Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History

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.

• The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East
• Morality Tales
• Ottoman Rule of Law and the Modern Political Trial: The Yildiz Case (Modern Intellectual and Political History of the Middle East)
• Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Studies in Environment and History)
• The Ottoman Age of Exploration
• Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire
• Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire
• The Qur'an and the Bible: Text and Commentary
• The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Studies in Middle Eastern History)
• Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900