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Women, Class, and Gender: Muslim Jaffa and Haifa at the Turn of the 20th Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Iris Agmon
Iris Agmon
Affiliation:
Iris Agmon is Lecturer, Department of Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.
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Extract

The following four stories were recorded among hundreds and thousands of others in the sharica court records of turn-of-the-century Jaffa and Haifa. There is no obvious connection among these four court cases. They raised various legal issues; the litigants were city-dwellers as well as villagers; and they also differed from one another in their socio-economic backgrounds. What these stories illustrate is that there was a major difference between the perception of family loyalties and obligations typical of men and women in the Muslim families of late Ottoman Jaffa and Haifa. I believe that it is important to recognize this difference if we want to understand gender relations in these families. I shall tell these stories first, then discuss the gender relations.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , November 1998 , pp. 477 - 500
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

Notes

Author's note: This essay is based on some of the findings and conclusions of my Ph.D. dissertation, “Women and Society: Muslim Women, the Sharʿī Court and Society of Jaffa and Haifa under Late Ottoman Rule (1900–1914)” (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 11 1994 [in Hebrew]).Google Scholar The dissertation was written under the supervision of Professor Amnon Cohen, to whom I owe deep gratitude. I am also grateful to Dror Ze'evi, Gabriel Piterberg, Leslie Peirce, Ron Shaham, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Beth Baron, and the participants in“The Workshop on Gender in Middle Eastern Societies”(Ben-Gurion University, 1996) for their valuable comments and observations on earlier versions of this article. I also wish to thank the anonymous readers of UMES for some very useful remarks and suggestions.

1 Jaffa, , al-Mahkama al-Sharʿiyya (hereafter JMS), Hujaj vol. 129, A.H. 1329–30 (1911–1912): 10–17, 21–35;Google Scholaribid., case 34. This arrangement with the manager of the waqf later caused the beneficiaries of the waqf a great deal of trouble and involved them in legal disputes, which is why I know about this waqf. Members of the Ramlawi family are frequently mentioned in the sijill as real-estate dealers; see, for example, JMS, Hujaj vol. 83, A.H. 1317–19 (1900–1901), case 1044, case 1081, case 1115, etc.

2 Iskandar ʿAwd, also known as Alexander Howard Bey, was a wealthy Maronite from Beirut with British citizenship. He was the agent of the Cook steamship company in Jaffa. His house stood on Bustrus Avenue (Raziel St.), north-east of the Clock Circus at Jaffa, where it can still be found today. CfKark, Ruth, Jaffa. A City in Evolution, 1799–1917 (Jerusalem: Yad Itzhak Ben-Zvi Press, 1990), 103, 169;Google ScholarShaham, Ron, “Christian and Jewish Waqf in Palestine During the Late Ottoman Period,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 54, 3 (1991): 461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Distributed according to the shariʿa—the man's share is twice the woman's: JMS, Hujaj vol. 83, case 1045. Details on the Sakajha family are to be found in many court cases: for example, ibid., case 1014, case 1019, case 1113, case 1120, case 1124, case 1152; JMS, Hujaj vol. 129: 5–9; JMS, Hujaj vol. 131, A.H. 1329–30 (1911–12), case 16, etc. On ʿAli Efendi Haykal, see ibid., case 1074, case 1123. According to the autobiography of his brother's grandson Dr. Yusuf Haykal, who was the mayor of Jaffa during the Mandate period, ʿAli Haykal was a prominent figure in late Ottoman Jaffa. He chaired its chamber of commerce, was the first member of its administrative council, and was the only Palestinian to whom the Ottoman authorities gave the title of “Efendi.”He was very rich, owned a large house inside the old city of Jaffa as well as many orchards in its vicinity, and was involved in the flourishing business of orange export to Britain: Haykal, Yūsuf, Ayyām al-Sibba (Amman: Dar al-Jalil lil-Nashr wal-Dirasat al-Falastiniyya, 1988), 217–18.Google Scholar

4 JMS, Hujaj vol. 152, A.H. 1331–32 (1913–14), case 19.

5 Approximately two qurūsh, a medium to low sum of child support compared with other sums of child support paid in Jaffa and Haifa in this period.

6 Haifa, , al-Mahkama al-Sharʿiyya (hereafter HMS), Jaridat al-Dabt vol. 32, A.H. 1331–32 (1913–1914), case 2.Google Scholar

7 The following summary of the main patterns in the family and marriage relations at Jaffa and Haifa in the period under discussion is based on the shariʿa court records of both cities analyzed in my Ph.D. dissertation. Three comments seem to be in order here. First, while I am aware that some of these patterns (in particular, the frequency of polygamy among families of all strata) differ from the findings of sijill research on other periods and places, a discussion of these differences would go beyond the scope of the present essay. Second, the families discussed here include mainly the Muslim Arabic- or Turkish-speaking families of the communities of Jaffa and Haifa. The Christians and Jews of these communities went to the shariʿa court as well, although much less often than their Muslim counterparts, particularly in matters of personal status. While the main patterns described later may have characterized them as well, I would rather limit my analysis to the Muslim families of these two communities, as it is heavily drawn on the sijill. Third, there were several differences between these two port cities and their communities (see Agmon, “Women and Society”). However, with regard to the arguments made in this essay, no major differences were traced; thus, the discussion here relates to the societies of both cities alike.

8 About the terminology and scholarship of family and household, see n. 19 and the section of this article titled “A Note on Family History.”

9 Kandiyoti, Deniz, “Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective,” in Women in Middle Eastern History. Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Keddie, Nikki R. and Baron, Beth (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), 23–43.Google Scholar

10 Kandiyoti, Deniz, “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender and Society 2, 3 (1988): 274–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 JMS, Hujaj vols. 45, 80, 81, 83–89, 91, 92, 2 vols, (no numbers), A.H. 1317–23 (1899–1905); ibid., vols. 104–9, 111–13, A.H. 1325–28 (1907–10); ibid., vols. 121, 128–35, 137–39, 144, 148–52, A.H. 1328–32 (1910–14); JMS, Flamat vol. 10, A.H. 1326–27 (1908–9); JMS, Turukāt vol. 124, A.H. 1328–29 (1909–10); JMS, Iʿlāmāt vol. 14, A.H. 1329–30(1910–11); HMS, Jarīdat al-Dabt vols. 13–14, A.H. 1317–22 (1899–1904); HMS, ʿām vols. 4, 7, 16, 21, A.H. 1319–28 (1901–10); ibid., vols. 3, 27, A.H. 1331–34 (1913–16); HMS, Jarīdat al-Dabt vol. 32. A.H. 1331–32 (1913–14); HMS, Daftar al-cʿaʾīdāt al-Sharʿīyya, A.H. 1319–24 (1903–8).

12 JMS, Hujaj vols. 83, 129, 131, 151–52; HMS, Jaridat al-Dabt vols. 13–14; HMS, ʿam vols. 7, 21. For a wider discussion of my methodology, see Iris Agmon, “The Sijill as ‘Thick Description’?” working paper submitted to the 12th Symposium of the Comit6 International d'études Pré-Ottomanes et Otto-manes, Prague, 9–13 September 1996.

13 Ze'evi, Dror, “Women in 17th Century Jerusalem: Western and Indigenous Perspectives,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995): 161;Google Scholaridem, “The Use of Ottoman Sharfa Court Records as a Source for Middle Eastern Social History: A Reappraisal,” Islamic Law and Society 5, 1 (1998): 35–56;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAgmon, , “Women and Society,” 26–31;Google ScholarAgmon, Iris, “Muslim Women in Court according to the sijill of Late Ottoman Jaffa and Haifa: Some Methodological Problems,” in Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, ed. Sonbol, Amira El-Azhary (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 126–40.Google Scholar

14 There are of course other conceptual differences between the quantitative and the micro-historical approaches to history, which for lack of space are not dealt with here. For a methodological discussion of micro-history, see Levi, Giovanni, “On Microhistory,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Burke, Peter (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 93–113;Google ScholarGinzburg, Carlo, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It,” Critical Inquiry 20, 1x (Autumn 1993): 10–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 This description of 19th-century Jaffa and Haifa is based on Iris Agmon, “The Development of Palestine's Foreign Trade, 1879–1914. Economic and Social Aspects” (M.A. diss., University of Haifa, 07 1984 [in Hebrew]);Google Scholar Agmon, “Women in Society”; Kark, Jaffa; Yazbak, Mahmoud, “Haifa at the End of the Ottoman Rule, 1870–1914: Selected Issues in the History of Administration and Society” (Ph.D. diss., The Hebrew University, 1992 [in Hebrew])Google Scholar (Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period: A Muslim Town in Transition [Leiden: E. J. Brill, forthcoming]). About the Ottoman reforms in the 19th century, see Yapp, Malcolm E., The Making of the Modern Near East 1792–1923 (London: Longman, 1987), 108–20, 128–37, 201–11.Google Scholar About the general trends of development in the port cities during the 19th century, see Keyder, çağlar, Özveren, Y. Eyüp, and Quataert, Donald, “Port-Cities in the Ottoman Empire. Some Theoretical and Historical Perspectives,” Review 16, 4 (1993): 519–58.Google Scholar

16 There are no indications in the case record of al-Najami (n. 27) of his upper-class background. The Najami family was one of the families that gained power in Haifa during the second half of the 19th century and established itself as an upper-class family by means of administrative positions and marriage ties with established upper-class families. However, the Najami family did not manage to maintain its power, and by the turn of the century it was in decline (the lack of indications in this court case for the family's former high position, such as the mentioning of social titles, may be a reflection of that decline). Cf. Yazbak, “Haifa at the End of the Ottoman Rule,” 281–83.

17 HMS, Jaridat al-Dabt vol. 32, case 54.

18 Agmon, , “Women and Society,” 150–75;Google ScholarYazbak, , “Haifa at the End of the Ottoman Rule,” 214–311.Google Scholar

19 Agmon, , “Women and Society,” 147–49;Google ScholarMarcus, Abraham, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 195–99;Google ScholarGerber, Haim, “Social and Economic Position of Women in an Ottoman City, Bursa, 1600–1700,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980): 241;Google Scholaridem, “Anthropology and Family History: The Ottoman and Turkish Families,” Journal of Family History 14, 4 (1989): 409–21;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDuben, Alan, “Understanding Muslim Households and Families in Late Ottoman Istanbul,” Journal of Family History 15, 1 (1990): 71–86;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem and Behar, Cem, Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility, 1880–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991);Google ScholarCuno, Kenneth M., “Joint Family Households and Rural Notables in 19th-century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27 (1995): 485–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Kandiyoti, , “Islam and Patriarchy,” 31.Google Scholar I use the term “family” to mean a patrikin, with emphasis on the kinship relations connecting its members, whereas the term “household” means a group of people who share the same house. They may have kinship relations, marriage relations, or working relations; their definition as a household is based on their common residence. See the section of this article titled “A Note on Family History.”

20 J. N. D. Anderson, “Glossary: Hadana,” in idem, Islamic Law in Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1970), 361–62. The book deals with Muslim law in Africa, whereas its glossary includes the main principles of Muslim law in general.

21 See, for example, the explanation of Ibn ʿAbidin, one of the most influential jurists of the Hanafi school in 19th-century Syria. Cf. Muhammad ibn Muhammad Amīn ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ibn ʿĀbidin, Radd al-Muhtār ʿala al-Durr al-Mukhtār. Hashiyyat Ibn ʿĀbidin, 5 vols. (Beirut: Dār ihyāʿ al-turāth al-ʿArabi, n.d.), vol. 2, “Bāb al-hadāna,” 633–42. See also Motzki, Harald, “Child Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Palestine,” in Islamic Legal Interpretation. Muftis and their Fatwas, ed. Masud, Muhammad Khalid, Messick, Brinkley, and Powers, David S. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 129–40.Google Scholar

22 In the case of waqf, Hasna Filfil, the manager of the waqf who was not a member of the Filfil family, is also described as ajnabi in the court records (see n. 1). About the definitions of ajnabi as ghayr mahram, see ʿĀbidin, Ibn, Radd al Muhtar, 2:633–34.Google Scholar See also Anderson, ibid.

23 See n. 3.

24 See n. 1. On gender and waqf endowments, see Doumani, Beshara, “Endowing Family: Waqf, Property Devolution, and Gender in Greater Syria, 1800 to 1860,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40, 1 (1998): 3–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 For example, HMS, Jarīdat al-Dabt vol. 32, case 58; JMS, Hujaj vol. 83, case 1019. About Muslim law of family waqf and its application, see Shaham, “Christian and Jewish Waqf”; Layish, Ahron, “The Family Waqf and the Shariʿa Law of Succession in Modern Times,” Islamic Law and Society 4, 3 (10 1997): 352–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Literally, it means “distance of cutting off” certain religious duties when traveling, such as praying with fewer than the regular number of prostrations, etc. The sharʿi rules in this respect are rather complicated. Basically, considered short is the distance that can be covered in fewer than three days and nights, but there are circumstances in which this definition might be changed: see ʿĀbidīn, Ibn, Radd al-Muhtār, 1: 526–27.Google Scholar

27 HMS, Jaridat al-Dabt vol. 32, case 80.

28 Interestingly enough, no one in the courtroom even mentioned this. Pick, Walter Pinhas, “Meissner Pasha and the Construction of Railways in Palestine and Neighboring Countries,” in Ottoman Palestine 1800–1914. Studies in Economic and Social History, ed. Gilbar, Gad G. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 183–203.Google Scholar

29 Ibn ʿĀbidīn, Radd al-Muhtar, 1, “Bāb salāt al-masāfa,” 525–35; al-Halabī, Ibrāhim Muhammad ibn Ibrāhīm, Multaqā al-Abhur (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1989); “Bāb al-masāfir,” 139–43.Google Scholar

30 In Egypt in the 1920s, the shariʿa courts sometimes acknowledged the widespread custom of adding to the nuptial-agreement conditions by which a husband took it upon himself not to force his wife to leave her home town in case he decided to move, and considered such conditions as sharʿi marital conditions—that is, the husbands had to stick to them. Shaham, Ron, Family and the Courts in Modern Egypt (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 92.Google Scholar The same notion was found by Abdal-Rehim in marriage contracts in late–16th-century Egypt; Abdal-Rehim, Abdal-Rehim Abdal-Rahman, “The Family and Gender Laws in Egypt During the Ottoman Period,” in Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws, 102, 110.Google Scholar See also Anderson, “Glossary: Taʿa,” 376. The sijill of Jaffa and Haifa rarely mention the conditions of the nuptial agreements, and even the discretion judges had when giving a particular verdict appears much less frequently, if at all, when compared with the Egyptian records. That leaves me with no more than indirect hints at the social importance attributed to a woman's daily contacts with her natal family and original neighborhood. In her anthropological research of the Awlad cAli, bedouin tribes who live at the northern end of the Egyptian Western Desert, Lila Abu-Lughod shows how in this tribal society, where there is a clear preference for the paternal kin as a source of social bonds, the close ties between a married woman and her natal family are nurtured and considered highly important. Abu-Lughod explains the tendency toward endogamic marriages among these tribes as a kind of a merger of the divided family loyalties of women: cfAbu-Lughod, Lila, Veiled Sentiments. Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 51–59.Google Scholar

31 It did not cut travel time by much anyway. There was only one train a day in each direction; travel expenses were not low (see n. 28); and, besides, a woman traveling by herself in a train carriage full of strangers was probably unthinkable. Highlighting the cultural dimension of the court work, however, is by no means saying that the judge was paying less attention to or even ignoring shariʿa law while making his verdict. On the contrary, it is through cases such as this that the process of adaptation of the shariʿa law to changing circumstances can be demonstrated, emphasizing the vital interaction between law and culture: cfGerber, Haim, State, Society, and Law in Islam. Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).Google Scholar Though Gerber stresses the adaptability of the shariʿa law as conducted in the Ottoman Empire to changing circumstances, he nevertheless seems to feel somewhat uncomfortable with interpretations of the work of shariʿa courts that are entirely cultural, such as the anthropological study of the shariʿa court of the Moroccan town of Sefrou: cfRosen, Lawrence, The Anthropology of Justice. Law as Culture in Islamic Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar See also n. 32, n. 37.

32 Anderson, ibid., “Mahr,” 369; ibid., “Nafaqa,” 370–71; ibid., “Taʿa,” 376. For analysis of the marital bond in Islamic society as reflected in Fatwa literature and court records, see Tucker, Judith E., “Muftīs and Matrimony: Islamic Law and Gender in Ottoman Syria and Palestine,” Islamic Law and Society 1, 3 (11 1994): 265–300.Google Scholar Tucker argues that the Muslim jurists, in dealing with marriage arrangements and the rights and responsibilities of husbands and wives, constructed a legal discourse that focused on gender difference yet proved flexible and responsive to changing social conditions. See also idem, In the House of Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).Google Scholar

33 In fact, the division of the dowry into immediate and postponed payments is optional in Muslim law. In the court records I examined, this division is always mentioned as part of the nuptial agreement. As to the actual payment, however, not paying the immediate dowry or part of it upon marriage was a practice as widespread as paying it. Thus, it appears that there were two systems of immediate dowry (in addition to the formal distribution of the dowry as immediate and postponed)–a declared (frequently fictitious) dowry, and the dowry paid de facto. See the analysis of this phenomenon in Agmon, “Women and Society,” 106–12.

34 HMS, ʿām vol. 7, A.H. 1325–26 (1907–8), case 70.

35 HMS, Jarīdat al-Dabt vol. 32, case 72. In fact, this second dispute between Fatima and Ibrahim was divided in court into two stages, with only the documentation of the second found in the sijill volumes that are available for that period in Haifa. I can infer details of the first case, which included Fatima's claim for an increase in her daily expenses, from the second case, which started with Ibrahim's request that the court reconsider its verdict in favor of the increase. The whole story of Fatima and Ibrahim, their relationships and trials, is discussed in detail in Agmon, “Muslim Women in Court.”

36 HMS, ʿām vol. 7, case 8; Yazbak, “Haifa at the End of the Ottoman Rule,” 251.

37 The court took part as well in responding to these women's patterns of behavior, though not necessarily by giving women—or anyone else, for that matter—a favorable position. Usually, court verdicts were in keeping with shariʿa law. For the social function of the court, see Agmon, “Women and Society,” 79–95. This kind of independence of women appearing in court by themselves and claiming their rights was found in 17th-century Jerusalem court records, as well; cf. Ze'evi, “Women,” 164. See also Peirce, Leslie P., “LE DILEMME DE FATMA. Crime sexuel et culture juridique dans une cour ottomane au début de Temps modernes,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 53, 2 (1998): 291–320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Anderson, “Glossary: Khulʿ,” 367.

39 For example, JMS, Hujaj vol. 152, case 17. During the period under discussion there was a constant increase in the prices of all kinds of products and services. This situation was reflected in the consular reports submitted by the consular agents of the European countries in the port cities of Palestine to their capitals: for example, for France, see Vice-Consul Arthur Guy, Ministére des Affaires Ètrangères et le Ministère du Commerce, de I'industrie et des Colonies,“ Situation économique de la région de Caiffa et de Saint-Jean-d' Acre, annés 1909–1910,” Rapports Commerciaux, no. 1058 (1913), 57; for the United Kingdom, see Consular-Agent Knesevich, Acting Vice-Consul Falanga, and Consul Dickson, Foreign Office, “Report on the Trade and Commerce of Palestine for the Year 1905,” Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series no. 3561 (March 1906), 7.

40 JMS, Hujaj vol. 152, case 2; ibid., case 50 (see discussion of this case in Agmon, “Muslim Women in Court”); HMS, Jarīdat al-Dabt vol. 32, case 76; ibid., case 79.

41 JMS, Hujaj vol. 83, case 1144. As to the ownership of Khalil al-Qamaʿ of other orchards, he was the owner of the orchard next to the one he bought from Futum, on its western side (ibid.). See also ibid., case 1120; JMS, Hujaj vol. 129, 37–41, 59–60.

42 0ther cases in which similar prices for orchards are mentioned (for the same year, although the size of the properties is mentioned in the sijill only in ashum, i.e., in relative proportions) are: ibid., cases 1014, 1015, 1029, 1044. Records that apparently include cases of fictitious claims which aimed at having a legal confirmation for an agreement which was signed outside the court are: ibid., case 1099; JMS, Hujaj vol. 129, case 11; JMS, Hujaj vol. 152, case 4; HMS, Jarīdat al-Dabt vol. 32, case 96, case 99. The procedure of waqf foundation included a built-in fictitious claim for canceling the new waqf, which used to be rejected prior to the confirmation of the waqf by the court. See n. 1, n. 3.

43 The pattern of the activities of the wakil daʿāwī in court resembled those of a legal attorney, and they were different from those of the lay legal representative (wakil), who still used to appear in court and represent litigants voluntarily in the same manner by which he was described in the Islamic jurisprudence and in court records of earlier periods. See Jennings, Ronald C., “The Office of Vekil (Wakil) in 17th Century Ottoman Sharia Courts,” Studia Islamica 42 (1975): 147–69;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGerber, , Economy and Society in an Ottoman City: Bursa, 1600–1700 (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1988), 204–6;Google Scholar Marcus, Aleppo, 197; El-Nahal, Galal H., The Judicial Administration of Ottoman Egypt in the Seventeenth Century (Minneapolis and Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1979), 25–26, 29, 36, 48, 50;Google Scholar Agmon, “Women and Society,” 56–71.

44 The Christian (mainly Catholic and Greek Orthodox) upper-class families in Haifa had emerged during the second half of the 19th century and become quite influential, threatening the position of the Muslim elite families. This found reflection in the patterns of the development of two main neighborhoods, an eastern one, which was Muslim, and a western one, which was Christian (a clear-cut division which was not typical of Jaffa, though its Christian upper-class families were also very prominent): Yazbak, “Haifa at the End of the Ottoman Rule,” 332–50.

45 The tendency of upper-class families in the modern era to become more remote from the rest of the urban community is also pointed out in Abu-Lughod, Janet L., “The Islamic City–Historic Myth, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987): 170;Google ScholarSchatkowski-Schilcher, Linda, “The Lore and Reality of Middle Eastern Patriarchy,” Die Welt des Islams 28 (1988): 498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Though it seems that the 19th-century European bourgeois idea of “refinement” that was found to be behind the seclusion of well-to-do women from the public sphere in Europe was not the impetus in our case: see Mabro, Judy, Veiled Half-Truths, Western Travellers' Perceptions of Middle Eastern Women (London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co., 1991), 10–14.Google Scholar See also Ze'evi, “Women,” 170. With regard to the ideal of women's seclusion, which, for economic reasons, was kept mainly among upper-class families, see Marcus, Abraham, “Privacy in Eighteenth-Century Aleppo: The Limits of Cultural Ideals,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 18 (1986): 166.Google Scholar

47 For an analysis of the court cases according to property versus personal matters in relation to socioeconomic positions of female litigants, see Agmon, “Women and Society,” 36–79. For some examples of marriages within elite families, see HMS, Jarīdat al-Dabt vol. 32, 10–11; HMS, ʿām vol. 7, case 29. For much the same tendency in 18th- and 19th-century Nablus, see Tucker, Judith E., “Ties that Bound: Women and Family in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Nablus,”in Women in Middle Eastern History, 239, 241.Google Scholar

48 At this point, an analysis of men's family loyalties and obligations and their attitudes toward women's strategies in this respect would have further contributed to the understanding of gender relations in the society under discussion. However, as the focus of the research that underpins this essay was on women, such a project would require more research and more space than permitted here.

49 Scott, Joan Wallach, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 42–43, 46–48.Google Scholar

50 Ibid., 38.

51 Ibid., 32–33.

52 Ibid., 42.

53 CfHourani, Albert, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Polk, William R. and Chambers, Richard L. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 41–68.Google Scholar The mediating role of urban notable families in late Ottoman society has been discussed by many historians; see Khoury, Philip S., “The Urban Notables Paradigm Revisited,” Revue des Études du Monde Méditerranéen Musulman 55–56, 1–2 (1990): 215–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Hatem, Mervat, “Class and Patriarchy as Competing Paradigms for the Study of Middle Eastern Women,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, 4 (1987): 813.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 For works dealing with household constructions, see n. 19. The discussion that follows excludes the recently flourishing scholarship on household formation and construction among the ruling elite in the Ottoman urban centers, of which some works seem to be pathbreaking. Yet they generally deal with an entirely different set of historical questions. See, for example, Hathaway, Jane, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt. The Rise of the Qazdağlis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).Google Scholar As for works dealing with family ties and relations, see, for example, Sonbol, Amira al-Azhary, “Adoption in Islamic Society: A Historical Survey,”in Children in the Muslim Middle East, ed. Fernea, Elizabeth W. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 45–67;Google Scholar and several articles in idem (ed.), Women, by idem, Fay, Mary Ann, Hanna, Nelly, Khouri, Dina Rizk, Meriwether, Margaret L., and Rehim, Abdal; Tucker, Judith E., “Marriage and Family in Nablus, 1720–1856: Towards a History of Arab Muslim Marriage,” Journal of Family History 13 (1988): 165–79;Google Scholaridem, “The Arab Family in History. ‘Otherness’ and the Study of the Family,”in Arab Women. Old Boundaries, New Frontiers, ed. Tucker, Judith E. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 195–207;Google Scholar Motzki, “Child Marriage.” This list includes some references to works in another field of research that recently has begun to draw the attention of historians, that is, children's history. However, the works of a prominent scholar in this field, Avner Gilʿadi, are excluded inasmuch as his research deals mainly with the Medieval period. See, for example, his Infants, Parents, and Wet Nurses: Islamic Views on Breastfeeding and their Social Implications (Leiden: E. J. Brill, forthcoming).

56 Doumani, “Endowing Family,” constitutes an important contribution to this project.