Book Review

There is a growing trend in contemporary Islamic legal studies to demonstrate that Islamic law was never stagnant in development nor rigid in application and that, in particular, the use of fatwa literature bears witness to the fluidity and growth in substantive law, in legal discourse in general, and the dynamic relationship between law and society within Muslim civilizations. Judith Tucker has written one such book with a focus primarily on the roles of women in the urban settings of Ottoman Syria and Palestine during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Using primary legal sources including a range of fatwas by prominent jurists, as well as the shari'a records of three Islamic courts, namely Damascus, Jerusalem, and Nablus, Tucker examines the way society and the court system tried to understand and contextualize the different roles that women played as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. She looks at how actively engaged the Muslim jurists were in their discussion of the issues pertaining to womens' rights and their efforts to curtail the male coercion of the female. Indeed, her chapter headings reflect the traditional themes that usually lie at the basis of gender discussions—"Marriage," "Divorce," "Mothering and Fathering," and "Sexuality and Reproduction." Tucker acknowledges that in the construction of gender in society, local custom, oral traditions, and the sacred and profane literature of the time also played a significant role but that her focus on law is as a consequence of the rich resources of material available for legal discourse. Moreover, it reflects the locus of current debates on gender issues: "how Islam genders society through the precepts of the shari'a" (4–5).	1
She distinguishes the muftis as being particularly active in bringing about a level of doctrinal change since they played a crucial role in the life of the court; they were quite simply the "link between legal thought and practice" (20). Tucker concentrates on the fatwas of three particular muftis of the time, providing brief biographical details on Shaykh Khayr al-Din Ramla (993H./1185 A.D.), Hamid al-'Imadi (1103H./1692 A.D.) and finally, 'Abd al-Fattah b. Darwish al-Tamimi (d.1138H./1725 A.D.). She concludes her general overview of the muftis and the courts regarding gender: "It was the interplay between the muftis' discussion of gender at a symbolic level and the working out of gender as a social relationship in the specifics of the fatwa and the courts that shaped a definable 'Islamic' vision of a gendered social order in that time and place" (36).	2
Tucker begins her chapters by citing a fatwa, mostly from Khayr al-Din, and then looks at the issues around it to exemplify the debates of the time. Her discussions present a general description of HanaFi family law interspersed with occasional fatwas as illustrative of the various principles she touches on. We have for example Imadi's fatwa on the necessity of obtaining a virgin's consent in marriage whether or not she has been married off by her wali (49–51). Tucker quite rightly explains the tension in HanaFi sources about the rights of the woman who had attained majority to choose her own partner and the rights of her wali in arranging a marriage for her. On the contentious issue of nafaqa, she compares the fatwas of Khayr al-Din with those of al-'Imadi to show the contrast in the level of maintenance according to whether the groom was poor or comfortable. In the case of the former, a poor man from Ramla might be able to afford no more than basic clothing along with a diet of barley bread, corn, or oil (61). Al-'Imadi's more affluent milieu of urban Damascus reveals the wife's right to demand slaves and servants, that is, a level far higher than the mere subsistence of food and clothing. Fatwas thus reveal the close connection between legal discourse and the social practice of the time. They also depict those values that society upholds and those that are the subject of juristic criticism despite being entrenched in local custom, such as the practice of testing a wife's virginity on the wedding night—the notion of the "deflowered" bride (67–68). Though the arguments and discussions are well constructed, Tucker alludes to most of the fatwas only as references in the endnotes and does not cite them directly in the main body of the text. As a consequence of this relatively poor use of citation, the reader is left with much of Tucker's own descriptive narrative and is unable to observe the style and focus of arguments of the fatwas themselves.	3
In her chapter on "Sexuality and Reproduction," Tucker explains that though the jurists recognized that human sexual desire, both male and female, is "powerful and ubiquitous" (148), juristic debate on sexual desire looked at this debate from a "distinctly male vantage point" (151). The discussions rested on the simple premise that a "man was expected to attempt to have illicit sexual relations with any attractive woman with whom he might find himself alone" (152); thus there was always a need to regulate sexual desire. Despite the efforts to control illicit relations between men and women, the courts did occasionally have to deal with questions pertaining to abduction and rape. Tucker informs us, however, that in almost every rape case "punishment was routinely muted by the legal fiction of shubha" (161) and thus instead of the application of hadd, the payment of a suitable mahr to the victim was made obligatory. The paucity of references to actual litigation, the hypothetical speculation on issues of illicit sexual activity, and the court's aim of averting the hadd punishments makes this whole debate problematic. She concludes, moreover, that it was in the sphere of female sexuality especially outside of marriage that families ignored the guidelines of the muftis, thus bringing about a clear divide between doctrine and practice.	4
In conclusion, the book is useful as an overview of legal discourse regarding gender and society within this period. Tucker is right in asserting that Islamic law is a "strongly gendered law" and the diversity of debates she raises illustrate this definition. However, the paucity of citations, a tendency to repeat the same legal points and frequently generalize, and her rather hurried conclusion expressing her concerns toward contemporary codification of Islamic law are unfortunate deficiencies in the book. Tucker is the feminist and the historian, but she is also a lawyer when she uses legal texts to reflect her concerns on gender in juristic debate. The problem may simply be one of methodology—how to read, understand, and apply these texts from different perpectives? If that is so, then perhaps it is a problem all of us who work with these texts continuously face.	5
Mona Siddiqui University of Glasgow

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