Women’s gifting of their inheritance share to male kin is void: a study of late Ottoman fatwas on social coercion

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the juristic discussions about women’s access to their financial rights during late Ottoman Egypt. Taking fatwa collections as a source of social history, one can recognize that women sometimes gave up their financial entitlements to their male relatives voluntarily. This concession is thought to have occurred due to the influence of deeply ingrained social customs in some tribes. While various historical and anthropological studies have explored this social practice, this paper focuses instead on the Islamic law ruling concerning this phenomenon. I discuss in this paper how some ostensibly conservative ulama in nineteenth-century Egypt, in pursuit of upholding women’s financial rights against patriarchal oppression, recognized an important principle of social coercion. By considering fear of social stigma as a constraint on women’s free will and thus as a form of legal duress, those ulama enabled women to reclaim their rights when possible— likely following the death of their male relatives. This paper urges us to rethink the position of the ulama in nineteenth-century Egypt regarding women’s rights. Furthermore, it illuminates an overarching concept of coercion in Islamic law, which holds relevance to various modern debates.

Acknowledgement

I am deeply indebted to Mona Siddiqui, Omaima Abou-Bakr, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. I also extend my gratitude to Ceren Lord and Saloni Jaikumar Jain for their editorial assistance. All errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ I use the word waive in a non-technical sense. There is a disagreement among Islamic law scholars about how one may surrender his/her financial rights (whether through isqāṭ ‘concession’, ibrāʾ ‘waive’, or hiba ‘gift’). However, this procedural disagreement is mostly unrelated to our cases.

² ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rāfiʿī, Tarīkh al-Ḥaraka al-Qawmiyya wa-Taṭawwur Niẓām al-Ḥukm fī Miṣr (Cairo: Maṭbāʿat al-Nahḍa, 1929), 47.

³ ʿAbd al-Mutaʿāl al-Ṣaʿīdī, Tarīkh al-Iṣlāh fī al-Azhar: wa-Safaḥāt min al-Jihād fī al-Iṣlāh (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Iʿtimād, n.d.), 57–8.

⁴ Aḥmad Amīn, Zuʿamāʾ al-Iṣlāh fī al-ʿAṣr al-Ḥadīth (Cairo: Maktabat al-Naḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1948), 7–8.

⁵ See Indira Gesink, Islamic Reform and Conservatism: Al-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010); Meir Hatina, ʿUlamaʾ, Politics, and the Public Sphere: An Egyptian Perspective (Utah: University of Utah Press, 2010).

⁶ Fatima Hafez, al-Fatwā wa-l-Ḥadātha (Beirut: Namaa, 2019), 259.

⁷ Ibid, 222.

⁸ Muhammad al-Marakeby, ‘A treatise in response to those who permit the unrestricted wearing of the Christian headgear by Muhammad ʿIllīsh’, in Christian-Muslim Relations: a bibliographical history, ed. David Thomas and John Chesworth (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2021), 535-539.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Junaid Quadri, Transformations of Tradition: Islamic Law in Colonial Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 219.

¹¹ Quran 4:4.

¹² Al-Rāfiʿī complained about the high costs of dower in early twentieth century in Egypt. Muṣṭafā Ṣādiq al-Rāfiʿī, Waḥy al-Qalam (Saida; Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, n.d.), 1:85.

¹³ See Ṣalāh al-Dīn Sulṭān, Imtiyāz al-Marʾa ʿalā al-Rajul fī al-Mirāth wa-l-Nafaqa: Dirāsa Fiqhiyya (U.S.A.: Sultan Publishing, 2004).

¹⁴ Beshara Doumani, ‘Endowing family: Waqf, property devolution, and gender in greater Syria, 1800 to 1860’. Comparative studies in society and history 40, no. 1 (1998): 3–41.

¹⁵ Leslie Peirce, Morality tales: Law and gender in the Ottoman court of Aintab (California: University of California Press, 2003), 247; Sabrina Joseph, Islamic Law on Peasant Usufruct in Ottoman Syria: 17th to Early 19th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 155.

¹⁶ Afaf Lutfi Marsot, ‘Entrepreneurial Women’, in Feminism and Islam: Legal and Literary Perspective, ed. May with the assistance of Andrew Allen Yamani (Reading: Garnet Publishing Limited, 1996).

¹⁷ Ronald C. Jennings, ‘Women in Early 17th Century Ottoman Judicial Records: The Sharia Court of Anatolian Kayseri’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 18, no. 1 (January 1975). See also, ʿAbd al-Rāziq ʿĪsā, al-Marʾa al-Miṣriyya Qabla al-Ḥadātha: Mukhtārāt min Wathāʾiq al-ʿAṣr al-ʿUthmānī (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub wa-l-Wathāʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 2012), 228, 232.

¹⁸ Judith E. Tucker, Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 45.

¹⁹ Mary Ann Fay, ‘From concubines to capitalists: Women, property, and power in eighteenth-century Cairo’, Journal of Women’s History 10, no. 3 (1998): 135.

²⁰ Ibid, 122.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Tucker, Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, 93.

²³ ʿAbd al-Rāziq ʿĪsā, al-Marʾa al-Miṣriyya Qabl al-Ḥadātha, 232–234

²⁴ Ibid, 243.

²⁵ Khālid Sayyid Marzūq, Min Wathāʾiq Banī Siwīf fī al-ʿAṣr al-ʿuthmānī, 249.

²⁶ Nāṣir ʿAbdullah ʿUthmān, al-Sulṭa wa-ʿArḍuḥālāt al-Miṣriyyīn al-Maẓlūmīn: min ʿAṣr Muḥammad ʿAlī 1820–1823 (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub wa-l-Wathāʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 2009), 88.

²⁷ Myriam Ababsa, ‘The Exclusion of Women from Property in Jordan’, Hawwa 15, no. 1–2 (2017): 107–28.

²⁸ Beshara Doumani, ‘Endowing family: Waqf, property devolution, and gender in greater Syria, 1800 to 1860’. Comparative studies in society and history 40, no. 1 (1998): 3–41, 41.

²⁹ Muhammad al-Marakeby, ‘Could Women Own Agricultural Land? Rethinking the Relationship of Islamic Law and Contextual Reality (Wāqiʿ)’, Die Welt des Islams 63, no. 2 (2023): 184–212.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Ibid. They also used to inherit some privately owned lands such as abʿadiyya, jafālik, and rizqa, even before the law of 1858 See, Yaʿqūb Artīn, al-Aḥkām al-Marʿiyya fī Shaʾn al-Arāḍī al-Miṣriyya, trans. by Saʿīd ʿAmmūn (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Amīriyya, 1888), 46–52.

³² As it will appear later, questions raised about dower and estate concessions typically mention that this is the custom of a specific tribe or village, and no claim is made that it was nationwide.

³³ Muhammad al-Mahdī al-ʿAbbāsī, al-Fatāwā al-Mahdiyya fī al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyya (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Azhariyya, n.d.), 5:74.

³⁴ Ibid., 4:39.

³⁵ Ibid., 4:16.

³⁶ In some cases, neither scenario occurred. Perhaps, women’s incentive to claim her right resulted from a conflict that happened between the two relatives, and therefore the woman would ask for her old entitlement. For instance, a woman suddenly decided to claim her dower that was seized by her brother thirty-eight years ago while both of them were alive. Al-Mahdī, al-Fatāwā al-Mahdiyya, 4:78.

³⁷ See later fatwas discussed. Also, see Tucker, Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, 51; Annelies Moors, Women, Property, and Islam : Palestinian Experiences, 1920–1990 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 53–76, 146. Peirce, Morality Tales, 226–229.

³⁸ Tucker, Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, 49.

³⁹ Peirce, Morality Tales, 226.

⁴⁰ For the uṣūlī typology of coercion see, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Isnawī, Nihāyat al-Sūl Sharḥ Minhāj al-Wuṣūl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1999), 66.

⁴¹ Ḥanafīs differentiate between fāsid and bāṭil. The former can become valid by will of the coerced, but not the latter.

⁴² Muḥammad Mullā Khisrū, Durar al-Ḥukkām Sharḥ Ghurar al-Aḥkām (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 2:269–273; Burhān al-Dīn al-Marghīnānī, al-Hidāya fī Sharḥ Bidāyat al-Mubtadī (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 3:272–276; Aḥmad al-Ḥamawī, Ghamz ʿUyūn al-Baṣāʾir fī Sharḥ al-Ashbāh wa-l-Naẓāʾir (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1985), 3:203.

⁴³ It is important to distinguish between the questions of ‘coercion’ and ‘sanction’. For instance, if somebody is told to sell his house or an unrelated person will be killed, the sale is valid and it is not considered coercion. However, this does not necessarily mean that the homeowner can sanction the killing by abstaining from the sale to begin with; these are two different questions.

⁴⁴ Zain al-Dīn ibn Nujaim, al-Baḥr al-Rāʾiq Sharḥ Kanz al-Daqāʾiq (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya, n.d.), 8:81; Group of Scholars, al-Fatāwā al-Hindiyya (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Amīriyya, 1883), 5:41.

For a discussion of coercion in the early nineteenth century, see Aḥmad al-Ṭaḥṭāwī, Ḥāshiyat al-Ṭaḥṭāwī ʿalā al-Durr al-Mukhtār Sharḥ Tanwīr al-Abṣār (Cairo: al-Mātbaʿa al-Amīriyya, 1865), 4:71–80.

⁴⁵ It is important to distinguish between the questions of ‘coercion’ and ‘sanction.’ For instance, if somebody is told to sell his house otherwise an unrelated person will be killed, the sale is valid, and it is not considered coercion. However, this does not necessarily mean that the homeowner can sanction the killing by abstaining from the sale to begin with; these are two different questions.

⁴⁶ Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdullāh al-Kharshī, Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar Khalīl li-l-Kharshī wa-Bihāmishih Ḥāshiyat al-ʿAdawī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), 8:109; See also Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Nawawī, Rawḍat al-Ṭālibīn wa-ʿUmdat al-Muftīn (Beirut, Damascus, Amman: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1991), Zakariyya al-Anṣārī, Asnā al-Maṭālib fī Sharḥ Rawḍ al-Ṭālib (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-Islāmī, n.d.), 3:283.

⁴⁷ He cannot be considered as a Muslim neither in this life nor in the hereafter.

⁴⁸ Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Lakhmī, al-Tabṣira (Doha: Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-l-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya in Qatar, 2011), 6:2666.

⁴⁹ Aḥmad al-Ṣāwī, Ḥāshiyat al-Ṣāwī ʿalā al-Sharḥ al-Ṣaghīr ʿalā Aqrab al-Masālik ilā Madhhab al-Imām Mālik (Cairo: Dār al-Ma‘ārif, n.d.), 2:547.

⁵⁰ Muḥammad ibn Rushd, al-Bayān wa-l-Taḥṣīl wa-l-Sharḥ wa-l-Tawjīh wa-l-Taʿlīl li-l-Masāʾil al-Mustakhraja (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1988), 6:119

⁵¹ Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Mawwāq, al-Tāj wa-l-Iklīl li-Mukhtaṣar Khalīl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), 5:312; Ibn Rushd, al-Bayān wa-l-Taḥṣīl, 6:119; Muḥammad ʿArafa al-Dusūqī, Ḥāshiyat al-Dusūqī ʿalā al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Ḥalabī, n.d.), 2:368. The same regulations, in contrast to the Ḥanafīs, are applied to the cases of coercion in marriage or divorce. Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAinī, al-Bināya Sharḥ al-Hidāya (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2000), 11:42; al-Mawwāq, al-Tāj wa-l-Iklīl, 5:312; Akmal al-Dīn al-Bābartī, al-ʿInāya Sharḥ al-Hidāya (Damascus : Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), 9:235.

⁵² Muḥammad Kāmil al-Ṭarābulsī, al-Fatāwā al-Kāmiliyya fī al-Ḥawādith al-Ṭarābulsiyya, (no publisher, 1890).

⁵³ ʿAqīl al-Zuwaitīnī, Fatāwā al-Zuwaitīnī (Cairo: Manuscript al-Azhar Library no. 44319),135, and 153 in which the compulsion was made by a brother to let his sister give up her share of inheritance; Muḥammad Amīn ibn ʿĀbidīn, Radd al-Muḥtār ʿalā al-Durr al-Mukhtār (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1992), 6:746.

⁵⁴ Fakhr al-Dīn Qadī Khān, Fatāwā Qādī Khān (India: ʿĪsawī, 1935), 495.

⁵⁵ Al-Mahdī, al-Fatāwā al-Mahdiyya, 5:87.

⁵⁶ Muḥammad Amīn ibn ʿĀbidīn, al-ʿUqūd al-Durriyya fī Tanqīḥ al-Fatāwā al-Ḥāmidiyya (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2008), 2:246.

⁵⁷ See al-Nawawī, Rawḍat al-Ṭālibīn, 7:374; Abū al-Maʿālī al-Juwainī, Nihāyat al-Maṭlab fī Dirāyat al-Madhhab (Riyad: Dār al-Minhāj, 2007), 13:391; Ibn Rushd, al-Bayān wa-l-Taḥṣīl, 13:464.

⁵⁸ Muḥammad al-Amīr, Ḍawʾ al-Shumūʿ Sharḥ al-Majmūʿ (Mauritania and UAE: Dār Yūsuf ibn Tashfīn and Maktabat al-Imām Mālik, 2005), 4:51.

⁵⁹ Aḥmad ibn Ḥajar al-Haitamī, al-Fatāwā al-Fiqhiyya al-Kubrā (Cairo: ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Aḥmad Ḥanafī, n.d.), 3:30.

⁶⁰ Al-ʿAinī, al-Bināya, 11:42.

⁶¹ Al-Mawwāq, al-Tāj wa-l-Iklīl, 5:312.

⁶² Al-Bābartī, al-ʿInāya, 9:235.

⁶³ Qadā Khān, Fatāwā Qādā Khān, 193.

⁶⁴ Ibn ʿĀbidīn, Radd al-Muḥtār, 9:194; ʿAlī Ḥaidar, Durar al-Ḥukkām Sharḥ Majallat al-Aḥkām, trans. Fahmī al-Ḥusainī (Riyad: Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 2003), 2:741.

⁶⁵ Ibn Rushd, al-Bayān wa-l-Taḥṣīl, 13:464.

⁶⁶ Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ʿIllīsh, Fatḥ al-ʿAliy al-Mālik fī l-Fatwā ʿalā Madhhab al-Imām Mālik (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), 2:96.

⁶⁷ Al-Amīr, Ḍawʾ al-Shumūʿ, 4:51.

⁶⁸ ʿIllīsh, Fatḥ al-ʿAliy al-Mālik, 1:413–414. Apparently, this fatwa has been edited for its incorporation within the book by sheikh ʿIllīsh.

⁷⁴ Al-Ramlī, al-Fatāwā al-Khairiyya, 2:144.

⁷⁰ If the children are two or more girls they would receive two-thirds of the estate; the husband a quarter and the father would take one sixth (al-masʿala taʿūl i.e. the shares are to be proportionally re-adjusted).

⁷¹ ʿIllīsh, Fatḥ al-ʿAliy al-Mālik, 2:98.

⁷² It seems that some women allowed their male relatives to benefit from their property and to hold it, but not to own it. See, al-Mahdī, al-Fatāwā al-Mahdiyya, 4:92.

⁷³ Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥaṭṭāb, Mawāhib al-Jalīl Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar Khalīl (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1992), 5:46.

⁷⁴ Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Qarāfī, al-Dhakhīra (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1994), 5:502, 6:200. See also, al-Mahdī, al-Fatāwā al-Mahdiyya, 5:113.

⁷⁵ Mona Siddiqui, ‘Mahr: Legal Obligation or Rightful Demand?’, Journal of Islamic Studies 6, no. 1 (1995): 14–24.

⁷⁶ Al-Ṣāwī, Ḥāshiyat al-Ṣāwī ʿalā al-Sharḥ al-Ṣaghīr, 2:246. See also, Qadī Khān, Fatāwā Qādī Khān, 192.

⁷⁷ Joseph V. Femia, Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 31.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 37–39.

⁷⁹ Dave Elder-Vass, The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3.

⁸⁰ Kenneth Morrison, Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought (London: SAGE, 1995), 153–156.

⁸¹ Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 1986), 1–12.

⁸² Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1979), 50–52.

⁸³ Ibid., 69–70.

⁸⁴ Ayesha S. Chaudhry, Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 223; ——, ‘Islamic Legal Studies: a Critical Historiography’, in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law, ed. Rumee Ahmed and Anver Emon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). For an incisive response to Chaudhry see, Sohaira Siddiqui, ‘Good Scholarship/Bad Scholarship: Consequences of the Heuristic of Intersectional Islamic Studies’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 88, no. 1 (2020): 142–74.

⁸⁵ Joseph Lowry, ‘Is There Something Postmodern about Usul Al-Fiqh? Ijma, Constraint, and Interpretive Communities’, in Islamic Law in Theory: Studies on Jurisprudence in Honor of Bernard Weiss, ed. Kevin Reinhart and Robert Gleave (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2014), 290.

⁸⁶ ʿIllīsh, Fatḥ al-ʿAliy al-Mālik, 2:273

⁸⁷ Mustafa Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto for a Relational Sociology’, The American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 2 (Sep. 1997), 229.

⁸⁸ Marzūq, Min Wathāʾiq Banī Siwīf, 96.

⁸⁹ ʿIllīsh, Fatḥ al-ʿAliy al-Mālik, 2:278.

⁹⁰ Moors, Women, Property, and Islam, 75.

⁹¹ Ibid., 76.

⁹² Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, ed. Mary Douglas and W. D. Halls (London; New York: Routledge, 2002), 7.

⁹³ Ibid., 88.

⁹⁴ Al-Kharshī, Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, 2:394. Such a principle can be helpful when discussing the ruling of women’s concessions of their deferred dower in return for being allowed to gain custody of their children; an odd case, that Leslie Peirce claims to have found in Aintab in the sixteenth century (Peirce, Morality Tales, 231). It can be assumed that, as women have an inalienable right to child custody, they should not pay money in return for it. Therefore, their concession is invalid.

⁹⁵ Al-Mahdī, al-Fatāwā al-Mahdiyya, 4:71, 78.

⁹⁶ ʿIllīsh, Fatḥ al-ʿAliy al-Mālik, 2:375.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 2:232. See also, 2:233.

⁹⁸ Al-Mahdī, al-Fatāwā al-Mahdiyya, 4:8–9.

⁹⁹ Isaiah Berlin, Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 179. See also, Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 10.

¹⁰⁰ Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 15.

¹⁰¹ Other works faced criticism for merely asserting that Muslims had formulated theories of modernity before the advent of the modern West. See Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979).

¹⁰² Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992).

¹⁰³ For this call, see Alexandre Caeiro, ‘Facts, Values, and Institutions: Notes on Contemporary Islamic Legal Debate’, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 34, no. 2 (2017): 42–72.