Beyond the harem: ways to be a woman during the Ottoman Empire

From University of Cambridge: 

Ottoman women shopped. They didn’t just shop; they also ran businesses, owned property and, on occasion, stormed buildings to stage protest meetings. Not only did they flirt and dance – and infuriate their husbands with demands for the latest fashions – but they exerted genuine political and economic power. And they did all this much more visibly than is often assumed.

A new volume of essays looks afresh at women’s lives during the 600 years of the Ottoman empire. The book challenges the stereotypes of female lives confined to the harem and hamam – and reveals how women were surprisingly visible in public spaces.

In Ottoman Women in Public Space, a group of scholars of the Middle East and the Islamic world turn their attention to a neglected topic: what life was actually like for women at the height of an empire that lasted for 600 years (right up until the turn of the 20th century) and, at its most powerful, stretched eastwards from present-day Hungary, southwards to the religious centre of Mecca, and westwards around the southern Mediterranean to the bustling port of Algiers. 

Using a wealth of primary sources and covering the entire Ottoman period, Ottoman Women in Public Space challenges the traditional view that sees Ottoman women as a largely silent element of society, restricted to the home and not seen beyond the walls of the house or the public bath. Instead, taking women in a variety of roles, as economic and political actors, prostitutes, flirts and slaves, the book argues that women were active participants in the public space, visible, present and an essential element in the everyday, public life of the empire. 

Ottoman Women in Public Space thus offers a vibrant and dynamic understanding of Ottoman history.

read more here @ University of Cambridge

Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom by Sher Banu A. L. Khan

In Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom, Sher Banu A. L. Khan provides a fresh perspective on the women who ruled in succession in Aceh for half the seventeenth century. Khan draws fresh evidence about the lives and reigns of the sultanahs from contemporary indigenous texts and the archives of the Dutch East India Company.

The long reign of the sultanahs of Aceh is striking in a society where women rulers are usually seen as unnatural calamities, a violation of nature, or even forbidden in the name of religion. Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom demonstrates how the sultanahs' rule was legitimized by both Islam and adat (indigenous customary laws). Khan provides original insights on the women's style of leadership and their unique relations with the male elite and foreign European envoys who visited their court. This book calls into question received views on kingship in the Malay world and shows how an indigenous polity responded to European companies in the age of early East-West encounters during Southeast Asia's age of commerce.

Sher Banu A. L. Khan's book is the first full-length monograph to analyse female rule in Aceh. That alone makes it a major contribution to the historical scholarship on Aceh's political history as well as on Southeast Asia as a whole. Furthermore, this book does much to break through somewhat stale arguments about female rule in Aceh and the broader region that have held sway since the 1980s. Khan is nuanced in her approach and thorough in her analysis, using an impressive array of sources to draw her conclusions.

read more here 

@ Queen Mary University - Rule Behind The Silk Curtain: The Sultanahs of Aceh 1641 - 1699 by Sher Banu A. L. Khan (thesis)

Fez's Al Qarawiyyin University and Library

Fez's Al Qarawiyyin University and library, founded and restored by women — Quartz

Founded by a Muslim woman, the University of Al Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morroco, opened its doors in 859. Its library has been restored during the last three years by another woman, Canadian-Moroccan architect Aziza Chaouni. A wing will be open to the general public later this year.

The library houses a collection of 4,000 rare books and ancient arabic manuscripts written by renowned scholars of the region. According to the AP, the manuscripts include a 9th century version of the Quran and a manuscript on Islamic jurisprudence written by philosopher Averroes.

Read More here at QUARTZ