The Beauty of the Houri

The fascination with the houri, the pure female of Islamic paradise, began long before September 11, 2001. The Beauty of the Houri demonstrates how the ambiguous reward of the houri, mentioned in the Qur'an and developed in Islamic theological writings, has gained a distinctive place in the cultural eye from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century. The Beauty of the Houri narrates an intellectual history of the houri and offers a contemporary account of how theological ambiguity has led to different interpretations of this Islamic religious icon.