2019 Volume 54 Pages 75-84
The article will focus on qualities attributed to several female slaves involved in activities labeled criminal or transgressive as depicted in narrative chronicles of the Mamluk period (1250–1517 C.E.). Contemporary narrative authors often attributed a degree of impropriety—and enhanced offensiveness—to transgressions allegedly committed by women, in addition to the generalized concept of ‘social harm’ applicable to acts by either gender: crossing normative boundaries of ‘proper’ decorum specific to women (such as adoption of ‘immodest’ dress, overt self-assertion in the public sphere, or undisguised contradiction of decisions by males). The essay will consider whether narrative authors signaled their sense of violated gendered space through their terminological choices, selection of descriptive detail, or adoption of stylistic devices peculiar to these incidents. That they resorted to these indirect, covert, devices to signal aberrant behavior more often than explicitly denouncing it emerges as a noticeable trend to be considered. Implication rather than condemnation appeared as a more subtle, and possibly effective, means of highlighting departure from behavioral norms.
