Women in the Qur’an: IIS Publishes Groundbreaking Anthology
We are very pleased to announce the publication of a groundbreaking anthology that explores a critical and contentious theme: women in the Qur’an and Qur’anic interpretation.
An Anthology of Qur'anic Commentaries, Volume 2: On Women, edited by Dr Karen Bauer and Dr Feras Hamza, represents a unique new resource for all scholars and students of the Qur’an and its interpretations, Islamic studies, and women and gender.
The volume starts with an introduction that for the first time follows the Qurʾanic narrations on women in a chronological sequence, showing how its worldview developed. This innovative analysis is followed by translations of key Qur’anic verses on women and commentaries on these spanning the eighth to the twentieth centuries.
On Women also includes interviews with leading Muslim scholars, bringing the historical commentaries into dialogue with contemporary perspectives, including those of women. By doing so, it probes the impact of the medieval interpretive tradition on modern Muslim women’s rights, social status, intellectual authority, and spiritual standing within their communities.
The book’s co-editor Dr Karen Bauer is a Senior Research Associate at the IIS. She is the author of Gender Hierarchy in the Qurʾān: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses and editor of Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qur’anic Exegesis (2nd/8th–9th/15th Centuries). She has also written numerous articles on the history of Qur’anic interpretation, women’s status in Islamic interpretation and the history of emotions in Islam.
Dr Feras Hamza, co-editor, is Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong in Dubai, UAE, and a Research Fellow at the IIS. He co-edited the first volume in the Anthologies of Qur’anic Commentaries series, On the Nature of the Divine, and is the general series editor for the multi-volume project.
