In his monumental “Introduction to History,” al-Muqaddima, Ibn Khaldun, the well-known Muslim historiographer and philosopher of history (d. 1406 a.d.), dedicates a whole chapter to midwifery (ṣināʿat al-tawlīd) that is as original in conception as it is rich in detail. The chapter is included in Part V, which offers a survey of professions and crafts—“the ‘accidents’ of sedentary culture”—that for Ibn Khaldun reflect the sophistication of urban life.Footnote ¹ Within this survey, midwifery ranks among the most basic crafts (ummahāt al-ṣanāʾiʿ), being “something necessary in civilization and a matter of general concern, because it assures, as a rule, the life of the newborn child.” Moreover, like “the art of writing, book production, singing, and medicine,” midwifery is regarded as a noble craft because of the subject that is at the heart of it (sharīf bi-l-mawḍūʿ).Footnote ²

Ibn Khaldun first defines three areas of the professional expertise of the midwife (qābila, pl. qawābil, “she who receives,” that is to say, receives the newborn infant, or muwallida, she who helps a woman to give birth)Footnote ³: (1) “how to proceed in bringing the newborn child gently out of the womb of its mother”; (2) “how to prepare the things that go with that”; and (3) “what is good for (a newborn child) after it is born,” that is to say, how to treat it.Footnote ⁴ With striking familiarity and in great detail, probably the result of extensive and meticulous reading in medical manuals and/or information he had collected from female informants,Footnote ⁵ Ibn Khaldun describes female anatomy and physiology and outlines the techniques of midwifery. He is aware that, given what we today would call “the modesty code,” this “craft is as a rule restricted to women since they, as women, may see the pudenda of other women” (al-ẓāhirāt baʿḍahunna ʿalā ʿawrāt baʿḍ).Footnote ⁶ Moreover, “midwives are better acquainted” with obstetrics than others,Footnote ⁷ and “we likewise find them better acquainted than a skilful [male] physician with the means of treating the ills affecting the bodies of little children from the time they are sucklings until they are weaned.”Footnote ⁸ Observing that, due to God's way of creation, “the [mother's] opening is too narrow for it, and it is difficult (for the embryo to come out)”Footnote ⁹ or, as physical anthropologists today put it, “human beings have a difficult birth because evolution has matched the size of the new-born human brain very closely to the limits of the mother's body,”Footnote ¹⁰ Ibn Khaldun concludes the first part of his chapter by saying that “this craft is necessary [essential] to the human species in civilization. Without it, the individuals of the species could not, as a rule, come into being.”Footnote ¹¹

Rather unexpectedly, Ibn Khaldun then turns to a philosophical argument about the possibility of re-creating the human species if it became extinct.Footnote ¹² He brings in al-Farabi (d. 950 a.d.) and “Spanish philosophers” who argue that the end of created beings, especially the human species (al-nawʿ al-insānī), is inconceivable because that would make “a later existence of them . . . impossible. Their existence depends upon the existence of midwifery (li-tawaqqufihi ʿalā wujūd hādhihi al-ṣināʿa), without which man could not come into being[!].”Footnote ¹³ Although he does not accept their theory, Ibn Khaldun's philosophical deliberations take him far from his initial discussion of the practical aspects of the craft and lend the role of the midwife an almost cosmological-existential dimension, placing her, at least theoretically, in a highly elevated position. To what extent is this view shared by other thinkers or based on earlier sources from the Islamic world? In answering this question through a survey of some branches of mainly theoretical (including legal) and literary writings, here I trace the attitudes toward midwives on the part of male Muslims—biographers, physicians, and jurists—to an ambivalent mixture of awareness of the midwife's essential role in society with obvious marginalization that sometimes results in total absence of midwives in those texts where I expected them to appear. Thus, I hope to draw a better understanding of the gender relations that existed in medieval Muslim societies.

When I began looking for sources for a sociocultural history of midwifery in premodern Islamic contexts, I found myself browsing through the rich contemporary Arabic biographical dictionaries. There, and particularly in biographies devoted to women either in early Islamic history or in the late Middle Ages, I hoped to locate materials on midwives and female physicians whose achievements had earned them a special entry.Footnote ¹⁴ For instance, some of the biographical collections from the Mamluk period contain information on personalities, including women, engaged in a wide range of occupations and professions.Footnote ¹⁵ However, much to my disappointment, I discovered that none of the compilers of such collections—all of them men, of course—shared Ibn Khaldun's high opinion of midwifery and its practitioners. In other words, midwives, including those of the first generations of Muslims and “professionals” of later periods, are almost totally absent.Footnote ¹⁶ For example, among the 1,075 women featured in a separate part (Kitab al-Nisaʾ) of Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Sakhawi's biographical collection, al-Dawʾ al-Lamiʿ (compiled in 15th-century Cairo), only three can be clearly identified as midwives: Umm al-Khayr bint Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Muhammad (d. 1456 a.d.),Footnote ¹⁷ Faʾida (or Hajar) bint Muhibb al-Din (?) (d. 1467 or 1468 a.d.)Footnote ¹⁸ and Khadija bint Muhammad b. ʿAbdallah Bulkam (no death date mentioned).Footnote ¹⁹ All three were well educated and involved in religious activities, and it is probably this, not their occupation as midwives, that secured each of them an entry in al-Sakhawi's collection. Umm al-Khayr and Khadija, the latter designated raʾīsa (master? woman of authority?), received several teaching licenses (ijāzāt) from religious scholars and may thus be called ʿālimāt; Umm al-Khayr was a teacher, probably of hadith, as was common among educated women in the Middle East in the late Middle Ages.Footnote ²⁰ Faʾida served as the shaykha of a sufi convent for women (ribāt al-ẓāhiriyya) in Mecca and is praised for her religious knowledge and preaching. Little is said about the activities of the three women as midwives, and it is therefore difficult to assess to what extent they engaged in the field as “professionals.” Khadija seems to have inherited her expertise from her grandmother and Faʾida from her mother. Khadija and Umm al-Khayr assisted noble women in Cairo and in Mecca, respectively, whereas Faʾida is said to have served Meccan women in general.

Obviously, women who practiced midwifery often combined this with other occupations such as teaching. An earlier example is given by the Damascene historian Muhammad b. Ibrahim al-Jazari (d. 1338 a.d.). In his report of the death of Umm al-Khayr Khadija bint Fakhr al-Din Abu ʿAmr ʿUthman al-Nawzari (known as Dawʾ al-Sabah) in Cairo in December 1333 a.d., al-Jazari first describes in detail her accomplishments as a scholar and then highlights that she gained prosperity in old age thanks to the midwifery services she extended to the Sultan al-Malik al-Nasir Muhammad's wife.Footnote ²¹ This may allude to the advantage older, experienced women enjoyed in Muslim societies: because they had stopped menstruating and could no longer give birth, their purity was guaranteed, and they could move more freely in the public space and cooperate with male doctors in assisting pregnant women.Footnote ²² As I will show, they could also play a crucial role as expert witnesses in court, an arena where the social aspect of their activity is most clearly reflected.

Biographers of physicians in the medieval Muslim world were interested mainly in medicine as an intellectual domain and therefore tended to single out authors of medical compilations and treatises as well as court physicians.Footnote ²³ This can explain the underrepresentation of female medical practitioners in their compilations, yet another disappointment from my point of view. Midwives in particular were associated not only with the less prestigious medical practice but also with popular beliefs, superstition, and magic, as illustrated by the critical opinion of Ibn al-Hajj al-ʿAbdari, the Cairene jurist of the 13th/14th century a.d. He writes that, like other women, midwives adopt, out of ignorance, many disgraceful practices (ʿawāʾid radīʾa) in contradiction with the sacred law, the shariʿa.Footnote ²⁴ He goes on to describe those practices in detail.Footnote ²⁵ In this context, one should keep in mind that in premodern times, when healers came from various educational backgrounds and supplied medical services without being necessarily licensed by or supervised through any official central system, “professional” midwifery probably did not mean more than training through apprenticeship, work for wages, occasional use of instruments, cooperation with male physicians in complicated cases, and reputation. The “nonprofessionals,” probably the majority of midwives, were those elder, experienced women who voluntarily extended help to family and community members.

A survey of three collections of physicians’ biographies in Arabic by Ibn Juljul (b. in Cordoba in 944; d. after 994 a.d.),Footnote ²⁶ Ibn al-Qifti (b. in Upper Egypt in 1172; d. in Aleppo in 1248 a.d.),Footnote ²⁷ and Ibn Abi Usaybiʿa (b. in Damascus after 1194; d. in Sarkhad—or Salkhad—in the Hawran, in 1270 a.d.)Footnote ²⁸ yielded only one entry devoted specifically to a female physician, namely, Zaynab, the legendary doctor (ṭabība) of Banu Awd in the Umayyad period, who is said to have been both a surgeon and an ophthalmologist.Footnote ²⁹ But there is not a single article devoted entirely to a midwife.Footnote ³⁰

Unlike authors of medical encyclopedias and gynecological-obstetrical treatises in the eastern parts of the Islamic Mediterranean world whose works I have consulted for my research, two famous Andalusian physicians of the 10th and 11th century a.d. write appreciatively of the firsthand bodily experience of the midwife and see her as a key figure in the delivery scene, either under a male doctor's supervision or independently, even in complicated and dangerous situations.Footnote ³¹ As we can infer from ʿArib b. Saʿid (or Saʿd) al-Qurtubi's Khalq al-Janin wa-Tadbir al-Habala wa-l-Mawludin (On the Generation of the Fetus and the Treatment of Pregnant Women and Newborn Babies)Footnote ³² and Khalaf b. al-ʿAbbas al-Zahrawi's Kitab al-Tasrif li-Man ʿAjiza ʿan al-Taʾlif (The Arrangement [of Medical Knowledge] for One Who is Unable to Compile [a Manual for Himself]),Footnote ³³ physicians in Muslim Spain were familiar with some highly competent and reliable midwives. This is significant even if we take into account that much of what we find in the writings of the two Andalusian physicians is theoreticalFootnote ³⁴ and that the image of the midwife in these works is idealized. However, because we know that al-Zahrawi criticized the excess of theory and the lack of experience among the physicians of his time,Footnote ³⁵ that he included his own experiences and case histories in the huge compilation he wrote, and, moreover, that he contributed a number of technological innovations, among them a variety of obstetrical forceps,Footnote ³⁶ it is reasonable to assume that skillful midwives served in Cordova at the time and that he cooperated with one or some of them, at least in complex situations.

This assumption is supported by other occasional references to female doctors and midwives in the “Golden Age” of Muslim Spain.Footnote ³⁷ Ibn Abi Usaybiʿa, in an entry on al-Hafid Abu Bakr b. Zuhr, mentions the latter's sister and her daughter who, “being both experts in gynecology” (wa-lahumā khibra jayyida bi-mā yataʿallaqu bi-mudāwāt al-nisāʾ), “served as the only physicians and midwives for the women of Caliph al-Mansur's household” in 11th-century Cordova (wa-lā yaqbalu li-l-Manṣūr wa-ahlihi walad^an illā ukht al-Ḥaf īd aw bintuhā . . .).Footnote ³⁸ Another Andalusian female doctor, depicted as a learned and honorable woman (al-ṭabība al-adība . . . nabīla, ḥasība), was Umm al-Hasan (or Umm al-Husayn), the daughter of the Qadi Ahmad b. ʿAbdallah b. ʿAbd al-Munʿim, Abu Jaʿfar al-Tanjali (d. in Lawsha in 1349 or 1350 a.d.), who had studied medicine himself.Footnote ³⁹ In addition to the medicine her father had taught her, she excelled in Qurʾan recitation and wrote poetry.Footnote ⁴⁰ Ibn Hazm, the Andalusian jurist and writer of the 11th century a.d., in his Tawq al-Hamama (Ring of the Dove, a treatise on love and lovers) mentions the female doctor (ṭabība) and blood-letter (ḥajjāma) at the top of a list of “women plying a trade or profession that gives them ready access to people.”Footnote ⁴¹ Later, in the 14th/15th century a.d., we hear of Muslim midwives from Toledo “imported” to Navarre to serve Queen Leanor.Footnote ⁴²

No wonder, then, that given the years he spent in al-Andalus during the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun had such a high opinion of midwives. And when at exactly the same time we find Abu al-Faraj b. Lubb of Granada (d. 1381 a.d.) complaining of a decline in the standards of midwifery,Footnote ⁴³ this may well mean that he had a similarly high image of midwives. But even for Ibn Khaldun, learned male doctors on the whole rank higher within the hierarchy of the medical profession. After recognizing the midwife's expertise in pediatrics, Ibn Khaldun expresses a significant reservation: “This is simply because the human body, at this stage, is only potentially a human body. After (the child) is weaned, (its body) becomes actually a human one. Then, its need for a physician is greater (than its need for a midwife).”Footnote ⁴⁴

Turning to narrations on the birth of the Prophet, I again expected to find some stories and myths on midwives in early Arab-Muslim societies of the sort that existed in ancient Near Eastern cultures (see below). Of course, the few stories that I actually found appear in texts that combine biography with hagiography and thus abound with legendary motifs that make the reconstruction of the real lives of their central characters a complicated, if not impossible, task. However, as hagiographic literature often tends to highlight the uniqueness of miraculous events by placing them within as ordinary a setting as possible, details in the accounts of the Prophet's birth, and that of other members of his family, can help shed light on the contemporary images and roles of midwives. While surveying the sources, not only did I try to tease out information from them on midwives—who, again disappointingly, play a secondary, albeit not completely insignificant, role—but also I found it hard to escape other aspects of the fascinating story of Muhammad's birth.

There are many different versions of the story of the Prophet's birth, all highly interesting in themselves.Footnote ⁴⁵ We find them in chronicles and in biographical writings, particularly in the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life and background (sīra),Footnote ⁴⁶ and encounter them in treatises dedicated to the miracles the Prophet performed or that happened to him (dalāʾil al-nubuwwa, amarāt al-nubuwwa, aʿlām al-nubuwwa), especially, of course, those devoted entirely to the event of his birth (mawlid al-nabī).Footnote ⁴⁷ Here I highlight the questions that come up when looking at the role of the midwife in these narrations: Was Amina bint Wahb, the Prophet's mother, assisted by one or more midwives? If so, who was/were she/they? Of more importance, how do Islamic biographical-hagiographic works portray her/them, and what can we learn from this about the status and functions of midwives at the time these texts were written?

On the whole, when they are mentioned at all, the role of the women who helped Muhammad's mother is represented as marginal. This is understandable if we take into account the theological background of the birth stories. According to the early Islamic conception of history, God created the Light of Muhammad 9,000 years before things were created, and Muhammad was destined to be a prophet long before the creation of Adam. Indeed, the latter came into being so as to help prepare for the appearance of the Prophet of Islam.Footnote ⁴⁸

No wonder that in such a setting the physical body of Muhammad, the Seal of all Prophets, is seen as out of the ordinary,Footnote ⁴⁹ and his birth becomes an event of cosmological magnitude that reduces its earthly aspects to secondary importance.Footnote ⁵⁰ As in certain versions of the Jewish tradition of the birth of Moses where no midwife is mentionedFootnote ⁵¹ and, of course, the story of Jesus’ nativity in the Gospels of Matthew (1:18–25) and particularly Luke (2:1–8), where we find no reference even to the occurrence of parturition, let alone to helpers,Footnote ⁵² the most authoritative early Islamic sīra compilation, by Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham (8th and 9th century, respectively), altogether ignores the moment of the Prophet Muhammad's birth, and no mention is made of a midwife.Footnote ⁵³

In his Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, Muhammad ibn Saʿd (d. 845 a.d.), Ibn Hisham's contemporary, devotes some attention to the Prophet's birth. He describes surrealistic-fantastic occurrences: light that emerged the moment the infant was separated from his mother illuminating all between east and west; the exceptional way Muhammad dropped down, rested upon his knees, and raised his head toward heavenFootnote ⁵⁴; and a pottery vessel that, according to a local custom, had been placed on top of him (to protect him during the night from an evil eye?Footnote ⁵⁵) and was found split in two, with Muhammad lying beneath it, his eyes wide open, gazing up to heaven. Moreover, Ibn Saʿd tells us, the child was born clean (naẓīf), with his umbilical cord already cut off (masrūr),Footnote ⁵⁶ and circumcised (maḥtūn), “so that no one saw my private parts” (wa-lam yara aḥad sawʾatī), as Muhammad is said to have explained.Footnote ⁵⁷ Yet here, too, the narrator assigns no role to human helpers of any kind. But then, of course, given the miraculous circumstances of his birth, such help was unnecessary.Footnote ⁵⁸ Even in much “thicker” narrations of the Prophet's birth, such as those of al-Kharkushi (d. 1015 a.d.)Footnote ⁵⁹ and Ibn Fahd (d. 1480 a.d.),Footnote ⁶⁰ midwives do not appear in the birthplace: Amina is depicted as being alone at home when birth pains take hold of her.Footnote ⁶¹ But, unlike reports in other compilations and despite the supernatural character of the delivery as a whole, in these accounts she is said to have suffered terribly.Footnote ⁶²

These are not the only versions of the story of Muhammad's birth, of course. At a rather early stage (probably in the 9th or 10th century a.d.) the figure of a woman, Fatima bint ʿAbdallah, the mother of ʿUthman b. Abi al-ʿAs, a later close companion of the Prophet,Footnote ⁶³ appears in our texts as being present at the Prophet's birth, although she is given no active role in assisting Amina.Footnote ⁶⁴ Her “mission” was not only to serve as a witness to the miracles that occurred when Muhammad was born, corroborating Amina's testimony, but probably also to testify, in a “legal” sense, to the birth itself (see below).Footnote ⁶⁵ Moreover, ignoring the “historical” question of whether a woman of the tribe of Thaqif, located in Taʾif, actually attended the Prophet's birth, one can assume that early Islamic writings, by giving her a role—however marginal—in the story of the Prophet's birth, intended to glorify her son more than her.

Dalaʾil al-Nubuwwa by Abu Nuʿaym al-Isfahani (d. 1038 a.d.) is probably one of the few works of the time that not only mention but also identify a midwife at the birth: al-Shifaʾ bint ʿAmr b. ʿAwf, mother of ʿAbd al-Rahman b. ʿAwf. The latter, another prominent companion of the Prophet Muhammad, took part in both migrations of Muhammad's supporters, fought in all the main battles of the Prophet, and, according to Muslim tradition, was one of ten believers Muhammad assured a place in Paradise; he died about 652 a.d.Footnote ⁶⁶ Al-Shifaʾ was among the first converts to Islam and one of the Muslim immigrants from Mecca to Medina.Footnote ⁶⁷ Her role in the story is, again, to attest to the birth and to the miraculous occurrences surrounding it. At the same time, the text alludes to some more concrete aspects of her function when she is quoted as recounting how the infant dropped into her hands and made his first sound—a cry or a sneeze—upon which she heard a voice responding, “May God have mercy on you” and how she then dressed him and laid him down.Footnote ⁶⁸

According to a Shiʿi Ithna-ʿAshari version of the Prophet's birth story, some anonymous midwives came to help Amina and found to their astonishment that the baby already had his umbilical cord cut off, had been swaddled, and had his eyes anointed with collyrium, although nobody, including his mother, had actually treated him. Thus left “unemployed,” their main task, here too, was to pass on their testimony.Footnote ⁶⁹

Some elaborations of the story of Muhammad's birth from the late Middle Ages add realistic details to the supernatural characteristics of the delivery. For example, while Muhammad is described not only as born circumcised and with his umbilical cord cut off but also as clean, purified, perfumed, and anointed,Footnote ⁷⁰ and the pregnancy is depicted as exceptionally easy,Footnote ⁷¹ his mother is portrayed much more realistically: she is heavily perspiring and suffering immense pains before and during birth,Footnote ⁷² after which she falls ill and thus proves unable to breastfeed her infant for more than a week.Footnote ⁷³

The vacuum left by the absence in several texts of helping women and a midwife, and the reduced role al-Shifaʾ plays in others, is filled in a few cases—probably beginning with al-Kharkushi in the 10th/11th century a.d.—by supernatural figures who are made to function very much like human helpers and midwivesFootnote ⁷⁴: an angel who, as in the Qurʾanic story of Jesus’ birth, calms the mother down and gives her milk,Footnote ⁷⁵ and supernatural female figures who crowd the house, surrounding and supporting her with their arms, giving her something to drink and anointing her belly.Footnote ⁷⁶ Tall women, identified as Asiya, the Israelite wife of Pharaoh,Footnote ⁷⁷ and Maryam, Jesus’ mother—both, by the way, destined to be Muhammad's wives in Paradise (yaṣīrāni zawjatayni lahu ṣalʿam f ī al-janna)Footnote ⁷⁸—are there as well, presenting Amina to women to whom they refer as ḥūr al-ʿayn, “the virgins of Paradise.”Footnote ⁷⁹

Burhan al-Din al-Halabi, in an effort to harmonize contradictory traditions—those describing Amina as giving birth without any human assistance, on the one hand, and those according to which al-Shifaʾ and ʿUthman b. Abi al-ʿAs's mother attended her, on the other—argues that the latter joined Amina at a later stage of her labor.Footnote ⁸⁰ The theme of saints extending help to women in labor, thus replacing the regular midwife, appears also in stories of miracles related to women in, for instance, Moroccan hagiographic writings from the Middle Ages.Footnote ⁸¹ Here it reflects, perhaps, a yearning for supernatural intervention when the usual physical treatment proves useless or unsuccessful. From the above it is clear that even in hagiographic contexts it was difficult to imagine childbirth—in regular daily life an all-female communal event with a midwife as a supervisor and guide—without any sort of moral and physical support extended by women, be they human or celestial. Given the hagiographic context, the presence of supernatural figures overshadows the role of the human helpers involved in the Prophet's birth, who remain on the margins of the story.

Interesting from another point of view is Amina's report of an angel, one of three delegates in human appearance, who a short while after Muhammad's birth stamps the prophecy seal between his shoulders and then puts his mouth on the infant's, feeding him as if he were a bird.Footnote ⁸² This can be regarded as an early act of initiation preceding the event, alluded to in the Qurʾan (94:1–3), of an angel opening the breast of the child Muhammad, purifying his heart.Footnote ⁸³ Amina's emotional reaction when she discovers her newborn baby has disappeared is touchingly described: “My soul became anxious and my heart dismayed” (wa-jaziʿa fuʾādī wa-dhahila qalbī).Footnote ⁸⁴

Like al-Shifaʾ, Muhammad's freed slave and servant Salma Umm Rafiʿ seems to have been relegated to the margins of Islamic mythology. She served as midwife for the Prophet's first wife, Khadija; his female slave (ama), Mariya the Copt; and his daughter, Fatima.Footnote ⁸⁵ Salma appears more frequently than al-Shifaʿ does in biographical and other collections; still, her figure remains “thin.”Footnote ⁸⁶ Ibn Saʿd alludes to her experience as a midwife when he recounts how she made the necessary preparations each time she helped Khadija deliver one of the Prophet's sons.Footnote ⁸⁷ Others mention her also as the woman who, together with Asmaʾ bint ʿUmays and ʿAli, washed the body of the ailing Fatima prior to her death, a hint of another task midwives carried out in Muslim societies: purifying women's bodies before burial.Footnote ⁸⁸

According to a tradition cited by Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalani,Footnote ⁸⁹ it was Sawdaʾ, or Sawdaʾ bint Misrah, who served as a midwife for Fatima, the Prophet's daughter, when she gave birth to al-Hasan, the son of ʿAli. The report contains details on how the midwife treated the infant immediately after his birth: she cut his umbilical cord, wrapped him in a yellow cloth—in general identified with infidels and therefore forbidden for Muslim males—but then covered him with another, white, cloth, recommended in Islam for males and females alike.Footnote ⁹⁰ This change of colors, preparing the newborn infant for his encounter with his distinguished grandfather Muhammad, was probably intended to emphasize his transition from a natural feminine environment into the monotheist sphere of the new religion.

None of the women who served the Prophet's family became mythological figures who might thus have enhanced the craft of midwifery and heightened the prestige of the women practicing it as, for instance, is the case with midwives in ancient Mesopotamia who embodied on earth the Mother Goddess, the “Wise Mother.”Footnote ⁹¹ Nor did any of them become the prototype for later midwives as we see happening in the Jewish tradition, where Shifra and Puʿa are said to have helped the Hebrew women in Egypt to give birth, enjoying God's blessing as the people of Israel multiplied and strengthened thanks to their courage.Footnote ⁹²Midrash Exodus Rabbah, an almost purely Haggadic exegesis compiled in Palestine either in the early Islamic period or between the 9th and the 11th or 12th century a.d., goes one step further in its effort to create a mythical aura around the two midwives and identifies them with the more famous Jochebed, Moses’ mother, and Miryam, his sister. Elaborating on the relevant verses in Exodus 1, the Midrash praises both of them for the role they fulfilled in saving the children born to the Israelites and emphasizes the generous remuneration God bestowed on them.Footnote ⁹³

The marginality in medieval Islamic writings of the midwife, or midwives, who helped the Prophet Muhammad's mother, stands out all the more when one compares the chapters on the lactation of the infant Muhammad with those on his birth. It is remarkable how compilers such as Ibn Hisham, al-Kharkushi, and al-Bayhaqi focus on Halima bint Abi Dhuʾayb al-Saʿdiyya, the Prophet's best known wet nurse: they make her the central figure and the main narrator in the relevant chapters while altogether ignoring the midwife who assisted Muhammad's mother.

Why did the issue of nursing—maternal breastfeeding as well as wet nursing—attract the attention of medieval Muslim writers, particularly of jurists who devoted detailed chapters in their legal compilations to the subject, much more than midwifery? Nursing is a long-term intrafamilial affair. It plays a decisive role not only in ensuring the nursling's survival prospects, the first stages of his/her socialization, and, according to Islamic medical theories, the consolidation of his/her character traitsFootnote ⁹⁴ but also in corroborating women's status vis-à-vis men and the power relations that reign within the family. The attention physicians and religious scholars alike paid to the question of a man's sexual relations with a nursing woman brings to the fore the impact breastfeeding had on everyday family life.Footnote ⁹⁵ Moreover, by enabling it to form the basis for a complex and ramified network of impediments to marriage, Islamic law gave nonmaternal breastfeeding a crucial role in social life as a whole.Footnote ⁹⁶

Breastfeeding is mentioned in six Qurʾanic verses, three of which contain rulings that were to form the basis for the ramified legal discussions we find later in Qurʾan commentaries, hadith, and legal literature.Footnote ⁹⁷ In contrast, no midwife is mentioned in Qurʾanic verses referring to pregnancy and early childhood, for instance, 31:14, or describing the stages of human life, from conception to old age and death, for instance 22:5 and 23:13–15. No midwife features in the story of the birth of Maryam, Jesus’ mother, in Qurʾan 3:36 or in connection to the story of the infant Moses in 28:7–12.Footnote ⁹⁸ This can explain, at least in part, why midwives appear only rarely in the huge corpus of canonical hadith attributed to the Prophet, many of which serve as commentary on the Qurʾanic text.

Men's ambivalent attitudes toward birth and the mother-genitrix may well have contributed to the midwife's relative marginality in Arabic-Islamic texts. Throughout history, birth for them was wrapped in mystery, fears, and taboos. Because they were excluded from this process, males felt it threatened their superiority, prompting them to attribute magical powers to the female—the “primordial other”—while, at the same time, trying to belittle her role in reproduction.Footnote ⁹⁹ According to the Greek myth of autochthony, one had to be born of the earth (chthon), not of a woman, to be recognized as an Athenian citizen. The Greek male aspiration was for birth to take place without any procreative act, as the goddess Athena had sprung fully formed out of the head of her father, Zeus.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The medieval Christian church—under the inspiration of the biblical myth of creation that, among other things, explains suffering at birth to be the result of divine punishment—considered women not only to be the source of depravity and the cause of man's downfall but also to be necessary, or rather a necessary evil, for procreation.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The Qurʾan refers to the (nameless) spouse of Adam as part of a couple. Both Adam and his wife are warned about the tree and approached by Satan and therefore jointly found guilty of the disobedience that costs them their expulsion from Paradise.Footnote ¹⁰² However, in post-Qurʾanic sources, Adam's wife, now named Hawwaʾ (Eve), is featured as responsible for the fall: Adam tasted the forbidden fruit only after having been intoxicated by the wine that Hawwaʾ made him drink. Ten punishments—among them menstruation, pregnancy, and the sufferings of childbirth—thereafter serve to remind the daughters of Eve of the fault of their first ancestress.Footnote ¹⁰³

Midwives represent the epitome of the physical essence of femininity, with its periods of impurity during menstruation and childbirth and after delivery; they are associated with its creative power and threatening mystery alike and embody the purely feminine subculture.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ As such they draw simultaneous feelings of contempt and fear from men. These, in turn, made the midwife a likely target for misogynous sentiments, whether explicitly expressed—Ibn al-Hajj's Madkhal is a salient example (see above)—or implicitly reflected in silence about the midwife's crucial role in society.

In patriarchal terms, by giving birth and life, by breastfeeding and caring for the newborn child, the woman performs her duties, first as a place of “safekeeping” for her husband's (or master's) semen and then as a protecting mother, thus fulfilling the expectations of her husband's family. The woman bearing the child is a vessel, then, and the midwife is a tool for getting the baby out of the vessel.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ In contrast, because the future of a lineage was entrusted in her hands, it is hard to imagine men in patriarchal societies ignoring the power of the midwife altogether. Moreover, Muslim jurists recognized the importance of midwives as agents of the patriarchal system in its permanent efforts to control the female domain through legal procedures and rites of passage. This explains why, despite their low image in Arabic-Islamic writings, midwives were granted exceptional legal status and consequently enjoyed a number of social privileges, most significant among them their role as witnesses in court.

When issues involving women's reproductive organs are brought before a sharʿia court—menstruation, competence for sexual intercourse, virginity at the time of marriage, pregnancy, miscarriage and the age of the miscarried fetus, birth, the first cry of the newborn, the verification of the mother's identity, as well as defects of the sexual organs—the qadi may authorize one or more midwives to conduct the necessary physical examinations and summon them to testify as experts. This is not necessarily a direct testimony but sometimes a circumstantial one, and they are allowed to give it independently, that is to say, in the absence of male witnesses.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Muslim jurists who accept this rule, on occasion reluctantly, are unanimous that, due to the modesty code, there is no choice but to rely on the testimony women give regarding what men are forbidden to watchFootnote ¹⁰⁷ except in cases of danger to life, for example, during a complex delivery, when male physicians are called upon to extend help. Already in the 8th or 9th century a.d. we find this rule formulated in ʿAbd al-Razzaq's hadith collection: “the sunna proceeded in allowing the testimony of females without the presence of a male witness in matters they are in charge of [maḍat al-sunna fī an tajūza shahādat al-nisāʾ laysa maʿahunna rajul], such as birth, the infant's first cry, and other feminine matters which they and only they are entitled to examine.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ This principle, infirād, a testimony of women, or even a single woman, not authenticated by male witnesses, is an exception—justified by necessity (ḍarūra)Footnote ¹⁰⁹—to the basic rule derived from a Qurʾanic verse (2:282) that implies the testimony of a woman is less credible than that of a man.Footnote ¹¹⁰ The controversy among jurists, sometimes taking place within one and the same school of law (madhhab), focuses mainly on the range of legal questions to which this exceptional rule applies and on the number of female witnesses required.Footnote ¹¹¹

In this sociolegal context it is tempting to reexamine the role of Fatima bint ʿAbdallah, ʿUthman b. Abi al-ʿAs's mother, and al- Shifaʾ bint ʿAmr in terms of testimony given not before a regular court but before the “court of history.” Some authors of early sīra, dalāʾil, and ṭabaqāt writings may have been unaware of the importance of eyewitnesses to the Prophet's birth, although, as we have seen, hadith compilers as early as ʿAbd al-Razzaq do refer to the question of infirād. In contrast, it is reasonable to assume that later writers, from the 9th/10th century a.d. onward, prompted by the intensifying legal discussions on the theme of women's testimony, began allocating a role, however modest, to those women who helped the Prophet's mother give birth. Likewise, traditions in sīra and similar compilations telling the stories of Muhammad's wet nurses, particularly Halima, may well have been influenced by contemporary legal discussions on prohibitions of marriage stemming from nonmaternal lactation and at the same time helped consolidate the Islamic rules in this regard.Footnote ¹¹² If we take into account the mystery surrounding the birth of the Prophet Muhammad in the previously mentioned reports, particularly the absence of Amina's family members or those of her deceased husband, ʿAbdallah, on the one hand, and the importance attributed to the Prophet's pure lineage (nasab), on the other hand,Footnote ¹¹³ we may understand why religious scholars, mindful of the legal significance of such questions, insisted on furnishing judicial evidence to the Prophet's genealogy through the testimony of two (!) female eyewitnesses. Their testimony was also essential in the context of another debate that started among Muslim scholars around the 12th century a.d. over whether the Prophet was born at night or in daylight.Footnote ¹¹⁴

To conclude, classical Arabic texts that deal with women's affairs, either from the medical or from the religious perspective, are without exception the product of male scholars, members of “the sex that begets, not bears, young.”Footnote ¹¹⁵ Although in reality midwifery was based on unwritten female wisdom transferred through apprenticeship,Footnote ¹¹⁶ these texts were directed mainly at male readers—physicians and jurists. As we have seen, they mirror an ambivalent attitude toward midwives, a mixture of repressed admiration, open repulsion, and fear. Thus, midwives are almost totally absent from Islamic scriptures, and Muslim writers make them play only a minor role in biographical and hagiographic literature, where the midwives of the Prophet's family are consciously or unconsciously “blocked” from becoming mythological figures.

While on the whole remaining marginal literary figures in those stories of mawlid al-nabī incorporated in sīra compilations and related genres, women, sometimes hesitatingly identified as midwives, nevertheless played a role through their very presence at the moment of the Prophet's birth. In a storylike manner, they set an example for the implication of the legal rules concerning the midwife's status in court, rules that were formulated and consolidated in the formative period of Islamic law side by side with the mawlid traditions.

Men acknowledged the power of the midwife in whose hands the future of a lineage was entrusted, as the chapter that Ibn Khaldun dedicated to this profession in al-Muqaddima shows, and were aware of their ritual-magical leading role in the all-female domain of the birth scene, as reflected in the unbridled attack on Cairene midwives in Ibn al-Hajj's al-Madkhal. Moreover, men recognized the importance of midwives as agents of a patriarchal system that continuously sought to control the female domain, the “queendom of the mothers.” Although she did not rank highly in social terms, the midwife was granted exceptional legal status as a witness in court. In her capacity as the “overseer” in the birth place, extending physical help, witnessing to events involving women's bodies, and, at the same time, fulfilling prescribed ritual roles, she found herself at the intersection of public and private spheres in a quasi-official but still liminal status—the female representative of patriarchal authorities.Footnote ¹¹⁷