Baydas, Khalīl Bayt Al- Āa

166 bayt al-a Arang te Tembajat, TBG 53/5–6 (1911), In his translations and in his own literary 435–581 ; Douwe A. Rinkes, Nine saints of writings Baydas took a realistic approach, Java , transl. H. M. Froger, ed. Alijah Gordon, Kuala Lumpur 1996. both thematically and aesthetically, thereby laying the foundation for a literary school M. C. Ricklefs in Palestine that encouraged writers to embrace values that would lead to social reform. Literature, as he himself believed Baydas, Khalīl and taught, should praise virtue and con- demn vice. Khalīl Baydas (1874/5–1949) is the foremost Palestinian intellectual to have Bibliography documented the emergence and develop- annā Abū annā, Dār al-muallimīn al-rūsiyya ment of Palestinian narrative fi ction and fī l-Nāira “al-Siminār” 1886–1914 wa-atharuhā culture beginning in the late nineteenth alā l-naha l-adabī fī Filasīn , Nazareth 1994 ; A mad Abū Maar, al-Riwāya fī l-adab al- century. His biography can be divided into fi lasīnī (1950–1975) , Beirut 1980 ; Wāif Abū four major periods: his childhood in Naza- l-Shabāb, Funūn al-nathr fī l-adab al-fi lasīnī reth (1874–93); a period spent in Syria and 1900–1948 , Amman 1998 ; Nāir al-Dīn Lebanon (1893–1908), where he served as al-Asad, Mu āarāt an Khalīl Baydas rāid al- qia al-arabiyya al-adītha fī Filasīn , Palestine the principal of several elementary schools 2001 2 ; Mattityahu Peled, Annals of doom. established by the Russians; his career in Palestinian Literature in 1917–1948, Arabica Haifa and Jerusalem (1908–48); and his lat- 29/2 (1982), 141–83 ; Jihād āli, Khalīl Bay- ter days in Amman and in Beirut (1948–9), das , Ramallah 2005 ; Amad Umar Shāhīn, Mawsūat kuttāb Filasīn fī l-qarn al-ishrīn , where he died in February 1949, one year Damascus 1992 ; Kāmil al-Sawāfīrī, al-Adab after fl eeing his homeland during the fi ght- al-arabī al-muāir fī Filasīn min sanat 1860 ing over the city of Jerusalem between ilā 1960 , Cairo 1979 ; Qustandī Shūmalī, Jewish and Arab forces. al-Ittijāhāt al-adabiyya wa-l-naqdiyya fī Filasīn. Dirāsa li-ayāt al-naqd al-adabī al-adīth fī Baydas wrote forty-four books in vari- Filasīn min khilāl Jarīdat Filasīn , Jerusalem ous fi elds—creative literary works, histo- 1990 ; Muammad Ubaydallāh, al-Qia al- riography, translation, Arabisation, and qaīra fī Filasīn wa-l-Urdunn mundhu nashatihā teaching—but only thirty-seven of them attā jīl “al-ufuq al-jadīd,” Amman 2001 ; Abd al-Ramān Yāghī, ayāt al-adab al-Filasīnī were published. He also wrote textbooks al-adīth. Min awwal al-naha attā l-nakba , on the Arabic language, mathematics, Beirut, 19812 . history, and geography, and contributed regularly to the journal al-Naf āis al-ariyya , Ibrahim Taha a publication that had a major impact on the development of Palestinian literature. In addition to some attempts at translating B a y t a l - āa Arabic texts into Russian, Baydas, who was fl uent in that language, translated into The term bayt al-āa , which means lit- Arabic many literary works by prominent erally “the house of obedience,” came to be Russian writers of the late nineteenth and understood as enforced obedience of a wife early twentieth centuries. He also translated to her husband. According to the Egyptian works of English, German, French, and 1897 Ordinance Organising the Sharīa Italian literature from Russian into Arabic. Courts and the Proceedings Pertaining to bayt al-a 167 Them (article 93) and the equivalent 1931 court records prior to 1897 indicates that Law (articles 345–6), a husband who has such suits were inspired by the provision in been granted an obedience decree by the the 1897 Law for enforcement of a wife’s court may seek the assistance of the police obedience (Cuno, Disobedient, 13; Bagh- in forcing his rebellious wife to return to dadi, 165). Cuno suggests (Restitution, 1–5) the conjugal dwelling. Enforced obedi- that (1) Egyptian legal offi cials introduced ence, in this sense, is not mentioned in the the enforcement of conjugal obedience Qurān or adīth . According to legal texts, following the legal norm in northwestern if a wife leaves the conjugal home with- Europe in the nineteenth century (cf. the out a sound reason and refuses to return, “restitution of conjugal rights” in Britain); she is “disobedient” and forfeits her right (2) bayt al-āa was brought to Sudan from to maintenance (cf. Anderson, 105, who Egypt by the British; and (3) the institution states that “dragging the wife back to the was introduced into Algeria by French matrimonial home” is “pure sharīa ,” per- magistrates who oversaw the shar īa courts. haps referring to Q 4:34, which permits a Pace Cuno, bayt al-āa was not practised husband to use force against his disobedient in other areas of British mandatory rule, wife); but enforced obedience became part of such as Palestine, Iraq, or Transjordan. In- state law in Egypt, Sudan, and other parts deed, in Sudan the British objected to bayt of British Africa, and in Jordan, Kuwait, al-āa in the 1930s, while the local shar īa and the People’s Democratic Republic of establishment supported it (Fluehr-Lobban, Yemen, only in modern times. In Kenya, 121). In the words of one English judge in Zanzibar, and the Protectorate of Aden, Sudan in 1951, “a decree of obedience in it used to be permissible to imprison the the case of a wife must not be executed by disobedient wife, although imprisonment force” (Farran, 72, esp. n. 6). was rarely resorted to (Abdel Kader, 44; The bayt al-āa institution probably Zaghū, 195; Fluehr-Lobban 18, 86, 125; originated in a literal interpretation of the Anderson, 20, 73, 105, 138; Antoun, 42, concept of “enforcement of judgments” 55–6; Welchman, 875). by Egyptian legal offi cials who sought to construct a centralised, hierarchical, bu- 1. Origins reaucratic, and effi cient judicial system. Modern scholars differ on the origins According to article 29 of the 1880 of bayt al-āa . The Egyptian al-Amrūsī Ordinance of the Sharīa Courts, state claims that the procedure was introduced administrative authorities are required, into Egypt by the Mamlūks to humiliate at the request of an interested party, to women, but this is unlikely. Fluehr-Lob- use “the necessary legal means” (al-uruq ban’s suggestion (18, 86, 125; Fluehr-Lob- al-qānūniyya al-mūjaba) to enforce any deci- ban and Bardsley-Sirois, 52) that bayt al-āa sion handed down by the sharīa courts. was introduced into Egypt and the Sudan Article 93 of the 1897 Law stated in part, in Ottoman times is also weak, for two rea- “A judgment [for] wifely obedience, keep- sons: (1) no traces of bayt al-āa are found ing a child in the custody of his relative in other areas that had been subject to Ot- (ma ramihi , i.e., a relative who is in a degree toman rule, such as Anatolia or the Fertile of consanguinity that precludes marriage Crescent; (2) the total absence of suits for with that child), the separation (tafr īq) of marital obedience from Ottoman-Egyptian spouses, and matters relating to personal 168 bayt al-a status shall be implemented by compulsion According to most Egyptian qāī s a (qahran) even if the execution leads to the husband is entitled to “enforced obedi- use of force and entry into houses.” The ence” according to both Islamic law and fact that in this article bayt al-āa is one statutory law, but only after the husband of the types of family-law court decisions has exhausted the customary means of fa- that warrant enforcement suggests that the milial reconciliation. The q āī s complained primary motivation for its introduction that some men exploit this procedure in an was procedural-administrative—that is, effort to keep their wives in the house, to for the maintenance of public order and threaten them, and to force them to give of the deterrent character of the judicial up their shar ī rights. These complaints system—and not social-normative—that is, indirectly assisted women’s-rights move- for preventing wives from disrupting family ments that called for the abolition of the life and from threatening social stability (cf. institution (Shaham, 95–6). Cuno, Restitution, 5). Although they do not refer specifi cally 3. Abolition to bayt al-āa , the 1917 Ottoman Fam- After the turn of the twentieth century ily Rights Law (article 71) and the 1951 and especially after the establishment of Jordanian family law (article 33) stipulate the Egyptian Feminist Union in the 1920s, that a wife who has received her prompt Egyptian women’s movements attacked dower may be compelled to reside in her the compulsory character of bayt al-āa husband’s dwelling (tujbar . alā l-iqāma and demanded its abolition. They were fī dār zawjihā) . Other articles refer to the supported by some modernist jurists who standard sanction, that is, the disobedient claimed that this mechanism is ineffective wife’s loss of the right to maintenance. so long as a wife does not voluntarily obey Egypt’s leadership in legal reform seems to her husband. have inspired other Arab countries, such as Supporters of bayt al-āa responded that Kuwait, to follow its example by legislating so long as feminists justify imprisonment of bayt al-āa . a husband for failing to pay maintenance, a husband should not be prevented from 2. Operation asserting his legal right to wifely obedience, Whereas in Egypt an obedience order by force if necessary. Since marriage is a re- might be enforced an unlimited number ciprocal contract ( aqd tabādulī) , stipulating of times, in Sudan, after three attempts wifely obedience in return for maintenance, to enforce obedience, the husband must fairness requires that each spouse may obtain a new judgment (article 259 of the attempt to recover his or her right in the event 1915 Sudan Muhammadan Law Courts that the other spouse violates a marital ob- Organisation and Procedure Regulations; ligation.

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