Women in the Ottoman Empire: A Social and Political History

Cover
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Epigraph
Contents
List of figures
Preface and acknowledgements
A note on spelling and transliteration
Map
Timeline
Introduction
	Women as agents: the struggle for survival, through family connections, work and charity
	Political aspects
	Agency and visibility
	Information and social contacts as preconditions for agency
	When to begin and when to end?
	Spaces and places
	Both indispensable and ‘treacherous’: the Ottoman qadi registers
	Feminist-inspired source criticism: how to deal with authors writing women out of the record
	The thrust of this book
Prologue: a conspectus of Ottoman history as relevant to women
	The Ottoman–Safavid conflict, from the female perspective
	‘Placing’ the sultan’s harem: the Old Palace, the Topkap ı Saray ı and the ‘old’ Çırağan Palace
	The valide sultan and the Chief Black Eunuch: the harem as a political centre
	A glimpse of ‘ordinary women’ in political and environmental crises
	Ottoman defensive modernization: a backdrop for changes in the lives of women
	Demographic engineering as a corollary of ‘defensive modernization’
	The Balkan wars, the First World War, the Armenian massacres and the end of the empire
1 How women fitted into Ottoman history
	Periodization
	A long and complicated history: what were the consequences for women?
	In conclusion
Part I 1500s to about 1700
2 The legal framework of family life
	Conditioning agency: the sharia and the sultan´s commands
	In the qadi’s court
	The status of free women in Islamic law: a few salient points on marriage
	Ottoman Syria and Egypt: the marriages and divorces of Muslims and Christians
	Christians and Muslims in Ottoman Sofia
	Jewish women, married and perhaps abandoned
	In conclusion
3 Dependent on work, investments and charity
	Protecting personal and family property
	Moneylending, other investments and craftwork
	Slaves
	Pious/charitable foundations: outside the sultan’s court
	Town and country: the charitable foundations of women in western Anatolia
	The charities of royal women
	The crimes of women as examples of non-agency
	In conclusion
4 Exceptionally talented, exceptionally active: women of distinction
	The marginality of literary women and the scarcity of female poets
	Competing for patrons: entering the race with a ball and a chain on her foot
	The protest of an ‘amateur’ female poet
	‘I have always earned my living in this manner’31
	A provincial mystic
	Anonymous but outspoken: a petition writer of the 1520s
	In conclusion
Part II about 1700–1870s
5 Ottoman diversity: female agency and survival in Ottoman Syria and Egypt
	Viewed from Istanbul: vastly different urban societies
	Forms of women’s agency
	Marriage matters: family status, politics and perhaps the hope for some personal autonomy
	Family boundaries and endogamy within families and households
	Military households: from exceptions to widely emulated models
	A study in contrasts
	Back to the extraordinary power of Cairo’s magnate women: female agencies compared
	To conclude
6 Ottoman diversity: coping with relatives, the state and dependent capitalism
	Surviving social, economic and political changes in the Ottoman central lands
	Marriage and divorce in an age of growing institutionalization
	Providers of charity: the changing activities of royal women
	The donations of Izmir’s non-royal women
	Investors
	At work, but with major privileges: female poets and an artist-cum-entrepreneur
	Women’s work under incipient capitalism and an expanded money economy
	Girls as paid household help: exploitation, charity or something in between?
	Slaves within and outside the Ottoman palace
	‘Falling through the cracks’: prostitution and crime
	In conclusion
Part III 1870–1918
7 Female teachers, journalists and actors: education as a source of survival skills
	Becoming a teacher in the Darülmuallimat
	Teachers’ pay and curricula at the Darülmuallimat
	The views of former students
	Teacher training for Greek and Jewish women
	Special: missionary schools that appealed to some Muslims as well
	Despite poor pay: the benefi ts of teacher training
	From education to authorship
	Kadınlar Dünyası, feminism and nationalism: who can establish telephone connections?
	Female authors in Ottoman Syria
	On the stage in post-Tanzimat Istanbul
	In conclusion
8 Before 1912: surviving through family, work, and charity – and occasionally, turning to crime
	Marriage and its vicissitudes
	Divorce and relations between ex-spouses
	Polygamy and marriage to former slave girls
	Hoping to survive as a worker
	Persistent slavery
	Outside the law
	Dependent on charity
	Orphanages and missionary schooling: Armenian orphaned girls about 1900
	In conclusion
9 In profound distress: struggling to survive the disintegration of the empire (1912–18)
	How the Ottomans entered the First World War
	The labours and tribulations of rural women
	Famine in Greater Syria and Lebanon
	Deportations
	Armenian women
	The miseries of refugees
	‘Demographic engineering’ in a new key: attempts to recuperate the younger generation
	Seeking paid work to survive: the Banque Ottomane
	Paid work in a novel ambiance: the telephone exchange
	Making a living by nursing and midwifery
	Working for the army and the Association for the Employment of Muslim Women
	Ladies Bountiful and their clients in the Great War: women in organizations dispensing social aid
	Being active – or not – in welfare work
	State and private initiatives in tandem: shelter and training for homeless women and children
	In conclusion: tracing agency
Conclusion
	In the late 1700s: more Istanbul women taking their problems to court
	Searching for early indicators of (limited) primary schooling for girls
	The impact of ‘defensive modernization’: increasing the number of surviving Muslim children
	Female refugees and deportees: the dark side of ‘defensive modernization’
	Women’s agency: resembling that deployed by men
Suggestions for further reading
	Multi-authored works reflecting the condition féminine, Ottoman style
	Non-elite women in the qadi’s court: making and unmaking marriages
	Privileged among working women: authors, journalists and educators
	Paid work as a means of keeping (barely) alive
	The labours of slave women
	Palace women and their charities
	The lives of female royals
	Charitable giving by non-royal women
	From charity to social aid: not always a successful transition
	Conclusion
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index