In the historiography of Mandate Palestine, the dominant narrative about family and colonial power has held that due to the sensitive nature of the family, British authorities were reluctant to legislate around it, and left family law in the hands of religious courts. Therefore, the argument goes, they did not attempt to intrude on Palestinian family practices. The role of other bodies of law and state court systems in regulating the family has historically been neglected when assessing the impact of the Mandate legal system on Palestinian society. I argue that we need to rethink this conclusion, this approach to family history in Palestine, and potentially in the region as a whole. While the Mandatory government left religious law in the hands of religious courts, they leveraged criminal law to project a new ideal of family that could be enforced by punitive means. The 1936 Criminal Code raised the age of marriage and created additional documentary requirements for girls under the age of legal majority. The archives, in the form of police files and court records, show that these laws about marriage were enforced, and violators were prosecuted. Beyond marriage, new laws about juvenile delinquency, sex work, education, and child welfare provided inroads for the state to assert control over the most intimate aspects of family life, without ever intruding on the authority of religious courts. With a normative family inscribed into law, the British administration created a foundation of state authority on which to build a network of coercive institutions that disciplined the Palestinian family in the name of its own salvation. My research shows that, contrary to the perception that the British administration was less interested in the “civilizing mission” in Palestine, the Mandatory government circumvented preexisting structures of authority to reshape the family, introducing another dimension of social instability to an already volatile climate. In addition, this work challenges the normative methodologies of the field of family history in the Middle East, and argues that that family law has too often been conflated with religious law in the historiography of Palestine. It calls for a reexamination of this approach and a broader consideration of the myriad interactions between the family and the law in Middle Eastern contexts.

This study delves into the intricate relationship between public domain regulations enacted through sultanic laws and the fatwas (legal opinions) issued by the Chief Mufti (şeyhülislam), with a keen focus on issues of family law. Although family law has been perceived under the purview of religious scholars and Sharia in the scholarship, starting from the sixteenth century, sultanic decrees unprecedentedly regulated this domain. The present research identifies four primary catalysts for this regulation: ensuring legal stability across courts, preventing frauds related to marriage and divorce, increasing state revenues through taxes, and safeguarding the rights of the couples. By examining the incorporation of family law issues into the public domain through Maruzât fatwas and legal codes (kanunnâmes), this study seeks to understand the motivations for their inclusion, the changes they underwent, and their implications on the legal landscape of the Ottoman Empire. This expansion was not merely an attempt to intervene in family matters as modern laws often do; rather, it was a strategic effort to address specific societal and economic concerns. These concerns included promoting a more uniform legal framework, curbing legal abuses, enhancing fiscal policies, and reinforcing social justice. Through a comprehensive analysis of the transition of family law matters into the realm of public law and their reflection in the Chief Mufti’s fatwas, this investigation will shed light on the broader implications of these legal intersections for the social and legal fabric of the empire. The findings aim to enhance our insight into the sixteenth century Ottoman legal changes and their impacts on the practices.

This paper explores how the regulation of marriages and Islamic family laws became a predicament for the Ottoman state during the WWI. As the economic and social difficulties of the war struck the Ottoman women whose husbands were conscripted, the Hanafite legal rule precluded many Muslim women from annulling their marriages. The Ottoman bureaucracy was troubled by an outbreak of socio-legal problems caused by the religiously licit but officially unregistered marriage/divorce cases of the soldiers’ wives. The ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) also grappled with various legal cases regarding child marriage, polygamy and the intermarriages -particularly the ones between Armenian women and Muslim men. Therefore, the state’s failure to thoroughly control the religious marriages throughout the empire became a crucial source of disquiet for the CUP amid the adversities of the war. Having some serious misgivings about the compatibility of the Shari’a with the legal edifice of the modern state, the CUP elite codified the religious family laws in 1917 and imposed marriage registration and prenuptial licenses. Based on archival research of the reform of matrimonial laws and their repercussions in everyday life, this paper examines how the Ottoman state encompassed marriage with a new evidential regime to monitor and regulate the private lives of its citizens. By doing so, the Ottoman state undertook an ambivalent role in undercutting Sharia’s jurisdiction through a series of legislation while not thoroughly replacing it with a secular civil code. This paper takes such ambivalences of reform as a crucial historical moment to scrutinize the problem of Sharia’s commensurability with the secular state.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the nascent Cilician Armenian kingdom found itself on the verge of a political crisis. After extending his authority over the Principality of Antioch in 1219, Cilicia’s first king Lewon shifted his attention towards his own kingdom’s dynastic future. However, rather than nominating the grandnephew he had just installed as Prince of Antioch, Lewon chose his only surviving child, three year old princess Zabel, as the next ruler of Cilicia. In the months following Lewon’s death in 1219 Cilicia was plunged into factional violence, finally culminating with the ascendancy of the house of Barberon who took Queen Zabel into its custody. Rather than doing away with Zabel however, the house of Barberon chose to uphold the succession and build upon Lewon’s established kingship through marriage with his daughter. Although contemporary sources are silent on Zabel’s role in regional politics, they do reveal a robust domestic sphere of influence that she created and managed. As the Barberons treated with the Mongols and fought in the crusades, Zabel gained immense popularity at home for her patronage of churches and hospitals. From these parallel threads of active and symbolic authority, this paper will argue for the reign of Queen Zabel (1219-1252) as a turning point in Armenian kingship in the Mediterranean. Using textual sources written by Armenian, as well as Latin authors, and numismatic sources, the paper will discuss the ways in which kingly legitimacy developed to be shaped by proximity to the Zabel’s bloodline, rather than by papal or imperial recognition. The paper will also utilize contemporary chronicles to highlight the ways in which Zabel was able to wield agency through her strategic avenues of patronage and her connection to the Cilician people.

Since the Tanzimat era, the Ottoman state embarked on a journey of increased involvement in the private realm of its subjects, particularly within the family structure, aiming to solidify its social authority through interventions in education, child welfare, and marriage regulations. Drawing from extensive archival research, this paper delves into the domestic sphere of Ottoman provinces, focusing on marriage patterns, marital economics, and familial conflicts. By analyzing court cases and testimonies, this study illuminates domestic disputes in rural communities, revealing how family members articulated their demands, grievances, and experiences, while also shedding light on the state's ideals concerning the significance of family. The paper first explores the patterns of family establishment, uncovering intra-familial relations through documented instances of murder. Through these cases, it endeavors to unravel the narratives surrounding family dynamics, highlighting emphasized relationships and conflicts. The analysis offers insights into how individuals recounted their family histories, addressing conflicts and silences within these narratives. Moreover, this study provides a comprehensive framework for understanding family dynamics in Ottoman provinces, primarily focusing on intra-family conflicts. It conducts data analysis on various aspects such as motives behind murders, perpetrators, victims, and methods employed. By synthesizing archival data and court records, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexities of family life in Ottoman society during the second half of the 19th century, offering valuable insights into the interplay between state intervention, familial dynamics, and societal norms.