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The Centre of Islamic Studies is delighted to invite you to Reconsidering Verses on Women in the Qur'an: A Conversation with Karen Bauer and Feras Hamza.

Karen Bauer (Institute of Ismaili Studies) and Feras Hamza (University of Wollongong in Dubai) have several co-authored publications, beginning with 'An Anthology of Quranic Commentaries. Volume II On Women' (OUP, 2021). This anthology, part II of the Anthology of Qur'anic Commentaries, offers annotated translations of Qur'anic commentaries spanning twelve centuries and, unusually, interviews of contemporary Muslim scholars. 

The Anthology led them to re-examine the place of women in the Qur'an itself, and in 2023 they published their monograph, 'Women, Households and the Hereafter in the Qur'an. A Patronage of Piety' (OUP), which comprises a comprehensive analysis of the female subject in the Qur'an. This book offers a fresh perspective by undertaking the first historical-critical study of all the Qur’an’s verses on women and by offering an initial overview of households and patronage – late antique social structures that took the place of formal state structures in the Qur’an’s tribal milieu. 

The findings of this study call into question common approaches to Qur’anic theology, law, and narratives, to the nature of the early community, and to women’s place in that community. 

To purchase a discounted copy of Women, Households and the Hereafter in the Qur'an. A Patronage of Piety, please visit the OUP website and use this discount code for 30% off the RRP: AAFLYG6

About the authors

Karen Bauer is an Associate Professor at The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. With Feras Hamza she edited An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries, Volume II: On Women (2021). She is the author of Gender Hierarchy in the Qurʾān: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses (2015), and editor of Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qur’anic Exegesis (2nd/8th–9th/15th Centuries) (2013). 

She has written numerous articles on the history of Qur’anic interpretation, on women’s status in Islamic texts and on the history of emotions in Islam. She is the series co-editor for IQSA Studies in the Qur’an.

Feras Hamza is Head of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong in Dubai, UAE, and is also a Senior Research Fellow in the Qur’anic Studies Unit at The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. He co-edited, with Karen Bauer, An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries, Volume II: On Women (2021), and with Sajjad Rizvi and Farhana Mayer, An Anthology of Qur’anic Commentaries, Volume I: On the Nature of the Divine (2008). 

He published the first ever in toto translation in English of Tafsir al-Jalalayn (2008), and volume 1 of Kashani’s Ta’wilat al-Qur’an (a.k.a Tafsir Ibn Arabi) (A Sufi Commentary on the Qur’an, vol. 1, 2021). He is the series coordinator for the multi-volume project Anthologies of Qur’anic Commentaries with OUP, and Editor for E.J. Brill’s series Islamic Literatures: Texts and Studies. 

Feras is the author of several historical articles on the early Muslim community, as well as on methodological approaches in Qur’anic and tafsīr studies.