2 ideas
The novel places holiness in the saint's humble daily life among the women of his neighbourhood rather than in institutional rank or court honour. The women share in that spiritual life, taking part in miracles and prayers for rain, not only observing it, and this contrasts with the worldly power of the sultan's court.
A historian can use the novel to reconstruct what chronicles omit, namely the domestic spaces, women's lives and street-level religion of a medieval city, and set them against the court's official history. Placing a saint's household beside the sultan's palace shows how large political events look from the kitchens and courtyards they disrupt. The form makes marginal people the vantage point from which power is judged.