Women, Households, and the Hereafter in the Qur'an: A Patronage of Piety

It is commonly understood that the Qur'an sought to transform social and religious practices in its seventh-century Arabian milieu. Yet the nature of that transformation is debated, especially as it relates to women, warfare, kinship and community. This book offers a fresh perspective by undertaking the first historical-critical study of all the Qur'an's verses on women, who were integral to this transformation, and by offering an initial overview of households and patronage -- late antique social structures that took the place of formal state structures in the Qur'an's tribal milieu. The findings of this study call into question common approaches to Qur'anic theology, law, and narratives, to the nature of the early community, and to women's place in that community. Bauer and Hamza adopt a holistic method, which integrates aspects of the Qur'an that are commonly considered separately, showing, for instance, how stories act as precursors to law, with female characters acting as models for all believers. Concurrently, they highlight the Qur'an's egalitarian approach to moral agency in existing hierarchical social structures, which the Qur'an seeks to transform both by imposing a salvific frame on them, and by fashioning a community of households characterised by morality, decorum, and care of the vulnerable. This compelling and original work proposes new paradigms for understanding the Qur'an's social milieu and its salvific vision for that world.


About the Author
Karen Bauer, Senior Research Associate, the Institute of Ismaili Studies, Feras Hamza, Head of School, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Wollongong in Dubai and Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Ismaili Studies

Dr Karen Bauer is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. With Feras Hamza she edited An Anthology of Qur'anic Commentaries, Volume II: On Women (OUP, 2021). She is the author of Gender Hierarchy in the Qur'an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses and editor of Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qur'anic Exegesis (2nd/8th-9th/15th Centuries). She has written numerous articles on the history of Qur'anic interpretation, on women's status in Islamic texts and on the history of emotions in Islam. She is the series co-editor for IQSA Studies in the Qur'an.

Dr Feras Hamza is Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong in Dubai, UAE, and is also a Senior Research Fellow in the Qur'anic Studies Unit at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. He co-edited, with Karen Bauer, An Anthology of Qur'anic Commentaries, Volume II: On Women (OUP, 2021), and with Sajjad Rizvi and Farhana Mayer, An Anthology of Qur'anic Commentaries, Volume I: On the Nature of the Divine (OUP 2008). He is the general series editor for the multi-volume project Anthologies of Qur'anic Commentaries and has authored several historical articles on the early Muslim community, as well as articles on the epistemological and methodological approaches in Qur'anic and tafsīr studies.