Based on original and previously unexamined sources, this book provides a critical and systematic analysis of the role of women, mothers, wives, eunuchs, concubines, qahramans and atabegs in the dynamics and manipulation of medieval Islamic politics. Spanning over 600 years, Taef El-Azhari explores gender and sexual politics and from the time of the Prophet Muhammad through the Umayyad and Abbasid periods to the Mamluks in the 15th century, and from Iran and Central Asia to North Africa and Spain.