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Problems in the Historiography of Women in the Middle East: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Judith E. Tucker
Judith E. Tucker
Affiliation:
Institute of Arab Studies, Belmont, Mass.
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Extract

The study of women in the history of the Middle East has been subject, until recent times, to a benign neglect born of the general of scholarship in the field and common misconceptions, shared by historians of other regions as well, about the study of women. First and foremost, the general backwardness of Middle East historiography, widely attested to in periodic surveys of the state of the art, consigned women, along wiht many other groups and classes in society, to a minor, if not totally insignificant, place in history. Concentration on visible political institutions, diplomatic events, and intellectual currents of the high, as opposed to popular, culture effectively wrote all but upper-class males out of the historical process. That Middle East history remained, to a large extent, confined to this rather narrow sphere long after historians of Europe and the Far East had embarked on studies of social and economic history is related to the origins and the orientation of the field itself.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , August 1983 , pp. 321 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

NOTES

Author's note: The author is grateful for research support from the Institute of Arab Studies in Belmont, Mass. This article owes much to the comments and criticisms of David S. Landes and Albert Hourani; their knowledge and experience has been much appreciated.Google Scholar

1 For one overview of the state of the field, see Hourani, Albert, “History,” in Binder, Leonard, ed., The Study of the Middle East (New York, 1976), pp. 97–136.Google Scholar

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4 See Keddie, Nikki, “Problems in the Study of Middle Eastern Women,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 10 (1979), 225–240 for a discussion of sources and methodology for the study of women in the Middle East.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7 Baer, Gabriel, Population and Society in the Arab East (New York, 1964), p. 43.Google Scholar

8 This particular line of thought is all too familiar in most of the classic works on women in the Middle East. For a discussion of how the study of women has been used as a stick with which to beat Arab and Islamic culture see Sayigh, Rosemary, “Roles and Functions of Arab Women: A Reappraisal,” Arab Studies Quarterly III, 3 (Autumn, 1981).Google Scholar

9 al-Masry, Youssef, Le drame sexuel (Paris, 1962), pp. 87–90.Google Scholar

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18 See, for example, Peters, Emrys, “The Status of Women in Four Middle East Communities,” in Beck and Keddie, Women, pp. 311–350.Google Scholar

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24 Archives of the Ma'kamah Shar'iyyah, Cairo, al-Bāb al-'Alī, registers 323, 345, 366, 370, 387, 388, 413, 440, 476; al-l'lanāt, registers 5, 23, 24, 37.Google Scholar

25 See Wolf, Eric, Peasants (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966), pp. 65–72.Google Scholar

26 See Humphries, Jane, “The Working Class Family, Women's Liberation, and Class Struggle: The Case of Nineteenth Century British History,” Review of Radical Political Economics, IX, 3 (Fall, 1977), 25–41;CrossRefGoogle Scholar also Eisenstein, Zillah, “Developing a Theory of Capitalist Patriarchy”, in Eisenstein, Z., ed., Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (New York, 1979), pp. 5–40.Google Scholar

27 See, for example, my “Decline of the Family Economy in Mid-Nineteenth Century Egypt,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 1, 3, 245–271.Google Scholar

28 Foreign observers, intrigued by the harīm, often devoted an inordinate amount of space to descriptions, generally fanciful, of its pleasures and perils. The more astute among them, however, clearly appreciated the vast chasm which separated the life of harīm inmates from that of the majority of Egyptian women, peasants and the urban lower class.Google Scholar See, for example, de Volvic, Chabrol, Essai sur les moeurs des habitants modernes de l'Egypte (Paris, n.d.), p. 49;Google Scholar and Lane, Edward, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (New York, 1973), p. 177.Google Scholar

29 Engels, Frederick, Origins of the Family, pp. 137–139, 221.Google Scholar

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31 See De Jong, F., Turuq and Turuq-Linked Institutions in Nineteenth Century Egypt (Leiden, 1978), for a history of sufi orders in the nineteenth century in which women are remarkable for their absence.Google Scholar

32 See Baer, Gabriel, Egyptian Guilds in Modern Times (Jerusalem, 1964), pp. 32–33. In addition, while the Cairo court records demonstrate that Cairene women might be engaged in crafts production, there is no evidence in these records that affiliation with a guild played any role in their economic or social life.Google Scholar

33 For a description of the bath, see Lane, Edward W., An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (New York, 1973), p. 191;Google Scholarde Volvic, M. Chabrol, Essai sur les moeurs des habitants modernes de l'Egypte (Paris, nd.), p. 156;Google Scholar and Fakkar, Rouchdi, Aspects de la vie quotidienne en Egypte à l'èpoque de Mehmet-Ali, première motié du XIXe siècle, d'après les souvenirs d'une fille du peuple en Egyprte, 1834 à 1836, de Suzanne Voilquin (Paris, 1975). pp. 63–67.Google Scholar

34 Juan Ricardo Cole described such a situation at the end of the nineteenth century in Egypt when, he argues, economic and social pressures forced the issue of women's emancipation. The petite bourgeoisie responded by idealizing and exaggerating “traditional” definitions of women. See Coles, Juan Ricardo, “Feminism, Class, and Islam in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt,” IJMES 13 (1981), pp. 387–407.Google Scholar

35 Based on selected registers from the Mahkamah Shar'iyyah archives, Cairo.Google Scholar

36 Shukri, Ahmad, Muhammadan Law of Marriage and Divorce (New York, 1917), p. 122, notes that Hanafī law is silent on the wife's right to obtain a divorce because of the husband's failure to discharge general marital obligations.Google ScholarCoulson, N.J., A History of Islamic Law (Edinburgh, 1964), p. 97, cites impotence of the husband as the only valid cause in Hanafi jurisprudence.Google ScholarFyzee, Asaf, Outlines of Muhammedan Law (Oxford, 1964), pp. 161–162, claims that the Hanafi interpretation denied women the rights of dissolution theoretically available under the shar'ah.Google ScholarAnderson, J.N.D., “The Eclipse of the Patriarchal Family in Contemporary Islamic Law,” in Anderson, , ed., Family Law in Asia and Africa (London, 1968), pp. 225–226, pins much of the blame for past abuses of the marital relationship, especially male desertion and the failure to provide support, on the inability of the wife to obtain a divorce under Hanafī law.Google Scholar

37 Mahkamah Shar'iyyah, Bāb al-Alī, s.323, 7 Rabī' 11, 1216 A.H./1801 A.D.; al-'Abbgāī, Muhammadal-Fatāwā (Cairo, 1301 A.H.), vol. 1, 1 Safar 1265 A.H./ 1848 A.D., 153.Google Scholar

38 For a discussion of periodization in women's history, see Gordon, Ann D., Buhle, Mari Jo, and Dye, Nancy Schrom, “The Problem of Women's History,” in Carroll, Berenice A., ed., Liberating Women's History (Urbana, 1976), pp. 75–92;Google Scholar also see Gerda Lerner, ibid., pp. 357–368.

39 See Tucker, Judith, “Decline of the Family Economy in Mid-Nineteenth Century Egypt,” Arab Studies Quarterly”, 1, 3, 245–271, for a discussion of the ways in which women used the courts to activate family responsibilities, especially support for female family members.Google Scholar