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China
In 1644 the Chinese were conquered by the Qing, or Manchu dynasty from Manchuria. Qing rulers had mixed feelings about Chinese customs. On the one hand, they worked to re-integrate Confucian teachings (as we know, traditional Confucian gender roles were typically devastating for women) but they also believed themselves superior, forbade intermarriage between the Manchu and the Chinese, and had segregated schools. Manchu women were forbidden from foot binding, a painful Chinese practice left over from the Song dynasty.
The Qing dynasty was a period of expansion for the Chinese, leading to an influx of native people into the Chinese population. Conquests transformed Central Asia, a cosmopolitan center along the silk roads, now a hotbed for conflict between the nomadic pastoralists and infiltrating agricultural society.
Despite these changes and increasing diversity within the empire, Qing women saw little improvement to their daily lives, which was highly restricted and revolved around the domestic sphere and rearing strong sons. Women would often be one of several wives, or become a concubine. The Qing campaigned to promote the ideal of a virtuous woman.
Classically hypocritical, men who had many wives valued the chastity and virginity of women. Literature of the period demonstrates just how important this was. Poems and songs were pretty extreme in just how much they valued female purity. They included stories of women who were so loyal to their virtue that they committed suicide to avoid rape or chose not to remarry when their spouse died. None of these stories actually named these women– so they were likely demonstrative of the ideal woman, rather than any real women. But nonetheless, when the Qing government sought examples of “chaste widows,” families of the period nominated over 6,000 different women who were honored with a stone arch.
Poet Wanyan Yun Zhu (1771-1833) was an elite Chinese woman who married into the Manchu and was famous for reaching back and supporting other women. She was a patron of women’s literature and compiled poems written by other women. She also compiled biographies of important and moral Chinese women who lived exciting lives full of murder, sacrifice, and travels to exotic lands. The women she chose to include tell us a great deal about the pressure of chastity in her time. She selected faithful wives, submissive daughters, and other examples of ‘ideal” Chinese women.
In 1644 the Chinese were conquered by the Qing, or Manchu dynasty from Manchuria. Qing rulers had mixed feelings about Chinese customs. On the one hand, they worked to re-integrate Confucian teachings (as we know, traditional Confucian gender roles were typically devastating for women) but they also believed themselves superior, forbade intermarriage between the Manchu and the Chinese, and had segregated schools. Manchu women were forbidden from foot binding, a painful Chinese practice left over from the Song dynasty.
The Qing dynasty was a period of expansion for the Chinese, leading to an influx of native people into the Chinese population. Conquests transformed Central Asia, a cosmopolitan center along the silk roads, now a hotbed for conflict between the nomadic pastoralists and infiltrating agricultural society.
Despite these changes and increasing diversity within the empire, Qing women saw little improvement to their daily lives, which was highly restricted and revolved around the domestic sphere and rearing strong sons. Women would often be one of several wives, or become a concubine. The Qing campaigned to promote the ideal of a virtuous woman.
Classically hypocritical, men who had many wives valued the chastity and virginity of women. Literature of the period demonstrates just how important this was. Poems and songs were pretty extreme in just how much they valued female purity. They included stories of women who were so loyal to their virtue that they committed suicide to avoid rape or chose not to remarry when their spouse died. None of these stories actually named these women– so they were likely demonstrative of the ideal woman, rather than any real women. But nonetheless, when the Qing government sought examples of “chaste widows,” families of the period nominated over 6,000 different women who were honored with a stone arch.
Poet Wanyan Yun Zhu (1771-1833) was an elite Chinese woman who married into the Manchu and was famous for reaching back and supporting other women. She was a patron of women’s literature and compiled poems written by other women. She also compiled biographies of important and moral Chinese women who lived exciting lives full of murder, sacrifice, and travels to exotic lands. The women she chose to include tell us a great deal about the pressure of chastity in her time. She selected faithful wives, submissive daughters, and other examples of ‘ideal” Chinese women.
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Mughals
India’s Mughal empire fostered a new phase of interaction between the Islamic and Hindu cultures in South Asia. The Mughal leadership were Muslims, along with just 20% of the population, while the rest were solidly in the Hindu majority. Akbar, who ruled from 15 56–1605, clearly recognized that he needed to accommodate the Hindu majority. When he conquered north western India, he married several other princesses but did not force them to convert to Islam. He also supported the building of Hindu temples and made reforms on some Hindu restrictions on women that proved helpful to women’s status, including encouraging the remarriage of widows which was forbidden in many Hindu communities. He also discouraged child marriages. He persuaded merchants to set aside certain days for women to go to the market in relative seclusion. Akbar’s reforms were deemed too tolerant by some Muslim elite who wanted Hinduism eradicated. The philosopher Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi was one of Akbar's most vocal opponents. He blamed women from Sufi Islam and Hinduism for Akbar‘s deviation from the righteous path. He said, “because of their utter stupidity women pray to stones and idols and ask for their help. This practice is common, especially when smallpox strikes, and there’s hardly a woman who is not involved in this polytheistic practice.”
But when times demanded it, women did wield enormous power in Mughal society. For example, Nur Jahan was the favorite wife of Akbar’s successor, Emperor Jahangir, a raging drunk and opium addict. She became the power behind his throne meeting with dignitaries, consulting with ministers, and having coins issued in her name.
Anti-Hindu thinking found a champion in the Emperor Aurangzeb, who took a much less tolerant approach to establishing Islamic supremacy. Where Akbar had discouraged Hindu practices, Aurangzeb forbade them outright. Music and dance were banned at court; common vices like gambling, drinking, and prostitution were suppressed. Dancing girls were ordered to get married, and the custom of widows burning themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre was outlawed.
The fracturing religious tensions in the empire opened the way for the British takeover a century and a half later.
Southeast Asia
In Southeast Asia, Muslim women continued to hold significant political power. In Sumatra, many women ruled in the late 17 century, resulting in the male patriarchy banning women from exercising any political power. In Java, elite Muslim women served politcal roles in Royal courts. And in Indonesia, women had substantive contributions to the economy as laborers, consumers, and shopkeepers–beyond their domestic responsibilities.
Ottomans
To the west, the Ottoman Empire controlled most of the modern Middle East. Muslim reformers sought to restrict women’s religious gatherings. Turkish women were able to keep some of the social power they enjoyed in their pastoral societies, but they remained uncounted, and unconsidered in imperial censuses.
Elite Turkish women were increasingly veiled. Veiling is seen by some as an oppressive practice used to hide female bodies and show male ownership of them. For others, the veil provided women the freedom to simply be themselves, display their devotion, and be measured by their intellect and not their faces.
There was no doubt, however, that the empire was changing as it expanded. More and more enslaved women from the Caucasus mountains and the Sudan entered into the empire, diversifying the population. By 1839, the empire was becoming more modern with reforms across most systems.
As the empire industrialized, many working class women worked full time jobs in factories, especially in rug production. This was a craft they had long worked on and followed as it modernized. Women working in factories doubled between 1880 and 1900.
For example, in 1880, workers in Usak numbered 3,000 women and 500 girls; by 1900 their total had increased to 6,000. In the final years of the century, rug production shifted from home workshops to large factories employing thousands of women, including girls as young as four years of age. Workdays were long: eleven hours for all but the youngest girls. Some women walked to work, others lived in dormitories furnished by the factory. In 1908, mobs of women pulled the rug out from under these mills, protesting against the move to factory production, as home working fit better with their lifestyles and culture. In addition to rug making, Muslim and non-Muslim Ottoman women worked in the shoe, silk, and cigarette industries. Men and women worked side by side in many factories, even though the textile, rug, and cigarette industries were classified as women's work. The large numbers of women and girls working in Ottoman factories drove wages down and helped make those industries more competitive with European producers. One European report described women's labor as “cheaper than water,” usually costing less than half that of male workers.
Tanzimat reforms created increased educational opportunities for some Ottoman women. The first state school for girls opened in 1858 , and others followed over the next few decades. An 1869 decree made primary education compulsory for both boys and girls aged six to ten, though its implementation was limited. In 1870 the Teacher Training College for Girls opened, which prepared women as teachers for girls' schools; over the next forty years it would graduate over seven hundred instructors. Prior to this time girls received instruction in their homes or in classes held in the homes of educated women. Missionary schools and the schools of the empire's non-Muslim minority communities were also important sources of education for women. As small but growing numbers of women received an education, a variety of publications specifically targeting them began to appear. In 1870 the first women's periodical was published as a weekly supplement to a reformist newspaper, and others followed over the next few decades. These publications were rarely radical, focusing instead on family-related issues, religion, needlework, and noteworthy women, both Muslim and non-Muslim. The first published defense of Ottoman women's rights, Fatma Aliye's ‘Nisvan-i Islam’
(Women of Islam), appeared in 1891. Aliye was the daughter of the influential grand vizier and historian Ahmed Cevdet Pasa . She received an excellent education, and her numerous works of literature open a fascinating window onto women's experiences in the final years of the empire. The first Ottoman Women's Organization was founded in 1876 by the wife of an influential government official, who wanted to help wounded soldiers. Other organizations with similar charitable objectives were founded over the next several years. Only after 1908 did organizations concerned with more civil issues, such as women's education and suffrage, begin to appear. Minority Ottoman women also organized associations toward the end of the 1800s, and some international women's organizations like the Young Women's Christian Association were active in the capital, though they worked mostly with non-Muslim girls and women. In general, before the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Ottoman women did not engage with the broader international women's movement, but there was clearly some internal moving and shaking happening.
In the late 1800s, like everywhere else in the world, scholars and government officials debated the status of women in Ottoman society. They were critical of traditional Ottoman practices and began to shift toward “Western,” practices. They championed the “new” woman would help the nation succeed in the modern world; the “traditional” woman, in contrast, was trapped in the antiquated traditions of the past and progress. One of the common tropes of the early 1900s was the image of an old hag, who symbolized traditional culture, contrasted with a young Westernized woman of the future. This vision of womanhood was championed by the political group called the Young Turks. The Young Turks stated, “Women must be liberated from the shackles of tradition.” Women's status in the cities improved a bit, and women began to participate in public social activities, education improved, and women earned positions in professional roles like lawyers and doctors. Public spaces like restaurants were segregated to allow women to participate. In 1917, marriage laws change to become more secular, rather than religious. But in rural parts of the empire, traditional values prevailed. During WWI, the government created the Society for the Employment of Muslim Women, to fix the wartime labor shortages and encouraging women to work in the Battalions of Women Workers. In six months 14,000 women in Istanbul had applied for employment through the society! Like elsewhere, this brought women of all classes into the workforce previously dominated by men. The Ottoman Empire collapsed after WWI and the War of Turkish Independence (1919 –1923).
In that war, women like Halide Edib Adivar and Nakiye Elgun played a public role in the war. Adivar served as a corporal, sergeant, and after the war became an important author, and member of parliament. The secular Turkish Republic, which was established on 29 October 1923 , produced significant new political, social, and economic opportunities for Turkish women.
India’s Mughal empire fostered a new phase of interaction between the Islamic and Hindu cultures in South Asia. The Mughal leadership were Muslims, along with just 20% of the population, while the rest were solidly in the Hindu majority. Akbar, who ruled from 15 56–1605, clearly recognized that he needed to accommodate the Hindu majority. When he conquered north western India, he married several other princesses but did not force them to convert to Islam. He also supported the building of Hindu temples and made reforms on some Hindu restrictions on women that proved helpful to women’s status, including encouraging the remarriage of widows which was forbidden in many Hindu communities. He also discouraged child marriages. He persuaded merchants to set aside certain days for women to go to the market in relative seclusion. Akbar’s reforms were deemed too tolerant by some Muslim elite who wanted Hinduism eradicated. The philosopher Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi was one of Akbar's most vocal opponents. He blamed women from Sufi Islam and Hinduism for Akbar‘s deviation from the righteous path. He said, “because of their utter stupidity women pray to stones and idols and ask for their help. This practice is common, especially when smallpox strikes, and there’s hardly a woman who is not involved in this polytheistic practice.”
But when times demanded it, women did wield enormous power in Mughal society. For example, Nur Jahan was the favorite wife of Akbar’s successor, Emperor Jahangir, a raging drunk and opium addict. She became the power behind his throne meeting with dignitaries, consulting with ministers, and having coins issued in her name.
Anti-Hindu thinking found a champion in the Emperor Aurangzeb, who took a much less tolerant approach to establishing Islamic supremacy. Where Akbar had discouraged Hindu practices, Aurangzeb forbade them outright. Music and dance were banned at court; common vices like gambling, drinking, and prostitution were suppressed. Dancing girls were ordered to get married, and the custom of widows burning themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre was outlawed.
The fracturing religious tensions in the empire opened the way for the British takeover a century and a half later.
Southeast Asia
In Southeast Asia, Muslim women continued to hold significant political power. In Sumatra, many women ruled in the late 17 century, resulting in the male patriarchy banning women from exercising any political power. In Java, elite Muslim women served politcal roles in Royal courts. And in Indonesia, women had substantive contributions to the economy as laborers, consumers, and shopkeepers–beyond their domestic responsibilities.
Ottomans
To the west, the Ottoman Empire controlled most of the modern Middle East. Muslim reformers sought to restrict women’s religious gatherings. Turkish women were able to keep some of the social power they enjoyed in their pastoral societies, but they remained uncounted, and unconsidered in imperial censuses.
Elite Turkish women were increasingly veiled. Veiling is seen by some as an oppressive practice used to hide female bodies and show male ownership of them. For others, the veil provided women the freedom to simply be themselves, display their devotion, and be measured by their intellect and not their faces.
There was no doubt, however, that the empire was changing as it expanded. More and more enslaved women from the Caucasus mountains and the Sudan entered into the empire, diversifying the population. By 1839, the empire was becoming more modern with reforms across most systems.
As the empire industrialized, many working class women worked full time jobs in factories, especially in rug production. This was a craft they had long worked on and followed as it modernized. Women working in factories doubled between 1880 and 1900.
For example, in 1880, workers in Usak numbered 3,000 women and 500 girls; by 1900 their total had increased to 6,000. In the final years of the century, rug production shifted from home workshops to large factories employing thousands of women, including girls as young as four years of age. Workdays were long: eleven hours for all but the youngest girls. Some women walked to work, others lived in dormitories furnished by the factory. In 1908, mobs of women pulled the rug out from under these mills, protesting against the move to factory production, as home working fit better with their lifestyles and culture. In addition to rug making, Muslim and non-Muslim Ottoman women worked in the shoe, silk, and cigarette industries. Men and women worked side by side in many factories, even though the textile, rug, and cigarette industries were classified as women's work. The large numbers of women and girls working in Ottoman factories drove wages down and helped make those industries more competitive with European producers. One European report described women's labor as “cheaper than water,” usually costing less than half that of male workers.
Tanzimat reforms created increased educational opportunities for some Ottoman women. The first state school for girls opened in 1858 , and others followed over the next few decades. An 1869 decree made primary education compulsory for both boys and girls aged six to ten, though its implementation was limited. In 1870 the Teacher Training College for Girls opened, which prepared women as teachers for girls' schools; over the next forty years it would graduate over seven hundred instructors. Prior to this time girls received instruction in their homes or in classes held in the homes of educated women. Missionary schools and the schools of the empire's non-Muslim minority communities were also important sources of education for women. As small but growing numbers of women received an education, a variety of publications specifically targeting them began to appear. In 1870 the first women's periodical was published as a weekly supplement to a reformist newspaper, and others followed over the next few decades. These publications were rarely radical, focusing instead on family-related issues, religion, needlework, and noteworthy women, both Muslim and non-Muslim. The first published defense of Ottoman women's rights, Fatma Aliye's ‘Nisvan-i Islam’
(Women of Islam), appeared in 1891. Aliye was the daughter of the influential grand vizier and historian Ahmed Cevdet Pasa . She received an excellent education, and her numerous works of literature open a fascinating window onto women's experiences in the final years of the empire. The first Ottoman Women's Organization was founded in 1876 by the wife of an influential government official, who wanted to help wounded soldiers. Other organizations with similar charitable objectives were founded over the next several years. Only after 1908 did organizations concerned with more civil issues, such as women's education and suffrage, begin to appear. Minority Ottoman women also organized associations toward the end of the 1800s, and some international women's organizations like the Young Women's Christian Association were active in the capital, though they worked mostly with non-Muslim girls and women. In general, before the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Ottoman women did not engage with the broader international women's movement, but there was clearly some internal moving and shaking happening.
In the late 1800s, like everywhere else in the world, scholars and government officials debated the status of women in Ottoman society. They were critical of traditional Ottoman practices and began to shift toward “Western,” practices. They championed the “new” woman would help the nation succeed in the modern world; the “traditional” woman, in contrast, was trapped in the antiquated traditions of the past and progress. One of the common tropes of the early 1900s was the image of an old hag, who symbolized traditional culture, contrasted with a young Westernized woman of the future. This vision of womanhood was championed by the political group called the Young Turks. The Young Turks stated, “Women must be liberated from the shackles of tradition.” Women's status in the cities improved a bit, and women began to participate in public social activities, education improved, and women earned positions in professional roles like lawyers and doctors. Public spaces like restaurants were segregated to allow women to participate. In 1917, marriage laws change to become more secular, rather than religious. But in rural parts of the empire, traditional values prevailed. During WWI, the government created the Society for the Employment of Muslim Women, to fix the wartime labor shortages and encouraging women to work in the Battalions of Women Workers. In six months 14,000 women in Istanbul had applied for employment through the society! Like elsewhere, this brought women of all classes into the workforce previously dominated by men. The Ottoman Empire collapsed after WWI and the War of Turkish Independence (1919 –1923).
In that war, women like Halide Edib Adivar and Nakiye Elgun played a public role in the war. Adivar served as a corporal, sergeant, and after the war became an important author, and member of parliament. The secular Turkish Republic, which was established on 29 October 1923 , produced significant new political, social, and economic opportunities for Turkish women.
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Lady Montagu
One remarkable woman who bridged the gap between East and West was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. (née Pierrepont; 1689 – 1762). Lady Wortley was an English aristocrat, writer, and poet. Today, she is mainly remembered for her letters, particularly her Turkish Embassy Letters describing her travels to the Ottoman Empire as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey. These have been described as "the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient." Aside from her writing, Lady Mary is also known for introducing and advocating for smallpox inoculation to Britain after her return from Turkey. She is also notable for her travels; her scandalous love life; and her progressive views on women’s education, slavery, and Islam. Montagu shared with other philosophers a celebration of Islam for what they saw as its rational approach to theology, its strict monotheism, and its teaching and practice around religious tolerance. In short, Montagu and other thinkers in this tradition saw Islam as a source of Enlightenment, as evidenced in her calling the Qur'an "the purest morality delivered in the very best language." By comparison, Montagu dedicated large portions of the Turkish Embassy Letters to criticizing Catholic religious practices, particularly Catholic beliefs around sainthood, miracles, and religious relics, which she frequently denounced. At a time when many Western Christians viewed Islam as the enemy and its followers as barbarians, her understanding of the religion was astounding and nuanced and disproved the myth that Christians and Muslims had always been adversaries.
During Montagu's time in the Ottoman Empire, she also saw and wrote extensively concerning the practice of slavery and the treatment of slaves by the Turks. She wrote frequently and positively about the various enslaved people that she saw in the elite circles of Istanbul, including eunuchs and large collections of serving and dancing girls dressed in expensive outfits. In one of her letters written back home, famously from the interior of a bath house, she dismissed the idea that slaves of the Ottoman elite should be figures to be pitied. In response to her visit to the slave market in Istanbul, she wrote "you will imagine me half a Turk when I don't speak of it with the same horror other Christians have done before me, but I cannot forbear applauding the humanity of the Turks to those creatures. They are never ill-used, and their slavery is in my opinion no worse than servitude all over the world." This again strongly contrasted with the reports of other travelers at the time who presented the Muslims as barbaric savages.
During her time in the Empire, Mary was sincerely charmed by the beauty, style and hospitality of the Ottoman women she encountered. Montagu constantly praised the "warmth and civility" of Ottoman women. She described the hammam, a Turkish bath, "as a space of urbane homosociality, free of cruel satire and disdain", and said that "hammam are remarkable for their undisguised admiration of the women's beauty and demeanor," which creates a space for female authority. She recorded a particularly amusing incident in which a group of Turkish women at a bath in Sofia, horrified by the sight of the corset she was wearing, exclaimed that "they believed I was so locked up in that machine that it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my husband."
Lady Mary wrote about the misconceptions that previous travelers, specifically male travelers, had recorded about the religion, traditions and the treatment of women in the Ottoman Empire. Mary’s gender and class status provided her with access to female spaces that were closed off to men, and thus enabled her to provide a more accurate account of the lived reality of Turkish women. This at times was undeniably “more a critique of the Occident than a praise of the Orient.” The title of her published letters is "Sources that Have Been Inaccessible to Other Travelers." The letters themselves frequently draw attention to the fact that they present a different, and Montagu asserts more accurate, description than that provided by previous (male) travelers: "You will perhaps be surpriz'd at an Account so different from what you have been entertained with by the common Voyage-writers who are very fond of speaking of what they don't know." In general, Montagu dismisses the quality of European travel literature of the 18th century as nothing more than "trite observations…superficial…[of] boys [who] only remember where they met with the best wine or the prettiest women."
Although Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is now best known for her Turkish Embassy Letters, she wrote poetry and essays as well. A number of Lady Mary's poems and essays were printed in her lifetime, either without or with her permission, in newspapers, in miscellanies, and independently. They covered many topics including politics, science, feminism, religion, philosophy, gossip, love, and everything inbetween.
A pioneering scientist, feminist, explorer, religious scholar, writer, potential queer icon, and all round powerhouse, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu deserves the same fame as Dr. Jenner, who so often steals her credit for protecting Britain from smallpox!
One remarkable woman who bridged the gap between East and West was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. (née Pierrepont; 1689 – 1762). Lady Wortley was an English aristocrat, writer, and poet. Today, she is mainly remembered for her letters, particularly her Turkish Embassy Letters describing her travels to the Ottoman Empire as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey. These have been described as "the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient." Aside from her writing, Lady Mary is also known for introducing and advocating for smallpox inoculation to Britain after her return from Turkey. She is also notable for her travels; her scandalous love life; and her progressive views on women’s education, slavery, and Islam. Montagu shared with other philosophers a celebration of Islam for what they saw as its rational approach to theology, its strict monotheism, and its teaching and practice around religious tolerance. In short, Montagu and other thinkers in this tradition saw Islam as a source of Enlightenment, as evidenced in her calling the Qur'an "the purest morality delivered in the very best language." By comparison, Montagu dedicated large portions of the Turkish Embassy Letters to criticizing Catholic religious practices, particularly Catholic beliefs around sainthood, miracles, and religious relics, which she frequently denounced. At a time when many Western Christians viewed Islam as the enemy and its followers as barbarians, her understanding of the religion was astounding and nuanced and disproved the myth that Christians and Muslims had always been adversaries.
During Montagu's time in the Ottoman Empire, she also saw and wrote extensively concerning the practice of slavery and the treatment of slaves by the Turks. She wrote frequently and positively about the various enslaved people that she saw in the elite circles of Istanbul, including eunuchs and large collections of serving and dancing girls dressed in expensive outfits. In one of her letters written back home, famously from the interior of a bath house, she dismissed the idea that slaves of the Ottoman elite should be figures to be pitied. In response to her visit to the slave market in Istanbul, she wrote "you will imagine me half a Turk when I don't speak of it with the same horror other Christians have done before me, but I cannot forbear applauding the humanity of the Turks to those creatures. They are never ill-used, and their slavery is in my opinion no worse than servitude all over the world." This again strongly contrasted with the reports of other travelers at the time who presented the Muslims as barbaric savages.
During her time in the Empire, Mary was sincerely charmed by the beauty, style and hospitality of the Ottoman women she encountered. Montagu constantly praised the "warmth and civility" of Ottoman women. She described the hammam, a Turkish bath, "as a space of urbane homosociality, free of cruel satire and disdain", and said that "hammam are remarkable for their undisguised admiration of the women's beauty and demeanor," which creates a space for female authority. She recorded a particularly amusing incident in which a group of Turkish women at a bath in Sofia, horrified by the sight of the corset she was wearing, exclaimed that "they believed I was so locked up in that machine that it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my husband."
Lady Mary wrote about the misconceptions that previous travelers, specifically male travelers, had recorded about the religion, traditions and the treatment of women in the Ottoman Empire. Mary’s gender and class status provided her with access to female spaces that were closed off to men, and thus enabled her to provide a more accurate account of the lived reality of Turkish women. This at times was undeniably “more a critique of the Occident than a praise of the Orient.” The title of her published letters is "Sources that Have Been Inaccessible to Other Travelers." The letters themselves frequently draw attention to the fact that they present a different, and Montagu asserts more accurate, description than that provided by previous (male) travelers: "You will perhaps be surpriz'd at an Account so different from what you have been entertained with by the common Voyage-writers who are very fond of speaking of what they don't know." In general, Montagu dismisses the quality of European travel literature of the 18th century as nothing more than "trite observations…superficial…[of] boys [who] only remember where they met with the best wine or the prettiest women."
Although Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is now best known for her Turkish Embassy Letters, she wrote poetry and essays as well. A number of Lady Mary's poems and essays were printed in her lifetime, either without or with her permission, in newspapers, in miscellanies, and independently. They covered many topics including politics, science, feminism, religion, philosophy, gossip, love, and everything inbetween.
A pioneering scientist, feminist, explorer, religious scholar, writer, potential queer icon, and all round powerhouse, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu deserves the same fame as Dr. Jenner, who so often steals her credit for protecting Britain from smallpox!
Wahhabism
In the early 1700s, an Islamic scholar, Muhammad Ibn Abd Abdullah al-Wahab worked to address the weakening Ottoman empire through a return to what he saw as traditional Islamic thinking– the way women had been treated under Muhammad. He showed preference for Aisha’s contributions to the Hadith and for women’s agency. He believed women were spiritually equal to men and made no exceptions to the five daily prayers during menstruation, generally considered a positive because others considered menstruating women filthy. But the effect of Wahhabism varied greatly from his ideas— and for women, Wahhabism came to mean more patriarchy. Wahhabism spread from the Saudi Arabian peninsula throughout the Islamic world.
The Wahhabi movement found political headway when it was backed by a Saudi Arabian ruler. The result was the destruction of idols, the burning of books, the banning of vices, and the distraction of “non-authorized“ texts. Climates such as these are often dangerous for women. Wahhabism emphasized the rights of women within the patriarchal framework; he also returned to traditional Islam where women had the right to consent to their marriages and power over their finances and divorce.
One particularly problematic trait of Wahhabism was it’s return to “traditional” Islam for forcible control of women’s sexuality and ancient tribal punishments of sexually promiscuous women. “Promiscuity” could be anything from having a child out of wedlock, to adultery, to prostitution and everything in between. Women would be dragged by their male relations, before all male judges and juries, using only male witnesses to defend their actions. Women convicted would be subjected to a horrendous punishment like being buried up to their necks in dirt and then having stones hurled at their head until they died by those intimate relations closest to them.
Wahhabism still thrives in parts of the Islamic world today, but to truly understand it would take a much deeper exploration than offered here.
[Setting up the Inquiry] By the end of this era, so much remained in question. What changes did these empires endure and how did they impact the everyday lives of women - good and bad? What new freedoms did they allow women? How did the different ways women were treated influence the international relations between the diverging industrialized world?
In the early 1700s, an Islamic scholar, Muhammad Ibn Abd Abdullah al-Wahab worked to address the weakening Ottoman empire through a return to what he saw as traditional Islamic thinking– the way women had been treated under Muhammad. He showed preference for Aisha’s contributions to the Hadith and for women’s agency. He believed women were spiritually equal to men and made no exceptions to the five daily prayers during menstruation, generally considered a positive because others considered menstruating women filthy. But the effect of Wahhabism varied greatly from his ideas— and for women, Wahhabism came to mean more patriarchy. Wahhabism spread from the Saudi Arabian peninsula throughout the Islamic world.
The Wahhabi movement found political headway when it was backed by a Saudi Arabian ruler. The result was the destruction of idols, the burning of books, the banning of vices, and the distraction of “non-authorized“ texts. Climates such as these are often dangerous for women. Wahhabism emphasized the rights of women within the patriarchal framework; he also returned to traditional Islam where women had the right to consent to their marriages and power over their finances and divorce.
One particularly problematic trait of Wahhabism was it’s return to “traditional” Islam for forcible control of women’s sexuality and ancient tribal punishments of sexually promiscuous women. “Promiscuity” could be anything from having a child out of wedlock, to adultery, to prostitution and everything in between. Women would be dragged by their male relations, before all male judges and juries, using only male witnesses to defend their actions. Women convicted would be subjected to a horrendous punishment like being buried up to their necks in dirt and then having stones hurled at their head until they died by those intimate relations closest to them.
Wahhabism still thrives in parts of the Islamic world today, but to truly understand it would take a much deeper exploration than offered here.
[Setting up the Inquiry] By the end of this era, so much remained in question. What changes did these empires endure and how did they impact the everyday lives of women - good and bad? What new freedoms did they allow women? How did the different ways women were treated influence the international relations between the diverging industrialized world?
Draw your own conclusions
Power Point for Teachers
Include the basics in what you already teach.
Bibliography
Natana J. Delong-Bas. Wahhabi Islam : From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. https://search-ebscohost-com.libproxy.plymouth.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=176916&site=ehost-live.
Mann, Susan L.. "89. Biographies of Exemplary Women" In Hawai‘i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture edited by Victor H. Mair, Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt and Paul R. Goldin, 607-613. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824852351-096.
Li, Xiaorong. “Gender and Textual Politics during the Qing Dynasty: The Case of the Zhengshi Ji.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 69, no. 1 (2009): 75–107. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40213692.
"Qing Dynasty: Social Classes, Laws & Economy." Study.com. November 26, 2017. https://study.com/academy/lesson/qing-dynasty-social-classes-laws-economy.html.
Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
"Women in the Qing Dynasty." Study.com. December 14, 2021. https://study.com/academy/lesson/women-in-the-qing-dynasty.html.
Mann, Susan L.. "89. Biographies of Exemplary Women" In Hawai‘i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture edited by Victor H. Mair, Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt and Paul R. Goldin, 607-613. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824852351-096.
Li, Xiaorong. “Gender and Textual Politics during the Qing Dynasty: The Case of the Zhengshi Ji.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 69, no. 1 (2009): 75–107. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40213692.
"Qing Dynasty: Social Classes, Laws & Economy." Study.com. November 26, 2017. https://study.com/academy/lesson/qing-dynasty-social-classes-laws-economy.html.
Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
"Women in the Qing Dynasty." Study.com. December 14, 2021. https://study.com/academy/lesson/women-in-the-qing-dynasty.html.
Primary AUTHOR: |
Kelsie Brook Eckert
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Primary Reviewer: |
Jacqui Nelson
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Consulting Team |
Editors |
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Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer, Consultant Professor of History at Maryville University. Chloe Gardner, Consultant PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University Dr. Whitney Howarth, Consultant Former Professor of History at Plymouth State University Jacqui Nelson, Consultant Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University Maria Concepcion Marquez Sandoval PhD Candidate in History at Arizona University |
Amy Flanders
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy Ron Kaiser Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy Chris Canfield Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy ReviewersAncient:
Dr. Kristin Heineman Professor of History at Colorado State University Dr. Bonnie Rock-McCutcheon Professor of History at Wilson College Sarah Stone PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University Medieval: Dr. Katherine Koh Professor of History at La Sierra University Dr. Jonathan Couser Professor of History at Plymouth State University Dr. Shahla Haeri Professor of History at Boston University Lauren Cole PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University Modern: Dr. Jack Gronau Professor of History at Northeastern University |
© The Remedial Herstory Project 2022
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