Highlights Includes new and groundbreaking research First academic book on women in the Arabian Gulf Includes contributions by fifteen leading scholars from Arab and international universities Uses new methodologies and sources Overview This groundbreaking collection of fifteen essays provides a greater understanding of the history of the Gulf and the Arab world, as well as the history of Muslim women. The result of a project aimed at finding sources and studying the history of women in the region, the articles are presented thematically and chronologically, starting with ancient history, and moving on to the medieval, early modern and contemporary periods. These present discourses regarding the life of women in early Islam and the contrast with their lived experiences, women’s work and the diversity of jobs they performed, the family – and how it changed over time – and the legal system and laws dealing with women and family from the pre-modern to the modern periods. Amira Sonbol Amira Sonbol specialises in the history of modern Egypt, Islamic history and law, women, gender and Islam and is the author of several books including Women, the Family and Divorce Laws in Islamic History and Beyond the Exotic: Muslim Women’s Histories. Professor Sonbol is Editor-in-Chief of Hawwa: the Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World.