Abu Musa's Women Neighbors: A Historical Novel from Morocco

Fiction. Middle Eastern Studies. ABU MUSA'S WOMEN NEIGHBORS is a tale of political intrigue, whose themes of power and its abuses and the relationship between the secular and the sacred are as much a part of today's Arab world as they were in the pre-modern era it describes. Beginning in the 14th century port city of Sale, the novel follows the circuitous path of the beautiful and virtuous Shamah, whose sudden rise from cowherd's daughter to wide of a the Sultan's counsel leads her through teh cloistered ways of palace ladies into a teeming world of corruption, adventure, and tests of faith. Ahmed Toufiq is Minister of Habous and Islamic Affairds for the government of Morocco.

Novelist and historian Ahmed Toufiq has served as director of the National Library of Morocco and as a professor of history at the University of Mohammed V in Rabat. His many novels, including Jarat Abi Musa and Al Sayl, are well-known in the Islamic world. Translator Roger Allen is a professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and is the author of an Introduction to Arabic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and The Arabic Novel (Syracuse University Press, 1994).