Parts of the doctrine as well as certain aspects in the practice of Islamic Family Law in various regions and time periods have faced harsh criticism by many scholars as well as female rights activists concerned about social realities in the Middle East for their patriarchal and inegalitarian nature. Among the examples that are frequently adduced in the literature are different rules for the initiation of a divorce and unequal inheritance shares based on the gender of the parties involved. Even though this may have been the case if one looks solely at the doctrinal texts of the Qur'an and hadith literature, recent research on Islamic jurisprudence has found ample evidence that the practice often deviated since "jurists did not speak with one voice" and by doing so have "cleared the way for nuances and caveats we encounter in the courts, and in the juristic literature, where the categories of Woman and Man acquired some elasticity" (Tucker). In my paper I will offer a further element to a more nuanced picture of Islamic Family Law in practice by illustrating that, rather than shunning the Islamic Family Law whenever possible by making use of their legal autonomy under the stipulations of the Dhimma, non-Muslims often had good reasons for voluntarily submitting a legal dispute within the family to Islamic legal institutions. Non-Muslims in 17th century Istanbul had their own legal tribunals operated by the Greek and Armenian patriarchates and by the rabbis of the Jewish community respectively. My study of the sharia court records of two court districts as well as the protocols of the Imperial Council (Divan-i H(mayun) of late 17th century Istanbul, however, shows that Jews and Christians frequently and routinely chose to submit disputes in the realm of Family Law to these Islamic legal institutions rather than to their own independent legal tribunals. It will be argued that rather than considering the norms of Islamic Family Law as a "straightjacket" curtailing individual rights on the basis of gender and faith under all circumstances, the study of cases of dhimmis who were not obliged to use Islamic legal institutions reveals the strong appeal that this set of norms had on non-Muslims of both genders who saw their judicial needs most perfectly met by Islamic Family Law.

In January and November of 1857 two remarkably similar cases were recorded in the Sharia court registers in the Egyptian Delta town of al-Mansura. Each case was a suit brought by a soldier who served in the Egyptian contingent sent to the Crimean War, and who discovered, upon returning, that his wife had married another man. In each case the women testified that they became convinced that their husbands had perished, and so the believed that as widows they were free to re-marry. Neither woman was penalized since the judges found them to have acted sincerely on the basis of erroneous information. My paper discusses these cases in light of the evolving legal position of married women in nineteenth century Egypt. In initial stage of "modernizing" reform of the Ottoman Sharia court system, in the middle decades of the century, judges were restricted to applying Hanafi jurisprudence. This imposed disadvantages on married women that their mothers and grandmothers had not faced. Among other things, the Hanafi school presumed missing (mafqud) men to be alive into their nineties, and offered their wives no way out of their marriages even though they were deprived of all marital benefits including financial support. This problem was eventually addressed by Law No. 25 of 1920, which drew on non-Hanafi doctrine to enable the wives of missing men to petition the court to declare their husbands deceased. But between the middle of the nineteenth century and 1920 a widow was potentially better off than the wife of a missing man, including a soldier missing in action. Legal histories portray the legislation of the 1920s as improving the status of women by correcting problems supposedly caused by outmoded interpretation of the Sharia or the influence of "tradition." But as this paper demonstrates, some of the problems faced by women were the result recent "modernizing" reforms.

In 1910, al-Mahdi al-Wazzani, one of the most distinguished muftis of Morocco, published an extensive compilation of Maliki fatwas and named it al-Mi'yar al-Jadid (the New Standard Measure). It is my contention that in compiling this collection, al-Wazzani aimed to redefine Maliki jurisprudence for the modern age by composing a new and updated orthodoxy, emphasizing its renewed nature as a response to changing realities. Thus, he included in the collection those fatwas he deemed particularly pertinent to the social and cultural circumstances of his society, and crafted legal responses that corresponded to the concrete sensibilities and concerns of his contemporaries. The purpose of this essay is to investigate al-Wazzani's interpretation of family life and kinship practices in the context of a particular history of modernity. Specifically, my paper examines one fatwa of al-Wazzani that focuses on the transmission of property via hubus endowments within the family. In analyzing al-Wazzani's portrayal of the hubus institution, I ask what family relations appear fundamental, and what concepts and ideas acquire meaning in his interpretation of the transmission of wealth within the family. I demonstrate that in constructing his legal interpretations, al-Wazzani understood the legal notion of family as essentially patriarchal in nature. His reasoning lends importance to the principle of patrimonial continuity, which takes place in the relationships between fathers and sons. However, I argue that the patrilineal notion of family was only one notion, though a pivotal one, in the discourse on property and family. Al-Wazzani viewed the process of property transmission from one generation to the next within the family as shaped by and embedded in a variety of fundamental ideas about relations among kin and hierarchies of gender. I illustrate that notions about family's responsibility to its vulnerable members, especially women and their minor children were expressed in al-Wazzani's discourse. An important insight of my study is that the definition of the modern as a necessary conceptual break from the traditional does not adequately convey the nature of modernity in Muslim societies. My investigation of al-Wazzani's interpretation of the inner workings of the family suggests a less dichotomous and abrupt movement to modern practices.

Over the course of the long nineteenth century (1774-1918), the Ottoman Empire engaged in an imperial reform agenda rivaled by few others. One central area of Ottoman reform was its penal institutions, particularly prisons. Another was the realm of the Ottoman Criminal and Civil Justice Systems. These reforms affected many facets of Ottoman state and society, such as the adoption of the concept of prisoner rehabilitation, altering the concepts of childhood and adolescence, and the rationalization and standardization of criminal codes and prison procedures. Additionally, the relationship between the incarcerated and their families changed as a result of these reforms. With the state's greater assumption of power over the individual and incursion into the private sphere, questions regarding the role of the state in caring for its prisoners, particularly incarcerated women and children became an important area of concern and debate in late Ottoman culture and politics. Drawing upon a wealth of documents from the Ottoman Imperial Archives and period newsprint, this paper investigates how Ottoman penal law and practice affected the incarcerated and their families during the late Ottoman Empire. Among the specific topics to be discussed are the status and treatment of incarcerated women and those with small children; the provisioning of prisoners; petitions for redress by families of the incarcerated; and how people coped with the incarceration of family members, especially if the prisoner was the family's chief breadwinner or caregiver. The debates and practices regarding families and incarceration reflect broader changes in Ottoman state and society as a result of the onset of modernity, particularly in terms of the state's greater role in the lives of its citizens. As the state penetrated more deeply into the private sphere it assumed greater responsibility for the most private of a social institutions--the family. New penal policies and practices helped redefine the family in the late Ottoman Empire as a public sight of state intervention and regulation not only for issues related to social control and discipline, but also for rehabilitation and benevolence.