Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T09:51:02.012Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

TASTE AND CLASS IN LATE OTTOMAN BEIRUT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2011

Toufoul Abou-Hodeib
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article deals with the material aspects of the late Ottoman home in Beirut, focusing on the notion of taste (dhawq) and its role in constructing class boundaries. It looks at how intellectuals used taste to articulate a prescriptive middle-class domesticity revolving around the woman as manager of the house and privileging moderation and authenticity in consumption habits. Rather than take such tastes as representative of actual consumption habits of an emerging middle class, and arguing for an approach that goes beyond taste as a construct, the article investigates the potentiality of new objects for subverting the existing social order. Based on a marital-conflict case brought to the Hanafi court, the article explores how one such object, a phonograph, opened interpretive possibilities in the gendered rigidity of court procedures.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , August 2011 , pp. 475 - 492
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

Author's note: Some of the research for this article was undertaken with support from the Humanities Division of the University of Chicago and the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Mellon Fellowship. I am grateful to Børre Ludvigsen, Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, Martin Stokes, Lisa Wedeen, and the anonymous IJMES reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

1 For a more detailed account of the urban development of Beirut, see Davie, May, Beyrouth et ses faubourgs (1840–1940): Une intégration inachevée (Beirut: CERMOC, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hanssen, Jens, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

2 There are many excellent works on the topic, many of which focus on Iran and Egypt. See, for example, Booth, Marilyn, “‘May Her Likes Be Multiplied’: ‘Famous Women’ Biographies and Gendered Prescription in Egypt, 1892–1935,” Signs 22 (1997): 827–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baron, Beth, The Women's Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Najmabadi, Afsaneh, “Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran,” in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Abu-Lughod, Lila (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 91–125Google Scholar; and Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh, “Patriotic Womanhood: The Culture of Feminism in Modern Iran, 1900–1941,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 32 (2005): 29–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Khater, Akram Fouad, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar. See also idem, “Building Class: Emigration, the Central Hall House, and the Construction of a Rural Middle Class in Lebanon, 1890–1914,” in La Maison Beyrouthine aux trois arcs: Une architecture bourgeoise du Levant, ed. Michael F. Davie (Beirut: Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts; Tours: Centre de Recherche et d'Études sur l'Urbanization du Monde Arabe, 2003), 371–93. Other works on the history of the modern home in Beirut and Lebanon deal with the cultural and technological currents that helped produce its form. See Davie, La Maison Beyrouthine; Saliba, Robert, Domestic Architecture between Tradition and Modernity: Beirut 1920–1940 (Beirut: Order of Engineers and Architects, 1998)Google Scholar; and Sehnaoui, Nada, L'Occidentalization de la vie quotidienne à Beyrouth, 1860–1914 (Beirut: Éditions Dar An-Nahar, 2002)Google Scholar.

4 Khater, Inventing Home, 118–27.

5 A notable exception is Jens Hanssen's discussion of how an elite discourse of morality engendered class tensions. Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut, Chap. 7. More recently, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi addresses the alliance between the emerging middle and working classes in the radical politics of Beirut as well as of Alexandria and Cairo. Khuri-Makdisi, , The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif.: University of California Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Bourdieu, Pierre, “Symbolic Power,” Critique of Anthropology 4 (1979): 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for help in refining this point. According to Bourdieu, such class alliances are not necessarily the result of strategizing but may instead relate to a “homology” between the space of producers and the space of consumers. In our case, this corresponds to the field of intellectual production, on the one hand, and the educated members of the emerging middle class, on the other. Bourdieu, , “The Field of Cultural Production, or the Economic World Reversed,” in The Field of Cultural Production, ed. Johnson, Randal (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 37–41, 44–45Google Scholar.

7 The term was legally used in the Hanafi court to determine the amount to be paid in alimony or child support.

8 Commercial areas in late Ottoman Beirut were centrally located with respect to the rest of the city, and stores owned by prominent merchant Muslim families, such as Bayhum and Nsuli, not only offered wares similar to those of their Christian counterparts but also introduced, at an early stage, popular items of furniture such as the Thonet chair and metal bedstead.

9 Al-Muqtataf (1876–1952) was a scientific, nonreligious journal founded in Beirut by students of the Syrian Protestant College and published in Cairo starting in 1884. The major biweekly Thamarat al-Funun (1875–1908) was owned by Jamʿiyyat al-Funun (Society of the Arts) in its early years before moving to ʿAbd al-Qadir Qabbani with the closure of the society. Although its explicit references to Islam imply a Muslim readership, it was not uncommon for Christians to write for the newspaper. For more on Thamarat al-Funun, see Huda Sayyah, “Sahifat Thamarat al-Funun” (master's thesis, American University of Beirut, 1974); and Cioeta, Donald, “Islamic Benevolent Socities and Public Education in Syria,” Islamic Quarterly 26 (1982): 40–55Google Scholar. Al-Mahabba (1899–1907) was a weekly issued during its first four years by Jamʿiyyat al-Taʿlim al-Masihi al-Urthudhuksiyya (Greek Orthodox Society for Christian Education) in Beirut before moving into the hands of Fadlalla Faris abi Halaqa. Its content was not overtly religious, but it often featured articles on the Greek Orthodox clergy and community and sometimes explicitly addressed a readership of churchgoers. Judging by the announcements and contributions, it enjoyed a regular readership in Homs, Hama, Tripoli, Damascus, and Sidon. Al-Hasnaʾ (1909–12) was founded by Jurji Niqula Baz (1882–1959), nicknamed by his contemporaries naṣīr al-marʾa (champion of women). As the first woman's magazine to be published in Beirut, al-Hasnaʾ focused on articulating a social role for women, and most of its contributors were women located in Beirut and sometimes also in Syria and Egypt.

10 Çelik, Zeynep, The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle, Wash., and London: University of Washington Press, 1986), 49Google Scholar.

11 Faroqhi, Suraiya, Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 254Google Scholar.

12 These regulations are the 1848 First Building Regulation, the 1858 Regulation on Streets, the 1864 Street and Building Regulation, the 1875 Regulation on Construction Methods in Istanbul, the 1877 Istanbul Municipal Law, and the first comprehensive Building Code of 1882. Çelik, The Remaking of Istanbul, 51. See also Denel, Serim, Batılılaşma Sürecinde İstanbul'da Tasarım ve Dış Mekanlarda Değişim ve Nedenleri (Ankara: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, 1982), xxxiv–lxxxGoogle Scholar.

13 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Istanbul, Sadaret, Mühimme Kalemi Evraki (A.MKT.MHM), 283/47, 28.C.1280 (10 December 1863).

14 This model of urban management was characteristic of many cities of the Middle East. On Istanbul, see Çelik, The Remaking of Istanbul, 43; on Aleppo, Marcus, Abraham, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the 18th Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 293–313Google Scholar; on Damascus, Grehan, James, Everyday Life and Consumer Culture in 18th Century Damascus (Seattle, Wash., and London: University of Washington Press, 2007), 168–69Google Scholar; and on Cairo, Raymond, André, “The Traditional Arab City,” in A Companion to the History of the Middle East, ed. Choueiri, Youssef M. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 220–22Google Scholar.

15 For more on the different housing typologies of the early 19th century, see Davie, Beyrouth, 21–22; and idem, “Maisons traditionnelles de Beyrouth: Typologie, culture domestique, valeur patrimoniale,” http://almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/900/902/MAY-Davie/maisons-I/html/ (accessed 15 February 2010).

16 Ministère des Affaires étrangères (hereafter MAE), Paris, vol. 10, “Notes sur le commerce de la Syria,” n.d. June 1890, 256, 259; and vol. 12, “Mouvement du commerce de Beyrouth en 1896,” 15 March 1898, 93. Although a portion of the imports was reexported regionally, the demand in Beirut was high enough to warrant the construction of local factories supplying the city with floor and roof tiles. Ibid., vol. 11, “Annexe no. 1 à la dépêche commerciale no. 20,” 15 December 1896, 167; and vol. 476, “Annexe à la dépêche du consulat général de France à Beyrouth (Syrie), no. 20,” 15 December 1906.

17 “Al-Samaʾ al-Ula,” pt. 1, al-Hasnaʾ, June 1910, 12. Julia Tuʿma Dimashqiyya (1882–1954) was born to a Protestant family in al-Mukhtara, Shuf region. After receiving her education, she taught at Shafa ʿAmru and Brummana before becoming director of the Maqasid Islamic School for Girls (Beirut) in 1910. For more, see Jiha, Michel, Julia Tuʿma Dimashqiyya (Beirut: Riad al-Rayyes Books, 2003)Google Scholar.

18 Najmabadi, “Crafting an Educated Housewife,” 114. See also on Lebanon, Mount, Khater, Akram Fouad, “‘House’ to ‘Goddess of the House’: Gender, Class, and Silk in 19th-Century Mount Lebanon,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996): 325–48Google Scholar.

19 Some of these debates are discussed in detail in Zachs, Fruma and Halevi, Sharon, “From Difāʿ al-Nisāʾ to Masʾalat al-Nisāʾ in Greater Syria: Readers and Writers Debate Women and Their Rights, 1858–1900,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (2009): 615–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 These included Ghuraf al-Qiraʾa (Reading Rooms), Bakurat Suriyya (Syria's Beginning), Shams al-Birr (Sun of Righteousness), and Zahrat al-Ihsan (Flower of Charity) in Beirut. Kallas, Jurj, al-Haraka al-Fikriyya al-Nasawiyya fi ʿAsr al-Nahda, 1849–1928 (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1996), 212–13Google Scholar.

21 al-Khalidi, ʿAnbara Salam, Jawla fi al-Dhikrayat bayna Lubnan wa-Filastin (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1997), 91–93, 113–17Google Scholar.

22 ʿAnbara Salam al-Khalidi describes in her memoirs how she and the students at the Maqasid Islamic School for girls used to wait impatiently for periodicals from Egypt. The social restrictions on their participation in the activities taking place in the city, however, become palpable in al-Khalidi's description of her attempt to attend a lecture by her school director, Julia Tuʿma Dimashqiyya. Having convinced her father to allow her to attend, she then had to turn back when recognized by a Muslim man; the presence of a notable Muslim girl at a meeting attended by both men and women became a news item the following day. Ibid., 68–70.

23 “Al-Fatat wa-Tadbir al-Manzil,” al-Hasnaʾ, April 1912, 308.

24 Ayyub al-Kafawi, Abu al-Baqaʾ, al-Kuliyyat: Muʿjam fi al-Mustalahat wa-l-Furuq al-Lughawiyya (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risala, 1998), 462Google Scholar.

25 Metcalf, Barbara, ed., “Introduction,” in Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1984), 2–3Google Scholar. Omnia Shakry also points out how a modern discourse on tarbiya was predicated on an “indigenous” concept of adab. Shakry, “Schooled Mothers and Structured Play: Child Rearing in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt,” in Abu-Lughod, Remaking Women, 127–28.

26 Metcalf, “Introduction,” 18–19.

27 With its emphasis on moderation and the fragile family economy, much of the advice implies a readership of “middling means.” There are, in addition, explicit references to such a readership in, for example, “al-Tartib,” al-Muqtataf, May 1882, 751; “al-Ziyara wa-l-Diyafa,” al-Muqtataf, December 1883, 244; “Zinat al-Maʾida,” al-Muqtataf, June 1885, 554; “Farsh al-Buyut wa-Tartibuha,” al-Muqtataf, September 1885, 742; “al-Muda Aydan,” al-Mahabba, 29 April 1905, 223; and “al-Ibna fi al-Bayt,” al-Mawrid al-Safi 1 (1910): 40.

28 See in al-Muqtataf, “al-Dhawq wa-Qiyasuhu,” March 1890, 372–79; and “al-Dhawq,” November 1892, 81–87. On acquiring taste, see “al-Dhawq,” Thamarat al-Funun, 8 June 1908, 2–3; “al-Ibna fi al-Bayt,” al-Mawrid al-Safi 1 (1910): 39–43; and “Tarbiyat al-Dhawq,” al-Hasnaʾ, November 1911, 62–65 and December 1911, 109–13. “Correct taste” was also used in connection with educating women (“Masʾalat al-Nisaʾ,” Thamarat al-Funun, 4 December 1899, 4); with socialization (“Kayfa Yamduna Saharatahum,” al-Mahabba, 26 May 1900, 1070); and with dress (“al-Muda,” al-Mahabba, 13 May 1905, 259; and “al-Zahir al-Maʾluf min al-Mafrush wa-l-Malbus,” Thamarat al-Funun, 28 May 1900, 3).

29 Bourdieu, , Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), 56Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., 170–73.

31 Ibid., 56–57, 60.

32 For example, Hashim, Labiba, Kitab fi al-Tarbiya (Cairo: al-Maʿarif, 1911), 116–17Google Scholar; and “al-Marʾa wa-l-Rajul,” Thamarat al-Funun, 8 July 1901, 6.

33 “Al-Samaʾ al-Ula,” pt. 2, al-Hasnaʾ, July 1910, 48. See also “al-Ibna fi al-Bayt,” al-Mawrid al-Safi 1 (1910): 39–43; “al-Marʾa wa-l-Rajul,” Thamarat al-Funun, 8 July 1901; and “Tarbiyat al-Dhawq,” al-Hasnaʾ, November 1911, 62–65.

34 Maʿluf, , al-Akhlaq Majmuʿ ʿAdat (Beirut: al-Matbaʿa al-Adabiyya, 1902), 45Google Scholar.

35 For other articles referring to the effect of ifranjī fashion on “oriental” or “Syrian” nature, see, for example, “Inhad al-Ghayra al-Wataniyya li-Tarqiyat al-Badaʾiʿ al-Sharqiyya,” pt. 1, Fatat al-Sharq, April 1893, 227–28; “Fi al-Fatat al-Haqiqiyya,” al-Mahabba, 14 July 1900, 1188; “al-Nahda al-Nisaʾiyya ‘wa-l-Muda,’” al-Mahabba, 10 May 1901, 236; “Bint al-Madrasa,” al-Hasnaʾ, June 1910, 18; and “al-Fatat al-Sharqiyya wa-l-Tahdhib,” al-Mawrid al-Safi, April 1913, 269–70.

36 “Nisaʾuna ‘wa-l-Muda,’” al-Mahabba, 22 April 1905, 205. It is not clear if the owner, Abi Halaqa, wrote the editorials, but they were clearly written by a man who was well known in the Greek Orthodox community of Beirut.

37 “Al-Muda wa-Asbabuha,” al-Mahabba, 3 March 1906, 98. See also “al-Nahda al-Nisaʾiyya wa-l-Muda,” 10 May 1901, 235–39; “al-Muda Aydan,” 29 April 1905, 231–35; “Dhayl li-l-Muda,” 6 May 1905, 237–41; “Raddan ʿala Radd,” 10 June 1905, 325–29; “al-Nisaʾ fi al-Aswaq,” 31 March 1906, 161–65; and “al-Marʾa wa-Tahamul al-Kuttab ʿalayha,” 2 June 1906, 321–26.

38 “Madha Nurid bi-Taʿlim al-Marʾa,” 10 February 1908, 3.

39 The dictum is attributed (in a hadith) to the Prophet Muhammad. See, for example, “al-Adab,” 5 June 1884, 2; “Masʾalat al-Nisaʾ,” 4 December 1899, 3; and “al-Zahir al-Maʾluf min al-Mafrush wa-l-Malbus,” 28 May 1900, 3. For a similar attempt at authenticating the middle class by citing the same hadith, see Lockman, Zachary, “Imagining the Working Class: Culture, Nationalism, and Class Formation in Egypt, 1899–1914,” Poetics Today 15 (1994): 168CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 “Al-Nisaʾ fi al-Aswaq,” al-Mahabba, 31 March 1906, 161.

41 See, in al-Mahabba: “Dhayl li-l-Muda,” 6 May 1905, 237–41; “al-Muda,” 13 May 1905, 253–60; letter to the editor, 3 June 1905, 314–15; and “al-Marʾa wa-Tahamul al-Kuttab ʿalayha,” 2 June 1906, 321–26. The first three responses were signed using initials or pseudonyms and the fourth by a woman residing in Belgium, which points out some limitations to women's participation in this kind of public debate.

42 MAE, Paris, vol. 10, “Notes sur le commerce de la Syria,” n.d. June 1890, 195–96; and vol. 12, “Mouvement du commerce de Beyrouth en 1896,” 15 March 1898, 90.

43 Auslander, Leora, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1996), 261Google Scholar. In 1904, manufacturers in Beirut and its surroundings were still unable to reproduce the popular bentwood models, and hence Beirut continued to import these, primarily from Austria. MAE, Paris, vol. 476, “Mouvement commercial de Beyrouth pendant l'année 1904,” 16 June 1905, 42.

44 MAE, Paris, vol. 429, “Situation économique (1910–1915),” 12 March 1914. The cheapest model cost fifteen francs, the equivalent of eighty piasters. Considering that an unskilled worker in Beirut could make up to forty piasters a day, a metal bed was an affordable goal for those willing to invest in it. Estimate derived from Issawi, Charles, The Fertile Crescent 1800–1914: A Documentary Economic History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 89–91Google Scholar.

45 MAE, Paris, vol. 11, “Annexe no. 1 à la dépêche commerciale no. 20,” 15 December 1896, 161; and al-Khuri, Amin, al-Jamiʿa aw Dalil Bayrut (Beirut: al-Matbaʿa al-Adabiyya, 1889), 93–95Google Scholar.

46 Information on stores and their merchandise comes from al-Khuri's Dalil Bayrut as well as from advertisements in the back sections of Thamarat al-Funun, Lisan al-Hal, and al-Mahabba. For more on Orosdi-Back, see Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut, 252–55; and Kupferschmidt, Uri M., European Department Stores and Middle Eastern Consumers: The Orosdi-Back Saga (Istanbul: Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Center, 2007)Google Scholar.

47 See, for example, in Lisan al-Hal: “Grand Dépot,” 15 November 1886, 4; “Iʿlan min Makhzan al-Badaʾiʿ al-Inkliziyya fi Bayrut,” 13 December 1886, 4; “Makhzan Suriyya,” 21 October 1887, 2; “Au Petit Bon Marché,” 20 October 1904, 4; “Magasin Cristal,” 12 November 1904, 1; in al-Bashir: “Grand Magasin du Printemps,” 8 April 1891, 2; “Au Bon Marché,” 4 April 1894, 4; and in Thamarat al-Funun, “Grand Magasin du Printemps,” 4 June 1888, 4.

48 See, for example, MAE, Paris, vol. 10, “Notes sur le commerce de la Syria,” n.d. June 1890, 262; and vol. 12, “Mouvement du commerce de Beyrouth en 1896,” 15 March 1898, 90.

49 Auslander, Leora, “Regeneration through the Everyday? Clothing, Architecture and Furniture in Revolutionary France,” Art History 28 (2005): 244CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Al-Khuri, Dalil Bayrut, 93

51 “Kassab Ikhwan,” Lisan al-Hal, 10 November 1910, 4. One advertisement specifically markets tuḥaf for the living room, and other references to them appear in advertisements for precisely those stores that emphasized abundance. See, in Lisan al-Hal, “Grands Magasin Bérangé,” 18 Jaunary 1912, 4; “Grand Magasin,” 11 December 1894, 1; and “Magasin Cristal,” 12 November 1904, 1 and 30 December 1905, 4.

52 See, for example, in Lisan al-Hal, advertisements for Khalil Hashim, 29 August 1878, 4; Williams’ Depot, 22 July 1881, 4; Dawud al-Qurm, 24 January 1882, 1; and Mikhaʾil Rahma, 4 January 1899, 1.

53 See, for example, advertisements for ʿAdami and Khuri, Lisan al-Hal, 17 October 1887, 1; ʿArdati and Daʿuq, Lisan al-Hal, 21 October 1887, 4; and “Makhzan al-Badaʾiʿ al-Inkliziyya” and “Makhzan al-Khawajat Bishara ʿAwda,” in al-Khuri, Dalil Bayrut, 92, 93.

54 Advertisement for Mahmud al-Hajja Shami & Co., Lisan al-Hal, 20 July 1878, 4.

55 See, for example, in Lisan al-Hal: “al-Qirmid wa-l-Ajur,” 10 December 1900, 1; and advertisement for a silk factory, 28 December 1905, 4.

56 Bill Brown, “How to Do Things with Things (A Toy Story),” Critical Inquiry 24 (1998): 947–48.

57 See Ghazzal, Zouhair, The Grammars of Adjudication (Beirut: Institut Français du Proche-Orient, 2007), Chap. 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “The Rarity of Crime, the Phantom of the Victim, and the Murder Triangle,” unpublished paper presented at the workshop for the study of strategies for reading Ottoman qadi court documents, Harvard University (18–20 May 2008); Agmon, 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, A. E. (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 126–40Google Scholar; and Ze'evi, Dror, “The Use of Ottoman Sharia Court Records as a Source for Middle Eastern History: A Reappraisal,” Islamic Law and Society 5 (1998): 35–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 For a sampling of objects, including gilded objects, from 1896 to 1910, see Muʾassasat al-Mahfuzat al-Wataniyya, Beirut Court Records (hereafter BCR), Hujaj, H.A. 1314–1316, 29 June 1989; Hujaj wa-Daʿawa, H.A. 1321–1322, 12 November 1903, 27 August 1904; Daʿawa 18, H.A. 1323–1326, 19 September 1905, 26 March 1906; Daʿawa 20, H.A. 1323–1326, 19 December 1905, 13 May 1906; and Zawaj, H.A. 1328–1329, 7 and 21 November 1910. This includes marriage and inheritance conflicts, the latter including some cases involving Christians. See also advertisements for gilding services in al-Khuri, Dalil Bayrut, 93–94.

59 For example, BCR, Hujaj, H.A. 1302–1303, 19 November 1885; Hujaj, H.A. 1314–1316, 10 August 1898; Daʿawa, H.A. 1317–1320, 27 September 1900; Daʿawa, H.A. 1317–1320, 31 August 1901; Daʿawa, H.A. 1320–1325, 8 February 1903; Hujaj wa-Daʿawa, H.A. 1321–1322, 27 August 1904; Daʿawa 18, H.A. 1323–1326, 19 September 1905; and Daʿawa 20, H.A. 1323–1326, 13 June 1906.

60 In the examined records, most women laying claim to bedsteads do so in inheritance cases. I found only two exceptions in which a woman lays claims to a bed in a marriage dispute. BCR, Hujaj wa-Daʿawa 16, H.A. 1323–1326, 31 October 1905; and Daʿawa 30, H.A. 1328–1332, 28 July 1911. Metal bedsteads present an interesting case when contrasted with the gendered division of spaces that developed in France with the introduction of furniture into bourgeois homes during the 18th century. There, the bedroom constituted the most feminine of spaces, the space of reproduction, and it was the wife who brought bedroom furnishing, including the bed, into the marriage as part of the dower. Auslander, Taste and Power, 279–81.

61 BCR, Zawaj, H.A. 1328–1329, 20 May 1910.

62 BCR, Daʿawa 30, H.A. 1328–1332, 11 January 1911.

63 See advertisements in Lisan al-Hal for Au Gant Rouge, 30 December 1900, 4; Edisson, 1 May 1901, 4; and ʿAbd al-Karim Fadil's store, 17 February 1905, 4. Lewis Gaston Leary, who taught at the Syrian Protestant College for three years in the early 1900s, mentions billboards advertising phonographs next to French cosmetics, English insurance companies, American sewing machines, and moving-picture dramas. Syria, the Land of Lebanon (New York: McBride, Nast & Co. 1913), 37.

64 For example, BCR, Daʿawa 18, A.H. 1323–1326, 8 August 1905; and advertisement for Singer sewing machine in al-Mahabba, 10 June 1905, 816. See also Kupferschmidt, Uri M., “The Social History of the Sewing Machine in the Middle East,” Die Welt des Islams 44 (2004): 195–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 In another marital court case, testimonies were rejected because the mode of socialization they referenced was that of two married couples spending evenings together in mixed company. BCR, Zawaj, H.A. 1328–1329, 18 January 1910. Phonographs were common in cafés and entertainment facilities in Beirut. ʿUmar Salih al-Barghuti, al-Marahil (al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Dirasat wa-l-Nashr, 2001), 126.

66 Dahir, Masʿud, trans. and ed., Bayrut wa-Jabal Lubnan ʿala Masharif al-Qarn al-ʿIshrin: Dirasa fi al-Taʾrikh al-Ijtimaʿi min khilal Mudhakkirat al-ʿAlim al-Rusi al-Kabir A. Krymsky (Beirut: Dar al-Mada, 1986), 113Google Scholar.

67 Advertisement by Filip Shushani and Shukri Sawda, Lisan al-Hal, 21 February 1905, 1.

68 On Izmir and its Greek Orthodox community, Exertzoglou, Haris, “The Cultural Uses of Consumption: Negotiating Class, Gender, and Nation in the Ottoman Urban Centers During the 19th Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 35 (2003): 77–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Istanbul, Elizabeth Frierson, “Unimagined Communities: State, Press, and Gender in the Hamidian Era” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1996); and on Cairo, Shakry, “Schooled Mothers and Structured Play.”

69 On Egypt, Russell, Mona L., Creating the New Egyptian Woman: Consumerism, Education, and National Identity, 1863–1922 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), esp. Chap. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and on Iran, Kashani-Sabet, “Patriotic Womanhood,” 36–37.