Women, Class, and Gender: Muslim Jaffa and Haifa at the Turn of the 20th Century

The following four stories were recorded among hundreds and thousands of others in the sharica court records of turn-of-the-century Jaffa and Haifa. There is no obvious connection among these four court cases. They raised various legal issues; the litigants were city-dwellers as well as villagers; and they also differed from one another in their socio-economic backgrounds. What these stories illustrate is that there was a major difference between the perception of family loyalties and obligations typical of men and women in the Muslim families of late Ottoman Jaffa and Haifa. I believe that it is important to recognize this difference if we want to understand gender relations in these families. I shall tell these stories first, then discuss the gender relations.