The paper aims at reappraising the position of women in wealth holding and transmission among the elite families of Mamluk Egypt. It is based on sample surveys of the bulk of legal documents, both sale and endowment deeds mainly dating from the ninth/fifteenth century, nowadays preserved in Cairo. It argues that at a time of high mortality rates, frequent widowhood and remarriage, the Islamic law of inheritance proved to be particularly protective for the female relatives of a male deceased. In such a context, pious endowment (waqf) was not only an option among others in the management of estates, but was used as an alternative, albeit legal, channel of wealth transmission in order to escape the law of inheritance and its adverse effects. In this respect, elite families of Mamluk Egypt, were they of local or foreign background, used to share the same concerns and values about family, as evidenced by the extensive use of the same form in their endowment deeds, while dealing with the attribution of their waqf’s surplus income. This standard form, which is not to be found in contemporary notarial handbooks such as al-Asyūṭī’s Jawāhir al-ʿUqūd, sheds some light on the effective asset strategies of the ninth/fifteenth Egyptian elites. The “chosen family” it outlines shows several discrepancies to the legal norms of inheritance, as for instance the exclusion from wealth transmission of the deceased’s widow(s) and of the children she/they might have after remarriage, and moreover the equal treatment of boys and girls in the attribution to the founder’s descendants of his/her waqf’s surplus income. The Cairene legal documents also reveal to what extent women were playing all roles in dealing with the holding and transmission of wealth in Mamluk society.
{"title":"“Boy and Girl on Equal Terms”","authors":"J. Loiseau","doi":"10.5356/orient.54.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5356/orient.54.23","url":null,"abstract":"The paper aims at reappraising the position of women in wealth holding and transmission among the elite families of Mamluk Egypt. It is based on sample surveys of the bulk of legal documents, both sale and endowment deeds mainly dating from the ninth/fifteenth century, nowadays preserved in Cairo. It argues that at a time of high mortality rates, frequent widowhood and remarriage, the Islamic law of inheritance proved to be particularly protective for the female relatives of a male deceased. In such a context, pious endowment (waqf) was not only an option among others in the management of estates, but was used as an alternative, albeit legal, channel of wealth transmission in order to escape the law of inheritance and its adverse effects. In this respect, elite families of Mamluk Egypt, were they of local or foreign background, used to share the same concerns and values about family, as evidenced by the extensive use of the same form in their endowment deeds, while dealing with the attribution of their waqf’s surplus income. This standard form, which is not to be found in contemporary notarial handbooks such as al-Asyūṭī’s Jawāhir al-ʿUqūd, sheds some light on the effective asset strategies of the ninth/fifteenth Egyptian elites. The “chosen family” it outlines shows several discrepancies to the legal norms of inheritance, as for instance the exclusion from wealth transmission of the deceased’s widow(s) and of the children she/they might have after remarriage, and moreover the equal treatment of boys and girls in the attribution to the founder’s descendants of his/her waqf’s surplus income. The Cairene legal documents also reveal to what extent women were playing all roles in dealing with the holding and transmission of wealth in Mamluk society.","PeriodicalId":35262,"journal":{"name":"Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45421286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gender, Marriage and Narrativity in Ibn Ayyūb’s Tadhkira","authors":"Munther H. AL-SABBAGH","doi":"10.5356/orient.54.85","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5356/orient.54.85","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35262,"journal":{"name":"Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49499840","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nobuaki Kondo, Islamic Law and Society in Iran: A Social History of Qajar Tehran (Royal Asiatic Society Books), New York: Routledge, 2017. 210 pp., ISBN: 978-0-415-71137.","authors":"Kenneth M. Cuno","doi":"10.5356/orient.54.173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5356/orient.54.173","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35262,"journal":{"name":"Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42150846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Last Mamluk Princess, Her Endowment, and Her Family History","authors":"Takao Ito","doi":"10.5356/orient.54.55","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5356/orient.54.55","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35262,"journal":{"name":"Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47878578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although many studies have argued for the frequency of cousin marriages and the significant role of marriage as an opportunity for employment or alliance between two families, extensive case studies on marriages within scholarly families have not been conducted. This paper is a case study on the marriages of four Meccan scholarly families from the mid-thirteenth to the late fifteenth centuries: the Ṭabarī family, the Nuwayrī family, the Fāsī family, and the Ẓuhayra family. It aims to examine the basic characteristics of these mar-riages, including the rate of consanguineous marriages and cousin marriages, and to reveal what kind of marriage strategies each family employed. This study is based primarily on the biographical dictionaries composed by contemporary intellectuals. This study found that, first, each family utilized different marriage strategies. For example, as the only Ḥasanid sharīf family among these four families, the Fāsī family tried to connect with the family of the Meccan amirs who were also the Ḥasanid sharīf s. Second, regarding the general tendency, nearly half of those with marriage records married their paternal relatives, and more than one third of consanguineous marriages were with sons and daughters of paternal uncles. The daughters of Shāfi ʿ ī judges were apparently the most preferred candidates from other families. Among male members of the four scholarly families who married daughters of the Shāfi ʿ ī judges, two-thirds succeeded in attaining the position of judge or deputy judge. In addition, around 40 percent of these men were sons of deputy judges. This indicates that judges and deputy judges tried to keep the legal offices within their extended families. Thus, extended households seem to have had a major role in marriages.
{"title":"Marriages of Meccan Scholarly Families in 650–850/1252–1446","authors":"Kaori Otsuya","doi":"10.5356/orient.54.105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5356/orient.54.105","url":null,"abstract":"Although many studies have argued for the frequency of cousin marriages and the significant role of marriage as an opportunity for employment or alliance between two families, extensive case studies on marriages within scholarly families have not been conducted. This paper is a case study on the marriages of four Meccan scholarly families from the mid-thirteenth to the late fifteenth centuries: the Ṭabarī family, the Nuwayrī family, the Fāsī family, and the Ẓuhayra family. It aims to examine the basic characteristics of these mar-riages, including the rate of consanguineous marriages and cousin marriages, and to reveal what kind of marriage strategies each family employed. This study is based primarily on the biographical dictionaries composed by contemporary intellectuals. This study found that, first, each family utilized different marriage strategies. For example, as the only Ḥasanid sharīf family among these four families, the Fāsī family tried to connect with the family of the Meccan amirs who were also the Ḥasanid sharīf s. Second, regarding the general tendency, nearly half of those with marriage records married their paternal relatives, and more than one third of consanguineous marriages were with sons and daughters of paternal uncles. The daughters of Shāfi ʿ ī judges were apparently the most preferred candidates from other families. Among male members of the four scholarly families who married daughters of the Shāfi ʿ ī judges, two-thirds succeeded in attaining the position of judge or deputy judge. In addition, around 40 percent of these men were sons of deputy judges. This indicates that judges and deputy judges tried to keep the legal offices within their extended families. Thus, extended households seem to have had a major role in marriages.","PeriodicalId":35262,"journal":{"name":"Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49263297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Female Slaves and Transgression in Medieval Cairo and Damascus","authors":"C. Petry","doi":"10.5356/ORIENT.54.75","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5356/ORIENT.54.75","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35262,"journal":{"name":"Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42194646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Patterns of Women’s Landholding in the Late Mamluk Period","authors":"Wakako Kumakura","doi":"10.5356/orient.54.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5356/orient.54.7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35262,"journal":{"name":"Orient","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45804742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}