In her analysis of Islamic women's property rights in fifteenth-century Granada, Maya Shatzmiller powerfully demonstrates how Islamic women were able to acquire property ownership through sadaq, which was essentially a marriage gift from the groom to the bride. Though under parents' guardianship, this marriage act secured women individual property rights in two successive instalments, upon and after marriage, as did inter vivos minor or marriage gifts. In support of her arguments, the author uses an enormous number of primary documents, including contemporary legal publications as well as court and notary cases.

Shatzmiller also carefully contextualizes her arguments within the economic, social, historical, and legal frameworks of the period. She concludes that, in some cases and circumstances, Islamic women in fifteenth-century Granada enjoyed greater status and rights, as well as independence and equality, than elsewhere in Christian Europe at the time. Although such Muslim women certainly took part in family property devolution and inheritance systems, Schatzmiller does not clearly identify how women's property rights fit within the larger male/female legal inheritance context. A broader gender analysis of Islamic inheritance laws and the enforcement of marriage contracts would have put women's rights into a more nuanced and larger perspective.

The author also analyses how laws and legal practice provided a woman with some control over her own body, then understood as a property right. It appears that Islamic law did provide more protection than elsewhere and was quite unique. Women had specific rights regarding childrearing, virginity, intercourse, contraception, breastfeeding, and pregnancy. In the pronatalist environment of the time, however, one cannot be certain that the rights provided by law were actually enforced and respected in daily life. Although Shatzmiller's analysis would have been enriched by including a larger number of case studies, the findings remain convincing and innovative.

The book next discusses property rights in connection with an individual's conversion to Islam. The author argues that conversion prior to marriage was necessary to enforce marriage contracts and property rights. The law further provided different outcomes depending upon whether women were free or slaves, whether women converted and/or men converted, and when the conversion occurred. Yet the author's discussion relies on what she describes as the ‘legal framework of conversion’ obtained from contemporary published sources. The discussion is of particular interest considering the time period, but again it would have benefited from case studies on the specific effects of conversion on women's property rights as well as how they were enforced in the then male-dominated environment.

As sadaq and conversion affected women's property rights, so too did they govern women's labour, wages, and transactions. Women's labour and wages were discussed within the marriage contract and considered one component of women's property rights. After marriage, women's labour, wages, and earnings belonged to the wife but only with the husband's approval. Thus, it would be a great stretch to say that women's rights were equal to men's, as they were often subordinate to the husband's decisions, and those imposed by parents before and after marriage (until sadaq payment). Similarly, women could sell property and have access to loans in their own name but again only with family support and approval. The comparative context, however, indicates that despite these limitations on property rights, Islamic women's rights in fifteenth-century Granada were quite unique, as they were protected by the law and remained separate from the husband's. In the end, the author successfully persuades the reader to believe that Islamic women's property rights in fifteenth-century Granada were not equal to men's but that they did have property rights which resulted in enhanced equality for women, more so than elsewhere in Christian Europe at the time.