Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender.

• Author: Celik, Zeynep

Edited by Nikki R. Kiddie and Beth Baron New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Pp. xii + 343. $35.

Women in Middle Eastern History focuses on the changing boundaries between male and female in the Middle East and North Africa through case studies from the birth of Islam to the 1950s. The introductory essays by Nikki Keddie ("Deciphering Middle Eastern History") and by Deniz Kandiyoti ("Islam and Patriarchy") frame the debate. The remaining fifteen articles are grouped into four sections. Part I deals with "The First Islamic Centuries" and extends to the eleventh century. Part II covers Egypt during the Mamluk period. Parts Ill and IV are on the "modern period," divided into two regions: Turkey and Iran and the Arab world (consisting of Palestine, Algeria, and Egypt) respectively. The internal organization of each section is chronological.

This book suffers from several weaknesses typical of any edited work. While presented as a "survey," it is rather a collection of case studies, each dealing with a specific topic. Altogether, they display temporal and regional variations in gender relations and the shifting boundaries of women's power, yet they do not add up to a comprehensive text on women in Middle Eastern history. Another inevitable problem is the lack of balance between regions and historic periods. The weight of the book is on the "modern" period, and Egypt (more accurately, Cairo) gets more attention than any other place. Furthermore, the general nature of several articles contrasts with the specificity of others, and the articles are uneven in terms of their arguments and scholarship.

For this reader, the articles which attempt to draw a theoretical framework are the least convincing. In their generalizations, these pieces repeat familiar arguments and interpretations, and, stretching over a vast temporal and geographic surface, they do injustice to their own premise of writing a revisionist history of the Middle East. On the other hand, many of the more specific articles are excellent-well-defined and debated, scrupulously researched, imaginative, and theoretically sophisticated.

Several articles stand out. Huda Lutfi's analysis of "Manners and Customs of Fourteenth-century Cairene Women" demystifies the submissive Muslim woman image. Opposing the Sharia order and male authority by means of ingenious personal strategies, women of Cairo went out and intermingled with men and other women in the market place. They were in constant...