Full Description
This book offers the first sustained scholarly exploration of intersex embodiment and identity in premodern Islam. Bringing together leading scholars in the field, it examines how classical Muslim thinkers conceptualised, categorised, and regulated bodies that defied binary understandings of sex and gender. Spanning legal reasoning, medical treatises, and literary representations, the chapters uncover the complex ways in which intersex figures—variously described in premodern sources—shaped debates over personhood, spirituality, care, legal practice, ritual, and bodily integrity. By situating these discussions within the broader intellectual and institutional history of Islam, the book demonstrates that intersex was not a marginal curiosity but a category that tested and refined classical understandings of human difference, divine creation, and social order. The volume will appeal to readers of Islamic studies, gender and sexuality studies, the history of medicine, and religious studies more broadly, inviting reflection on how traditions of interpretation continue to shape contemporary understandings of sexed and gendered embodiment within and beyond the Islamic world.
Contents
Introduction - Mehrdad Alipour and Indira Falk Gesink
Chapter One. "Gendering the Ungendered Body": A Brief Biography - Paula Sanders
Chapter Two. The Intersex Character (al-khunthā) in Classical Arabic Lexicography and Literature - Indira Falk Gesink and Mehrdad Alipour
Chapter Three. Intersex and Effeminate Characters (khunthā and mukhannath) in Classical Persian Poetry - Asghar Seyed-Gohrab
Chapter Four. 'Al-khunthā laysa bi-nawʿ:' The Absence of the Khunthā in the Qurʾānic Narrative of the Creation of the Humans - Saqer Almarri
Chapter Five. Of Camel-Drivers and Glass Vessels: Gender (In)stability in a Ḥadīth's Interpretive History - Ash Geissinger
Chapter Six. Shuraiḥ, Ali, and the Khunthā: Gender and Narrative Fluidity - Saqer Almarri
Chapter Seven. The Intersex Body in Classical Shiʿi Scriptural and Legal Traditions: Embodiment, Agency, and Beyond - Mehrdad Alipour
Chapter Eight. The Khunthā in Classical Sunni Jurisprudence - Indira Falk Gesink
Chapter Nine. Tracing Difference: al-Rāzī and the Intersex Body in Classical Persian Medical Tradition - Mehrdad Alipour
Conclusion - Indira Falk Gesink and Mehrdad Alipour
Index
