Writing Sacred Histories in Late Ottoman Egypt: Zaynab Fawwāz and Qadriyya Kāmil’s Descriptions of Early Islam

Abstract

Abstract This article studies contrasting notions of historiography in Zaynab Fawwāz and Qadriyya Kāmil’s biographical dictionaries. It begins by offering an overview on these authors’ vitas and delves into the historiographical practices that concerned Ottoman intellectuals in the late nineteenth century. It analyses Fawwāz’s dictionary, al-Durr al-manthūr fī ṭabaqāt rabbāt al-khudūr (1894), which reveals a feminist understanding of Islam as situated within an Arab and pan-Ottoman environment as well as the large arch of Abrahamic monotheism. By highlighting specific figures over others, Fawwāz produces a historical narrative that transcends religious and sectarian divides. The article then introduces Kāmil’s Shahīrāt al-nisāʾ fī l-ʿālam al-islāmī (1924) which depicts a conceptually narrower Islam, shaped by the geo-political circumstances of the early twentieth century. The biographies of the Muslim foremothers Kāmil presents offer normative templates of female piety but are not completely subsumed by the category of gender either. Throughout, the article points to how both authors engage the rules of the biographical genre, arguing that the ways they adhere to or break with its tradition indicate a desire to create new forms of moral and communal belonging.