Women and Law in Gulf History This research will focus on the history of personal status laws in the Arabian peninsula and Gulf societies. It will trace the genesis of modern personal status and family laws pertaining to family and family relations and identify important watershed dates in regards to women’s history and legal rights as they pertain to family relationships. Here can be included marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, as well as labor laws and rights as they pertain to family authority, marital obedience, and financial support. Inter-family violence and the laws handling them will also be a focus of attention. Since the modern family is actually a new-comer in world history, this research will trace various types of social formations constituting blood alliances and other relations that constituted various types of family structures in Arabia and the Gulf over the history of Islam. Using archival records, Shari`a court records, literature, chronicles and major histories, the changing shape of family and inter-family alliances will be traced and connected to major socioeconomic and political transformations. Oral history will also be an important source to tap in regards to changes in alliances in the last decades. Altogether it is hoped that connections will be drawn between women’s role within the family, their relative power vis-à-vis other members of the family, the codification of laws pertaining to family and changes in Shari`a law and its application from one period to the other.