The Muslim woman—secluded, oppressed, and either longing for liberation or ignorantin her false consciousness—has been an enduring topos in the Western imagination sincethe spread of Islam. Right? Wrong. Mohja Kahf explains that in fact “the question of theliberty, or lack thereof, of the Muslim woman” does not appear until around the 17thcentury, and the image of the subjugated Muslim woman, with its trappings of harems and veils,does not reach full fruition until the 18th and 19th centuries. If we go back to the 8th century,even after the Muslims had conquered Spain and part of France, there was a lack of Europeancuriosity about Muslims and a tendency to see them as just another enemy who was notparticularly different from the pagans of Europe. Orientalism and its gendered images came muchlater and were based on and helped to justify Western domination over the East, especially duringthe rise and heyday of colonialism. What, then, was the European image of the Orient—inparticular, of Muslim women—during the many centuries before Orientalism, when theMuslim world was as powerful as, or even more powerful than, Europe? Kahf answers thisquestion by introducing us to a series of fictional Muslim women from European literature of theMiddle Ages through the late Romantic period.