Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 6 (2008) 225253

www.brill.nl/hawwa

Recreating Fatima, Aisha and Marginalized Women in the Early Years of Islam: Assia Djebars Far from Medina (1991)
Ruth Roded
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem msrroded@mscc.huji.ac.il

What if Aishas soft voice, the unending ow of her narration, should merge with Fatimas eloquence in spate, the turbulence of her deance? Muslim women of the rarest kind, submissive to God and rebelling ercely against power, all forms of powerthus Fatimas traces will be perpetuated, in Syria, in Iraq, later in the Muslim West.1 Abstract When Francophone creative artist Assia Djebar decided to write a semi-ctional work on the early years of Islam, she brought to this endeavor her life experience in the context of Algerian history and French colonial inuence. Her writing reveals changing attitudes towards Algerian women and Islam, in response to ongoing events. Far from Medina was inuenced by the chain of modern biographies of the Prophet Muhammad produced in English, French and Arabic. Early Islamic feminist endeavors also informed her work. Most fascinating is the dialogue that Djebar seems to have carried out with classical Islamic texts, revealed in the format and style of the book. Djebar proposes that the death of Muhammad, and to a greater extent the death of his daughter Fatima six months later, were turning points in womens roles in Islamic societytaking the Muslims Far From Medina, where women were strong and stood up for their rights.
1 Assia Djebar, Loin de Mdine: lles dIsmael (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), pp. 300, 299; Assia Djebar, Far from Medina (London: Quartet Books, 1994), pp. 275, 274. This study was undertaken in the framework of a research team at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace Research dedicated to Gender, Space and Forms of Domination in the Middle East and North Africa, 20068. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Emory University, Prof. Vincent Cornell, Rkia Cornell and Prof. Devin Stewart for their stimulating input. The Hawwa readers raised some extremely challenging issues that deserve further attention.

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008

DOI: 10.1163/156920808X381667

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Keywords Feminism, Islam, Algeria, novel, Djebar, Prophet Muhammad, Fatima, Aisha

In the early 1990s, Algerian writer, historian and lmmaker, Assia Djebar returned to classical Islamic texts to produce a semi-ctional, feminist work. The purpose of this novel was to elicit and reconstruct the formative period of Islamic history from the point of view of the women who came into contact with the Prophet Muhammad, women whose voices had been marginalized or occulted by male scholars socialized in patriarchal societies. Loin de Mdine appeared in French in Paris in 1991, and in English translation in London several years later.2 The book would eventually be reworked as an opera, in Italian, and produced in Rome and Palermo.3 Another musical drama based on the same materials whose libretto was in classical Arabic, and staged by a Moroccan cast in Rotterdam, was planned, but the production was cancelled due to pressure from Islamist groups.4 Djebars work must be seen against the backdrop of the French colonial heritage in Algeria. The woman born as Fatima-Zohra Imalayen in 1936 brought a multiplicity of cultural and political personas to her Islamic feminist novel: French-educated Berber, romantic, nationalist, historian, lmmaker, feminist, post-colonial icon and Islamic feminist. Her changing attitudes to Algerian women and to Islam will be traced in the light of political and cultural events as well as her life experiences. Assia Djebars Far From Medina will also be placed in the context of other modern life-stories of the Prophet Muhammad that have been produced since the mid-nineteenth century. Djebars unique reworking of classical Islamic texts produced an Islamic feminist message that diered from other Islamic feminist endeavors. It was an outcome of Algerias distinct history, society and culture.
2 There are references to an Arabic translation, Baidan an al-Medina, but concrete details of publication are not cited nor does it appear on her web-site. See, for example:

.(1991) 2007 October 26 , : ,.

Assia Djebar, Figlie di Ismaele nel vento e nella tempesta, Dramma musicale in 5 atti e 21 quadri, Firenze, Giunti, 2000, traduction de Maria Nadotti, Postface de Jolanda Guardi; Filles dIsmal dans le vent et la tempte. . . .; Ishmaels Daughters in the Wind, in the Storm, a musical drama in 5 acts. 4 Dutch Group Calls O an Opera After Muslims Pressure Cast The New York Times International Sunday, December 10, 2000.

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The Colonial Heritage The status of Algerian Muslim women became a dening issue in the cultural conict between the French and Algerian Muslims by the end of the nineteenth century.5 French writers of widely dierent backgrounds and political views described the downtrodden condition of Arab women under Islamic law and local custom.6 Algerian Muslims, impotent against the superior military, political and economic power of the French, retrenched around an idealized image of the traditional Muslim woman.7 A small, elite of Muslim men and women became Europeanized, while the vast majority of the population became even more conservative as a reaction to the French cultural onslaught. The French colonial presence actually caused women to adopt a more stringent version of the veil and at an earlier age.8 The Algerian salayya, the Islamic movement referred to until recently as reformist or modern, was defensive and conservative on womens issues, regarding feminism as a dangerous foreign import. Moreover, although the Algerian national movement for the most part supported womens

David C. Gordon, Women of Algeria: An Essay on Change (Cambridge: Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, 1968), pp. 3550; Julia Clancy-Smith, The Colonial Gaze: Sex and Gender in the Discourses of French North Africa, in L. Carl Brown and Matthew S. Gordon, eds. Franco-Arab Encounters: Studies in Memory of David C. Gordon (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1996), pp. 201228; Clancy-Smith, Islam, Gender, and Identities in the Making of French Algeria, 18301962, in Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda, eds. Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1998), pp. 154174. On French colonial manipulation of family law in Algeria, see: Mounira M. Charrad, States and Womens Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 132139. 6 An excellent illustration of this phenomenon is Julia Clancy-Smiths comparison of the writings of General Daumas, a member of the French colonial military, and Hubertine Auclert, the feminist activist: La Femme Arabe: Women and Sexuality in Frances North African Empire, in Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, ed. Amira ElAzhary Sonbol (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), pp. 5263. Early French works on the subject include D. Perron Femmes arabes avant et depuis lislamisme (ParisAlgiers, 1858), and Louis Milliot, tude sur la condition de la femme musulmane au Maghreb (Paris, 1910). 7 Marnia Lazreg, The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question (New York and London: Routledge, 1994). 8 Lazreg, pp. 22, 26, 28, 54.

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liberation, womans main role was seen as guarding indigenous culture. The slogan was: A Free Algerian Woman, not a Free French Woman.9 The custom of seclusion, however, did not prevent young girls from attending traditional Islamic primary schools with boys until the age of nine. The upper class demonstrated its social status by having girls, and boys, tutored at home. Thus, upper and middle-class women tended to be literate in Arabic and some were quite learned in traditional Islamic scholarship. Moreover, womens education was valued among Muslims in Algeria as in other Islamic societies.10 The French authorities made some perfunctory eorts at establishing schools for Muslim girls but French notions about women, about Muslims and about Muslim women guaranteed that little would be accomplished in this eld.11 The curriculum of state girls schools emphasized French geography, culture and citizenship as well as home economics.12 No wonder that in 1954, only 952 young women studied in secondary schools (compared to 5,308 young men), and twenty-two female students (4801 male students) attended the university, of a total Muslim population of 8,546,000 of which 1,398,563 were urban.13 The price educated Muslim women paid was cultural alienation that was expressed in their literature written in French.14 Thus, during over a century of French domination of Algeria (1830 1962), Muslim women as a whole were objectied, and often viewed through the sexual fantasies of Europeans. A small elite of Muslim men and women became Europeanized, while the vast majority of the population became even more conservative as a reaction to the French cultural onslaught.

9 Ali Merad, Le Rformisme Musulman en Algrie de 1925 1940 (Paris: Mounton & Co, 1967), pp. 315331; Gordon, pp. 36, 42; Doria Cherifati-Merabtine, Algeria at a crossroads: national liberation, Islamization and women, Gender and National Identity: Women and Politics in Muslim Societies ed. Valentine M. Moghadam. (London and New Jersey: Zed, 1994), pp. 4445. 10 Lazreg, pp. 25, 26. 11 Gordon, p. 44; Lazreg, pp. 6379; Guy Pervill, The Francisation of Algerian Intellectuals: History of a Failure? in Brown and Gordon, pp. 416418. 12 Gordon, p. 44. 13 The gures on female education are from Gordon, p. 44; on the total population, Ruedy, p. 121. 14 Gordon, p. 45.

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From Fatima to Assia Fatima-Zohra Imalayen, born in 1936 in a coastal town near Algiers, was a product of French colonialism in Algeria.15 She broke into male gendered space of secondary education in Algeria with the support of her father, a Francophile teacher, but the price she paid was co-optation by the dominant French educational and linguistic authorities in colonial Algeria.16 This cultural shift was facilitated by her Berber origin.17 Imalayen was one of many Berbers who were regarded by the French and the franciss, Frenchied Algerians as Romansspiritual descendants of St. Augustine, and French Latin Africans. The Berber lands were considered part of Europe and its inhabitants as Mediterranean and Latin, brothers to the Iberians, Ligurians, Corsicans and Celts.18 Based on this dominant historical view, Berbers like Djebar were enlisted in the French cultural project. Although Djebar does not forefront her Berber origins,19 themes from this heritage appear in her workmost notably the image of the strong woman and the tradition of oral transmission, both of which would eventually appear in Far from Medina.

Biographical material on self-conscious creative artists is notoriously dicult to obtain. I rely on: Gordon, pp. 4650, who as early as 1968 highlighted Assia Djebar. Clarissa Zimras interviews with Djebar, cited below, are quite revealing although their timing is complicated. Some information was also taken from numerous web-sites sponsored by her, such as: http://www.assiadjebar.net/ I made a conscious decision not to attempt to interview Djebar, exploring her life story instead through published works. 16 She later related that she was not allowed to study Arabic as a foreign language. A 1938 law had in fact declared Arabic a foreign language, Jane E. Goodman, Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to Video (Bloomington Press, 2005), p. 32. 17 I use the term Berber in this context advisedly, rather than Amazigh which is preferred by many North Africans. Imalayen originates from the town of Cherchel where Chenoua is spoken, a language similar to Tachawit and Kabyle, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com. 18 Pessah Shinar, The Historical Approach of the Ulama in the Contemporary Maghreb, Asian and African Studies (Jerusalem) 7 (1971): 259263; James McDougall, Myth and Counter-Myths: The Berber As National Signier in Algerian Historiographies, Radical History Review 86 (2003): 6688; McDougal, History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 7880, 8284, 184216. 19 The situation of the detached Berber is addressed in Assia Djebar, Les enfants du nouveau monde (Paris: Julliard, 1962); trans. Marjolijn de Jager, Children of the New World (New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 2005), p. 157.

15

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In the fall of 1954, Djebar went to France to study just as the struggle for independence broke out in Algeria. At that time, French-trained Algerian Muslim students were increasingly mobilizing in the service of the revolution.20 Under the pen name Assia Djebar, she rst penetrated the Francophone literary eld in 1956 at the age of twenty by writing a romantic novel in French revealing the love life of an Algerian young woman. La Soif (The Mischief ) was also published as a paperback romance in the United States under the title Nadia with an appropriately beguiling cover.21 The book is a romantic story of a wealthy, self-centered young woman who believes that idealized marriage will solve her loneliness. Although the story takes place in Algeria, Islam is totally irrelevant to the lives of the characters. The book is reminiscent of Franoise Sagans novel Bonjour Tristesse, a sensation when it was published a year earlier by Julliard in Paris, when the French author was nineteen years old.22 Assia Djebars French romantic novel appeared at the height of the Algerian nationalist struggle for independence from Francea fact that highlighted her deracine status.23 Djebar was regarded in the West as an authentic Muslim female voice, and was presented with a collection of photographs on Women of Islam (Femmes de lIslam) for her comments.24 She wrote a lengthy introduction to these visual images which appeared as a small album in 1961, in French and English. The photographs reect the classic European view of heavilyveiled Muslim women around the world tempted by the allure of revealing Parisian fashion. European dress, hairstyles and other consumer products are equated with the emancipation of women from the connes of Islam. The juxtaposition of tradition and modernity in a single scene appears frequently.
Pervill, pp. 426430. Assia Djebar, La Soif (Paris: Julliard, 1957); The Mischief, trans. Frances Frenaye (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1958); Nadia (New York: Avon, 1958). 22 Franoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse (Paris: Julliard, 1955). 23 A good summary of this reaction may be found in Zimra, Afterword, to Women of Algiers, p. 187, conversation from 1976, 1987, 1990. Assia Djebars second novel, Les Impatients, written at about the same time was published in Paris by Julliard in 1958. It was also an individualistic, romantic work. See: Miriam Cooke, Deconstructing War Discourse: Womens Participation in the Algerian Revolution, Women in International Development: Working Papers 187 (June, 1989): 126, which includes an interview with the author in 1987. 24 Femmes dIslam (London: Andr Deutsch, 1961); Women of Islam, trans. Jean MacGibbon (London: Andre Deutsch, 1961).
21 20

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Djebars introduction to the photographs reveals her thinking on Islam and Muslim women at that time. She opens with a challenge to the European reader on over-simplied rst impressions of a foreign culture and preconceptions about the mystery of the East, which legitimize her right to address the problematic subject of Muslim women. She claims that some of the photographs remind her of her childhood but then subtly undermines the main message of the collection by telling of an old neighbor who managed to drag herself to the mosque every Friday to pray despite her physical disability. The majority of the introductory essay, however, is a stock apologetic explanation of Muslim rules regarding marriage and divorce combined with a sympathetic portrayal of some attempts to reform from within the religious tradition. She concludes with a montage of textual pictures of women of Islam that is far richer and more variegated than the photographs in the album. It would seem that in the early stage of her career, Fatima/Assia was heavily inuenced by French education and culture, but like many other acculturated natives, she was constantly reminded that she could never be truly French. Moreover, while identifying to some extent with the disparaging attitude of the French to the Muslim woman, Djebar showed signs, even at this early stage, of using her Algerian life experience to undermine western stereotypes. Romantic Nationalism, Womens Knowledge When joining the nationalist movementin the wake of her husband25 she served the cause by writing of her encounters with refugees in Tunisian exile for the National Liberation Front FLN ocial newspaper El Moudjahid. Her Les enfants du nouveau monde (1962), which came out during the last year of the war, is a nationalist novel which portrays the struggle in quite romantic terms. The work is prefaced by optimistic verses by French poet Paul Eluard, an indication of Djebars immersion in French literature and culture. Although the book documents the experience of Algerian women during the nationalist struggle, the attitudes expressed are not necessarily feminist. Djebar conveys an ambivalent view of Islam, although it is not a major factor in this work. Towards the end of the novel, however, the authors alter ego discovered that Islam was
25

Zimra, Afterword, to Women of Algiers, p. 189.

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not merely her familys and societys way of conforming but also, in the past, a source of innumerable adventures for visionaries mad with audacity and exultation.26 At this time, Djebars interest in the conux of Islam and women brought her to complete a graduate degree in history with Islamic scholar Louis Massignon, on the praises (manaqib) of twelfth-century Muslim female mystic, Lla Acha el-Manoubia, patron of Tunis.27 Djebars next novel Les alouettes naves (1967)28 interposed the stories of refugees with her own experiences in exile in Tunis, and appeared after she returned to Algiers to teach history at the university. The format and style of her writing was becoming increasingly more sophisticated but the tone is still romantic. She had developed a more ambivalent attitude to traditional Algerian women, even if they are described in Orientalist terms. The alouettes naves of the title (literally naive larks) refer to the Ouled-Nal dancers whose name was garbled by French soldiers.29 These Naliyyat were proud prostitutes, a symbol of seeming sexual licentiousness but women with inward strength.30 Algerian men regarded the Algerian female alouettes naves as representing the epitome of their being as compared to rough French prostitutes.31 There are many references in this work to the transmission of womens knowledge, at times in a derogatory sense but also as valued wisdom. The book has a degree of feminist awareness but the liberated heroine still focuses primarily on bourgeois romanticism, domesticity, and most important, love for her man. Islam is an integral part of everyday life, in language, scenery, and the calendar. Djebar recognizes that for young Muslim Algerians forged in the war of liberation, the revolution is a kind of religion, and Islam is an integral part of the revolutionary platform.32 At this stage, Djebar attempted in her writing not only to challenge French colonialism and support the nationalist struggle but also to confront the conservative male establishment by giving voice to female Algerian Muslims, women who experienced the war and those who exiled
Djebar, Children of the New World, p. 132. Zimra, Afterword, Children of the New World, p. 206. 28 Assia Djebar, Les alouettes naves (Paris: Julliard, 1967). 29 Djebar, Les alouettes, p. 7. 30 Djebar, Les alouettes, p. 482. See: Ruth Roded, Modern Gendered Illustrations of the Life of the Prophet of Allahtienne Dinet and Sliman Ben Ibrahim (1918), Arabica 49 (2002): 325359. 31 Djebar, Les alouettes, p. 482. 32 Djebar, Les alouettes, p. 457.
27 26

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from their home to further the cause.33 But consciously or not, she was still feeding into the French Orientalist discourse of the primitive, downtrodden traditional Muslim woman compared to the Europeanized liberated woman, a view which she had undoubtedly encountered time and again throughout her French education and experiences in France. Searching for Historical and Cultural Roots, Womens Oral Transmission Since she believed that her Arabic was insucient to fully express her thoughts and feelings,34 Djebar utilized numerous languagesincluding that of lmto bring her message to wider audiences via television. This brought her to direct one of the rst outwardly feminist Algerian lms which [re]placed the contribution of the mountain women into the story of the continuing struggle against the French. The message of this lm and other literary works is that oral transmission of women attempted to invade the written historical space of men throughout the ages. In her lm La Nouba des Femmes du Mont Chenoua/ (The Nuba of the Women of Mont Chenoua), produced by Algerian state television in 1976, the heroine goes to a village in the mountains and talks to the Algerian women about the war of liberation from France from their perspective. Later in the lm, the oral transmission of the women of the tribe is taken further back to an uprising against the French in 1871.35 Djebars artistic technique is to go backwards: from today to the Algerian war of liberation, to the French occupation of Algeria, to pre-colonial times, and even to the Roman period. At this time, she had not yet gone back in Islamic history. In the 1970s, Djebar seemed to be searching for her historical and cultural roots in a series of short stories published as Femmes dAlger dans leur appartement, in 1980.36 The short stories show that Djebars view of Islam
To her credit, Djebar does not disavow her early work but rather regards it as rst fruits of a budding writer, Zimra, Womans Memory Spans Centuries: An Interview with Assia Djebar, Afterword, Women of Algiers in their apartment, p. 178. 34 Zimra, Afterword, Women of Algiers in their Apartment, p. 198. In Djebars rst novel, the Algerian female hero describes the Arabic language as ugly and guttural, p. XXX. This attitude would seem to be a product of emersion in the French language. 35 On tribal uprisings at that time, see: Charrad, p. 124. 36 Djebars familiarity with European art is referenced in the title, the famous Orientalist painting by Delacroix, and the point of departure of a story, Pablo Picassos the Weeping Woman, painted in the wake of the bombing of Barcelona in 1937.
33

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was becoming more positive compared to her previous works, with formal religion serving at times as a constructive force.37 At the same time, her vision of Algerian women seems to be moving from Orientalist stereotypes to images of strong traditional women, which some critics regarded as regressive rather than progressive.38 Djebar herself regards this fertile intellectual periodshuttling between Algiers and Paris, and traveling to the interior to produce La Noubaas an important turning point in her work, crucial to her developing feminist consciousness.39 Meeting with real village women in their home settings and hearing their stories seems to have informed her Algerian feminism. This phase in Djebars life and work highlights the situation of a woman bridging French culture and values, on the one hand, and social reality in Algeria, on the other, without really accepting either. Moreover, in the 1970s, many Algerians were beginning to question the achievements of the independent state.40 Interestingly, in the Islamic context, the story Forbidden Gaze, refers to the traditional story told about the love between the prophet [lower case in the original RR] Muhammad and Zaineb, the most beautiful of his wives, a tale frequently cited by Christians and Orientalists to denigrate Islam.41

37 Djebar, Femmes dAlger, pp. 99, 149, 159, 174, 192, 195, 197, 200, 223, 228; Women of Algiers, pp. 3031, 66, 72, 85, 99, 101, 102, 104, 122, 126. 38 Zimra, Afterward, Women of Algiers, p. 189 citing Marie-Blanche Tahon, review of Femmes dAlger dans leur appartement, Ecriture franaise dans le monde: a tribune des Francophones 5 (1981): 114. 39 Zimra, Interview with Assia Djebar, Afterword, Women of Algiers, p. 177; Clarisse Zimra, Womans Memory Spans Centuries: An Interview with Assia Djebar, Afterword, Women of Algiers, 1976, 1987, 1990, p. 173. 40 See, for example, Merzak Allouaches outstanding lm Merzak Allouache, Umar Gatlatu/Omar Gatlato (Algeria, 1976). 41 Djebar, Femmes dAlger; pp. 246, 266, n. 3; Women of Algiers, pp. 139, 153, n. 3. In the English translation, the story is cited from a French language book by GaudefroyDemombynes, Mahomet (Paris, 1957), rather than a classical Arabic source. The Zainab aair has been a mainstay of Christian anti-Muslim polemics since the Middle Ages and was incorporated in some Orientalist works and Muslim retorts. See, for example: Norman Daniel, The life of Muhammad: polemic biography, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. (Edinburgh: The University Press, 1960), pp. 79108; Henri Lammens, Qoran et Tradition: Comment fut compose la vie de Mahomet, Recherches de Science religeuse 1: (Paris, 1910); Syed Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam: A History of the Evolution and Ideals of Islam with A Life of the Prophet (London: Methuen, 1922), pp. 235236; Emile Dermenghem, La vie de Mahomet (Paris: Plon, 1929).

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In the 1970s, Assia Djebar could still be hopeful about her countrys gender policy and more amenable to an Algerian form of Islam. Ocial policy promoted a reformist Islam which could be appropriated by the nationalist government and co-opted for its purposes, even attempting to reconcile Islam and Algerian socialism.42 Popular North African Islam, with which Djebar was undoubtedly familiar, focused on holy men and women, their shrines and celebrations. The political regimes in independent Algeria dened themselves as supporters of womens liberation. Nevertheless, enactment of a new Algerian family code was discussed several times, but none was adopted, until 1984, two years after the production of Djebars lm. It was actually a fairly conservative adaptation of the Maliki school of law that was customary in North Africa.43 The Algerian state did take measures to improve education for women; a large majority of girls attended elementary and middle school, and almost half of the students in high school were young women. This bode well for the future. But literacy even among young women was still quite low. Most visible to foreign observers and Algerians alike, large numbers of women wore traditional veils in the street, and there were stories of women being harassed for improper behavior in public.44 For Djebar (as for other francophone Algerian intellectuals), the post-independence period seemed to embody the inclusion of all forces to work for a better future for the country. But this was not to last for long. Exiled Counter-History and Feminism, Islamic Narratives In 1980, Djebars cultural foreignness in her own country compelled her to leave Algeria permanently to live in France. Citing personal experiences of often nding herself to be the only woman in Algeria in the street or sitting in a caf, Djebar said she left because she sensed a growing oppression of women, which excluded them from the public eye.45 Also, in 197980, a major crisis erupted at the University of Algiers, where she taught history, when Arabized students launched a two month strike to
Reudy, pp. 224225. Charrad, pp. 169200. 44 Ruedy, pp. 228230; Dalila lamarne-Djerbal, La violence islamiste contre les femmes, Femmes et Citoyennet: Revue dtudes et de Critique Sociale (Automne/Hiver 2006): 106. 45 http://www.lsu.edu/lsutoday/001208/pageone.htm.
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protest the favoritism shown to Francophone students in education and career opportunities. Pressure in the universities to teach in Arabic had been growing through the 1970s, and in 1979, Algerian President Ben Djedid underwent an Arabization program including the ministry of higher education.46 Djebar has frequently condemned this Arabization from above policy in Algeria,47 and it certainly contributed to her feeling of discomfort in her home country. Djebar continued to write nationalist Algerian counter history in French, which was eventually translated into English, bringing her recognition as one of the leading post-colonial writers in the world. The rst volume of a proposed quartet of autobiographical-historical works, LAmour: la Fantasia appeared in 1985.48 The books feminist message situates the author as a young girl, liberated by her fathers decision to send her to a French school, in opposition to the cloistered, imprisoned Algerian women. In replacing Algerian women in the countrys history, Djebar depicts them as victims of the colonial situation and of indigenous patriarchal views. In the wars of resistance and liberation, however, they take on important, even active roles. LAmour: la Fantasia contains numerous references by women to God and the Prophet, and even once to Lla Khadija his beloved.49 The story of Khadija, Muhammads rst wife, comforting the Prophet, is compared by Djebar to conjugal love in European society.50 This view echoes the defense of the Prophets marital life by other modern Muslim publicists and creative artists against claims of his licentiousness.51 Djebar projects an image of a model, Islamic, companionate, monogamous marriage. In this book, she documents the existence of alternate narratives of Muhammads biography when we are told that an aunt related the life of the Prophet, with many variations.52 Throughout the book, religion is porRuedy, p. 240. On the Arabization of education as it played out against the Berbers, see: Goodman, pp. 3437. 47 Zimra, Interview with Assia Djebar, Afterword, Women of Algiers, p. 176. 48 Assia Djebar, LAmour la Fantasia (Paris: Editions Jean-Claude Latts, 1985); trans. Dorothy S. Blair, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (London: Quartet Books, 1989). References here are to the 1995 editions of Albin Michel, Paris. 49 LAmour, p. 172; Fantasia, p. 152. 50 LAmour, p. 194; Fantasia, pp. 171172. 51 The theme of the Prophets ideal marriage to Khadija appears in Syed Ameer Alis inuential book cited above, and is at the forefront of Mustafa Aqqads lm, Al-Risala/The Message (Morocco and Libya, 1976), to the extent that the Prophets subsequent multiple marriages are occulted. 52 LAmour, p. 194; Fantasia, p. 171.
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trayed as a true support and comfort for Muslim women in their plight.53 Islam is a source of some pride to the author as a young girl, although it becomes increasingly irrelevant as she grows up. In 1987, Ombre Sultane, A Sister of Scheherazade, was published simultaneously in French and English in Paris and London,54 attesting to Djebars global reputation as a post-colonial writer. It would seem that the stronger feminist message in this work (reinforced by her relocation to France) resulted in a stereotyped approach to women in Algeria, although Djebar also subverted these Western preconceptions by indicating that modern women suer from their own gendered problems.55 Plays on the word veil and the Arabic term hejab run throughout the book;56 not surprising, since it has been a major symbol for Algerians of all views and lifestyles since the colonial period and through the years of independence. The book contains negative references to various aspects of Islam, although the Prophets life is cited as a model.57 One may perhaps understand Djebars resentment at the Islamists attempts to impose their vision of Islam on Algerians in the 1980s.58 As one of the mothers in the book states with anger: Islam is one, Islam is pure and unadorned! It allows you leisure for rejoicing! The law cannot change, it is the same, everywhere from our town to faraway Medina; I dont need any fqih or learned doctor from the Zitouna to explain it to me!59 Djebar left the quartet project to return to her Muslim roots, to write an Islamic feminist novel, recreating the early history of Islam, as told by women. Djebar was challenging the worldwide furor in September 1988 by Salman Rushdies ctional work based in part on the life of the Prophet Muhammad, The Satanic Verses. The digression was also a reaction to the
53 LAmour, pp. 103, 137 (Dieu, not Allah), 137, 148, 153154, 166, 168,169, 172, 211; Fantasia, pp. 89, 120, 121, 131, 135136, 146, 147, 148, 152,187. There are also some cases where references to God indicate resignation to ones fate, LAmour, pp. 175, 212; Fantasia, pp. 154, 188. An unusual appeal to O my Prophet, my sweet Saviour combined with an image of a baby lamb of God and a halo evokes Christian associations, LAmour, p. 215; Fantasia, p. 190. 54 Assia Djebar, Ombre Sultane (Paris: Editions Jean-Claude Latts, 1987); trans. Dorothy S. Blair, A Sister of Scheherazade (London: Quartet Books, 1987). 55 Ombre Sultane, pp. 25, 82; Sister of Scheherazade, pp. 16, 73. 56 Ombre Sultane, pp. 23, 2425, 27, 3941, 4243, 4447, 48, 119122, 171; Sister of Scheherazade, pp. 15, 16, 18, 3032, 3334, 3639, 40, 110113, 160. 57 Ombre Sultane, pp. 110, 119, 126, 138, 161; 96, 138; Sister of Scheherazade, pp. 101, 110, 117, 128, 151; 87, 127128. 58 lamarne-Djerbal, pp. 107126. 59 Ombre Sultane, pp. 131132; Sister of Scheherazade, p. 122.

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October riots in Algeria that year, of various opposition groups, among them the Islamists, which were brutally repressed by the FLN regime. The Algerian local and provincial elections of June, 1990, in which the Islamist Front islamique du Salut (FIS) won a startling victory, was likely the immediate impetus for Djebar to publish an Islamic feminist work. Genealogy of Modern Life-Stories of the Prophet Muhammad Assia Djebars Far From Medina may be viewed as a link in the chain of modern life-stories of the Prophet Muhammad that have been produced by Muslims and non-Muslims, in various parts of the world, from the mid-nineteenth century and through the twentieth century. The rst modern biography of the Prophet Muhammad was apparently a series of scholarly essays composed by the great Indian reformer Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan in 1870, in response to Orientalist William Muirs Life of Muhammad from Original Sources.60 Even more inuential was the work of the Indian Ameer Alii, eventually published under the title The Spirit of Islam.61 Ameer Ali was less defensive vis--vis Christian western attacks on Islam and its Prophet than Ahmad Khan, particularly on the issues of Muhammads alleged licentiousness, and Islams supposedly belligerent nature. His work impressed Western educated Muslims from the Indian subcontinent, to Egypt, to North Africa, where Djebar may have encountered it. In French, a popular, inuential La vie de Mahomet was produced in 1929 by mile Dermenghem.62 His book was based on an impressive selection of classical Arabic sources, modern Muslim writers, including Ameer Ali, and many of the most outstanding Orientalist studies of his time. Assia Djebar may well have been exposed to this work whether in her French schooling or in her reading. Shortly after, the Egyptian publicist and writer Muhammad Husayn Haykal began publishing a series of articles reviewing Dermenghems work. The articles eventually evolved into a book, rst published in Arabic in 1935, and heavily inuenced by Ameer Alis work.63 Haykals almost canonical modern Muslim biography
60 Sayyid Ahmad Khan, A Series of Essays on the Life of Mohammed, and Subjects Subsidiary Thereto (London: Trubner & Co., 1870). 61 For details of the book, see: above. 62 On the Dermenghem book, see: above. 63 Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Hayat Muhammad (Cairo: Matbaa Dar al- kutub almisriyya, 1935);The Life of Muhammad, trans. Ismail Ragi A. al-Faruqi. North American

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of the Prophet came to rival the classical Islamic sources, and was translated into English in 1976. A scholarly work that Djebar was later to cite was Mahomet by Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes that rst appeared in 1957, but was later published in an updated version in 1969.64 In addition to a chronological biography, including sections referring briey to Khadidja, and to the Aisha aair, concerning the Prophets young wife, topical chapters deal with the wives and daughters of the Prophet, and the family and marriage in Mohammads message.65 This hefty, prestigious, well-documented, Orientalist work was certainly an appropriate reference book for Djebar. The rst ctional rendition of the life story of Muhammad was Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouzs allegory, rst published in Arabic in 1959, and in English translation, in 1981.66 In Awlad Haratina, Children of Gebelawicomprised of ctionalized stories based on tales of the Prophets and on the life of MuhammadMahfouz blends feminism and humanistic realism.67 The rst Muslim woman to deal with the life of the Prophet Muhammad was the Egyptian writer and Islamic scholar Dr. Aisha Abd al-Rahman (b. 1913), a pioneer in many respects, although she did not consider herself a feminist. Writing under her pen name, Bint al-Shati, she approached the life of the Prophet Muhammad through vignettes of the women in his life.68 Although her book on the Wives of the Prophet often portrays women in a negative light, content analysis indicates that the

Trust Publications, 1976; the work in toto has been posted at: http://www.witness-pioneer. org/vil/Books/MH_LM/default.htm. Egypts premiere dramatist, Tawq al-Hakim, published a play on the life of the Prophet in 1936, although I doubt that Djebar was aware of this dramatic precedent. See: Ruth Roded, Gendered Domesticity in the Life of the Prophet: Tawq al-Hakims Muhammad, Journal of Semitic Studies 47 (Spring, 2002): 6795. 64 Mahomet (Paris: Albin Michel, 1957), 2nd ed. 1969. Claude Cahen, helped him; the 2nd ed. was revised by Alexandre Popovic with assistance from Maxime Rodinson. 65 Gaudefroy-Demombynes, 1969, pp. 6669, 149151, 223236, 549575. 66 Naguib Mahfouz, Awlad Haratina (1959) (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1967); Children of Gebelawi, trans. Philip Stewart (London: Heinemann, 1981). 67 This theme is documented in: Ruth Roded, Gender in an Allegorical Life of Muhammad: Mahfouzs Children of Gebelawi, The Muslim World 93 (2003): 117134. 68 Bint al-Shati [Aisha Abd al-Rahman], Tarajim Sayyidat Bayt al-Nabawiyya, 5 vols: Banat al-Nabi (1959); Nisa al-nabi, Umm al-nabi, Batalat Karbala: Zaynab bint al-zahra (1961) (Cairo: Dar al-Hilal and Shirkat al-Arabiyya, and Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 19561985).

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work also reects feminist themes.69 Moreover, Bint al-Shati brings not only the voices of the women who lived at the time of the Prophet but their feelings and thoughtsas she interprets themas well. Bint al-Shatis point of departure in writing about the women living at the time of the Prophet Muhammad is far dierent from that of Djebar, and although there are some similarities between the work of these two creative women, Djebars rendition of the women in Muhammads life is much more imaginative and variegated. The lectures of Iranian sociologist and Islamic theoretician, Ali Shariati, on the images of the Prophet, and Fatima, Muhammads daughter, disseminated as audiocassettes and simply-printed pamphlets, were crucial in mobilizing young educated Iranians, and particularly women, to revolutionary activism against the Shah.70 Shariati departed from traditional Muslim and Orientalist views of Fatima as marginal, passive and unloved,71 and empowered her as an activist role model for Muslim women. Inuenced by his teacher, Louis Massignon,72 Shariatis Fatima is close to her father, strong and courageous. After Muhammads death, she stands up to the dominant men in Medina, Abu Bakr and Umar. This Fatima is an independent woman, not a passive gure. Djebar had ties to Shariati, and was undoubtedly inuenced by his revolutionary, activist view of Fatima.73 The Syrian-American lmmaker, Moustafa Akkad, had to contend with the problem of bringing the images as well as the voices of the women who lived at the time of the Prophet to the screen, in his bi-lingual AlRisala/The Message released in 1976.74 The strong, evil womanHind bint
69 Ruth Roded, Bint al-Shatis Wives of the Prophet: Feminist or Feminine? British Journal of the Middle Eastern Society 33 (2006): 6984. 70 Dr. Ali Shariati, A Visage of Prophet Mohammad, trans. A.A. Sachadin (Lahore: Nor. Oqalam Publications, 1983); Ali Shariati, Fatima Fatima Ast, trans. Marcia Hermansen, in Fatimeh as a Role Model in the Works of Ali Shariati, Women and the Revolution in Iran ed. Guity Nashat. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1983). www.shariati.com. 71 Veccia Vagieri, L. Fatima, Encyclopaedia of Islam Brill, 2008. Brill Online 17 March 2008; Father Henri Lammens, Fatima et les lles de Mahomet (Rome: Scripta Ponticii Biblici, 1913). 72 Fatima, Encyclopaedia of Islam; L. Massignon, La Mubhala de Mdine et lhyperdulie de Fatima (Paris, 1955). 73 Shariati studied in Paris shortly after Djebar left for Tunis, but both were students of Massignon, and Shariati was a supporter of the FLN, Ali Rahmena, Ali Shariati: Teacher, Preacher, Rebel, in Rahmena ed., Pioneers of Islamic Revival (LondonNew York: Zed books, 2005), pp. 208250. 74 On the Akkad m, see above.

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Utba,75 wife of Abu Sufyan, leader of the pagan Meccansdominates the lm, until her husband sends her home. A mature wife and mother represents the idealized, self-sacricing woman, committed to the domestic sphere, but also publicly upholding her religious beliefs. These gender messages projected by the lm were probably informed by Akkads rather conservative ideas about women.76 The medium of cinema amplied the impact of the strong, evil woman, embodied by Hind. Akkads Message was a direct inuence on Anglo-Indian writer Salman Rushdies The Satanic Verses, a novel which contains a number of chapters based on material from the life of the Prophet Muhammad.77 In the Satanic Verses, Rushdie reveals more than in any of his previous works his misogyny and fear of strong, proud, sexually voracious women. Hind, wife of Abu Simbel (referring to Abu Sufyan), leads the attack on Mahound (Rushdies choice for the name of the Prophet), she rules the city, and wreaks revenge on him. In a footnote, Rushdie tellingly states that he wishes to present the true Message, referring to the lm.78 Assia Djebar has cited the international furor over Rushdies work as one of the reasons she wrote her novel Far From Medina.79 Certainly, she was asserting her right, and the right of any creative artist, to mold materials drawn from the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the early years of Islam, in the wake of the attacks on Rushdie. Djebars strong woman is akin to Shariatis activist Fatima, rather than Akkad and Rushdies evil Hind. Like other Islamic feminists, however, her primary audience was Muslim women and men. The French language original was accessible to francophone Muslims around the world. The English translation rendered the work in the major language in which Islamic feminist discourse is expressed and circulated. Publishing Djebars novel in Arabic would engage broader Middle Eastern audiences, for good and for bad. In writing Far From Medina, Djebar undertook dialogues with the composers of previous life stories of Muhammad, as well as with the classical Muslim scholars who wrote the foundation texts on the life of the Prophet.
75 The image of Hind bint Utba, matriarch of the Umayyad dynasty, is quite varied in the classical Islamic sourcesstrong-willed, poet, even ghter for Islam after her conversion. 76 Interview with Akkad, April, 2004. 77 Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (London: Viking Press, 1988). 78 I hope to prove this assertion, quoting chapter and verse, in a separate piece dealing with gender analysis of The Satanic Verses. 79 Clarisse Zimra, When the Past Answers Our Present: Assia Djebar Talks About Loin de Mdine Callaloo, Vol. 16, No. 1. (Winter, 1993), pp. 116131.

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Reworking Classical Islamic Texts Assia Djebar drew on classical Islamic texts, and reworked them in her own genre, format and style, informed by her North African life experience. Djebars approach to the classical texts, which were produced by men living in a patriarchal society, is critical and even challenging. In the novel Far From Medina, she cites a number of canonical classical sources that contain core material about the Prophets life. Citing references for a semictional work is in itself a departure, and is undoubtedly meant to strengthen the Islamic legitimacy of the work. Quoting Quranic verses also situates the book in the Islamic tradition.80 Foremost among the sources on the life of Muhammad is the earliest extant biography of the Prophet as handed down to us by Ibn Hisham, which contains no small measure of material transmitted by women who lived at that time.81 Similarly, the earliest collection of biographies of people who lived at the time of the Prophet, compiled by Ibn Sad, contains an entire section devoted to womens biographies.82 The history chronicle of Tabari, has far less material about women, but places that information in historical context.83 Although Djebar is an historian herself, she acknowledges the assistance of Arab poet Nurredine El-Ansari for his help with the language of the chronicles.84 She also cites Bukhari, scrupulous compiler of one of the most authoritative collections of ahadith sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, who, she emphasizes, conscientiously, veried the sources.85 At another point, Djebar notes that nonArabic speakers, who rely on French translations of these classical Arabic works, may misunderstand or miss information on women, which may
Loin de Mdine, pp. 73, 165, 224, 289, 290; Far From Medina, pp. 62, 147, 202, 263, 264. 81 Al-Sira al-nabawiyya li-Ibn Hisham, eds. M. al-Saqa et. al. (Beirut: Dar al-Khayr, 1990), 2: 112162; Guillaume, A., trans. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaqs Sirat Rasul Allah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 231270. 82 Muhammad Ibn Sad, Kitab al-tabaqat al-kubra. ed. Ihsan al-Abbas. Beirut, 1960 1968. 9 vols.; Ruth Roded, Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sad to Whos Who (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Reinner, November, 1994). 83 Muhammad Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. 84 Loin de Mdine, p. 6; Far From Medina, p. xvi. 85 Loin de Mdine, p. 62; Far From Medina, p. 51; Muhammad b. Ismail al-Bukhari, The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari: Arabic-English. 9 vols. Al-Medina: Islamic University, 19731976.
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have been deliberately removed.86 In short, Assia Djebar anchors Far From Madina in canonical, Arabic, Islamic sources. The overall format of the book is clearly inuenced by Djebars previous work but seems to be in dialogue with classical Islamic genres as well. The novel consists of vignettes of women who lived at the time of the Prophet based on the classical sources and rendered in regular type (rather than italics). These are not presented in chronological order, but rather in Djebars signature style of unfolding stories from obscure openings to increasingly clear messages. In this format, she may also have been engaging Ibn Sads method of devoting an entry to each woman, whether of great importance or less note. Nevertheless, Djebars choice of women and the order of their appearance are unusual, if not to say subversive. While she includes some well-known Islamic heroes, such as Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, and Aisha, his youngest wife, she ignores others, most notably Khadija, Muhammads rst wife and supporter. Moreover, Djebar pieces together information from a variety of sources and contexts in order to tell the stories of women who have been unnamed and marginalized in the Islamic sources, particularly, Asma, daughter of Umais (dealt with below). The book opens with the stories of powerful pre-Islamic and even antiMuslim womenShehr, the Yemenite Queen; Nawar, the wife of a false prophet; Selma, the rebel; and the [false] prophetess Sajah. These are followed by narratives depicting unique characteristics of Fatima, daughter of Muhammad. The following parts are devoted to women and war, as victims and as actors; women travelers, and Aisha, the most prominent wife of the Prophet. Each of the women depicted is given a title dening her signicance for Djebar that diers from traditional epithets that may have been attributed to her. Thus, Fatima is called The Beloved Daughtera title that not only diers from Fatimas numerous Islamic epithets but also goes against the grain of traditional images of Fatima.87 These titles are crucial when Djebar tells the story of a woman whose name was not even cited in the sources, but the appellations are no less interesting when appended to other women whose reputation in Islamic history has been dened by
Loin de Mdine, pp. 211, note, 212; Far From Medina, pp. 189, note, 190. The most common epithet is Fatima al-Zohra, the shining one, but she has been called: the virgin (al-batul ), the great Mary (Maryam al-Kubra), Mother of her father (Umm Abiha), etc. Some stories indicate that her father was not so devoted to her, Fatima, Encyclopaedia of Islam.
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male scholars. Djebar has added ctional female storytellers, rawiyat, who represent the unrecorded voices of women of that time. These storytellers and all the other ctional material in the book are rendered in italics, a technique that was used by Djebar in her earlier works. Djebars approach to the massive genealogical material in the classical Islamic sources is unique for a modern novel. As an Algerian from a tribal background, she is aware of the importance of blood ties, both patrilineal and matrilineal, for identication of the individual, but she takes the dry facts and imbues them with meaning. Thus, when Umm Hakim presents herself and her husband before the Prophets tent, and Umar ibn Khattab, looks at her, Djebar adds parenthetically: she was his maternal cousin, but he seemed not to recognize her, not having seen her since she was a child.88 Similarly, her sensitivity to family ties enable her to esh out stories, as when the little girl Umm Kulthum visits her older half-brother by twenty years Uthman ibn Aan, and a charming domestic scene is played out. This is followed by the humanization of the families who were divided when Muhammads followers ed Mecca.89 Following all of the kinship ties is also one of the techniques that enable Djebar to tease out stories about women who have been neglected in classical Islamic history. The oral history of women, as we have seen, is a major theme in Djebars work. But in Far From Madina, she employs variations on a unique Islamic genrehadith reports of the words and deeds of the Prophet, supported by isnad chains of transmitters, linking the scholar to the original source, many of whom were women. She also uses the classical Islamic as well as post-modern approach of bringing alternate narratives. Thus, in relating Muhammads burial, she gives various versions, preceded by: According to some, It is said, According to other chroniclers, According to others again.90 She refers directly to hadiths and to the use of one tradition of the Prophet against another to justify the actions of a Muslim woman against a prominent Muslim man.91 Reecting the classical Islamic discourse, she writes: Another scene, just as moving, is reported by another isnad, another chain of transmitters.92 But she can also mock the isnad method employed by classical Muslim male scholars, when a woman says: I was there, I solemnly declare. And that is why I do
88 89 90 91 92

Loin de Mdine, p. 138; Far From Medina, p. 121. Loin de Mdine, p. 159; Far From Medina, p. 141. Loin de Mdine, p. 13; Far From Medina, pp. 45. Loin de Mdine, p. 83; Far From Medina, p. 72. Loin de Mdine, p. 239; Far From Medina, p. 215.

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not say to you, Such a one told me what such a one said to her. No, I was there! 93 When writing about the Prophet Muhammad, Djebar does not automatically append the eulogy Salla Allahu Alayhi wa Sallam, Peace Be Upon Him, as was customary in classical Islamic works, and is common among many Muslims today. In quoting Ibn Sad, she renders the formula as May Salvation be His.94 Elsewhere, she occasionally adds dierent, alternate versions of the eulogy, such as: may Gods salvation be with him!, may Gods mercy and salvation be assured him, may Gods grace be granted him!95 The impression that this style gives is of genuine reverence for the Prophet rather than formulaic, mindless repetition. She also adds an appropriate eulogy to the names of other revered gures in Islamic history, such as Aisha (Radiya Allahu Anha, rendered as Gods approval is bestowed on her!), perhaps as another tweak at reexive religiosity.96 Battle stories were a large part of classical Islamic works on the Prophet Muhammad, largely due to the inuence of pre-Islamic tribal maghazi war stories. Djebars attitude to war and to women in war is complex as bets an Algerian of her generation. In Loin de Mdine, war is a fact of life and women have a number of auxiliary and symbolic roles in tribal warfare,97 as they did in the Algerian struggle. But there were also Muslim and non-Muslim warrior women, rebels who led armies, predecessors of the Berber queen Kahina.98 Women in the novel aspire to be warriors, rather than the mothers of warriors,99 a clear reference to the Algerian situation. Women are also depicted as victims of war and must be protected along with other noncombatants, old men and children.100

Loin de Mdine, p. 109; Far From Medina, p. 96. Loin de Mdine, p. 15; Far From Medina, p. 6. 95 Loin de Mdine, pp. 41, 109; Far From Medina, pp. 31, 96. 96 Loin de Mdine, p. 251; Far From Medina, p. 226. 97 Loin de Mdine, pp. 27, 32, 3839; Far From Medina, pp. 17, 22, 2829. Ilse Lichtenstadter, Women in the Aiyam al-Arab: A Study of Female Life During Warfare in Pre-Islamic Arabia (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1935). 98 Loin de Mdine, pp. 37, 96, 133153; Far From Medina, pp. 27, 83, 116136. On the Kahina, see: Mohammad Talbi, Kahina, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. 4: 42223; Abdelmajid Hannoum, Historiography, Mythology and Memory in Modern North Africa: The Story of the Kahina, Studia Islamica, 85 (1997): 85130. 99 Loin de Mdine, p. 92; Far From Medina, p. 80. 100 Loin de Mdine, pp. 34, 39, 107, 113, 114; Far From Medina, pp. 24, 29, 93, 99, 100.
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But Djebar does not unduly romanticize warfare, describing a gory attack on a woman.101 Legal and customary precedents were an integral part of the classical Islamic stories about the Prophet Muhammad, and some of this material must have resonated with Djebar at a time when personal status law was still on the Algerian agenda. First, Djebar cites the well-known fact that the Prophet Muhammad left nine widows, without explanations or apologies.102 But she adopts one feminist approach to polygamy that is grounded in a reading of the Quranic versea man may take up to four wives only if he can deal justly with all of them, something that is clearly impossible. She places this verse in the context of Muhammads public support for Fatima when her husband wished to take another wife.103 We may infer from this construct that a beloved daughter should not be forced to endure a co-wife. Yet, when Fatima wants to divorce Ali (an interesting concept in and of itself ), Muhammad makes a not very feminist plea for her to stay with him since a wifes role is to bring out the love of her husband.104 Not feminist, perhaps, but certainly in support of loving, companionate marriage. Moreover, Djebar points out that the internecine strife that came about after the Prophets death was a direct result of his polygyny (since his wives brought their own fathers to the succession conict.)105 She highlights the monogamous relationship that the Prophet had, not with Khadija, the oft-cited companionate wife, but for three years with Sawda, before he married Aisha.106 In fact, many women at that time enjoyed temporary almost monogamous marriages, she states.107 So, clearly, for Djebar, monogamy is the preferred form of marriage. Yet elsewhere she seems to be saying that monogamy is over-rated, a blessing that men bestow only on special women.108 Typically, Djebar opposes polygyny based on a modernist, feminist reading of the Quran, but also on some unique interpretations of stories from the life of the Prophet.

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108

Loin de Mdine, pp. 121122; Far From Medina, pp. 106107. Loin de Mdine, p. 13; Far From Medina, p. 5. Loin de Mdine, pp. 7075; Far From Medina, pp. 5963. Loin de Mdine, p. 70; Far From Medina, p. 59. Loin de Mdine, p. 59; Far From Medina, p. 48. Loin de Mdine, p. 52; Far From Medina, p. 42. Loin de Mdine, p. 272; Far From Medina, p. 247. Loin de Mdine, pp. 5758; Far From Medina, p. 46.

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Djebars attitude to the hejab is surprising considering that she does not wear this ostensibly Islamic dress, but perhaps is congruent with her multifaceted approach to the subject in her previous work. Her stand is undoubtedly informed by the contemporary image of Algerian streets where many women wore traditional or neo-Islamic dress. Twice she emphasizes that the verses on veiling in the Quran refer to the Prophets wives, which would imply that other Muslim women are not required to veil. Moreover, she states that the wives went out less freely and veiled themselves entirely in response to the amboyant style and licentiousness of the Medina women. This seems to be an oblique reference to the more stringent veiling of Algerian women when confronted by French hegemony. Finally, Djebar describes a woman who accedes to the demands of another woman to veil herself completely, including her face, more or less by choice, to avoid making a fuss on her wedding day.109 This approach seems to be something of a compromise with social reality, rather than a reinterpretation of the Quranic text, from a woman who chose not to succumb to social pressure in wearing a veil. Like many previous composers of modern biographies of the Prophet Muhammad, Assia Djebar presents her self-proclaimed novel from the outset as grounded in classical Islamic sources, and discourses, as well as French historiography and literary traditions. The foreword opens with a reference to the novel and ends by citing ijtihad, a classical Islamic method of independent reasoning. An epigraph is from the French historian Michelet, whose vivid style apparently inuenced Djebar. 110 This blend is employed to craft a groundbreaking, Islamic feminist work. Djebars Islamic Feminist Message In the 1990s, a new ideological and activist trend dubbed Islamic Feminism, emerged among Muslim women in various parts of the world.111 These Muslim women aimed to reconcile their belief in Allah and his
Loin de Mdine, pp. 140, 203204, 273; Far From Medina pp. 123, 181182, 248. Loin de Mdine, pp. 57; Far From Medina pp. xvxvii. 111 Margot Badran, Islamic Feminism: whats in a name, Al-Ahram Weekly Online (1723 January 2002). http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/569/cu1.htm; Valentine M. Moghadam, Islamic Feminism and Its Discontents: Toward a Resolution of the Debate, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (2002); Miriam Cooke, Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature (New YorkLondon: Routledge, 2001).
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Prophet with their aspiration for equality of women. Islamic feminists include those who may not accept the label or identity. They may wear the hejab or not according to their personal interpretation of the Islamic dress code for women. As a result, scholars and observers are not in agreement as to who may be dened as an Islamic Feminist. Moreover, liberal and even radical feminists have used Islamic discourse.112 The foremost methodology of Islamic Feminists is to return to the text of the Quran, the revealed word of Allah, and independently reinterpret it. They reject the generations of Muslim male exegetes whose ideas were formed by patriarchal societies. One of the pioneers of this method is African-American Muslim scholar Amina Wadud who wrote an extremely inuential book interpreting the Quran by topic rather than by verse, as is customary. Originally written in English, Waduds book was eventually translated into Arabic.113 In the late 1990s, a group of Muslim women from various countries gathered in Paris to read the Quran together in a non-hierarchical study group with the assistance of two anonymous reference persons. The results of their discussions were distributed in French and English as a resource kit.114 Islamic feminists employ the classical Islamic term ijtihad, independent reasoning, to describe their endeavor and provide it with legitimacy, even when writing in English or French. Only a few Islamic feminists have taken on the dicult subject of hadith, the normative words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad. Among them is Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi, who demonstrated how problematic misogynist hadith traditions of the Prophet may be neutralized by neo-traditional methods.115 Mernissis work has had a tremendous impact on Muslim women, among them, Assia Djebar.
112 Perhaps the most extreme example is Egyptian radical feminist Nawal al-Saadawi, who published an article in 1982 on Women and Islam, in Women and Islam, ed. Azizah al-Hibri. (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982). Cooke includes Saadawi in her book on Islamic Feminism, while I would exclude her from this category because of her Marxist beliefs. Religious faith is an extremely personal matter, however, and we must be cautious in evaluating the commitment to Islam of any women. 113 Quran and Women (Kuala Lampur, 1992, 2nd ed. 1993; Oxford University Press South East Asia 1993); Quran and Woman: Re-Reading the Sacred Text from a Womans Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1999); Quran and Woman: Arabic Version Amina Wadud, Samia Adnan2005. 114 Women living under Muslim laws, For Ourselves: Women Reading the Quran (1997) http://www.wluml.org/english/index.shtml. The organizations website now appears in Arabic as well. 115 Fatema Mernissi, Le harem politique: Le prophte et les femmes (Paris: Albin Michel, 1987); The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Womens Rights in Islam,

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Moroccan lmmaker Farida Ben Lyzaid told the story of a young woman who returns from France for her fathers funeral, and under the inuence of a popular shaykha establishes a shelter for battered women in her home.116 Ben Lyzaids lm demonstrated the great impact of Islamic Feminism rendered in dramatic media in which Assia Djebar was well-versed. Following the Islamic Feminist approach and her own talents as an historian and creative artist, Djebar fashioned a subversive, feminist view of Islamic history with a message to women of North Africa and the Mashriq, the eastern Middle East. Like other Muslim feminists, she views the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad as an ideal for women. The Prophets message was corrupted by his male followers and interpreters during the course of Islamic history. The question is: when was this turning point?117 In Loin de Mdine, Djebar proposes that the death of Muhammad, and to a greater extent the death of his daughter Fatima six months later, were turning points in womens roles in Islamic society taking the Muslims Far From Medina, where women were strong and stood up for their rights. In Djebars reading, Fatima learned to say no from her father in the context of love for his daughter. Muhammad said no to her husband Ali who wished to take a second wife; this no was also aimed at the men of Madina.118 Fatima says no to the powerful men of Madina when they want her to swear an oath of allegiance to their choice for Muhammads successor, but she becomes a feminist icon when she alone ghts for her rights to inherit from her father. Like Shariati, Djebar has taken the rather sparse and not very attering reports on Fatima and inated them to create an alternate view of early Islam. Shariati viewed Fatima as a revolutionary; Djebar views Fatima as an outspoken feminist. Moreover, she believes that Fatima could have gone even further. She could have proclaimed that the Islamic revolution for daughters, for wives, their right to inherit, was the feminist revolution of Islam, which subsequent Muslim men tried to disavow.
trans. Mary Jo Lakeland. (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1991). Numerous translations and revised editions were subsequently published in London, Paris and Casablanca, including Arabic. 116 Farida Ben Lyzaid dir., Bab al-Sama Maftouh/Door to the Sky (Morocco, 1989). 117 For some alternate views as to when and why this change took place, see: Nawal alSaadawi, Women and Islam, in Women and Islam, ed. Azizah al-Hibri (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982); Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992). 118 Loin de Mdine, pp. 68, 75; Far From Medina, pp. 57, 64.

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Djebar empowers Fatima rather than other more obvious early Muslim female role models such as Khadija, the rst believer, or Nusayba bint Kab, who fought to protect the Prophet. The inuence of Massignon and Shariati was undoubtedly one factor. Miriam Cooke suggests that Djebars focuses on Fatima, the daughter, because all women are daughters, but not all women are wives and mothers.119 Of course, one cannot ignore the possibility that the author born as Fatima-Zohra Imalayen identied with Fatima daughter of the Prophet (although Fatima is the most popular name in the Islamic world). An even more unusual choice for a female hero from among the early Muslims is Asma, daughter of Umais, a minor gure whose name most Muslims and scholars of Islam would not even recognize. Djebar devotes three chapters to her, and says she lived three womens lives. Asma is one of The Women Travelers of the second section of the book, having journeyed with the rst migrants to Abyssinia before the Hijra. She who lays out the dead, was also one of the wives of the Prophets chief ally Abu Bakr. She is a healer, the wife of Jafar, son of Abi Talib, and the mother of their three sons. Djebar has done a masterful job of picking out of the sources every detail about this seemingly marginal gure to create a mosaic portraying a real woman. Ties of kinship, marriage and ascription are given life to bring this woman into the center of the action. Asma in Djebars hands becomes the crucial, almost missing link between the death of Fatima and the death of Abu Bakr (both of whom she laid out.) She also becomes the possible healer of the rift between Abu Bakr and Fatima, an origin of the Sunni-Shii conict. Further, Asma, she of the tattooed hands, becomes the wife of Ali, Fatimas widower, cares for her daughters, and gives him sons. Only later in the book is it brought home that Asma and Aisha are connected through Abu Bakr, the one a wife, the other a daughter. Djebars portrayal of Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr, is quite unique compared to the numerous depictions of this major Islamic gure, admired by Sunnis and vilied by Shiis. This prominent woman, empowered by men, is somewhat marginalized by Djebar. She is present from the outset at the deathbed of the Prophet, with his head resting on her breast. At that point, brief reference is made to her role as the transmitter of knowledge but also to her childish pride.120 But only at the end of the book does
119 120

Cooke, p. 69. Loin de Mdine, p. 11; Far From Medina, p. 3.

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Aisha begin to be featured, and uniquely, in stories in which she is on the margins, not the many classical narratives that present her as a central actor. Djebar introduces Aisha through the stories of her freed slave Barira, and then depicts her as She Who Was Protected. This is a far cry from Aisha, the learned woman who was the source of crucial material on the life of the Prophet and early Islamic precedents, or Aisha the controversial political activistmore common feminist depictions.121 In an epilogue, Djebar presents Aisha and Fatima as dual or plural words in Arabic, representing two forms of feminism. Aishas role is to remember and to relate, a feminism of the pen, while Fatimas is to rebel, a feminism of ghting. Merged together, they empower all Muslim women. Djebars pairing of Aisha and Fatima is quite unusual for a number of reasons. Classical and modern interpretations of the life of the Prophet Muhammad tend to emphasize the jealousy and animosity between the two women. Moreover, recent political events have highlighted the SunniShi divide in which Aisha plays a major role, whether as hero or villain, and Fatima is portrayed dierently. Yet, Djebar, of Sunni background, was inuenced (as we have seen) by the Iranian Shi thinker Ali Shariati. Even more interesting in my view is that Paris served as a nexus to bring together Muslim intellectuals from North Africa and from faraway Iran. Djebars own life and work at this stage seems to be a blend of feminism of the pen and rebellious, active ghting. Islamic Feminism on Stage Djebar used the strategy of Islamic legitimacy as well as a conservative visual approach drawn from Islamic classical Persian-and Ottoman illustrations122 in bringing a similar Islamic Feminist message to European audiences in 2000, through a relatively new genre. Djebar has said that the stage production was inspired by the taziy, the Shii dramatic depiction
121 Denise A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of Aisha Bint Abi Bakr. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. 122 For images of the Prophet in classical painting, see: Basil Gray, The Prophet Muhammad receives submission of the Banul Nadir, in The World History of Rashid alDin (London: Faber & Faber, 1978); The Angel Gabriel Appears to the Prophet, The Miraculous Journey of Mahomet: Miraj Nameh (New York: George Braziller, 1977); Zeren Tanindi, Siyer-i Nebi: An Illustrated Cycle of the Life of Muhammad and its Place in Islamic Art, Eng. trans. Maggie Quigly-Pinar (Istanbul, 1984), pp. 24, 6, 17, 19, 2729, 5052, 67, 76, 8587.

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of the martyrdom of the Imam Husayn and his family, which sometimes included the death of the Prophet Muhammad as well as the death of his daughter Fatima six months later.123 Two musical dramas, or operas, were written based on the same Arab sources she used in Loin de Mdine. One was for a theater in Rome and the other for an experimental Dutch company. The two dramas incorporated women who lived during the time of the Prophets life and death, in the choruses and in many characters of the plays. As in the novel, the two women who were spotlighted were Fatima, the disowned, and Aisha, the slandered, both issues with contemporary ramications. Djebar was aware that putting gures revered by Muslims in a theater presentation was problematic. In Rome and Palermo, she brought Aisha and Fatima to the stage, as well as the rst caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar and Ali, but in Italian, with refrains chanted by one female and one male chorus.124 She staged the musical play, using Persian and Turkish miniatures as inspiration for the costumes and the headdresses.125 She also chose to have the hallowed guresboth women and menwear masks, playing on the concepts of hejab and niqab (face covering). Only the character of the Prophet remained invisible. At the moment of his death onstage, one sees his loved ones and wives by his bedside behind a semi-transparent curtain (the original meaning of hijab). Stage front, women keep watch, wait, evoke certain scenes from the Prophets life, and at the moment of his death, burst into tears.126 The international press focused on the cancellation of the Rotterdam production in Arabic, and the announcement by Djebar and the Moroccan cast that intimidation and threats from Muslim clerics had forced them to abandon the project.127 It is perhaps for this reason that a promOn the taziye, see: Taziya, Encyclopaedia of Islam; Peter Chelkowski, ed. Taziyeh: Ritual and Drama in Iran (New York and Teheran, 1979); Alsarat: Papers from the Imam Husayn Conference (London, 1984). Colonel Sir Lewis Pelly, The Miracle Play of Hasan and Husain, Collected From Oral Tradition (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co., 1879), 1:7191; 1:11032. 124 The production was well-received in the Italian press and cultural public, and does not seem to have drawn the attention of Middle Eastern critics. 125 Djebar indicated her familiarity with Persian miniatures in the 1987 novel Ombre Sultane, p. 122; Sister of Scheherazade, p. 113. 126 I did not see the production, but read descriptions of it: Why Ishmaels Daughters? On Islam and Theatre, Assia Djebar http://www.assiadjebar.net/women/index_ women.htm; 27 December 2006. 127 Dutch Group Calls O an Opera After Muslims Pressure Cast The New York Times International Sunday, December 10, 2000.
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ised Arabic translation of the novel still has not appeared.128 Nevertheless, French-Moroccan novelist Driss Chrabis Le Homme du Livre ((1995), Muhammad: A Novel (1998), with a strong feminist theme, was awarded the prestigious Moroccan Grand Prix Atlas,129 in sharp contrast to the reception of his predecessors Mahfouz and Rushdie. Djebars Far From Mdina may prove to have broadened the acceptance of Islamic Feminist works of ction. * * * * *

Assia Djebars Islamic feminist novel is a sophisticated, compelling, literary work that retells the early history of Islam from the voices of women, about women and for women. It is a mlange of multiple inuences that informed Djebars creative work: French linguistic and cultural discourse, the artists life experience in the context of the turbulent history of Algeria, and changing attitudes toward Islam and feminism. Far From Medina was also shaped by previous modern life stories of the Prophet Muhammad and other Islamic Feminist endeavors. In the book, Djebar also seems to be carrying out a dialogue with classical Islamic texts that until recently have been dominated primarily by male Muslim scholars. In undertaking this feat, radical in itself, she has presented complex, unique Islamic feminist messages. The impact of Assia Djebars Islamic feminist novel and stage productions is yet to be determined. Publication of her works in Arabic would increase her exposure in the Arab world, for good and for bad. But the inuence of Islamic feminist works even in English or French should not be summarily underestimated. The dissemination of Islamic gender messages may take unusual pathsfrom India to North Africa, from Egypt to England, and from the Far East to Jerusalem.130 Visual media such as drama and lmmediums in which Djebar is experiencedare particularly inuential. Will her message return to Medina? Ruth Roded The Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace Research The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Zimra, Afterward, Women of Algiers, p. 166. Le Homme du Livre (Paris: Balland-Eddif, 1995); Muhammad: A Novel, trans. Nadia Benabid (London and Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998). 130 I have recently discovered that Palestinian feminists learned of Islamic feminism from their Sisters in Islam in the Far East.
129 128