Studies concerning the shaping of Swahili culture in East Africa suggest that one feature of gender construction and differentiation in the African north Indian Ocean is based on formal instruction in the Arabic language. Women in the Muslim world have rarely had access to instruction at higher levels of written Arabic and, therefore, much of women's poetic religious production has been overlooked by historians and Islamicists. However, the existence of well-known female poets such as Dada Masiti, whose work has survived in both ora1 and written sources, could prove to be the tip of the iceberg - the 'iceberg' being the much more widespread production of religious Islamic works and celebrations by women, whose compositions seem 'submerged' because they rarely appear in written sources.
Sources on Islam composed in the vernacular: Somali women's religious poetry
DECLICH, FRANCESCA
2001
Abstract
Studies concerning the shaping of Swahili culture in East Africa suggest that one feature of gender construction and differentiation in the African north Indian Ocean is based on formal instruction in the Arabic language. Women in the Muslim world have rarely had access to instruction at higher levels of written Arabic and, therefore, much of women's poetic religious production has been overlooked by historians and Islamicists. However, the existence of well-known female poets such as Dada Masiti, whose work has survived in both ora1 and written sources, could prove to be the tip of the iceberg - the 'iceberg' being the much more widespread production of religious Islamic works and celebrations by women, whose compositions seem 'submerged' because they rarely appear in written sources.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
