The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam: Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki

Abstract

distracting from the discussion at hand, which is to demonstrate how the male-centred framing of the story has not, in her estimation, diminished Nazhūn’s place in the satiric anecdote. Hammond’s careful argument could be readily used in either an undergraduate or graduate classroom to discuss how one might think about these frames and their contents as gendered structures; rather than closing off further argument, Hammond lays the groundwork for additional discussion with further data. If Chapter 4 engages a difficult logical problem, Chapter 5, “He Desires Her?”, suggests strongly that the use of a woman’s voice in particular genres of poetry need not be interpreted in only one way. Looking at muwashshah ̇ a, “an Arabic and Hebrew genre which developed in Andalusia before the tenth century” (p. 25), she describes how this genre typically portrays women’s voices (and sexual expression) in the closing sections, and notes that this has largely been understood as men constructing women’s voices. She argues that women were also involved in the courtly musical lyrical traditions from which this genre grew, and we ought not assume automatically that all the anonymous verse was male-authored (p. 153). Hammond describes several women known to have been involved with the genre, and discusses how the verses that have been attributed to them do not manifest a unique “écriture féminine”, but a gender ambiguity that can help us to foreground and rethink our own biases when seeking something uniquely feminine in such highly stylized genres (p. 157). Although the frequent use of Arabic technical terms for genres and poetic terminology will make this text at times difficult for a non-specialist, the best recommendation might be that this reader was disappointed to reach the end. The only error spotted was a minor problem with the regnal dates for Muʿawı̄ya given on page 116. Sadly, the publisher has no plans for a paperback edition, pricing this out of range for use as a classroom text. The British Academy’s website notes that the publication series is yet another mark of the excellence of the scholars who receive its fellowships; this monograph demonstrates well the truth of that statement.