This special issue provides a comprehensive examination of women medical practitioners in the Middle East. The issue includes case studies from Algeria, Palestine, Israel, Iran, and Iraq that span the twentieth century and reveal tensions within the medical sphere between men and women, foreign and local, colonizer and colonized. Among the contributors are nurses, doctors, and midwives who examine micro-level contact zones where women’s agency shaped and was shaped by colonial and postcolonial encounters, decolonization, and the formation of national professions.