Islamic ideas about women and their role in society spark considerable debate both in the Western world and in the Islamic world itself. Despite the popular attention surrounding Middle Eastern attitudes toward women, there has been little systematic study of the statements regarding women in the Qur'an. This book fills the void with a study on the women of Islamic sacred history. By telling their stories in Qur'an and interpretation, the book introduces Islamic doctrine and its past and present socio-economic and political applications. It establishes the link between the female figure as cultural symbol, and Islamic self-perceptions from the beginning to the present time.

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Ladies and gentIemen, i would like to spEmdthe next forty minutes or so with you in the discussion of the work of one of the most outstanding thinkers of medieval Islam. Our topic today is the work of Ibn Khaldun who ranks among the leading thinkers of the world, the man who set forth a system of historical speculation in a book which Arnold Toynbee has called "the gr€atest work of its kind that has. ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place." Ibn Khaldun has also been called "the father of social science" and "the founder of 'positive' or 'historical' or 'truly scientific' social science" in the Islamic world. While i concur with those voices that emphasize Ibn Khaldun's importance and originality, i cannot, however, agree with those that deseribe his as a positivist or even a true pragmatist in the contempoıary sense, and i win return to this point a little later on. But let me now introduce you to Ibn Khaldun and to his work and then let me try to analyze, very briefly, that ultimate philosophical framework within which his though~unfolds. ,. This lecture was delivered on January 5, 1984 at the Faculty of politicaı Science, Ankara University.