‘And let her use it’: Women patients in early medieval Arabic gynecological recipes

Abstract This article examines the gynecological recipes contained in three Arabic medical compilations from the ninth and tenth centuries CE and asks how they present women patients as engaging with recipe knowledge related to matters of their own sexual health. Through an analysis of the grammatical forms of their key verbs, I argue that such recipes can clarify the involvement of women in their own healthcare and, more broadly, their interaction with codified practical knowledge and techniques in the form of recipe collections. I contend that the extent to which women received, enacted, and conveyed gynecological recipe knowledge depended in large part on their class and socioeconomic situation. Whereas more privileged women seem to have a role largely limited to applying remedies prepared by a physician or pharmacist, non-elite women are depicted as both receiving and enacting gynecological recipe knowledge.