In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine

Book Description
In an rewarding new study, Tucker explores the way in which Islamic legal thinkers understood Islam as it related to women and gender roles. In seventeenth and eighteenth century Syria and Palestine, Muslim legal thinkers gave considerable attention to women's roles in society, and Tucker shows how fatwas, or legal opinions, greatly influenced these roles. She challenges prevailing views on Islam and gender, revealing Islamic law to have been more fluid and flexible than previously thought. Although the legal system had a consistent patriarchal orientation, it was modulated by sensitivities to the practical needs of women, men, and children. In her comprehensive overview of a field long neglected by scholars, Tucker deepens our understanding of how societies, including our own, construct gender roles.


From the Back Cover
"An original, valuable, and important study. . . . This book will quickly establish itself as a key work in the field of Middle East women's studies." (Leila Ahmed, author of Women and Gender in Islam) "The history of women in the Middle East is seen from an entirely new perspective in Judith Tucker's rewarding study of Islamic law in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Syria and Palestine." (Shofar) "Tucker presents a study of the tensions between the two traditions as acted out in the law courts in the Ottoman province of Shams...during the 16th through 18th centuries." (S. Bowman, Choice)


About the Author
Judith E. Tucker is a Professor of History at Georgetown University. She is the author of Women in Nineteenth Century Egypt (1985)and the editor of Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers (1993).


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In the House of the Law examines how law, in both theory and practice, shaped gender roles in Palestine and Syria during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was a time during which Muslim legal thinkers gave a great deal of attention to women's roles in society. Challenging prevailing views on Islam and gender as well as contemporary Islamist interpretations of the tradition, Judith Tucker shows that Islamic law was more fluid and flexible than previously thought. Using primary materials previously unmined by scholars, including the fatwas of prominent jurists and the Islamic law, or sharia, records of three Islamic courts - Damascus, Jerusalem, and Nablus - Tucker explores the ways in which Islamic legal thinkers and the court system understood the message of Islam for women and gender relations. By examining court cases on marriage, divorce, childrearing, and sexuality, Tucker sheds light on the relations between men and women, parents and children in the societies of those times.


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