Semerdjian - Off the Straight Path: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo

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Copyright 2008 by Syracuse University Press

Syracuse, New York 132445290

All Rights Reserved

First Paperback Edition 2016

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ISBN: 978-0-8156-3173-6 (cloth)

978-0-8156-3463-8 (paperback)

978-0-8156-5155-0 (e-book)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:

Semerdjian, Elyse.

Off the straight path : illicit sex, law, and community in Ottoman Aleppo / Elyse Semerdjian.

p. cm. (Gender, culture, and politics in the Middle East)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8156-3173-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Adultery (Islamic law) 2. Fornication (Islamic law) 3. Rape (Islamic law) 4. Domestic relations (Islamic law) 5. Customary law (Islamic law)SyriaAleppo. 6. Punishment (Islamic law) I. Title.

KBP559.958.S46 2008

345.56910253dc22

2008043095

Manufactured in the United States of America

To my parents, Nerses and Sandra Semerdjian

ELYSE SEMERDJIAN is an associate professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern history at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. She has published articles on the subject of gender in Islamic law in Beyond the Exotic: Womens Histories in Islamic Societies (2005) and Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World.

Table of Contents

Contents

Illustrations

M APS

T ABLES

Acknowledgments

I began this project in 1996 as a graduate student at Georgetown University, and it has taken more than a decade to complete. Along the way several individuals and institutions supported me and deserve recognition. Much of the material from the book was located in the Library of Congress, where I spent a great deal of time as a graduate student. I would like to thank the Middle East librarian in the law library, George Sfeir, who helped me and shared his own scholarly work. The library had a vast array of juridical materials (fiqh, fatwas, and commentaries) that I would like to encourage researchers to use more often than they do. The Middle East Reading Room of the Library of Congress was also extremely helpful during the course of this project.

As for my research in Syria, the majority of my time was spent in the Center for Historical Documents (Markaz al-Wathaiq al-Tarikhiyya). Both the late Dr. Dad Hakim, former director of the center, and the current director, Dr. Ghassan Obeid, did much to facilitate this research. The centers staff has become my friends and family away from home. I would like to also thank the French Institute of Damascus (Institut Franais dtudes Arabes de DamasIFEAD/IFPO) which has been a source of great help for me. The staff, in particular Issam Chehadat and Ali al-Ali, was willing to help even when my book requests fell far into the recesses of the collection, including a far-away storage facility. Jen Johnson of Penrose Library at Whitman College is a miracle worker and has gone out of her way to find material for me to use in remote Walla Walla, Washington.

I also thank Fulbright, which provided me with a grant to conduct the core of this research in Syria from 1999 to 2001. The Ford Arab-American Chamber of Commerce provided me with a scholarship in 2002 that paid for my final semester of tuition at Georgetown University, for which I am eternally grateful. I also thank the Syrian Studies Association for awarding me the Syrian Studies Association Best Dissertation Prize in 2003, for which I am truly humbled.

Several professors helped me along the way, and without their help and guidance I would have never completed the project. I would like to thank Mge Gek for introducing me to the world of Ottoman studies and, in particular, the sharia court records. Salim Khaldieh, instructor of Arabic at the University of Michigan in the early 1990s, was an amazing spirit who died much too young and is truly missed. I do not know how to thank Denise Spellberg for her mentoring that eventually led to me to Georgetown University. John Esposito, the director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, and the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown provided me with teaching assistantships that kept me out of Washington, D.C.s soup kitchens. I would like to thank my adviser, John Voll, for his guidance throughout the years. Special thanks to Amira Sonbol, who became my mentor at Georgetown and saw me through to the end. Her Arabic Sources course was one of a kind and produced some of the early research in my dissertation. Course work offered by Judith Tucker, the late Hisham Sharabi, and Yvonne Seng provided further inspiration for some of the ideas contained within the book. I would like to thank my Ottoman language instructors: the late James Stewart Robinson of the University of Michigan and Yvonne Seng and Gbor goston of Georgetown University. I add the disclaimer that any mistakes made in translation are my very own.

I would also like to thank friends who have been a sounding board for my ideas, read some chapters of this book, and been a source of moral support throughout the years: Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp, Faedah Totah, and Hibba Abugideri. The bond I share with these Arab women inspired me to finish this book and turn a new page in my career. A special thanks to my longtime friend Kathleen LaTosch, who edited an earlier version of this work. Abdul Karim Rafeq has lent crucial advice and expertise throughout the years for which I am grateful. Peter Sluglett read a few chapters and offered amazing comments that helped immensely. I would like to thank Charles Wilkins, my comrade in the archives, who held a common interest in Aleppo that developed into a friendship during some very cold days huddled around the sobiya in bayt Khalid al-Azm.

I am most grateful to Mary Selden Evans for her early interest in my work, which has resulted in a working relationship with her and Syracuse University Press, and Annette Wenda, my copy editor, whose amazing pen caught many inconsistencies prior to publication. My colleagues in the History Department at Whitman College have read and commented on chapters during our First Friday research meetings. I am very thankful to Nina Lerman, David Schmitz, Lynn Sharp, Julie Charlip, Brian Dott, Kyra Nourse, Mike Bottoms, and Trey Proctor for the insights and comments about my project along the way. Damascene lawyer Thaier Mourad read and discussed documents with me, offering his perspective on the cases. The Dean of Facultys office at Whitman College along with the History Department have always been generous in funding some of my trips back to Syria over the past few years that were crucial to accessing important sources in Damascus. I would like to thank Bryan Lubbers for listening to my ideas and lending his computer expertise that aided the construction of a database containing all of my court records. Cartographer Joseph Stoll of Syracuse University created beautiful maps for the book for which I am grateful.