A Critical Review of Ṣafūra's Personality in Women in the Qurʾan, Traditions and Interpretations by Barbara Stowasser

Abstract

Barbara Stowasser, introducing Ṣafūra — the wife of Mūsā — in Women in the Qurʾan, Traditions and Interpretations, raises doubts by suggesting that Ṣafūra stood apart from the shepherds because she lacked the strength to push them aside, and that only Mūsā could move the stone covering the well. Further doubt is raised by the claim that women may work in Islam only where there is "need", and by the reading of her "bashful gait" as separating her from a slave in the past and from her modernist sister in the present. This paper answers those doubts: Ṣafūra stood apart out of modesty; the stone Mūsā moved single-handedly ordinarily took ten men; and a woman may work in Islam provided she abides by its rules.