Women in Pre-Islamic Arabia: Nabataea

The first centuries BC-AD see a huge increase in Nabatean depictions of women, and using inscriptions, coins and archaeological studies this book looks at the reasons for this trend, which represents a clear rise in women's status at that time - with women becoming involved in business, and enjoying a certain amount of legal independence. al-Fassi argues that a crucial factor in the creation of this social structure was the development of full time long distance trade, which entailed long periods of male abscence.