:80. According to al-Halabi (65), in a symbolic act predicting his rule in the world, Muhammad also took a handful of soil immediately after coming out of his mother's belly.
56 Saʿd, Muhammad ibn, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, ed. Sachau, Eduard (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1904–1940), 1:62–63Google Scholar. On a similar description of the birth of Moses in Jewish sources—including the motifs of light and circumcision—see, for instance, Babylonian Talmud, “Sotah,” 12/a. These motifs were further developed in the story of Moses’ birth as it appears in later medieval Jewish sources, for example, Midrash Rabbah-Exodus, trans. S. M. Lehrman (London & Bournmouth: Soncio Press), 1951, 26–27, and in Islamic sources of the time, possibly with mutual exchanges. See, for example, ʿAli b. Hasan ibn ʿAsakir (d. 1176 a.d.), Taʾrikh Madinat Dimashq (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1998), 61:17.
57 There are, however, contradictory reports in Muslim tradition according to which Muhammad was either circumcised by the angel Gabriel during the event known as sharḥ al-ṣadr (“the opening of the Prophet's breast,” see below) or by his grandfather, ʿAbd al-Muttalib, on the seventh day after his birth. See, for example, Muhammad ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350 a.d.), Tuhfat al-Mawdud bi-Ahkam al-Mawlud (Bombay: Sharafuddin & Sons, 1961), 120–24. Cf. Kister, Meir J., “. . . ‘And he was born circumcised’ . . .: Some Notes on Circumcision in Hadith,” Oriens 34 (1994): 10–30Google Scholar. Some elements in the descriptions of Muhammad's birth reappear in Shiʿi traditions on the birth of their imams. See Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad ʿAli, The Divine Guide in Early Shiʿism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994), 56–58Google Scholar; Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505 a.d.), al-Khasaʾis al-Kubra, ed. Muhammad Khalil Harras (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Haditha, 1967), 1:132–33; Abu al-Fidaʾ Ismaʿil ibn Kathir, The Life of the Prophet Muhammad, trans. Trevor LeGassick (Reading, U.K.: Garnet, 1998), 1:149. See also, for example, Ahmad b. Hajar al-Haytami (d. 1567 a.d.), Mawlid al-Nabi (n.p., n.d.), 22.
58 See also Jamal al-Din ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1200 a.d.), Sifat al-Safwa, ed. Mahmud Fakhuri (Aleppo, Syria: Dar al-Waʿy, 1969), 1:52.
59 al-Kharkushi, Muhammad b. Ibrahim, Manahil al-Shifaʾ (Mecca: Dar al-Bashaʾir al-Islamiyya, 2003), 341–64Google Scholar.
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61 See al-Kharkushi, Manahil al-Shifaʾ, 354, 361, where Amina is described as embarrassed, amazed, and angry due to the absence of her relatives at such a difficult time for her, an absence that no doubt seemed to her in total contradiction with the common practice of familial, particularly female, support. Cf. Ibn Fahd, Ithaf al-Wara, 46. On the theme of Amina's loneliness at the Prophet's birth, see also Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet, 37.
62 Al-Kharkushi, Manahil al-Shifaʾ, 354–55; Ibn Fahd, Ithaf al-Wara, 47.
63 ʿUthman b. Abi al-ʿAs al-Thaqafi (d. 671 a.d.), one of the most well-known companions of the Prophet, played an important role in the early Islamic conquests. See E.I. 2, 1:695b; 2:811b, 823b; 4:14b; Khayr al-Din al-Zirikli, al-Aʿlam (Beirut: Dar al-ʿIlm li-l-Malayin, 1992), 4:207.
64 According to ʿAli b. Muhammad al-Mawardi (d. 1058 a.d.), it was Umm ʿUthman who covered the newborn child with a pottery vessel. See al-Mawardi, Aʿlam al-Nubuwwa (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1987), 273.
65 Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari (d. 922 a.d.), Taʾrikh al-Rusul wa-l-Muluk, ed. M. J. De Joeje (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1964), Prima Series 2:968–69.
66 M. Th. Houtsma and M. W. Watt, “ʿAbd al-Rhman b. ʿAwf,” E.I. 2, 1:84.
67 Ibn Saʿd, Tabaqat, 8:180. It is interesting that Ibn Saʿd and later biographers, such as Ibn al-Athir, Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, and Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, in the entries they dedicated to al-Shifaʾ in their biographical dictionaries, ignore altogether her presence at the birth of the Prophet.
68 al-Isbahani, Abu Nuʿaym, Dalaʾil al-Nubuwwa (Hayderabad, India: Daʾirat al-Maʿarif al-ʿUthmaniyya, 1977), 93–94Google Scholar. For al-Shifaʾ in later texts see, for example, Abu al-Fidaʾ Ismaʿil ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), 1:209–12; idem, The Life of the Prophet Muhammad, 1:145–53. For a detailed discussion of the themes of the first sound made by the infant Muhammad and the blessing his midwife heard, see al-Halabi, Insan al-ʿUyun, 1:76, 83–84. In addition to the popular explanation of the baby's first cry, namely, that it was a response to the devil poking his body, al-Halabi offers an interesting observation from our point of view: it is the difficulty involved in departing the warm womb and being transferred to the relatively cold air of the outside world that causes the cry.
69 al-Majlisi, Muhammad Baqir (d. 1700 a.d.), Bihar al-Anwar (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Wafaʾ, 1983), 15:329Google Scholar.
70 Ibn Fahd, Ithaf al-Wara, 47; Ahmad b. ʿAbd al-Rahman ʿAbd al-Karim ibn Makiyya al-Shafiʿi al-Nabulsi (d.1502 a.d.), Durar al-Bihar fi Mawlid al-Mukhtar, Ms. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin 3859(4), fol. 115a; al-Haytami, Mawlid al-Nabi, 17. See also al-Majlisi, Bihar al-Anwar.
71 Al-Kharkushi, Manahil al-Shifaʾ, 349–51. See also Ibn Hibban, Thiqat, 1:41, where the motif of the light appears also in connection with Amina's pregnancy period. According to another version, however, Amina used to complain during her pregnancy that the burden of her fetus was too heavy. See Muhammad ibn Zafar, Kitab Anbaʾ Nujabaʾ al-Abnaʾ, ed. Mustafa al-Qabbani (Cairo, n.d.), 20.
72 Al-Salihi, Subul al-Huda, 411; al-Haytami, Mawlid al-Nabi, 16.
73 Al-Nabulsi, Durar al-Bihar, fol. 115b.
74 In Mesopotamian literature female deities seem to have been involved in midwifery. There are also a few places in the Bible where metaphoric imagery is used of God as a midwife, for instance, Psalms 22:10. See Marsman, Hennie J., Women in Ugarit and Israel: Their Social and Religious Position in the Context of the Ancient Near East (Boston: E. J. Brill, 2003), 231, 423–24, 430, 725Google Scholar.
75 Al-Kharkushi, Manahil al-Shifaʾ, 354; Ibn Fahd, Ithaf al-Wara, 46; al-Haytami, Mawlid al-Nabi, 16–22. Cf. Qurʾan 19:23–26.
76 Al-Kharkushi Manahil al-Shifaʾ, 354–55; Ibn Fahd, Ithaf al-Wara, 47; al-Haytami, Mawlid al-Nabi; al-Halabi, Insan al-ʿUyun, 1:77. For other versions, see Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet, 36. In a Shiʿi Imami text from the 10th to 11th century a.d. describing, rather similarly, the birth of ʿAli b. Abi Talib, Abu Talib, while rushing to summon four of his wife's friends to help when she is about to give birth, is warned by a mysterious voice that impure women are not allowed to touch the body of the expected baby, “the friend of God.” Then four female figures appear dressed in white silk and exuding a perfumed scent and, replacing the human helpers, accompany ʿAli's mother throughout the delivery. See al-Fattal al-Naysaburi (d. 1114 a.d.), Rawdat al-Waʿizin (Najaf, Iraq: al-Maktaba al-Haydariyya, 1966), 79.
77 A. J. Wensinck, “Āsiya,” E.I.2, 1:710.
78 Al-Halabi, Insan al-ʿUyun.
79 Al-Haytami, Mawlid al-Nabi; A. J. Wensinck and Ch. Pellat, “Ḥūr,” E.I. 2, 3:581–82. On similar narrations disseminated by Ibn Babawayh in the context of the birth of both ʿAli and Fatima, see Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet, 37–39.
80 Al-Halabi, Insan al-ʿUyun, 1:77. Cf. Ibn ʿAsakir, Taʾrikh Madinat Dimashq, 61:17–18 for the two different versions of the story of Moses’ birth. According to one, Moses’ mother gave birth with the help of a midwife; according to the other, no helper at all supported her, and only Moses’ sister was present.
81 Manuela Marin, “Women and Sainthood in Medieval Morocco,” in Donne tra saperi e poteri nella storia delle religioni, ed. Sofia Boesch Gajano and Enzo Pae (Brescia, Italy: Morcelliana, 2007), 283–98.
82 Al-Kharkushi, Manahil al-Shifaʾ, 360–61; Ibn Fahd, Ithaf al-Wara, 51. Muhammad as a prophet used to transfer his blessing to young children by passing saliva from his own mouth to theirs. See Giladi, Children of Islam, 35–41.
83 See Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder, 59–64.
84 Al-Kharkushi, Manahil al-Shifaʾ, 361.
85 According to some sources, Salma was the freed slave of Safiyya bint ʿAbd al-Muttalib, Muhammad's aunt. See, for example, ʿIzz al-Din ibn al-Athir, Usd al-Ghaba fi Maʿrifat al-Sahaba, ed. Muhammad Ibrahim al-Bana and Muhammad Ahmad ʿAshur (n.p.: al-Shaʿb, n.d.), 7:147–48.
86 See, for instance, ʿAli b. Muhammad b. Masʿud al-Khuzaʿi, Takhrij al-Dalalat al-Samʿiyya, ed. Ihsan ʿAbbas (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1985), 749; Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani, Tahdhib al-Tahdhib, ed. Mustafa ʿAbd al-Qadir ʿAta (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), 12:376.
87 Ibn Saʿd, Tabaqat, 8:164–65.
88 See, for example, Ibn al-Athir, Usd al-Ghaba.
89 al-ʿAsqalani, Ibn Hajar, Al-Isaba fi Tamyiz al-Sahaba (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1990), 8:195Google Scholar, entry no. 11360.
90 See Fierro, Maribel, “Al-Asfar,” Studia Islamica 77 (1993): 169–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Al-Asfar Again,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 22 (1998): 196–213.
91 See Stol, Marten, “Private Life in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Sasson, Jack M. (New York: Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, 1995), 1:491Google Scholar.
92 Exodus, 1:15–21. Cf. Ron Barkai, A History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts (Boston: E. J. Brill, 1998), 51.
93 Midrash Rabbah-Exodus, 19–22.
94 Giladi, Avner, Infants, Parents and Wet Nurses: Medieval Islamic Views on Breastfeeding and Their Social Implications (Leiden/Boston/Köln: E. J. Brill, 1999), 50–51Google Scholar.
95 Benkheira, Mohammed H., “Le commerce conjugal gâte-t-il le lait maternel? Sexualité, medicine et droit dans le sunnisme ancien,” Arabica 50 (2003): 1–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
96 Idem, “Donner le sein c'est comme donner le jour: La doctrine de l'allaitement dans le sunnism medieval,” Studia Islamica 92 (2001): 5–52. Shiʿi Imami scholars raise the question of the legality of marriage between a man and the midwife who helped his mother give birth to him or between him and the midwife's daughter. It is clear that Shiʿi scholars are divided here: some disapprove of such unions, regarding it as reprehensible yet not formally forbidden; others, considering it a taboo similar, for instance, to that upon intimate relations between a male doctor and his female patients known in certain societies, categorically prohibit it; and finally, some allow it, but only in certain circumstances. Among the last group, a distinction is made between a midwife who is a helper in childbirth (qabilat wa-marrat) and who is allowed to marry the child when he comes to age, and a midwife who also serves as a nanny (qabilat wa-rabbat), who, substituting in a way for the mother, is prohibited from marrying the child. Others prohibit marriage of this type only in cases when the child is born with its face turned to the midwife(!). See Muhammad b. Yaʿqub al-Kulini (9th–10th century a.d.), Furuʿ al-Kafi (Beirut: Dar al-Adwaʾ, 1985), 5:447–48; Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-ʿAmili (d. 1693), Wasaʾil al-Shiʿa (Beirut: Muʾassasat Al al-Bayt li-Ihyaʾ al-Turath, 1993), 20:500–502. See also van Gelder, Geert J., Close Relationships: Incest and Inbreeding in Classical Arabic Literature (London/New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 81–102, esp. 101–102Google Scholar.
97 Giladi, Infants, Parents and Wet Nurses, 13–22.
98 Cf. the role midwives played in a few biblical stories: Genesis 35:16–17, 38:27–30, and Exodus 1:15–22. On midwives in biblical and postbiblical Jewish sources, see Rosner, Fred, Encyclopedia of Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000), 210–11Google Scholar.
99 Boyman, Elsa, “De l'enfantement: Les vicissitudes d'une notion primordiale,” Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 77 (1984): 303–309Google Scholar.
100 Ibid., 309–12. Cf. Yaʿacov Sh. Licht, “Leda,” Encyclopaedia Biblica 4:431–35 (in Hebrew).
101 Boyman, “De l'enfantement,” 312–15.
102 Spellberg, Denise A., “Writing the Unwritten Life of the Islamic Eve: Menstruation and the Demonization of Motherhood,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996): 306–307Google Scholar; Stowasser, Barbara Freyer, “The Status of Women in Early Islam,” in Muslim Women, ed. Hussain, F. (London/Sydney: Croom Helm, 1984), 22–23Google Scholar; idem, Women in the Qurʾan, Tradition and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 25–27.
103 Spellberg, “Writing the Unwritten Life,” 319–20; G. Vajda and J. Eisenberg, “Ḥawwāʾ,” E.I. 2, 3:295. For a different view, according to which the suffering of pregnancy and childbirth is understood in Islam not as a punishment but rather as part of the divine way of creation, see Ahmad Muhammad al-Sharqawi, al-Marʾa fi al-Qasas al-Qurʾani (Cairo: Dar al-Salam, 2003), 1:129–30. Basing his arguments on the Qurʾan and hadith, al-Sharqawi points to the importance of the woman's reproductive role, for which both God and His Prophet praise her and promise her rewards, for instance, by ordering the believers to honor their mothers for their efforts involved in bearing and rearing them or by granting each mother who dies during childbirth the status of shahīda, a female martyr testifying by her death to her belief in Allah.
104 Cf. Lughod, Lila Abu, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1986), esp. 124–34Google Scholar.
105 See, for example, al-Zamakhshari, Mahmud b. ʿUmar, al-Kashshaf (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Bahiya, 1924–1925), commentary on Qurʾan 2:233Google Scholar.
106 R. Peters, “Shāhid,” E.I. 2, 9:207–208; Tucker, Judith E., Women, Family, and Gender in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 142, 158–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar (on the infrequency of the appearance of women in court as witnesses in the Ottoman period); Zaydan, ʿAbd al-Karim, al-Mufassal fi Ahkam al-Marʾa (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risala, 1993), 5:106Google Scholar. For more concrete examples see, for instance, Powers, “Four Cases Relating to Women and Divorce,” esp. 386–87. On midwives as expert witnesses in Egyptian courts in the Ottoman period, see El-Azhary Sonbol, The Creation of a Medical Profession, 139–40. The most detailed discussion of this topic so far is Ron Shaham's “Women as Expert Witnesses in Pre-Modern Islamic Courts,” in Law, Custom, and Statute in the Muslim World: Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish, ed. Ron Shaham (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007), 41–65. Ordinary women also could supply direct eyewitnessing to exclusive female events at which they were present (45–46). On midwives as witnesses in court in medieval Europe, see Laurent, “L'accouchement dans l'iconographie médiévale,” 176–77.
107 See, for example, Shams al-Din Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Minhaji al-Suyuti (d. 1475 a.d.), Jawahir al-ʿUqud (n.p., 1955), 2:438.
108 ʿAbd al-Razzaq, al-Musannaf, 8:333. For a later formulation of the same rule, by the Hanafi jurist of Central Asia, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli b. Abi Bakr al-Marghinani (d. 1197 a.d.), see al-Hidaya: Sharh Bidayat al-Mubtadiʾ (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, n.d.), 3:117. Similar concessions were applied when testimony on breastfeeding was required. See chapters in hadith collections, for example, Sunan al-Darimi and Sunan al-Tirmidhi, dealing with shahādat al-marʾa al-wāḥida ʿalā al-raḍāʿ.
109 See, for example, al-Sarakhsi, Shams al-Din, al-Mabsut (Beirut: Dar al-Maʿrifa, 1978), 16:142–44Google Scholar. Cf. Herlihy, David, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, ed. Cohn, Samuel M. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 42Google Scholar, on the permission given to women in medieval Europe to give testimony in court out of necessity due to the huge mortality rates in the wake of the Black Death.
110 See Tucker, Women, Family, and Gender, 135, 140–44, 149.
111 See, for example, al-Sarakhsi, al-Mabsut, 16:144. Cf. Shaham, “Women as Expert Witnesses,” 46–49. For the historical development of the jurists’ attitudes toward women as witnesses in court, see Spectorsky, Susan A., Women in Classical Islamic Law (Leiden/Boston: E. J. Brill, 2010), 191–95Google Scholar.
112 See Giladi, Infants, Parents and Wet Nurses, 33–39.
113 See, for example, al-Mawardi, Aʿlam al-Nubuwwa, 273.
114 See, for example, al-Haytami, Mawlid al-Nabi, 16–22. Cf. Leites, “Temps béni,” 33–34.
115 Chambers Concise Dictionary (Edinburgh: W & R Chambers, 1991), s.v. “Male.”
116 Cf. Kuppinger, Petra, “Death of a Midwife,” in Situating Globalization: Views from Egypt, ed. Nelson, Cynthia and Rouse, Shahnaz (New Brunswick/London: Transactions Publishers, 2000), 276Google Scholar.
117 Cf. Thomas, Samuel S., “Midwifery and Society in Restoration York,” Journal of the Social History of Medicine 16 (2003): 1–16CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
