Female Religious Authority in Shi'i Islam

Mirjam Kuenkler is Research Professor at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. Her books include Female Religious Authority in Shiʿi Islam: Past and Present, Edinburgh University Press, 2021; A Secular Age Beyond the West, Cambridge University Press, 2018; Democracy and Islam in Indonesia, Columbia University Press, 2013; and the forthcoming The Rule of Law in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Power, Institutions, and Prospects for Reform, Cambridge University Press, among others. She is a PI of the Iran Data Portal, co-editor of the Cambridge Journal of Law and Religion, co-editor of the Brill Research Perspectives in Religion and Politics, and a member of the editorial boards of the International Journal of Islam in Asia (Brill), the Digest of Middle East Studies (Wiley), the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (Wiley), and Iranian Studies (Cambridge). In 2023, Künkler was elected President of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies (ASPS). Devin Stewart is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Emory University. He has published numerous journal articles, including in Islamic Law and Society, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies and Journal of Qur’anic Studies.

This volume is a substantial and welcome contribution to a growing body of literature on female religious authority in Islam. The introduction and individual chapters, covering a wide temporal and geographical range, address some of major unanswered questions, such as how particular contexts affect women's religious authority. This volume is of importance not just to scholars of gender or Shi'ism, but of religious authority broadly construed.

• IntroductionMirjam Künkler and Devin StewartForgotten Histories of Female Religious Authority in IslamMirjam Künkler, SCASUmm Salamah: A Female Authority Legitimating the AuthoritiesYasmin Amin, University of ExeterHeiress to the Prophet: Fatima as Inheritor of Her Father’s LegacyAlyssa Gabbay, University of North Carolina at GreensboroFemale Authority in the Times of the Shi‘i ImamsLiyakat Takim, McMaster University, Canada“She should not raise her voice when amongst men”: Imāmī arguments against (and for) women judgesRobert Gleave, University of ExeterHusniyyah’s Debate at the Court of Harun al-Rashid: Sectarian Polemics and Female Religious Authority Devin Stewart, Emory UniversityLayli as Queen of Heaven by Muhammadi of Herat, c. 1565Michael Barry, American University of AfghanistanPrincesses, Patronage, and the Production of Knowledge in Safavid IranYusuf Ünal, Emory UniversityThe Lives of Two Mujtahidahs: Female Religious Authority in 20th Century IranMirjam Künkler, SCAS, and Roja Fazaeli, Trinity College DublinThe "Other Half of the Mission": Amina Bint al-Hudà (al-Sadr) as Wakil for Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr?Raffaele Mauriello, Allameh Tabataba'i University Speaking in the Name of Zaynab: Female Shi‘i Religious Authority in SyriaEdith Szanto, University of AlabamaWomen’s Religious Seminaries in Iran: A Diversified System Despite State Attempts at Unification and StandardizationMaryam Rutner, NYU