Conclusion to Part III: A Tafsīr about the First Woman’s Fertility and Theological Vulnerability

Treating illness was, for the most part, deemed compatible with Islamic theological orthodoxy. But the desperation brought on by illness, the lack of consensus about how to understand illness, the frequent failure of medical treatments, and the “faith” and power dynamics implied in the relationship between patient and practitioner invested sickness and healing with theological repercussions which potentially skewed toward heterodoxy in one form or another.Women, who were physically separated from the authorized interpreters of Islam, and who were deemed by some to be mentally deficient in religious matters, were depicted as in even greater danger in this regard. The jurists’ interpretation of the field of medicine, when augmented with concerns about the religious ignorance and heterodoxy of Muslim women, and coupled with concerns about the physically intimate nature of medical intervention, could put Muslim women seeking gynecological care in a particularly uncomfortable position. Moreover, for young women who were mothers and aspiring mothers, it might have been even more difficult to make a distinction between medical and religious practice and authority, since medical care focusing on fertility and menstruation was intertwined with women’s social roles and their ritual purity. Physical robustness, sickness, and death, i.e. “medical issues” were likely to have been a constant concern in their religious lives – in the form of menstruation, pregnancy, miscarriage, birth, stillbirth, breastfeeding and infant mortality. All of these themes are encapsulated in a story told about the first woman, Eve, and her involvement with the Devil, Iblīs. The story appears in many different iterations.738 The following are the versions recounted in al-Ṭabarī’s (d. 310/ 923) history: