Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History
Beshara B. Doumani, "Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History "
English | ISBN: 0521133270, 0521766605 | 2017 | 370 pages | PDF | 4 MB
English | ISBN: 0521133270, 0521766605 | 2017 | 370 pages | PDF | 4 MB
In writings about Islam, women, and modernity in the Middle East, family and religion are frequently invoked but rarely historicized. Accessibly written and based on a wide range of local sources spanning two centuries (1660–1860), this book shows that there is no such thing as a typical Muslim or Arab family. Rather, it reveals dramatic regional differences, even within the same cultural zone, in the ways that family is understood, organized, and reproduced. By concentrating on family life in the Ottoman Mediterranean, in particular in what is now Lebanon and Palestine, Beshara B. Doumani skilfully uses examples of family waqf endowments, lawsuits between kin, and other cases from the shariʿa courts to reconstruct the encounters between kin and court and kin in court. Through his comparative examination of the transformations of family, property, and gender regimes, Doumani offers a ground-breaking examination of the stories and priorities of ordinary people. By doing so, he challenges prevailing assumptions about modern Middle Eastern societies.