In the past decade or so, scholars of al-Andalus have begun exploring the meaningful ways that class and ethnic differences shaped women’s lives. Drawing upon the rich data on female slave musicians in Ibn Hayyan’s al-Muqtabis, as well as discussion of the norms of women’s behavior in 9th- and 10th-century sources such as Kitab adab al-nisa’ by ‘Abd al-Malik Ibn Habib and al-‘Iqd al-farid by Ibn Abd Rabbih, this paper argues that freewoman- and slave-musicians in 9th- and 10th-century Cordoba experienced different degrees and domains of freedom of action and movement. Free women singers like the daughters of Ziryab, ‘Ulayya and Hamduna, could at times be recognized by name, but discussion of their activities and accomplishments remained circumscribed due to the religiously suspect nature of music in the Maliki school generally and to the demands of propriety. In contrast, female slave musicians could be and were discussed at length, not only for their talents and contributions to the production of elite music, but also for their desirability as servants and sexual partners. Moreover, further practical distinctions can be drawn between the common slave who performed music (the jariya) and the slave specialist in music (the qayna), and between those slaves belonging to elites who concealed them behind curtains, as if they were members of the family, and others whose masters brought them to the majlis to perform in front of other men. Thus, where performing music was concerned, literary discussions of women and feminine ideals suggest a bifurcated gender ideology that certainly subordinated women’s interests to men’s, but also generated different norms and expectations, depending upon a woman’s class and condition of servitude.

In 1569, in the midst of the bloody violence of the second Morisco (forced converts to Christianity from Islam) rebellion in the Castilian Kingdom of Granada, Hernando de Guzmán and Álvaro el Guajany submitted a petition to the royal Spanish government for special permission to travel from the city of Granada to the Morisco town of Pinillos in the Alpujarran countryside for the annual silk harvest. The men, Moriscos residing in the San Salvador parish of the Morisco Albaicín neighborhood in Granada, warned the crown that if it denied their petition and they were unable to return to the mountains they would be unable to “raise [silk], [and they would] have nothing with which to pay [their] taxes.” At the end of their petition, the men added that they would not go to harvest silk alone, but rather that they would need to go “with our women to cultivate the silk.” The men revealed only at the end of their petition the vital role their wives played in the family economy. The story of Guzmán and el Guajany was a story of survival. Moriscos used a variety of strategies to survive in a world that increasingly saw them as hostile. At times survival required cooperation with authorities and at other times it meant resisting Spanish hegemony, even with violence. At the most basic level, survival meant maintaining the ability to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for their families. In another sense, survival for Moriscos was the survival of their Arabic-Islamic culture and way of life by resisting conversion and assimilation. Silk was a fundamental part of the strategies Moriscos used to survive in Granada in the sixteenth century. Morisco families relied on silk for their basic everyday needs. Silk was also a part of the Andalusi culture that Moriscos sought to preserve. Women, as the kingdom's main silk producers, had a major role to play in the preservation of Granadan sericulture-- a process that took place in urban Morisco households and hillside farms all over the Kingdom of Granada. By reading records such as this petition “against the grain,” this paper seeks to recover the voices of ordinary Granadans to understand how they responded to their changing world after the conquest. In particular, I will argue that women in particular had an active role to play in ensuring the survival of their families and communities through conquest, war, and expulsion.

Theories of imperial photography argue that British imperialists sought bring visual order to dangerous colonial regions through the careful framing of photographs. Lighting, composition, and distance all worked to capture the wilds of the colonial environment and render it tame and familiar to audiences at home. The colonized native was an iconic part of the scene; her strange costumes and perceived state of undress cast her as exotic as her environs. Yet, in sharp contrast, the traditional dress of northern Sudanese women, the tobe, granted its wearer an air of civility. A length of cloth which covered a woman whenever she left the house, the tobe satisfied both imperial and local standards of modesty and social discipline. Though firmly categorized as a traditional Sudanese garment, the positioning of the tobe in British photographs was used as evidence of the success of the imperial civilizing mission. During the first decade of Sudanese independence, from the 1950s through the 1960s, the uncertainty and challenges of nation building were evident in another set of images: satirical cartoons that filled the pages of the women’s press. Unlike the ordered scenes framed by British imperialists a generation earlier, the illustrations penned by Sudanese women introduced shouting husbands, crying children, and unforgiving western fashions. Characters fell down as they struggled to walk along the street in tight dresses and high heels. Back in her tobe and flat sandals, a Sudanese woman (and her world) was righted again. The images that these women created did not speak of a tamed and civilized setting -but one that was spinning dangerously out of control. Caught in the chaos of national birth, Sudanese women held up the tobe as a beautiful and correct symbol of Sudanese identity. Through an exploration of photographs and cartoons, this paper posits that imperialists and nationalists shared symbols of social order found in traditional Sudanese women’s dress. It interweaves analysis of imperial photography with recent theories of body politics and sartorial behavior. Most significantly, this paper elevates the voices of Sudanese women who used humor and fashion to illustrate national crises.

Studies on women and consumption are relatively new fields of inquiry for Ottomanists. In the highly hierarchical Ottoman society, where rank and status corresponded to material wealth, studies on consumption help to reveal differences of various groups. Majority of scholars who studied consumption of Ottoman women have focused on the female members of the imperial dynasty. No attention, however, has been given to lesser status female members of the imperial palace who belonged to the various ranks of the harem hierarchy. The study of consumption habits of palace affiliated women who had both ongoing ties with the palace and lived among common people, is important in contributing to our understanding of consumption in the eighteenth century Ottoman Empire. This issue is examined in the context of the century, in which more and more individuals rose up the social and economic ladder, with an increase in the consumption habits towards the end of the century. This paper explores consumption habits of palace-affiliated women through the eighteenth century based on the court registers, complemented with inheritance inventories of about four hundred palace slaves. As records of material possession of the deceased, inheritance registers are promising source for studying consumption. In order to comprehend the consumption habit in the context of the era, this study compares this group of women with female members of another segments of the society. This paper argues that affiliation to the imperial palace had an impact on the consumption habit of this group of women who had both knowledge of courtly life style and they were also presented with gifts both during their stay and following their transfer from the palace. It further argues that consumption habit of this group changed towards the end of the eighteenth century, parallel to the changing consumption habit of the Ottoman society, with an increase in the number, quality and variety of items added with the imported luxurious objects.