Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean
A Social History

Beshara B. Doumani uses a variety of local sources to examine everyday family life throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Beshara B. Doumani (Author)

9780521133272, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 8 June 2017

370 pages, 25 b/w illus. 6 maps 26 tables
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.6 kg

'Doumani's book is extremely insightful … constitutes a significant landmark in the family and social histories of the Ottoman Middle East.' Iris Agmon, Journal of Levantine Studies

In writings about Islam, women and modernity in the Middle East, family and religion are frequently invoked but rarely historicized. Based on a wide range of local sources spanning two centuries (1660–1860), Beshara B. Doumani argues that there is no such thing as the Muslim or Arab family type that is so central to Orientalist, nationalist, and Islamist narratives. Rather, one finds dramatic regional differences, even within the same cultural zone, in the ways that family was understood, organized, and reproduced. In his comparative examination of the property devolution strategies and gender regimes in the context of local political economies, Doumani offers a groundbreaking examination of the stories and priorities of ordinary people and how they shaped the making of the modern Middle East.

1. Maryam's final word
2. Hamida's children come of age: the shari?a court and its archives
3. The different designs of Husayn and ?Abd al-Wahid: the waqf as a family charter
4. Good deeds: the family waqf as a social act
5. Who's in? Who's out? The waqf as a boundary marker
6. Property and gender: the political economy of difference
7. Fatima's determination
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]