As Margaret Meriwether notes in her Introduction to this well-crafted study, until recentlythere has been little history of the Middle Eastern family. There were “histories offamilies,” which is not the same as a solidly researched sub-discipline within the broaderfield of Middle Eastern history, because these “did not deal with the family as aninstitution, its evolution over time, nor the relationship between family and society” (p. 2).The difficulty derives in part (as it does for other sub-fields of Middle Eastern history, particularlysocial history) from problems of sources that are partial, limited, or sometimes non-existent, andoften where they do exist are unavailable. There are few written records on certain subjects,particularly private lives. Scholars of social history and anthropology have relied increasingly onthe use of Islamic court records as sources for social history. The growing body of worksproduced from this scholarship has been highly sophisticated, nuanced, and exciting, openingwindows into the history of private life in the Middle East. This book is a welcome contribution tothis growing field of scholarship.