Women of Islam

Women of Islam - Anthology of the Great Ladies of Muslim Civilization, by 'Issâ Meyer

From the first days of Islam , Mothers of believers, daughters of the Prophet or among his Companions, they were part of all trials and successes. One would look in vain for a religious tradition where women were so present and active from the founding generations of its history: the first to believe in Revelation was thus a woman, Khadijah , as well as the first martyr of Islam – to name but a few.

After the death of the Messenger of God, they became learned and took their full part in the preservation and transmission of religious knowledge; many of them devoted themselves heart and soul to education, thus earning the deep esteem of their peers. As influential and generous first ladies of the greatest caliphates, from Baghdad to Cordoba, poetesses, artists and scholars, they populated the palaces and institutions of the golden age of Islamic civilization by the thousands…

Faced with the Crusades, the Reconquista or the beginnings of colonization, some also became warlords when circumstances demanded it; during the Ottoman era of the “sultanate of women”, they even presided over the destinies of what was then the most powerful empire in the Muslim world for almost a century! And from the Mughal Indies to Istanbul via Africa, they distinguished themselves just as much by their immense charitable work, their remarkable intellectual production and their building fever, marking their time as well as their societies and leaving an indelible mark on the landscape...

Through a series of chronicles that cross the ages and will transport the reader to the four corners of the world, "Women of Islam " thus pays tribute to these great ladies of Muslim civilization, far from received ideas on the alleged incompatibility between the full application of Islam and the development of women. »