Classes of ladies of cloistered spaces : writing feminist history through biography in fin de siècle Egypt / Marilyn Booth.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Booth, Marilyn, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fawwāz, Zaynab, 1859 or 1860-1914.

Fawwāz, Zaynab.

Muslim women.

Feminism--History.

Feminism.

History.

Physical Description:

v, 466 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2015]

Summary:

Zaynab Fawwaz (c.1860-1914) was a forceful voice in support of women's rights to education and work choices in colonial-era Egypt. Her volume of 453 women's lives, al-Durr al-manthur fi tabaqat rabbat al-khudur (Pearls scattered in times and places: Classes of ladies of cloistered spaces), was published between 1893 and 1896. It featuring Boudicca, Catherine the Great, Zaynab (granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad), Victoria Woodhull, the Turkish poet Sirri Hanim and many others - built on the Arabic-Islamic biographical tradition to produce a work for women in the modern era, grafting European, Turkish, Arab and Indian life narratives, amongst others, onto Arabic literary patterns. In Classes of Ladies of Cloistered Spaces Marilyn Booth argues that Fawwaz's work was less 'exemplary biography' than feminist history, in its exploration of achievement but also of what Booth labels patriarchal trauma in the lives of women across times and places. She traces Fawwaz's creative use of her sources, her presentation of biographical narratives in the context of the political essays she wrote in the Arabic press, her publicised dialogue with the President of the Board of Lady Managers of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition - where she attempted to send the volume - and how her inscription of a feminine ancient history diverged from that of men writing history in 1890s Egypt. Key Features, Includes descriptions of biographies of women form the US, Britain, Europe, India and the Maldives, as well as the Middle East (Iran Turkey and the Arab world), Presents Fawwaz's dictionary as a key text in the debates on gender and national efficacy in 1890s Egypt and Ottoman Syria, Closely examines issues to text circulation and borrowing, Argues that Fawwaz's book can be regarded as 'feminist history' Book jacket.

Contents:

I Pearls Scattered: An Introduction 1

II A Women's World History, in the World of Arabic Letters: A Reader's View 31

III Founding Mothers, Speaking Sisters: Lineaments of Community in History 95

IV Writerly Pursuits: A Compiler's Archive 124

V A Beckoning Compass, Circulating Lives: The Bustani Encyclopedia and Other Nineteenth-century Sources 153

VI Interlocutors? Men Authoring Women's History in the 1890s 205

VII Framing a History of the Present: or, Did the Pearls Scatter to the World's Fair? 247

VIII Violent Romances: The Bodily Drama of Patriarchal Trauma 294.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780748694860

0748694862

OCLC:

903000005