Medieval Arabic Islam and the Culture of Gender: Feminine Voices in al-Suyūṭī's Literature on Sex and Marriage

This article examines the feminine voices perceptible in works attributed to the renowned polymath of the Mamluk period, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), pertaining to the field of adab al-nikāḥ, literature on sex and marriage, or, more generally, erotic literature. As much of the early Arabic erotic literature—produced in the ninth and tenth centuries—was "lost without a trace," 1 it is fortunate that later authors, such as al-Suyūṭī, preserved some of this early production in their compilations and the (sometimes ample) quotations from earlier authors that they inserted in their own works.