The paper attempts to show how some early works of Islamic law gendered public space and constructed an ideal virtuous Muslim woman who was largely invisible. By “gendering the space” I mean two things: first, the process of supporting the seclusion of women in the domestic sphere through a pietistic legal discourse created by some male legists; and second, the imposition of certain restrictions on women when they are present in the public domain. These restrictions reflect an assumption that such space is primarily a male domain, and as a result, women are responsible for accommodating the male norms of that domain and not vice versa. In order to do that, the paper examines how the process unfolded in three different cultural milieus: Mesopotamia, Medina and Mecca. This comparative approach aims to highlight the differences among these regions when it came to addressing the question of women’s visibility in public space. Far from settling the “women’s question,” the paper’s main goal is to identify some areas in Islamic law that played a role, however minor or indirect, in prescribing the seclusion of women in the domestic domain. Recognizing the partially prescriptive nature of Islamic law, the focus here is on presenting the way in which some Islamic legal discourses made undesirable the presence of women in the public space and their participation in public community affairs. The second contribution of the paper is highlighting the possibilities that these early legal discourses created for women, and hence identifying the paths that were not taken. These two contributions could help illuminate the relationship between Islamic law and society as far as the question of gender is concerned. The paper concludes that the eighth and early ninth centuries, the period when legal schools were starting to form, was a time of flux in opinions. The three regional schools markedly diverged when it came to the question of women’s visibility in public space. Some of these early legal discourses seem to have been actively seeking to render public space a male arena by making women’s presence therein undesirable. The paper suggests that the divergence of opinion among these schools was neither due to the use of different legal theories or the acceptance of the authority of certain traditions over others, but rather a result of the influence of the jurists’ social and cultural milieus.