Sara Verskin

There is a widespread assumption that, in the medieval Islamic world, a cultural emphasis on female modesty and gender separation resulted in male physicians never having the expectation or opportunity to put their gynecological and obstetrical knowledge to practical use. However, a wide range of textual evidence suggests that, in many communities, there was a broad acceptance of intimate interactions between male practitioners and female patients. These interactions included verbal consultations, manual examinations, and physical procedures relating to fertility and childbirth, as well as diseases of the sexual organs. Some male authors of medical texts also convey the expectation that the information in their texts would come to be known and utilized by women themselves, through female medical intermediaries.</jats:p>

My slightly updated (rough) translation of the beginning of Sefer ha-Toledet. Hebrew original manuscripts edited and published by Ron Barkai in Les Infortunes de Dinah: ou la gynécologie juive au Moyen-Age. Information about the likely author of the text, Doeg ha-Edomi, a fascinating figure, can be found in articles by Gad Freudenthal.  Translation not for reproduction without permission. Superscripts direct readers to a handout with complementary biblical and talmudic passages.
You can find some discussion questions I have prepared here: https://www.academia.edu/38757167/Discussion_Questions_for_the_Introduction_to_Sefer_ha-Toledet . If you would like to adapt this text for use in an educational context, feel free to contact me about it.
Freudenthal article: https://www.academia.edu/36486645/Gad_Freudenthal_Doeg_ha_Edomi_The_Repentant_Converso_Physician_and_the_Rise_of_Hebrew_Science_in_the_Twelfth_Century_in_Myriam_Silvera_ed_Medici_Rabbini_Momenti_di_storia_della_medicina_ebraica_Rome_Carocci_Editore_2012_99_203
Ron Barkai:
https://telaviv.academia.edu/RonBarkai

Questions to kick-off discussion about the dialogue between Dina and Jacob which occurs at the beginning of the Sefer ha-toledet.  Questions are organized by audience. The original Hebrew text (including the full medical text) was edited and published by Ron Barkai, together with a French translation, and can be found here. https://www.amazon.com/infortunes-Dinah-ge%CC%81ne%CC%81ration-gyne%CC%81cologie-Toledot-Judai%CC%88smes/dp/2204043923
My rough translation of just the introductory part of the text can be found here https://www.academia.edu/32964181/_Trauma_and_Empowerment_The_Reinvention_of_Dina_in_Medieval_Jewish_Medical_Texts_text_study_for_popular_audience_ .

Unpublished introduction to learned gynecological thought in the medieval Middle East, with some comparisons to how medical discourse intersected with, paralleled, and sometimes contradicted Islamic legal thought. Please contact author before citing or distributing.
Contents
• I. Concepts and Continuities in Arabo-Galenic Gynecology
• II. Women’s Bodies Across Genres of Thought

This study examines a peculiar gynecological procedure that enjoyed remarkable longevity. Versions of it can be found in some of the oldest Egyptian medical papyri, in Hippocratic gynecological treatises, in the writings of the Roman and Byzantine physicians, in the Talmud, and in medieval Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin texts up through the early modern period.

"The garlic test" is notable not only for its longevity, but also for its adaptability. While the protocols of conducting this test were reproduced and transmitted continuously, the interpretation of the results of the garlic test varied significantly. Some authorities explain that the test differentiates between fertile and infertile women, others between pregnant and non-pregnant women, and still others between virgins and non-virgins. Furthermore, these varying interpretations seem to have influenced one another in a manner that led to the emergence of precisely opposite conclusions about how to read the testing results, despite using the exact same procedure.

I argue that the garlic test, in all its permutations, had a consistent goal: to “scientifically” uncover the “facts” about a woman’s sexual past or her reproductive future, facts which in the present are always in doubt. Its theory teaches that the unknown past and future are possible to discover, because they leave a tangible mark on the present body. Second, I argue that the variations among our texts indicate that the garlic test was a “living tradition”, i.e. an idea that was in the air apart from what was in our authors’ texts, such that this independent knowledge sometimes colored the way our authors interpreted and re-transmitted the texts they had received.

I further speculate that, contrary to my own initial expectations, the test was not primarily wielded as a weapon of intimidation against women. Rather I suggest that it was a defensive tool, by means of which a woman could attempt to exonerate herself from accusations of fault, and blunt the force of men’s distrust, by “scientifically” assuaging their doubts.

The fourteenth century saw a number of prominent scholars of Islamic law (sharia) describing their concerns about intellectual and ritual syncretism in Muslim populations, particularly in Mamluk Syria and Egypt. They blame this purported syncretism on a variety of factors, but chief among them are two forms medical culture: that of the physicians trained in the Galenic tradition and “the medicine of itinerants and old women.” In scolding tones, the jurists depict the medieval market for healing as remarkably ecumenical, a place of where the boundaries of religion, gender, and physical space were violated on a regular basis. They understood the quest for healing as potentially religiously problematic, both on the grounds that it promoted inappropriately intimate relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims and because it potentially led people to seek intercession from, and control over, powerful forces of nature and supernatural beings. As one jurist put it, people “believe that these are modes of treatment and healing, when in fact they result in polytheism, because people attempt to repel the fates which have been set down for them, and they request beings other than God to repel the suffering which He himself ordained.”
In the face of these threats, Muslim jurists, in particular such figures as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Ibn al-Hajj al-Abdari, and Ibn Muflih, attempted to promote an Islamic medical culture. This was a three-pronged effort: promotion of a distinctively Islamic medical teaching based on the statements of the Prophet Muhammad, promotion of Muslim physicians who practiced Galenic medicine, rather than Christian or Jewish physicians, and an attempt to subtly Islamicize the content of magical healing rituals. It is this third effort which is the focus of my paper. Rather than banning magic, the jurists advocated for redirecting the magical impetus. They did so mainly by preserving the physical content of magical medicine while Islamicizing its verbal content. In some instances, this took the form of accompanying physical rituals seemingly bent on controlling supernatural forces with pious verbal denials that such attempts could be successful, since all power is God’s alone. More commonly, texts and images that were not in Arabic, or were not understood (such as those copied from ancient Egyptian monuments) were proscribed. Instead the jurists encouraged replacing spells on magical bowls and amulets with Qur’ānic verses and replacing images or invocations of demons with poetry about the Prophet Muhammad.

There is a widespread assumption that, in the medieval Islamic world, a cultural emphasis on female modesty and gender separation resulted in male physicians never having the expectation or opportunity to put their gynecological and obstetrical knowledge to practical use. However, a wide range of textual evidence suggests that, in many communities, there was a broad acceptance of intimate interactions between male practitioners and female patients. These interactions included verbal consultations, manual examinations, and physical procedures relating to fertility and childbirth, as well as diseases of the sexual organs. Some male authors of medical texts also convey the expectation that the information in their texts would come to be known and utilized by women themselves, through female medical intermediaries.

This paper argues that medieval Islamicate texts consistently and unambiguously refer to a far greater degree of direct male medical interaction with female patients than has been previously acknowledged. It is, therefore, a mistake for scholars to assume that modesty concerns always made the male practice of gynecology socially and legally implausible. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvzgb78b.16

Drawing on legal discussions of marriage, divorce, inheritance, adolescence, pregnancy, and menopause, this first chapter demonstrates how being infertile often changed the way women interacted with the legal system, despite the fact that barrenness was, for the most part, not a legally acknowledged category. Barrenness highlighted the tension between the sexual and reproductive elements of marriage. It subverted social norms and attitudes towards the relative desirability of divorce and polygamy. It complicated the financial bonds between women, their birth families, and their husbands’ families. To the extent that infertility correlated with irregular menstruation, it also threw a wrench into divorce, remarriage, and inheritance proceedings. However, the gap between the mechanisms and principles utilized in Islamic marriage, divorce, and inheritance law on the one hand, and other widely accepted goals of those institutions on the other hand, gave women room to maneuver and to shape their own status in ways which have not previously been widely recognized.
 
Adapted as Part I of the book Barren Women. Open access: https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/537589?lang=en&tab_body=toc-62810

Historians have presented two theories of the place of gynecology in “book-learned” medieval Islamic medicine. The first theory suggests that women’s medicine was virtually stagnant, since gender segregation made the entire field moot. The other theory claims that medieval gynecology represents an attempt to undermine trust in women’s reproductive competence and to thereby exert control over women’s bodies, for the purpose of scientifically reinforcing chauvinistic notions of chastity, passivity, and deficiency. Against both these views, this dissertation argues that while their conceptions of anatomy, physiology, and disease were largely derived from Greco-Roman predecessors, medieval physicians reinterpreted their sources in interesting ways. Indeed, overall their depiction of fertility is somewhat more egalitarian and less socially coercive than that of their classical predecessors. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that there were opportunities for contact between male physicians and female patients, and writers communicate an understanding that the information contained in their books would come to be known and utilized by women themselves.

See Part II of the book Barren Women. Open access here: https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/537589?lang=en&tab_body=toc-62810

This final chapter addresses the medical encounter from the perspective of certain Muslim jurists, particularly in Mamluk Egypt and Syria. These jurists were concerned that health-related situations were ripe opportunities for people to be led astray, intellectually and religiously, by those who offered forms of knowledge, authority and aid which could be perceived as competing with Islamic authorities. They perceived Muslim women in particular as being especially corruptible, because there were limited opportunities for male authorities to convey “orthodox” religious attitudes to them, thereby leaving them in an intellectual and spiritual vacuum. These concerns led to a clash of priorities when it came to recommending who should provide gynecological care to women. One priority was to preserve sexual modesty by preventing gender mixing, but the other priority was to preserve Muslim women from corrupting, “un-Islamic” influences, by providing them with increased access to male culture. There was a concern that gender-segregated gatherings connected with life, death, and birth were an ideal medium for the spread of corrupt notions. Moreover, these concerns were operative not only in strictly “secular” medical contexts, but also in other women’s gatherings such as those in bathhouses, cemeteries, at weddings, and around sick-beds.

See Part III of the book Barren Women. Open access here: https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/537589?lang=en&tab_body=toc-62810