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22 - Gender and Sexuality

from Part III - Frames and Actors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2025

Alexis Wick
Affiliation:
Koç University, Istanbul
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Summary

This chapter reviews how gender and sexuality in early modern Ottoman society have been studied and analyzed in Ottoman historiography. Recent historical studies on Ottoman society and the everyday experiences of women and men reveal that individual experiences differ according not only to gender but also to class, age, ethnicity, and religion on a temporal and geographical basis. This chapter focuses on how scholars working on the archival sources made women, men, and children from different corners of the empire visible by mobilizing a “history from below” approach and utilizing sources creatively and comparatively to explore gender hierarchies, power relations, and sexual manifestations. It also discusses the representation of these hierarchies and relations as reflected in literary and narrative sources to reveal the diversity of gendered and erotic encounters and experiences. A closer reading of sources aims to provide a multifaceted representation of women from different classes, ethnicities, and religions, but also opens new questions on what constituted womanhood and manhood in various places and periods of the Ottoman Empire.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Suggested Further Reading

Andrews, W. G. and Kalpaklı, M. 2005, The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society, Durham, NC: Duke University PressGoogle Scholar
Faroqhi, S. 2023, Women in the Ottoman Empire: A Social and Political History, London: I. B. TaurisCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peirce, L. 1993, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, New York: Oxford University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peirce, L. 2003, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab, Berkeley: University of California PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schick, I. C. 2006, “Three Genders, Two Sexualities: The Evidence of Ottoman Erotic Terminology,” in Kreil, A., Sorbera, L., and Tolino, S. (eds.), Sex and Desire in Muslim Cultures: Beyond Norms and Transgression from the Abbasids to the Present Day, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 87110Google Scholar
Sonbol, A. E. A. (ed.), 1996, Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, Syracuse: Syracuse University PressGoogle Scholar
Tucker, J. E. 1998, In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine, Berkeley: University of California PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ze’evi, D. 2006, Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500–1900, Berkeley: University of California PressGoogle Scholar
Zilfi, M. C. (ed.), 1997, Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era, Leiden: BrillCrossRefGoogle Scholar

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