Gender, Muslim family law, and contesting patriarchy in Mandate Palestine, 1925--1939

This dissertation examines Palestinian Muslim women's interactions and negotiations within the Jerusalem Shari'a Court from 1925-1939. My research on nafaqa (so-called maintenance), female-initiated divorce, and child custody cases from Jerusalem and its surrounding villages expands on the scholarship that demonstrates Palestinian Muslim women were historically active participants in the shari'a court system and their legal affairs. Far from being passive and silenced, Palestinian Muslim women regularly initiated lawsuits and demanded their rights in court. In the nearly all of the cases examined here, the woman was appearing in court on her own initiative and most often she was arguing her own case. In addition, my interviews with Palestinian women suggests that most women had at least a general understanding of their rights in shari'a during this period, and women who took part in court proceedings were or soon became acutely aware of their rights and restraints.;My findings from the court registers and interviews shed light on Palestinian women's perception of the shari'a court, Muslim family law in general, and their legal status in family law. Most importantly, I have uncovered a variety of strategies that women employed in order to secure their needs within a patriarchal system, which demonstrates more than a degree of legal consciousness. Another objective of this dissertation is to assess to what extent the shari'a court system shifted from the late Ottoman era to the British Mandate period, and the reasons for different aspects of change and continuity from 1925-1939. In so doing, I will examine the extent to which judges in Mandate Palestine both followed and departed from classical Hanafi law and to what degree they adhered to the Ottoman's new family law code of 1917. In addition, I will analyze the most common circumstances under which women actually achieved their goals in court, and how these circumstances shifted from the Ottoman period to the British Mandate. Finally, I will examine British legislation and social policies concerning Palestinian women and the motivations behind their treatment of Palestinian women.