Mothers as appointed guardians in the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Empire

In Islamic law, when a person died leaving minor children, their shares of the inheritance had to be determined and protected. In the Ottoman Empire the orphan’s share was not left without control: the kadı, as the representative of the ruler, appointed a guardian (vasi) to manage it and to provide for the orphan’s maintenance. The guardian was most often the orphan’s mother. This practice continued for centuries, and the court registers record it in detail. This article uses more than 2,800 guardianship entries from some fifty sharia court registers, most of them of the sixteenth century, together with register 98 of the Üsküdar court (1577–1601), a volume kept entirely for loans of orphans’ money. Where the father had died, about a third of the guardians named were women, and among relatives the mother was by far the most frequent choice. The micro study follows the widow Hurşid bint Abdullah, whose guardianship of her son’s estate lasted far longer than usual because he was mentally incapable (ma‘tuh). The guardian, her agent, the sureties, the witnesses and the borrowers are analysed with network and spatial methods. The article argues that Ottoman women could go to court and act in their own names without holding any office: as heirs and creditors they sued guardians and estates, and they appeared in person or through agents as it suited them. Appointment as guardian added the management of the children’s property and the duty to account for it to the court, and guardian mothers lent orphans’ money on the same terms as men. The appointment of mothers thus shows the confidence that Ottoman courts placed in women as managers of their children’s property.