Copyright by Mohammad Hadi Hosainy 2016
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Copyright by Mohammad Hadi Hosainy 2016 The Dissertation Committee for Mohammad Hadi Hosainy Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Women’s Property Rights in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul Committee: Denise Spellberg, Supervisor Abraham Marcus, Co-Supervisor Julie Hardwick Yoav Di-Capua Women’s Property Rights in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul by Mohammad Hadi Hosainy, B.S.; M.A. History Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2016 Dedication In loving memory of my dad, Madar Ali Acknowledgements Many people and institutions supported me in the process of writing this dissertation. First I would like to thank my supervisors Abraham Marcus and Denise Spellberg, who provided me with immense encouragement and guidance. I would like to extend my gratitude to my committee members, Julie Hardwick and Yoav Di-Capua, for their questions, insights, and comments on my drafts. Furthermore, I am grateful to two professors, Hülya Canbakal and Hina Azam, who contributed substantially to my scholarly advancement during the course of my academic career. I am grateful for the institutional support I received from the Research Center for Anatolian Studies, Turkish Cultural Foundation, American Research Institute in Turkey, Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, Sabancı University, and the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin, all of which played a significant role in the materialization of this research project. I would also like to thank the archivists and librarians of the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi and İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi in Istanbul as well as the Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü Arşivi in Ankara, who facilitated access to my research materials. I would also like to thank my friends who have supported me throughout the years in many ways, includning companions, counselors, and editors. In particular, I extend my sincere gratitude to Ben Breen, Alexis Harasemovitch Truax, Sharzad Ahmadi, Mehmet Çelik, Felipe Cruz, and Sandy Chang. v Last but not least, my special thanks go to Bahareh Rezaeian. Without your patience and encouragment, this dissertation would have never been materialized. vi Women’s Property Rights in Seventeenth-Century Istanbul Mohammad Hadi Hosainy, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Denise Spellberg Co-Supervisor: Abraham Marcus In this dissertation, I examine the methods that Muslim women used to protect and manage their property rights in Istanbul in the second half of the seventeenth century. The flexibility of Islamic law permitted women to choose among the existing legal norms in order to possess, own, and manage their properties; to negotiate their relationship with natal and matrimonial families; and to strategize for their inheritance. Through the examination of sharia court records and endowment deeds, I demonstrate the changing patterns in Istanbulite women‘s relationship to property, their strategies in using the sharia court, and their mechanisms in transferring their properties to the next generations. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire was undergoing a series of administrative transformations that led to further expansion and centralization of the Ottoman legal administration in general and the expansion of the sharia courts in particular. This study investigates sharia court records in order to trace both continuities and changes regarding women‘s property rights in an era when the economy was increasingly privatized and monetized. While the amount and proportion of the properties to which women were legally entitled increased over the course of the seventeenth vii century, this dissertation demonstrates that Istanbulite women continued to prefer the ownership of cash and movable properties to that of real estate. Yet, this preference did not mean that they gave away their properties; rather, these women transferred one form of property to another in order to meet their immediate needs. Istanbulite women also turned their real estate into family trusts, which provided relatively secure accommodation for their children and descendants. These women were particularly concerned about the devolution of their estates to their female descendants, a phenomenon that was especially apparent in the gender-egalitarian approach of female founders of family trusts. The sharia court proved to be an important ally for Istanbulite women in realizing their strategies for protecting property rights and securing the well- being of their nuclear families. viii Table of Contents List of Tables ......................................................................................................... xi Abbreviations ........................................................................................................ xii Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Property, Power, and Family ..........................................................................5 Practice of Islamic Law ..................................................................................8 Transformation of Property Relations ..........................................................10 Sources and Methods ....................................................................................17 Chapter Outlines ...........................................................................................21 Chapter 1: Litigation and Property ........................................................................29 Propertied Women of the Capital .................................................................30 Women‘s Property Rights .............................................................................33 Conclusion ....................................................................................................76 Chapter 2: Money and Matrimony .........................................................................83 Wives of Absent Husbands ...........................................................................94 Divorced Women ........................................................................................102 Widows .......................................................................................................109 Negotiating Matrimony ...............................................................................111 Conclusion ..................................................................................................115 Chapter 3: Inheritance ..........................................................................................119 Family and Inheritance ...............................................................................123 Islamic Inheritance System .........................................................................127 Feraid Rules in the Istanbul Sharıa Court (1659-1661) .............................130 Intestate Inheritance: İcareteyn and Muktata‘a ..........................................131 Intestate Inheritance: Private Property ........................................................139 Division of the Estate ..................................................................................152 ix Conclusion ..................................................................................................162 Chapter 4: Pious Endowments .............................................................................165 Types of Endowments.................................................................................171 The Socio-Economic Backgrounds of Male Founders ...............................180 Women‘s Endowments ...............................................................................182 Family Trusts ..............................................................................................183 Public Endowments ....................................................................................194 Conclusion: Class, Status, and Property .....................................................197 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................201 Bibliography ........................................................................................................211 Archival Sources .........................................................................................211 Published Materials .....................................................................................211 x List of Tables Table 1.1: Litigants in the Istanbul sharia court, 1659-1661 ............................................ 36 Table 1.2: Muslim female plaintiffs in Istanbul, 1659-1661 ............................................ 38 Table 1.3: Muslim male and female plaintiffs in Istanbul, 1659-1661 ............................. 39 Table 1.4: Evidence in the Istanbul sharia court, 1659-1661 ........................................... 42 Table 1.5: Themes of Muslim women‘s litigation in Istanbul, 1659-1661 ...................... 50 Table 1.6: Themes of Muslim men‘s litigation in Istanbul, 1659-1661 ........................... 50 Table 1.7: Istanbulite women as borrowers and lenders, 1659-1661 ............................... 57 Table 1.8: Istanbulite Muslim women‘s sale deeds, 1659-1661 ....................................... 69 Table 4.1: Types of endowed