CSI Monday Majlis: Women fighting the enemies of Muhammad and converting to Islam before their husbands: The Abbasid-era stories of Umm Faḍl and Umm Hakīm

Anna Chrysostomides
Women fighting the enemies of Muḥammad and converting to Islam before their husbands:
The Abbasid-era stories of Umm Faḍl and Umm Hakīm

Monday Majlis Online on the 14th of October, 17:00-18:30 (UK time)
Centre for the Study of Islam, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter
Register please on this link:
https://universityofexeter.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUodOGorzssGtzlnl8LB3SiJKWmPZtUecfD

Bio: Anna Chrysostomides is a lecturer in Islamic History at Queen Mary, University of London. Her primary research interests cover the social dynamics of conversion between Christianity and Islam from the 8th through the 10th centuries CE as well as shared practices and beliefs between these two faiths. She is particularly interested in people who vacillated between Christianity and Islam, and social situations which would have engendered people identifying with both religions, such as inter-religious marriages, children of those unions, Christian mawālī of Muslims, and Christian slaves of Muslims. Recently her research has turned towards sexuality and gender in the late antique and medieval Middle East.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/history/people/academic-staff/profiles/chrysostomidesanna.html

Abstract: Abbasid-era texts describing female conversion to Islam often reflect oral traditions which were shared in informal settings and were likely used in a didactic manner – mimicking awkward domestic situations as a result of conversion that Abbasid Muslim women may well have found themselves in. Texts which preserve narratives of prominent 7th-century women who converted to Islam before their husbands celebrate these strong female examples. Within these stories, there is a striking parallel between women converting to Islam before their husbands do and women who physically killed men (Byzantine or Quraysh) with tent poles. This paper explores the narratives of Umm FadÌ£l and Umm HakiÌ„m, two companions of MuhÌ£ammad who wielded tent poles in defense of the innocent in their communities, or as part of the Arab conquest, respectively, in an attempt to understand the symbolism, or possibly even historical reality, behind this connection.

In the spirit of the label ‘Majlis’ and also to make the talks even more interesting, our speakers present the topic discussed as embedded in their own journey. You can watch the previous Majlises here, but we don’t record the Q&A in order to keep the discussion free. Please come and enjoy the talks and the discussions : ) If you’d like to be included in the CSI (Centre for the Study of Islam (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter) mailing list, please write to me (I.T.Kristo-Nagy@ex.ac.uk).
We’ll be happy to welcome you!
István T Kristó-Nagy