WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA IN 16-19TH CENTURIES
The greatest world empire in the early modern centuries was the Ottoman Empire in the
Middle East and North Africa. It consisted of Eastern Europe, Egypt, North Africa, Anatolia (now
Turkey), and most of the present-day Arab states. Originally this area was controlled by the
Byzantine Empire, an orthodox Christian state that succeeded to the western Roman Empire, when it
declined in the early Middle Ages. Constantine, the Roman Emperor of the fourth century,
established the capital at Constantinople on the Bosphorus, the waterway leading to the Black Sea.
Over the centuries, the Byzantines lost land to the encroaching Turks, Mongols, and Arabs. Trying to
stave off this foreign aggression, the Byzantine emperors solicited help from the Popes and the
Catholic Church in the West. This led to the Crusades, which did not benefit the Byzantines, but
helped to destabilize them. Orthodox Christian versus Roman Catholicism was never really
compatible, and eventually the Turks had conquered all but the capital at Constantinople. Finally, it
too fell in 1453 and the Ottomans now reigned supreme. By the sixteenth century, the Ottomans
under their famous sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, were at the apex of their power, and by the
seventeenth century the Ottomans almost captured the city of Vienna on the Danube River, the
gateway to Western Europe. The Ottomans had conquered the Mamluks of Egypt in 1517, only the
Safavid Empire in Persia remained independent.
Despite the Ottomans' great military successes and their strong administrative skills, their
Empire resembled earlier Middle Eastern empires. It lacked the growing technical skills, and the
expanding economic base of rapidly industrializing Western Europe. Consequently, the Ottomans
were not able to stop European advancement when the balance of power shifted against nonindustrialized states by the end of the seventeenth century.
With the rise of the Ottomans and their sophisticated bureaucracy, millions of documents
were preserved that dealt with social and economic facets. Women's roles were important in these
areas, but scholars are only now moving beyond cursory knowledge. Research has been done so far
on women during Suleiman's reign 1520-66 primarily in Constantinople only, but also in Konya
(Konia) and Bursa (Anatolia) this time too. Seventeenth century Kayseri and Bursa in Antolia and the
city of Aleppo in Syria have also been the subject of research. A little information has started to
percolate out of eighteenth century Palestine and Lebanon and sparsely in the eighteenth to
nineteenth centuries of North Africa, all part of the Ottoman Empire. Seclusion and veiling were still
practiced, which limited the ability of women to become active outside their households. Some
women did circumvent the limitations, and engaged in beneficial financial activities. The consensus
so far is that women in general appear to not be helpless or submissive victims of tyrannical fathers
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and husbands. Women did have some control over their lives, and the following information is
presented to illustrate this.
Much as been written about the Sultan Suleiman and his concubine-turned wife, the Sultana
Roxelana. In the Ottoman Empire, the sultan customarily chose his concubines from a harem of
slaves. Roxelana, however, managed to get Suleiman the Magnificent to marry her. Roxelana worked
to ensure her sons' future. Only one of them survived her; Selim succeeded to the Ottoman throne
eight years after his mother's death. While Europeans knew her as Roxelana, in Constantinople she
was called Rossa, translated as "the redhead" or as "the Russian" because of her origins. There is not
a consensus on where she originated from; Caucasus, Polish Catholicism or even Tunisian
buccaneers, but all agree she was taken to the slave market in Constantinople, and purchased for the
sultan's harem.In the harem or seraglio at the Topkopi Palace were his concubines, his favorites, and
the four kadines, his chief consorts, one of whom would bear his heir. Roxelana received the
teachings of the Koran and learned singing, dancing, embroidery, and all the other things she needed
to know to serve her master and lover well. She was such an enthusiastic and amusing person that her
harem-mates gave her the nickname Khourrem, which means laughing or or joyous one. At the end
of two years she spoke Turkish, Arabic and Persian, and was admitted into the presence of the sultana
valide, the queen mother. Catching Suleiman's eye she was led to the sultan's apartments, where she
stayed and amused him with her stories. According to the Venician ambassador, Roxelana was not
beautiful but graceful. She captured Suleiman's attention with her charm, and thus attracted the
jealousy of the senior kadine, Gulfem, whose son Mustafa was considered the heir to the throne.
However, Suleiman made certain Roxelana was by his side during festivals and processions, and he
wrote her love poems during his conquest of Hungary. Roxelana managed to get ride of her rival,
Gulfem and also the powerful grand vizier Ibrahim, who was married to Suleiman's sister. Gulfem
and her son Mustafa were cast far away, and Ibrahim at Roxelana's urging was assassinated. From
that time on she was the only person to benefit from the sultan's affection, and once the sultana valide
died, Roxelana became the first lady of the harem. Roxelana's then told Suleiman that she wished to
give part of her fortune to charitable works, but Islam did not accept the gifts of slaves. He then freed
her, and she had a hospital and a mosque built. Now as a free woman, however she could no longer
give herself to the sultan outside marriage; this was forbidden by the laws of the Qur'an. They were
married, and this was recounted in the Journal de la Banque Saint-Georges of Geneva: "The most
extraordinary thing happened this week, absolutely without precedent in the history of the sultans.
The great lord Suleiman took for wife a Russian slave called Roxelana and there was much
rejoicing...everyone talks of this marriage but no one knows what it means." With the help of the next
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great vizier, Rustem, she set about ensuring her sons' future. Roxelana died in the arms of her
husband in 1558, and when Suleiman died, her son Selim became the sultan.
During these early modern centuries within marriage women were treated with dignity and
they were full partners in the marriage contracts. While parents arranged their daughters' marriages, a
woman entered the marriage voluntarily. Wives received their bridal gift (mahr), and no one could
remove it from them. Women's marital rights were defined based on four major Sunni schools of law
with each differing in details. Women used the judicial system when their rights were threatened.
Records studied so far show no one, including husbands or fathers could make use of women's
property without their consent. Both wealthy & rural women sought court protection when these
rights were abridged. It appears that judges consistently upheld women's property rights. While most
women still relied on male relatives to represent them in court, some women did appear in court by
themselves. Women were guardians of their minor children, thus earning for themselves the social
prestige that accompanied this.
Women appealed to judges for divorce too based on the pre-nuptial (khul) clause that
empowered wives to seek a divorce. Grounds for divorce according to the records studied so far were
physical abuse, inadequate financial support, and desertion. We do not have statistics compiled on the
divorce rate at this time.
What were the economic activities that women participated in? It appears that many women
were active in buying and selling urban and rural real estate. Some women created religious
endowments with their bridal gifts (mahr). Consequently some women accumulated considerable
wealth. As in earlier centuries, only a small number of women participated in trade and financial
activities. Surprisingly, in Aleppo, Syria, in the seventeenth century, a few women even engaged in
money lending, an activity banned by Islamic teachings, but highly popular with men.
These studies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries contradict stereotyped images of
submissive and victimized Muslim women. By contemporary standards they compared favorably
with European women. European women visiting Constantinople in the eighteenth century sent
envious letters home about the status of Turkish women. Lady Elizabeth Craven of England
remarked: "I think I never saw a country where women may enjoy so much liberty, and free from all
reproach, as in Turkey. The Turks in their conduct towards our sex are an example to all other
nations." (see Lady Mary Wortley Montague's Letters too on the eighteenth century.)
At the dawn of the eighteenth century many of the patterns regulating women's behavior
remained as set by the Shari'ah in the first three centuries of Islam and declared immutable. All
provisions of Shari'ah had acquired the same weight of authority as Allah's direct words in the
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Qur'an. However, the nineteenth century is going to see many changes. Based on relationships with
Western Europe, and its imperialistic movement into the Continent of Africa and the Middle East, reevaluation on regulations of women's behavior was undergoing scrutiny. This started to undermine
faith in how things had been done for centuries. Scholars are only beginning to come to terms with
the complexity of women's lives in the economy, and in the political and social realms in the
nineteenth to twentieth centuries. As a rejoinder, keep in mind that there is neither pure tradition nor
pure modernity in Islam.
Many scholars and writers have assumed that women and families were largely untouched by
economic changes of the nineteenth century. While the Industrial Revolution began in England, it
moved to the continents of Europe and America. Eventually industrialization was established
elsewhere at the expense of non-western powers. It was written that women remained in the inviolate
world of the harem, or in the traditional confines of the peasant families, living on the margins, and
making few contributions outside the home. Other scholars stated just the opposite. New scholarship
now talks about the complexity of women's roles, and disputes original ideas held that the nineteenth
century economic developments brought automatic improvements for women. These same ideas were
stated in Europe too about working and middle class women. With the imperialistic drive of Europe
all over the globe, influence on women’s lives depended on which western power was operating.
We have the most information for Egyptian women, and secondarily for Syrian women in the
nineteenth century. In Egypt subsistence farming was practiced until the ruler Muhammad Ali's
period (beginning 1805). Farm work was based on gender. Men plowed and women worked in the
fields during harvests and pest-control times. Production of goods at home to sell in the local markets
kept women busy. They made a variety of handicrafts. Especially, as historically true, women were
involved in spinning, which has always been true historically. Some women made thread out of wool,
cotton, and flax (linen) and sold it to weavers or middlemen to secure money. Sometimes women
owned agricultural implements and animals. Court records show women asserted their rights to
usufruct (use) as opposed to outright ownership of agricultural land. This same usufruct system was
done by women in feudal Europe too.
Rural areas of northern Syria in the early nineteenth century suggest similar patterns for
women as in Egypt. Additional money was earned by peasant women fetching water, gathering
firewood, tending animals, and gleaning, all time-honored activities for women. Records show that
women were active members of the village societies. As in Egypt, women in Syria had the same legal
rights to usufruct (use) of farm implements and land. Aleppo court records from 1770-1830 show that
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of forty-five sales of usufruct rights recorded, twenty-four involved women. This is more than half,
showing that women bought, sold, and transferred property to their heirs in their wills.
Ancillary to Egypt and Syria, in North Africa, the Tunisian state records in coastal regions
show peasant women owned between 10 and 13.6% of the region's olive trees, which were a principal
source of wealth for the area. In other regions where olive trees were grown, similar percentages
probably prevailed too.
Political changes during these centuries effecting women in the Middle East and North Africa
(the Ottoman Empire) were extremely noticeable. Again, we have the most information for Egypt.
During Mohammed Ali's period (1805-1849) significant economic implications for rural women
developed. Increased commercialization of agriculture occurred, and greatly affected both women
and men's livelihood as the demands of the European economy and Egypt's own state economy rose.
Egypt drafted peasant families to work on canals, dams and agricultural work on large estates. This
corvee or public works recruited whole families, although more males drafted were than females. As
part of Mohammed Ali's military reforms, conscription of peasants was a new course of action that
siphoned off more men. This disruption of family labor unit had major effects on women whose male
relatives were drafted for the army or other public works, meant that women had to take on a
crushing burden of work. Women even did the work of animals at times since animals were
conscripted too. For many women these tasks were too formidable, and so they followed their men
folk, camping close to military barracks or corvee sites. Even after Muhammad Ali reversed these
development projects, certain patterns were already set. Men continued to be recruited for agricultural
labor on large estates, while women were relegated to shrinking family plots. This same scenario
happened in the West and other parts of Africa as imperialism of Europe took control. In Syria
similar experiences occurred as in Egypt, but at a slower rate as they had less arable land to raise
crops than they did in Egypt.
This commercialization of agriculture had long-term effects on peasant labor. Cash crops of
cotton, silk, grain, pistachio and gall nuts increased, needing the work of both men and women.
Women worked less and were paid lower wages, thus more men worked in the cash crops and
women in household production.
In coastal areas in other parts of the Ottoman Empire as in Anatolia also saw the increased
production of cash crops. Inland areas saw the continuation of subsistence agriculture. When Algeria
(North Africa) was colonized and conquered by France after 1830, massive land expropriations of
peasant families occurred. Thousands of Europeans migrated to Algeria, seizing lands, and creating a
large segment of indigenous rural poor. Consequences for the women were disastrous as they now
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became casual laborers on European-owned estates. Other women were forced into prostitution in the
coastal cities.
Massive changes also happened in the rural craft sectors where women had long-held
traditions. Textile crafts were especially hard hit by European exports of cloth. Over the course of the
nineteenth century this decimated the indigenous textile production in most regions of the Middle
East and North Africa. In Egypt, again under Muhammad Ali's policies, rural women were squeezed
out of textile production as factories were established. Women were restricted to less-skilled jobs and
their wages were much lower than men's. Ironically, in the 1840's most of the new factories were
closed as the cotton and linen cloth worn daily by the Egyptians was imported. Textile crafts never
recovered their former vitality. When they opened up new factories producing cigarettes and ginning
mills in the later nineteenth century, the precedent for cheap female labor in factories was already
established. These same circumstances occurred in Syria too. It is estimated that in the early
nineteenth century there were about 20,000 female weavers in Aleppo and by the mid-nineteenth
century only 2000 weavers remained. While the textile industry stabilized in the mid-century, women
were permanently excluded as cotton cloth came from imported yarns and dyes, and the local looms
were operated by men and children. Women lost their productive role in textiles completely.
In Western Algeria, unmarried women and girls gained employment in European-owned
carpet factories and workshops. These factories catered to European tastes, especially in the growing
demand for cheap tourist souvenirs. Tourism had expanded exponentially in the late nineteenth
century to North Africa as the middle and upper classes of Europe sought out places for holidays with
their new-found wealth from industrialization.
Sometimes European demands did expand rural women's work. In the mountains of Lebanon
saw the growth of the silk industry, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. Women
were the mainstay of workshops where silk cocoons were processed. This was true in Lyons, France
as well.
In Iran or Persia, European demand stimulated the carpet industry, greatly raising female
knotters' opportunities either at home or in factory settings. Three rapid-expanding export industries
in Anatolia employed predominantly female labor either at home or in factories too: silk-reeling,
lace-making, and carpet-making. Low female wages allowed the Ottoman Empire's industries to
remain competitive with the rest of the world because of low female wages. Much more research
needs to be done, but one needs to ask this question; was it more demeaning for women to produce
tourist items than goods for the local markets?
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As a consequence of these tremendous changes in the economy and political arenas, a new
phenomenum occurred. Over the course of the nineteenth century many rural women migrated to
urban areas because of the perception that better-paying and more jobs were available. This happened
in Europe and America too. Unfortunately, productive economic activities for these poorer rural
women were limited. Restrictions were imposed on female membership in most craft, trade, and
service corporations. Corporate control was especially strong among the better-organized and more
highly remunerated crafts, and these were mainly closed to women. Some workers had to work on the
margins. These women did work for weavers and other crafts in what is called the putting-out system.
Similar to the usufruct system for farm women, the urban license (gedik) allowed the holder to
practice a particular trade. Normally this license was passed from father to son, but in the absence of
a male heir, women could inherit it. They could not practice the trade, but they could sell, rent or
bequeath it.
Specific trades in urban areas were strongly identified with working-class women. In Cairo,
women sold milk and pancakes (different and better than ours in the West), they were soothsayers,
women's bath attendants, musicians, prostitutes and domestic servants. Once the slave trade was
outlawed by the late nineteenth century employment of free women occurred in greater numbers.
This then led to more conservative dress for these women as their work involved contact with
unrelated men. Kurdish peasant women in Iraq even started wearing the veil. The upper-class women
in harems required services too, and these were generally rendered by lower-class women.
Entertainers, peddlers, cosmologists, and midwives were employment opportunities for the working
class women.
Scholars have also studied the roles of upper-class women in the urban economy. Women
were important holders of urban land. In fact, these women owned considerable urban property. All
available studies of waqf (plural awqaf) or property endowed ostensibly for religious or charitable
purposes clearly show that women engaged in estate transactions and merchant activities. These
women controlled large amounts of money, and some even managed businesses themselves, clearly
demonstrating that under Islamic law women enjoyed and controlled their inheritance and bridal gift
(mahr). Clearly this is a fact, and not fictional as many believe. In the three cities of Cairo,
Constantinople, and Aleppo, women were actively engaged even in speculation and management of
urban properties. For long-distance trade it appears women were silent partners. Obviously they were
not as monumental in trade as Khadija was (Mohammed's first wife), but important nonetheless.
Records of wealthy Muslim women in Nablus, Palestine in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
century show women having large amounts of capital, and even loaning to men.
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Women in the harems of the Ottoman imperial household engaged in many philanthropic
endeavors. They used their money to build monumental public works. Usually these were places that
offered social services for women and children. This endowment practice dates back to Roxelana, the
Sultana to Suleiman, in the sixteenth century. The valide Sultan or mother of the sultan enjoyed
enormous wealth and power, and she too endowed institutions of public services. By using the waqf,
it was a way for elite women to avoid Islamic inheritance law. Anywhere from one-third to one-half
of urban awqaf were founded by women in the major cities. These women also served as the main
administrators, allowing them to name their successors. It is definitely clear that women were using
their awqaf to keep property in female ownership.
Islam has always been favorable to education and literacy so that Muslims may read the
Qur'an for themselves. The world's first universities were established by Muslims to accomplish this
goal. Women were usually taught to read the Qur'an at home, although some schools were
established over the centuries for girls only. Separate palace schools to educate women of the harem
in reading, writing, geography, and drawing were evident for some time. Once imperialism began,
then foreign missionaries who followed the conquerors, also established schools for girls as early as
the 1830's. The Coptic Christian Community in Egypt also did the same in the 1850's.
In the nineteenth century government-sponsored schools in Egypt to train women health
officers (hakimas) began. Believing that women were the appropriate health-care providers for their
sex, (just the opposite in Europe,) the Egyptian government wanted women highly educated. Six
years of training included instruction in the following: Basic literacy skills, Obstetrics, Postpartum
hygiene, Techniques of Cauterization, Vaccination, and Preparation of Medicines. Concern about the
under population in Egypt prompted the government to establish these schools. As early as 1832 a
regulated health service was receiving resources in Egypt. Women graduates of these schools played
active roles in various state-sponsored programs of immunization, collection of information on
female mortality, and infant and maternal health care. Unfortunately, over the course of the
nineteenth century, western disdain for paramedical personnel and women's role in medicine, led to
devaluation of the hakima and the end of female professional training. This led to the promotion of
the hospital-based curative medicine.
By the last decades of the nineteenth century, members of the emerging middle class in the
Middle East had more links to Europe, and thus followed their direction of using female teachers to
educate females as it was not proper for males to teach women. In 1872 the Women's Teachers'
Training School was founded in Constantinople. By 1900 one had been established in Cairo.
Movement was also underway to have secular primary schools for Muslim girls with a curriculum
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that included Qur'an Arabic, French and modern subjects. American missionary schools for girls in
other Muslim regions were also established. These new schools for girls did include schools of
midwifery, where at the same time in the West women were being eliminated from this. When these
areas of the Middle East and North Africa came under full colonial rule then the West did not want
these schools for girls. They argued that western education for Muslim girls produced native
prostitutes. What a terrible travesty and part of the long animosity between the West and Middle East.