Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Restoring Women to History

224 Pages·1999·3.889 MB·English

by  Guity Nashat, Judith E. Tucker

Women in the Middle East and North Africa
RESTORING WOMEN TO HISTORY
Series Editors: Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel
Wimen in Asia
Barbara N. Ramusack and Sharon Sievers
Women in Latin America and the Caribbean
Marysa Navarro and Virginia Sânchez Korrol, with Kecia Ali
Women in the Middle East and North Africa
Guity Nashat and Judith E. Tucker
Women in Sub-Saharan Africa
Iris Berger and E. Frances White
Women in the M iddle
East and North Africa
RESTORING WOMEN
TO HISTORY
by Guity Nashat and
Judith E. Tticker
Indiana
University
Press
BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS
Maps from The Middle East: Fourteen Islamic Centuries (3rd cd.),
by Glenn E. Perry, 01998. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
Upper Saddle River, NJ.
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-ln-Publication Data
Nashat, Guity, date
Women in the Middle East and North Africa : restoring women to history /
by Guity Nashat and Judith E. TXicker.
p. cm. — (Restoring women to history)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-253-33478-0 (cl : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-253-21264-2 (pa : alk. paper)
1. Women—Middle East—History. 2. Women—Africa, North—History.
I. TUcker, Judith E. n. Title. HI. Series.
HQ1726.5.N37 1999
305.4*0956—dc21 99-11042
1 2 3 4 5 04 03 02 01 00 99
To the memory of Marilyn Robinson Waldman,
1943-1996, gifted scholar and rare friend
GUTTY NASHAT
To the memory of my mother,
Ruth Horsfall Tucker, 1915-1997
JUDITH B. TUCKER

CONTENTS
SERIES EDITORS' PREFACE ix
authors' preface xiii
GLOSSARY XV
MAPS xvii
CHRONOLOGY XXiU
SERIES BDITORS' INTRODUCTION
Conceptualizing the History of Women in Africa, Asia, Latin America
and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa
CHBRYL JOHNSON-ODIM AND MARGARBT STROBBL XXVÜ
INTRODUCTION
Guity Nashat and Judith E. Tucker 1
Parti
WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST: 8000 b.c.e.-c.b. 1800
Guity Nashat 5
Partn
WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES
Judith E. Dicker 73
sources: 8000 b.c.b.-c.e. 1800 133
SOURCES: NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES 143
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 153
INDEX 155

SERIES EDITORS' PREFACE
This book is part of a four-volume series entitled "Restoring Wom­
en to History": Women in Sub-Saharan Africa; Women in Asia; Women in
Latin America and the Caribbean; and Women in the Middle East and North
Africa. The project began in 1984, bringing together scholars to syn­
thesize historical information and interpretation on women outside
of Europe and the United States of America. Earlier versions of the
volumes were produced and distributed by the Organization of Ameri­
can Historians (OAH) as Restoring Women to History: Teaching Packets for
Integrating Women 's History into Courses on Africa, Asia, Latin America, the
Caribbean, and the Middle East (1988; revised, 1990).
These volumes are intended to help teachers who wish to incor­
porate women into their courses, researchers who wish to identify
gaps in the scholarship and/or pursue comparative analysis, and stu­
dents who wish to have available a broad synthesis of historical ma­
terials on women. Although the primary audience is historians,
scholars in related fields will find the materials useful as well. Each
volume includes a bibliography, in which readings suitable for stu­
dents are identified with an asterisk. Each volume is preceded by a
broad, topical introduction written by Cheryl Johnson-Odim and
Margaret Strobel that draws examples from all four volumes.
This project is the culmination of many years' work by many
people. Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel conceived of the
original single volume, extending OAH projects published in the 1970s
and 1980s on U.S. and European women's history. Joan Hoff (then
Joan Hoff-Wilson, Executive Director of the Organization of Ameri­
can Historians), Cheryl Johnson-Odim, and Margaret Strobel wrote
proposals that received funding from the National Endowment for
the Humanities for a planning meeting of eight other authors, and
x Series Editors' Preface
from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education
(FIPSE) for the preparation, distribution, and dissemination of the
manuscript. Under the leadership of Executive Director Amita Jones,
the OAH took on the responsibility of printing and distributing the
single volume. The FIPSE grant enabled us to introduce the project
through panels at conferences of the African Studies Association, the
Association of Asian Studies, the Latin American Studies Association,
the Middle Eastern Studies Association, and the World History Asso­
ciation.
Because of the strong positive response to the single volume, Joan
Catapano, Senior Sponsoring Editor at Indiana University Press, en­
couraged the ten of us to revise and expand the material in four sepa­
rate volumes. In the decade or so since the inception of this project,
the historical literature on women from these regions has grown
dramatically. Iris Berger and E. Frances White added important new
information to their original contributions. White was assisted by
Cathy Skidmore-Hess, who helped revise some of the material on
West and Central Africa. Barbara Ramusack and Sharon Sievers found
new material for Asia, with certain regions and periods still very
unstudied. Marysa Navarro and Virginia Sanchez Korrol, with help
from Kecia Ali, reworked their previous essays on Latin America
and the Caribbean. Guity Nashat and Judith Tucker developed fur­
ther their material on the Middle East and North Africa from the ear­
lier volume.
This project is a blend of individual and collective work. In the
1980s, we met twice to discuss ways to divide the material into sec­
tions and to obtain consistency and comparability across the units.
Each author read widely in order to prepare her section, reworking
the piece substantially in response to comments from various readers
and published reviews.
Scholars familiar with each region read and commented on vari­
ous drafts. For this crucial assistance, we wish to thank Edward A.
Alpers, Shimwaayi Muntemba, and Kathleen Sheldon for Africa;
Maijorie Bingham, Emily Honig, Veena Talwar Oldenberg, Mrinalini
Sinha, and Ann Waltner for Asia; Lauren (Robin) Derby, Asuncion
Lavrin, Susan Schroeder, and Mary Kay Vaughan for Latin America
and the Caribbean; and Janet Afary, Margot Badran, Julia Clancy-
Smith, Fred Donner, Nancy Gallagher, and Jo Ann Scurlock for the
Middle East and North Africa. In revising the introduction, we re­
ceived useful comments from Janet Afary, Antoinette Burton, Nupur
Chaudhuri, Susan Geiger, and Claire Robertson. Anne Mendelson ably
copyedited the OAH publication; LuAnne Holladay and Jane Lyle