Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Premodern Middle East.

• Author: Katz, Marion H.
• Position: Book review

Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Premodern Middle East. By AVNER GILADI. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. New York: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015. Pp. x + 195. S95.

Avner Giladi's panoramic study Muslim Midwives: The Craft of Birthing in the Premodern Middle East opens by setting forth the views of midwifery presented by two authors of sharply contrasting sensibilities and approaches, the fifteenth-century historian and proto-sociologist Ibn Khaldun and the dyspeptic fourteenth-century religious polemicist Ibn al-Hajj. Ibn Khalduns unusually extensive and respectful treatment of midwifery forms a chapter within the section of his Muqaddima devoted to professions and crafts. Acknowledging the professional expertise of midwives, he notes that they are "better acquainted than a skillful [male] physician" not only with obstetrics but with the medical treatment of infants (p. 3). Ibn al-Hajj, perhaps predictably, depicts midwives as ignorant folk practitioners whose customs are harmful to infants; he denounces in detail the non-shar'i customs and ritual practices that they perform in conjunction with childbirth. Giladi acknowledges that these two authors may be describing midwives of different social strata or forms of training. However, he ultimately sees the contrast between Ibn Khalduns respectful acknowledgment of midwives medical prowess and Ibn al-Hajj's dismissal of their authority as reflecting "two sides of the ambivalent attitude of males towards this typically female occupation and its representatives" (p. 9). Because he believes that midwives are integrally associated with the issues of motherhood and femininity, he argues that the study of attitudes towards midwives will "contribute to a better understanding of the gender relations that existed in these societies"--that is, societies in "the central parts of the Muslim world and the Mediterranean, extending from Transoxania and Iran in the East, to Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) in the West" (p. 16) in the period from the seventh to the twentieth centuries. Giladi divides this panoramic timespan into a "premodern" era comprising a "classical period" from the seventh to twelfth century and the "Islamic Middle Ages" from the twelfth to the fifteenth (p. 15). In practice, the book is organized thematically rather than chronologically and combines data from various periods (including ethnographic data from the twentieth century) throughout, with the exception of an epilogue dealing with modern developments such as state regulation of midwifery and the competition between "traditional" midwives and practitioners of modern bio-medicine.

Chapter one offers a broad discussion of "Islamic Views on Birth and Motherhood," surveying relevant material from the Quran and hadith and its interpretation over the course of Islamic history. The chapter draws on the sociologist Abdalwahab Bouhdibas argument that in "Arabo-Muslim" culture "the wife is devalued. But by stressing the childbearing role of women, one valorizes the mother" (p. 25; bold in original). While emphasizing "the cult of the mother" (p. 37), Giladi also emphasizes that the stigma of ritual impurity (specifically that of blood) is distinctively associated with fertility and childbirth (p. 21). The chapter proceeds to survey historical evidence relating to the mother--child bond from various eras, particularly the Mamluk period. It concludes by arguing that "there...