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(This is the second of a two-part article on Women
during the Ottoman period)
Among
the varying methods of how to study the modern Middle East,
historians of the Ottoman period have a particularly difficult time
choosing between two. According to authorities in the field, these
approaches are labeled macro-history and micro-history.
The
first deals with broad patterns of social interaction, economic
activity and political development. It portrays the history of any
one society or people as large interpretations of existing data,
using theoretical or quantitative frameworks to study continuity and
change over time. The second deals with detailed case studies of
people or events that may convey a smaller but necessarily more
intimate look at society. It functions as a microcosm of larger
trends.
Both
approaches figure prominently in the study of Ottoman societies, so
it is no surprise to see that they have also been used with regard
to the history of women in Ottoman Palestine.
An
earlier article noted the distinctive differences between European
perspectives on women in Ottoman Palestine and the perspectives of
Muslim judges in Ottoman courts. But the differences are not solely
linked to Western biases; they also relate to the way that
present-day scholars interpret the material considered most
"authentic", that of the shar'iyya (Islamic) court records of
Ottoman Palestine.
Shar'iyya
court records primarily handled Islamic family law but in addition
to marriage, divorce and inheritance agreements, they also recorded
"sales deeds, commercial partnership contracts, waqf
(endowment) deeds and building authorizations"(Ze'vi, 1995).
The
problem arises with the interpretations that historians draw out
from what are, in essence, legal judgements passed by literate,
government-appointed men of the law on both literate as well as
illiterate women and men from all classes of society. The biases
inherent in the court records are largely those of the educated,
legal scholars confronting the "great unwashed" of the small towns
and villages of Palestine.
In
addition, as Dror Ze'vi's article on Ottoman Jerusalem shows, court
records sometimes fudged the "reality" they presented, so that the
facts presented were never completely fool-proof. For instance,
there are no records of murders of girls or women in the city
whereas the records of such "honor" crimes were plentiful for the
rural districts.
Ze'evi
surmises this was because the judges were men and tended to believe
the stories of the fathers and brothers questioned in "accidental"
deaths. Ze'evi believes that, where family honor was concerned, the
judges of Islamic courts preferred to "hear no evil". They did this
not only to safeguard the honor of men but of society as well.
Nonetheless, court records provide a slice of reality that is far
more complex and vibrant than the macro-histories of the European
traveler or the journeying scholar. Among other things, they allow
the conscientious historian to ferret out the strategies through
which women played key roles in society. By taking the law in their
own hands, so to speak, women in Ottoman Jerusalem and elsewhere in
Palestine were able to engage actively in commercial pursuits that
secured them a form of power and status in society that would
otherwise have been denied them.
While
many women were not apprised of their rights in Islam, and sometimes
cheated of their inheritances by brothers or husbands, the more
fortunate did indeed receive redress from Islamic judges, who were,
for the most part, fair-minded and cognizant of the law down to the
minutest detail.
June 5, 1999
Of Iraqi origin, Dr.
Hala Fattah is a historian of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman
empire, especially Iraq. She is the author of The Politics of
Regional Trade of Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900 (S.U.N.Y
Press, 1996). Presently, she is an Independent Scholar.
References :
Ze'vi, Dror, "Women in
17th-Century Jerusalem: Western and Indigenous Perspectives",
International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol.27, no.2, May
1995.
Agmon, Iris, "Women,
Class and Gender: Muslim Jaffa and Haifa at the Turn of the 20th
Century", International Journal of Middle East Studies,
vol.30, no.4, November 1998.
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