1299–1922 CE
Ottoman Period
Ottoman qadi court registers, most closely studied for the sixteenth-century provincial court of Aintab, document women routinely appearing as plaintiffs and defendants, suing for maintenance and inheritance shares, contesting divorce terms, and managing property in their own names (Peirce, 2003) — a considerably more active legal presence than the imperial harem's popular reputation suggests (Peirce, 1993).
Content from this period
- Research Paper
Islam or Muslim Culture? Measuring the Distance Between Revelation and Practice
How do you tell Islam itself apart from the cultures that grew up around it? This essay tests inheritance law, national governance, elder care, and charitable giving against the Qur'an's own text, and asks a harder question too: can a country call itself Islamic on population alone, or should it also be judged by how well it reflects the Qur'an's own ethical demands?
- Research Paper
Women in Mainstream Islam: Protection, Restriction, and the Historical Development of Religious Practice
A historical-critical review testing whether practices commonly described as Islamic requirements for women — segregation, face-veiling, travel guardianship, exclusion from mosques and public office — rest on the Qur'an itself or on later hadith, jurisprudence, dynastic custom, and regional practice.