Uriel Simonsohn is Senior Lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Haifa. At present, he also serves as head of the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies. He has previously held fellowships at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at Hebrew University (2010-2013), the Center of Excellence at the University of Konstanz (2016), the Helen Gartner Hammer Program at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (2017), Wolfson College, University of Oxford (2019), and the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies (2020-2021).

• Acknowledgements


• Note on transliteration systems, translations, dates, and references


• List of abbreviations


• Introduction


• 1: Contours of Family Dynamics


• 2: 'Even though it be against yourselves, or your parents and kinsmen' (Q 4:135)-The Prioritization of God over Family


• 3: Religiously-Mixed Families as Sites of Competing Religious Traditions


• 4: 'No bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another' (Q 53:38)-The Liminal Position of Women in Religiously-Mixed Families


• 5: Female Conversion to Islam-Religious Defiance and Feminine Resistance


• 6: Precarious Gatekeepers-Female Power and Religious Conflict


• Conclusion


• Bibliography


• Primary Literature


• List of Geniza documents


• Secondary Literature

Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East examines interrelatedly the Islamization of the Near East and the place of women in pre-modern Near Eastern societies.