Writing the Unwritten Life of the Islamic Eve: Menstruation and the Demonization of Motherhood

Abstract

Western scholars have long studied Jewish and Christian influence in shaping early Islamic tradition, but almost none of them has considered Eve's transformation as a critical part of the “genesis” of an Islamic historical framework and the evolution of its gender categories. I trace the transformation of the wife of Adam from the revelation contained in the Qurʾan and note the abrupt and distinct changes wrought upon this Qurʾanic persona in post-Qurʾanic sources in the matters of menstruation and motherhood. The figure of Satan plays a pivotal role in both of these biological aspects of Eve's biography. Her function as the first woman serves to explain not just the physiology of all women, but also the essential aspects of character that allegedly make all females different from the normative male in biology and behavior. As a wife, Eve is tested and fails, but as a mother, she both fails and passes the test of satanic temptation. I argue that in her role as wife, she is depicted in post-Qurʾanic sources in accordance with pre-Islamic monotheist precedent. However, in Eve's role as mother—especially as the mother of the prophetic patriline that culminates in Muhammad—Muslim scholars distinguished the meaning and implications of her temptation as distinctly Islamic. Eve embodied a fusion of traditions, a continuity of monotheistic meanings about the feminine in the Middle East, as well as an identity that distinguished her as the first woman of a new, emerging Islamic faith.