Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:13 This is <inaudible> and you're listening to history speaks on the Medan podcast. I want to begin our episode today with a story about a woman jurors from the 14th century, by the name of <inaudible> more popularly known as <inaudible> false mounted belt. That idea is widely acknowledged in different biographical accounts, as an accomplished preacher and jurists who also issued legal opinions. Uh, she was a contemporary of the very well-known Abenet Mia and almost all the biographical entries that I collected about her make mention of his tremendous respect for her. In fact, it is reported, um, that whenever even Tamia heard that <inaudible> would be present at one of his study circles, he would anxiously prepare for the session because he was often outwitted by her, in their exchanges on matters of law of the many different biographical entries that I collected on. <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:01:05 what I noticed was almost all entries had a similarly brief sketch of her life and not much more information, but in one entry, there is fleeting mention of an exchange between her and another male jurists on the issue of mensuration the entry notes that in this debate, she convinced him of her position. And then proclaimed your knowledge of this matter is only theoretical. Whereas I know it theoretically and experientially. When I first read this account, I was simply struck by the power of her voice and presence and her claim that her legal reasoning was more sound because she was thinking through her experiences as a menstruating person. But I could not find much more about this debate. What was the particular topic that they disagreed on? What was her position? Did it eventually find its way into authoritative opinions of her legal school? None of this is something that I could really make out from the very limited sources that I had available.
Speaker 1 00:02:02 The limits of what a source tells you as a problem that is that historians often have to deal with for those historians working on the marginalized and underprivileged in society, trying to recover their voices, to get some sense of their lives. Their understanding of their place in society is even more challenging. In this episode, I'll be speaking to two scholars, Prunella Myrna and Lori silvers who asked precisely these questions in their work. I speak first with Prunella Myrna about her work on elite and slave quarters sins in the Abassid period and the ways in which they navigated and negotiated their situations. I then speak with Laurie silvers about her series of historical mysteries, also in the Abassid period that bring together history and the imaginative as a space for giving voice to the silenced <inaudible> context. When we talked about <inaudible>, they are really,
Speaker 2 00:03:00 Really referred to high society courtesans often, but it could also be a domestic slaves often in urban settings. So, um, the geria in history, they could be, they th they are really marginalized really, but they do worry in that Bassett society. They have a voice and they are actually,
Speaker 3 00:03:27 Um, one,
Speaker 2 00:03:30 One of the groups of women, one of the social groups that have been mentioned in, in, in, in literature. So did Jerry, uh, the name Jerry actually means girl, uh, or it's one of the names for girls. So slave girl is how it is often translated, but, uh, Jalia could, well, actually could be any kind of female slave. We don't see any consistency in how to refer to slaves, but most of the time it's, um, uh, concubine or quarter son, it could also be any domestic slave or companions to, or slave companion or working in not only domestic settings, but also in other settings. But when we talk about, uh, Abbasids to society, uh, the January, when we talk about the January, uh, we often refer to a high society elite group of quarter sense, and also vest. We have to remember that the cortices will do worry. They had high status in their context. Uh, and sometimes they refer to the pride, especially Korean singers, but the singers were also slave enslaved. They were enslaved, but they had high status and they have their own proud pride. Do you see that? Yeah. And, uh,
Speaker 2 00:05:04 They don't see themselves as, uh, like, or, uh, sex workers or, eh, they really want to differentiate themselves
Speaker 3 00:05:17 From, you know, uh,
Speaker 2 00:05:19 And, um, or common people. They belong to the elite. I would like to say something about what we know about the GYT, because what we actually know about jewelry is told by male authors, uh, and many of them were friends, and this is so fascinating in Nebraska society, in the Bassett literature. Uh, that's this group of women are portrayed often by men who, uh, socialized with them. Some of them were their friends, some of them just met them at a different gatherings. And so today I will somehow Bassett literature is like a homeless social environment. When, where men talk to each other about this women,
Speaker 1 00:06:10 You know, it's really interesting this thing that you're bringing up about the homosexuality of those spaces, but at the same time, what you're seeing in the literature is that these men were, um, you know, that these men were relating to the Joetti in different spaces. Uh, you know, they might be friends with them. They might be coming across them in, in different spaces. So it seems like there's a certain kind of homeless sociality. Uh, but there are, uh, you know, women in these male spaces. They're just not free women.
Speaker 2 00:06:41 Yes. Uh, but I also see something else. Uh, and I think that, um, there is also a certain amount of admiration of these women. Interesting, because they have, they have something. And this is when we start, start to talk about agency, um, they use, they got a chance. They get a chance to use the agency. They get a chance to, to change the life situation. And when they take this chance, um, they do it by using the resources they have, which is, uh, th uh eloquency and, uh, you know, the quick answer to take advantage, to take advantage of the situation and, you know, turn the situation to their favor. Eh, so, um, so somehow, um, I think that these women were admired in the lifetime, but they were not seen as important, you know, historical actors. So what we see that the kind of fit or two, we have, uh, referring to them and use them for entertainment, for making jokes and, you know, chatting with each other about these whole wow, extraordinary women. So, uh, that will have to be very careful when we read this literature and try to go beyond this and not only prejudices of the sources, but also prejudices offer later interpretations of these sources. So, um,
Speaker 1 00:08:34 Could you say a little bit more about that in terms of what you see as both the prejudices and the sources, but also of the later works or the secondary literature that's interpreted these sources?
Speaker 2 00:08:47 I would say that, uh, they are not only, uh, mentioned in a negative way. It depends on the author. So, um, uh, but they are often because they are well, this often connected to, um, you know, uh, free sexuality, they are available as women, but in actual fact, they're not because he's caught persons are not, they're not prostitutes, but they act as prostitutes. They are. Uh, so they have often been interpreted as being like prostitute spread. They are not because they can choose which meant to be with, or not be with, I think because of their role as being, you know, somehow available women, eh, contrary to free women who were not, uh, they, uh, authors and the writers have felt free to use them, um, to, um, as bad examples of, uh, um, I mean, I, and this is actually, this is not typical for our Basset society.
Speaker 2 00:10:06 I mean, it's an age long, uh, prejudice about women who have active, active sexual life and talk freely about sexuality and other subjects that well, they have, um, it's a very old motif in, in, in poetry and pre pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, for example, uh, the, the, the force. And I do say, um, unloyal singing girl or not this kind of free woman who you can't rely on you, they will, they are never sincere in the love, et cetera. And they only want your money. So this is an old motif, and I don't think it not only in the Arabic literature, but in other literatures as well.
Speaker 1 00:11:04 I mean, certainly we still have this conversation today. I mean, the whole sort of critique of slut-shaming is precisely this point that, you know, we, that women, uh, tend to be seen in this. I mean, the interesting and describing in the <inaudible> context and the ways in which, you know, the, uh, the Giardia is seen is that, uh, you know, that, that kind of sexual availability, uh, of the enslaved woman is created by those very men who are then criticizing them for being, uh, sexually available. Right. I mean, it's like these people, these women were enslaved, uh, and then trained to, you know, uh, uh, occupied these positions as co as cortisones, uh, and then are being criticized for, uh, you know, basically being, uh, sexually available in those ways. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's just so jarring to kind of see that juxtaposition.
Speaker 2 00:11:56 Yes. They have been used in so many ways. Eh, and I think this critique is also part of an attempt to keep, I mean, bluntly to keep free women in place. Don't be like these women, and that's, that's the meaning of shut shaming. Huh it'll slut-shaming and so certain women are bad. Don't be like them, because if you like them, you will also be, you know, subject subjected to this kind of, uh, rumors. And exactly.
Speaker 1 00:12:35 I, I was wondering if you could maybe tell us a little bit about, um, you know, how you came to thinking about, uh, the agency of the Giardia, uh, and, uh, you know, stepping away from the, these tropes about them that you see in the literature, what were maybe the, you know, was there something that really struck you that made you realize, uh, you know, that you needed to take kind of a critical distance from the source, or, uh, basically, like, how did you kind of arrive at this place of being able to read these sources, not at their face value, but to read sort of, um, beyond what was most obvious to try to recover the agency of the Giardia
Speaker 2 00:13:20 In one way, uh, this kind of literature helped me, eh, cause, um, early Arabic adept as it's called, or, um, the Abbasids add up, uh, the anecdotes full of anecdotes and poems is in the self, very contradictory. So you, you find this contradictory, um, reports about these women and what they were doing, but, um, I can't say that there is one thing that made me, um, uh, come to this kind of use. This kind of method is only that I, from the beginning, I, I realized that, um, like this, um, I I'm a literary historian and, um, I started to, I met my PhD is anxious, classical Arabic literature, but I always been interested in how to use this literature as a, for social history. So what kind of, what can this, um, can we go beyond literature to see what really happened and well, we can never know exactly what happened and we can never come to an exact truth, but there's something, but have, I want to go as far as possible to kind of uncover a real-life of these women, although we can't go all the way we can do as much as possible.
Speaker 1 00:14:56 I mean, I think one of the things that I really appreciated about, uh, you know, your work and reading some of your work on, on the Giardia is the, you know, is, is the way in which, I mean, because this is always the challenge of the historian is how do you take the sources that, you know, we do have available, which we recognize are often written by elite members of society. Uh, and so it's, if you, if what you're interested in as a historian is how did the people who are not a part of this elite circles live, or they might've been a part of these elite circles, but were not themselves, um, uh, the kind of, uh, you know, um, holders of power in these spaces, how do you recover, uh, what their lives were like, how were they living? How were they perceiving, uh, you know, the society that they lived in and their place in it.
Speaker 1 00:15:44 Uh, and so I really appreciated the way in which you're trying to push us to think about, um, both literature as a source of social history, but also moving beyond the, the tropes sort of, you know, instead like reading those tropes as doing a certain kind of work through which you can then recover, uh, you know, what these women were trying to do. So, you know, at some level the, the trope of these women as being disloyal and, uh, you know, not really ever caring about you, but only just, you know, wanting to go after your money. I appreciate that. You know, you were trying to show us that this is a way in which the Ducati, like exercise their agency to better their situation.
Speaker 2 00:16:23 Yeah. You have, for example, one thing that I've, uh, found, uh, and w where you read everywhere, actually in this kind of Adam, uh, anthologies, the jokes about slave girls being presented for, uh, the kaleighf or another elite man who wants to buy, perhaps wants to buy her. And, um, she takes this opportunity. Uh, th th the joke is often in a, she says something, you know, sexualized or something like that, and makes him want to buy her. And this is a joke and the name of the slave women differ, and also the name of the potential bias, but there's so many of these kind of jokes that it was very popular. It seems to have been very popular. So what, what can they say? What can it tell us about this women's lives? Actually, nothing about the individual women, but it tells us that the purchase, uh, was extremely important for these women. They could, I mean, they could move socially, but it had to be bought by someone, but it could, you know, they could use the little ages to the hat in order to be bought by, uh, a person they wanted to people by. I mean, they could change the living conditions by, uh, coming from a more, um, modest household to, um, to a more, uh, prominent family, for example.
Speaker 1 00:18:06 Right. And that might give them much greater access to, uh, you know, to, to a certain kind of status in, in, you know, in society. I mean, and I think in some ways, you know, the argument that, that you make about agency and how to think about their agency, uh, reminded me of Saba Mahmoud's work, you know, where she's critic critiquing liberal feminist notions of agency that tend to want to look for resistance. Um, you know, and what you're, what you're kind of describing is, um, an exercise of their agency that was trying to, uh, you know, see the situation that they're in and, uh, you know, create further opportunities for themselves, given the situation that they're already in. Uh, and, you know, it's important to be able to recognize that that was a mode of agency, that they were, that they were exercising.
Speaker 2 00:18:54 Yeah. I think it's a faster way with, for, for most historical subject that okay. But they would, first and foremost, they want to improve their own living conditions and resistance wouldn't get them very far.
Speaker 1 00:19:11 Right. Right. Exactly. I mean, it's a system that's entirely, uh, out of your control, especially for enslaved people, uh, you know, in this context there's, uh, even after emancipation, at some level, you are still tied to the, to the individual that enslaved you through, you know, the sort of, um, system of a patron.
Speaker 2 00:19:30 Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1 00:19:33 I was wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit, I, I love, uh, you know, the way in which you describe the, um, you know, if we can call it the sort of slut-shaming of the Giardia as a way of controlling free women. Uh, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the relationship between the Giardia and the free woman,
Speaker 2 00:19:55 I think, uh, and this is valid for all, for long historical period that, eh, most slaves were women and most slave women, uh, uh, worked in or in a domestic setting. So, so, so, so they were living together and being very close to women. So what we see, and this is how, um, that th the kind of literature we have distort our vision of this, uh, women, because, um, the literature, the authors are men, and they talked to the right, the readers do readers are expected be men. And they described their meetings with, uh, with this women. So you'll get impression that these women were meeting men all the time, because that's the only picture we get from literature, uh, all anecdotes about a men's meeting, or some, several men's meeting with, uh, a slave woman or a geria. And she says something and they report it back to other men.
Speaker 2 00:21:17 But most of the time, I think that they were relived and, uh, were together with other women and free women and other slave women. So it must have been quite difficult to differentiate between them, of course, uh, um, the harms or the, um, the women's part of the house has had their own, um, hierarchies, but we also see examples of real friendship between, eh, enslaved and free women. And also one interesting, interesting thing is that we can, if we see examples of how, um, the Duetto were trained in families, uh, you have the kind of, uh, <inaudible> who was born and born in the house. And she was brought up by the family that is by the women in the family most of the time, uh, probably, and she was also taught singing. We have, uh, Sonic examples where it's explicitly stated that slave singers were taught music by the women in the family. So they were brought up with the children and lived together with the women and the families, women were slave owners, they own slaves, and they, so it was, uh, and, and, and the board and bias, um, bought and sold slaves. And there are many examples of that. So, yeah,
Speaker 1 00:22:58 I mean, I, I was really interested in, you know, uh, some of the, these sort of, um, you know, where you talk about in your work, the investment that free women had in enslavement as an institution, I feel like this is something that, you know, oftentimes we don't really think about, I, uh, you know, what strikes me is the work of, um, uh, Stephanie Jones, Rogers, who was a historian writing about the, uh, the American South and, and white Southern women, uh, as slave owners. And part of what she's arguing in her work is that, you know, white, Southern women were invested in slavery because it actually allowed them to acquire a certain amount of power and economic privilege in society. And it seems to me that some of what you're seeing and talking about in your work is similar. That there's an investment that there's a, there's some amount of agency
Speaker 2 00:23:46 That free women were able to exercise through their investment in the slave trade. Yeah, absolutely. And also, um, in this case, in that bus it's society, and we're talking about, uh, elite urban society now, uh, women were supposed to not going out outside, and they was supposed to stay in doors, but they could send their, eh, closest slave companions to do errands for them and also pick up gossip, I guess. So, uh, I guess they might also, depending on the slave companions to, eh, to be there, what do you say extended, right. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting how, you know, in, in that particular context of the Abaza period, but certainly this continues until much later the restriction on your mobility is actually a sign of an elevated social status. Uh, you know, but, but it does constrain you. And so then you do need individuals who are not restricted in the same way, who can kind of be your eyes and ears to the outcome, to be able to be a, um, insecure nation, which gave Morse highest status.
Speaker 2 00:25:03 They had to have slave, and they had to have, uh, uh, women's slaves, enslaved cortisones, and the Abassid courts had been, has been a subject of historical interest, partly because we have a number of historical sources that talk about them, their proximity to powerful men and women, and their participation in elite circles meant that they at least showed up in the sources, but what can historians do to recover the voices of those who are barely mentioned in the sources, those individuals who were of such little interest to scholarly and literary elite, that they make scant mention of them. I talk next to Laurie silvers to think about the limits of historical methods and the rich space opened up for recovering such voices at the borders of history and fiction.
Speaker 4 00:25:56 The characters came out of my research, uh, in, in, in a general form. So I worked on when I was an academic, I worked on early Sufism, uh, and earliest long, early, early mystic piety. Um, but in order to do that work, I had to do a lot of social history because the people that I was focusing on were not elite members of society. Uh, there was not a lot of information about them. There wasn't much about their lives or experienced. So I'm, I'm dealing with, with women in the stories, uh, non elite people, uh, in these stories and needed to do wide ranging social history research in order to know better about who they are and be able to make decisions about what they're, what the sayings that are attributed to them might mean what the behaviors described about them might mean. And this started to give me a sense of, of the world around these characters in a way that I would not have had I done sort of the more typical research on sophism, which is very textually oriented and focused, uh, on the immediate meaning, the close, the close meanings of the words in the text.
Speaker 4 00:27:13 I wanted to explore those meanings within the context of the worlds in which they were given, but specifically, because, you know, I had to look and see what might be behind them, given that the stories that I'm getting are stories that are told by elite men about non elite people. Uh, and so what were they getting at and telling you stories you have to sift through so much meaning in, in, uh, in these accounts to get at what might be the historical experience of the people, uh, behind them. Uh, so the, the, the books, the series really started out of the necessary imagination that I had to cultivate in order to do this kind of academic work. Uh, so when I stopped being an academic, it sort of moved on to working on fiction. I continued to asking those questions about the people and place and time, but I started asking questions in the context of, you know, what if, what would have become of this person or that person they were outside the, the, the realms of what I could know as a historian.
Speaker 4 00:28:29 And I found that I was able to say academic things make academic claims that were rooted in good historical research, but through people and in a, in a, in a place that, uh, that, that I couldn't, uh, th that I couldn't focus on historically in my, in my historical research, beyond the realm of what would be acceptable at a academic conference or in, you know, in an, in an academic article. And so it gave me the sort of freedom to say all the things that I had been wanting to say. So, so I've got a lot of main characters, but they're all, they all begin. The story begins centered on, uh, Zaytuna and teens, mothers as a tuna and teen are twins, uh, born to a woman who is a wandering Saint. And so she's based on, um, initially on, on, uh, Shajuana who is a, uh, a Saint of African descent in the early period.
Speaker 4 00:29:29 And, and on some of the stories that are passed on by the noon, uh, and others of these women who would wander the countryside in a, you, it just wool garments in ecstasy and in love with God. And I had always wondered, happened to these women, you know, what was life like for them? And so, so, uh, you know, there's a wonderful story about, uh, uh, a black Saint who is a shepherd, who is out, you know, is, is, is out with her sheep. And this, this man approaches her because he's had a dream about her, that she is his wife and paradise. And so, of course he feels like he has the right to go find her right now. I mean, let's just say that so that he has the right to go find that he has rights over her, right? So the first thing we encounter in this story is his expectation that he has rights over her because he just sort of arrives at her.
Speaker 4 00:30:28 He goes searching for her and he finds her. And, you know, she's just like, buddy, I, you know, I don't want any of this, but, but one of the things that we see is that she has, uh, either, uh, that she has a garment on which it is embroidered for buying or selling, uh, which is basically not for sale. And so what are we to think of this right now? I had actually heard accounts of this in conversation with other people who study Sufism, that this is an account of her, uh, her rejection of materiality. And I thought, well, you know, we're looking at social history, let's look at the wider context, which is that she may have been innocent and freed. Um, and, and also, so that there may also be there, there was at the time, the possibility of being abducted off the road and sold into slavery.
Speaker 4 00:31:22 So people did just abducted people off the road and then sell them into slavery. And most normally it didn't matter. And, and so she's, so to me, I read that within the context of her, of her social situation. Now, what else would it have been like for her to be alone? Any woman alone on the road was going to be raped. This is, you know, I don't want to say, may I, it, it feels like a certainty. Um, right. And so he seems to be addressing that reality when he approaches her. And he says, and he sees, um, wolves sitting with the sheep. Now, I'd also heard, you know, he's surprised at this. And so he, now, I'd also heard accounts of this being like, Oh, it's sort of lions lying down with the lens, that kind of thing. And, and he says, this is so shocking.
Speaker 4 00:32:09 The wolves are with the sheep. And she says to him, very sharply, I fixed what between what's between me and God. And so the wolfs are, are, are with the sheep. Now he's from my reading of it, he's telling the truth story in order to affirm, to readers or listeners of the story that she has not been sexually compromised through rape, right. Because it would be perceived as a sexual compromise. It wouldn't be perceived as a violence assault. Um, and that he saying, she's been protected by God from this. And I'm reading her saying, I am, you know, I'm, I'm protected by God, within myself that she understands her, this experience of her life with God. Uh, but not that she has been actually materially protected by God from, um, now that's not really something I could say in an academic article. Right, right. But I do venture, uh, as far as I can in my, in my, uh, chapter in the Cambridge companion to Sufism, uh, as far as I can, historically, I've ventured to argue these things there, but, um, you know, but I can actually bring out this experience and fiction.
Speaker 4 00:33:21 And so I really wanted to talk about the people who were the most vulnerable within, uh, within the early Sufi community, the early mystic and pious communities. I wanted to talk about these people that most vulnerable. And I wanted to, uh, talk about what their, their lives would have been like. I think so often we look at the past and we think about female saints. We see Robbie allodynia. And, and as a, and as a friend of mine said recently, you know, like poor, poor Robbia, she's doing a lot of work for, for all the rest of the feet. She's having to carry them. All right. And so, and, and, and I thought, and I, and I, and I thought I would like to bring these other women forward. And I'd like to bring them into the story. And I'd like to bring their, their history into the story. And so I decided to make the mother, uh, this woman of African descent, who, who wandered and who had these experiences and who was not hoping to have children, uh, because she wanted to live her life in ecstasy with God, uh, and becomes pregnant through a violent act. And God delivers her to her, these, these twins. And now she has to, uh, understand who she is as a pious of mystic women and what her relationship with God is with, with respect to this. Um,
Speaker 1 00:34:48 I mean, I really appreciate you, you know, the way that you're describing both the limits of historical work in terms of what it allows us to build as a picture or an imagination of, uh, you know, of the past, but also of that very close relationship between history and fiction, right? In some sense, the historian is doing precisely that work of trying to, you know, read some of these sources, put pieces together and imagine, you know, what things might have been like, or imagine what the life of, you know, X character have might have been like. Um, but then there, you know, certain kinds of ideas about what history is and what history does, and in some ways also limits your imagination. And so fiction is such a, a great way to, you know, to be able to move in that direction and to, you know, build precisely what you're talking about, build this imagination of a world that for a lot of readers, um, is so valuable because so much of what we understand of who we are, how we act in the world, uh, you know, the histories that we bring with us as we act in the world is really built on stories.
Speaker 1 00:35:57 And, and, you know, so for, to see you kind of doing that work, I feel like, you know, I love that when I read, um, when I read the lover and part of what I also love about the, the picture that you give us of these scholarly circles, uh, you know, that most stuff I circulating in is, is also because it gives us this picture of the writers of these texts that we do read, right. It gives us some kind of imagination of who they might have been, because, you know, like you're saying part of the challenges that pretty much all the historical sources that we have are written by people who are elite in some way or the other. Uh, and, and, and, and we tend to read them largely as the kind of text, right. That we sort of relate to the text and don't think too much about, you know, who are the people who are writing these, what are the circles that they're a part of?
Speaker 1 00:36:47 What were their lived experiences that kind of brought them to writing these texts in the way, in the way that they did? Um, you know what I mean, it's, it's so common to have these texts where you have religious scholars railing against, you know, the, the, the public and how they don't listen to them, how they don't follow what, you know, what they say. Um, and, you know, it took me a while to kind of read the stuff, not as a reflection on the public, but also a reflection on what the scholar hopes his position would be. Vis-a-vis the public and the authority that he would carry that he doesn't, that then brings him to writing the text in the way that he does. So, you know, I really love that, you know, bit of the way in which you explore these, uh, you know, these scholarly networks and scholarly circles, because it, it, it, it gives us, you know, it brings these people alive, uh, which gives us, uh, uh, you know, a different lens by which we can read some of these, you know, textual sources that we deal with.
Speaker 4 00:37:47 Thank you. And, um, you know, and one of the things I really appreciate when people do that in scholarship, et Cera, Abdul Latif has been looking specifically at, uh, Christianity in his context and, and, um, uh, Martin NeuLion did this as well, but looking at the, at his particular context, but Sarah is looking at why, why were certain people left out of cliches for Sola, right. What was going on was cliched and misogynist. You know, I mean, it's actually why all the women are being left out because somebody is a misogynist, but really, but what was going on with him, I mean, his daughter and his wife were, uh, ISTEAM Teddy's scholars, uh, you know, what was, what was going, what was going on there. And, uh, and she really sort of unpacks the social history and Martin does as well. And her work is sort of growing out of Wharton's work.
Speaker 4 00:38:33 Um, but she's unpacking in this gendered way of, of, of looking at, at Y uh, the kinds of pressures that he was under, that women would be left out. And it's similar to why he would be very reticent to, uh, you know, decide how as well, you know, people don't realize how dangerous a figure right on the edge was, uh, back in the day, people forget that, that even, you know, sort of quoting women in a particular way could, could bring down on your head, a lot of negativity that you don't need. And, and, uh, push shady was in this, in this place where there was actual violence going on in which his life was threatened. So, so it's like, we have to think of all these different ways, but, but the problem is right. We, now we understand that about, you know, about Christianity, that there's this view that there's this multitude of reasons why women are left out of the reseller, uh, in general.
Speaker 4 00:39:26 Um, and then how we look at the reseller as what Sufism should be, and women are absent. And, and so, you know, we, we look back at the, everybody, you know, when I was first sort of getting into soup as all, look at this, this is, this is the book that will tell you everything you need to know. And I wasn't there. Right. And if I was there, then I had to be Robbie. I'm like, well, that's not going to happen. Right. So, so how, you know, so how do we do that? I mean, how do we, how do we, how do we see ourselves in this history? So I think sort of bringing those aspects, that we're, we're looking at the complicated nature of the people who are writing these texts. It gives us an even broader sense of, of, uh, of, of why certain people are there and people who are not there and what their, uh, what their, their inclinations, uh, were.
Speaker 4 00:40:16 And in a lot of cases, you know, cliched is a nice example, but there are examples of people who are leaving women out and leaving the experiences of others out. Um, and I think you, you got this, I was listening to your interview with, uh, with murdering, you know, that they're, uh, that they're leaving these things out in order to preserve their own power, uh, and making sure that certain rights of theirs are preserved at certain ways, and to articulate power over others and the way that the stories are told. So, you know, I hoped in, in writing this, that I could unravel some of that within the story and, and, and fiction again, has this power to, to inhabit the imagination, uh, and to reach people that, you know, you know, as much as we love our work as historians, I mean, who, how much of it actually gets read and, and translated out on a popular, you know, at a popular level.
Speaker 1 00:41:08 Right. Yeah. And I often find that it, you know, it's also, um, ideas that, you know, we might have individually, or as a field about what constitutes, um, historical, uh, evidence and, you know, it isn't itself. So limiting, I mean, like some of the work that I've done on, on women jurors, for example, you know, there's like snippets that we get from them about them from, you know, in biographical, um, and, and, and not much more. And so, you know, to a certain extent you can kind of go into that time period, try to recreate the social history of, uh, you know, the city that they lived in, uh, you know, their, their kind of journey of moving from one place to the other who are people that are coming into contact with that maybe we know a little bit more about, but at some level, you know, you get stuck. If you can't bring a kind of imagination and, uh, you know, an ability to move beyond just what the sources are telling you, but recreating or re-imagining that person, their, you know, their interactions with others, uh, you know, that, that, that goes, that the works with the historical material, but then sort of strips beyond it.
Speaker 4 00:42:21 Yeah. And we're, and we're taught to not try to inhabit them. You know, we're, we're taught to not imagine them as people, uh, somebody that we could have known and asked questions of. Um, and that if we do that, we've, we've stepped up. You know, we've stepped beyond a realm of acceptability at some level. You do have to imagine them as people, you do have to imagine that there are people who get up in the morning who maybe are irritated because, you know, for, for whatever reason, cause they've got to deal with something, uh, that they, you know, they're happy, they're sad. They, you know, their, their child does something that worries them. And we have all these, we have all this information in the text, so they are people who got up in the morning, irritated with their children, you know, we it's there.
Speaker 4 00:43:09 Uh, but we somehow, I think my, my, I don't know, not everybody right, but there is this at least, you know, I always got the sense that I wasn't supposed to be looking those things. I wasn't supposed to be looking at these at the, the humane elements of the techs. And, and, and thinking about, about that, what are these, what are these things that are the sort of the texture, the deep texture of our humanity, uh, in these texts that make them much more complicated, much more disturbing, much more beautiful, uh, by, by, by seeing the human complexity that's there. Yeah. We were not allowed to do that. And if you do that, you've gone too far. Um, and what's interesting to me is that, is that the people who sort of want to look away from that complexity or mute that complexity in the, you know, it all in the name of doing good history, um, you know, we're actually doing bad history in a way, right. And, and yet, and yet they're setting the standards of what can be said. And, and I think we have to say outright, right. Which is not, not a complicated thing to say. Um, but that there they're doing work that does violence to the past and does violence to the non elites. I want to say they do violence to the elites as well, because they're not seeing them as, as full human beings, but they're also, but they're, but they're more importantly doing violence to those who, who are non elite.
Speaker 1 00:44:33 Thanks for listening to this episode, as we discuss the challenges faced by historians, in recovering the voices of the marginalized and the silenced in historical sources, as well as the possibilities opened up, when we venture into fiction, stay tuned for our next episode on local traditions of Islamic law.
