Between Function and Fiction: The Representation of Women in al-Ibshīhī's Mustaṭraf

The concepts of performativity and iterability, considered in relation to the social construct of gender identity, can prove useful in approaching the representations of women that al-Ibshīhī (d. ca. 1446)—also known as al-Abshīhī or al-Ibshayhī—transmitted in the seventy-third chapter of his encyclopedic work Al-Mustaṭraf fī kull fann mustaẓraf ("The Exquisite elements from every art considered elegant"). The chapter in question, which sits in the context of adab alnikāḥ, carries the title "On women and the qualities that distinguish them; on marriage and repudiation; on what is praised and blamed in relationships."