Shelter from the Tyrant: The Women Who Saved Moses in the Qur'an and in Nuṣrat Amīn's Commentary

Abstract: In the Qur'an, as in the Bible, the young Moses is born in perilous circumstances, and with a promise of greatness that can only be fulfilled if he survives; and in both scriptural accounts, his life is repeatedly saved through the heroic efforts of the women around him: his mother, his sister, and the wife of Pharaoh, who adopts him. The article begins with an examination of the qur'anic account of Moses's early life and the women whose interventions ensure his survival and considers the way in which certain narrative details found in the qur'anic account, as well as the Qur'an's unique narrative style, serve to highlight the perspicacity, courage, and independent agency of these women. The second part of the article explores the exegetical treatment of this qur'anic narrative by the twentieth-century female Muslim exegete Nuṣrat Amīn (1895–1983), a conservative religious scholar who outwardly reached an unusually high level of religious authority for her time, but who also wrote about her own rich inner life of spiritual and mystical experience, and who devoted much of her life to building a network of institutions for women's religious education. Amīn's exegetical treatment of the qur'anic Mosaic account reads the narrative from the perspective a woman who, like the women around Moses, has experienced both motherhood and maternal loss, successfully navigated a patriarchal world through her own intelligence and determination, and appreciated the value of women working together to support one another toward religious ends.