This book challenges prevailing assumptions about family, courts of law, and the nature of modernity in Muslim societies against the backdrop of Haifa and Jaffa during "the long nineteenth century". The popular image of the family and the court of law in Muslim societies is one of traditional, unchanging social frameworks. Iris Agmon suggests an entirely different view, grounded in a detailed study of nineteenth-century Ottoman court records from the flourishing Palestinian port cities of Haifa and Jaffa. She depicts the Sharia Muslim court of law as a dynamic institution, capable of adapting...
This book challenges prevailing assumptions about family, courts of law, and the nature of modernity in Muslim societies against the backdrop of Haifa...
