Creating Eve: Feminine fertility in medieval Islamic narratives of Eve and Adam

This paper explores how Muslim tradition constructs the placement of legitimate fertility potential with the male. Through analysing references to fertility in the Eve and Adam narratives in the Bible, Qur’an, and extra-Qur’anic literature, it examines the means by which this construction is achieved. It concludes with exploring possible explanations for the use and preservation of this motif in the Muslim context, and suggests that this was the result of a deliberated, conscious choice by the compilers and authors of the medieval Islamic sources.