Women, Islam, and Abbasid IdentityWhen the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad dynasty in 750 CE, an important element in legitimizing their newly won authority involved defining themselves in the eyes of their Islamic subjects. Nadia Maria El Cheikh shows that ideas about women were central to the process by which the Abbasid caliphate, which ushered in Islam's Golden Age, achieved self definition. In most medieval Islamic cultures, Arab Islam stood in opposition to jahl, or the state of