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THE broad outlining and quantification of what is often formulated as “women's rights and duties in classical legal literature” has long been a preoccupation of scholars seeking to define and portray an ideal Islamic society in which" women" are a legal category and in which gender roles carry social and political implications. Classical legal scholars operated within patriarchal family and social structures and political hierarchies in which people were presumed to have specified gender roles and assigned status in society. While theory described" ideal" societies and conditions, practice varied according to location, placement in socioeconomic and political hierarchies, free or slave status, ethnic background (particularly Arab vs. non-Arab), and religious affiliation. These categories serve as guideposts for contemporary scholars, although with caution not to use them in a reductionist, unidimensional way that assumes that all “women,”“female slaves," or" mothers," for example, are inherently the same. Contemporary scholars are further challenged to engage the classical literature based on the context in which it was written, but also with an eye toward methodologies designed to unveil the underlying purposes and objectives of the legal literature. This is particularly true where positive views of a diversity of opinions and conceptions of justice and the common good (maslaha) are concerned,'which require that they be placed within the broader sphere of complex and changing political, legal, social, and cultural contexts, looking for continuity and change over time and space, and comparing and contrasting them with other surrounding societies and …