Muslim Midwives: The Craft Of Birthing In The Premodern Middle East (Cambridge Studies In Islamic Civilization)

This book reconstructs the role of midwives in medieval to early modern Islamic history through a careful reading of a wide range of classical and medieval Arabic sources. The author casts the midwife's social status in premodern Islam as a privileged position from which she could mediate between male authority in patriarchal society and female reproductive power within the family. This study also takes a broader historical view of midwifery in the Middle East by examining the tensions between learned medicine (male) and popular, medico-religious practices (female) from early Islam into the Ottoman period and addressing the confrontation between traditional midwifery and Western obstetrics in the first half of the nineteenth century.

• • Author: Avner Giladi
• • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• • Publication Date: Dec 15, 2014
• • Number of Pages: 210 pages
• • Language: English
• • Binding: Hardcover
• • ISBN-10: 1107054214
• • ISBN-13: 9781107054219