Elyse Semerdjian . “Off the Straight Path”: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo.(Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East.)Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press . 2008 . Pp. xxxviii, 247. $29.95.

Abstract

The importance of court registers for historians of the early modern Middle East has been recognized for some decades. In recent years, optimism about the potential of these sources has been tempered. As befits the present post-positivist intellectual climate, it has come to be recognized that court registers do not afford direct and unproblematic access to “social reality” and “popular culture” but must be interpreted in light of other sources. Elyse Semerdjian's study is primarily based on selected court registers in Aleppo from the early sixteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, but the author heeds the point that such evidence must be placed in a context reconstructed in part from more traditional source material. The first part of her book is devoted to what juridical works of the period tell us about zina, which she translates as “illicit sexual intercourse,” in Islamic and Ottoman law. The second part of her book is based on more original research into court registers and discusses the neighborhood policing of morality, court responses to sexual immorality (especially female prostitution), and court responses to rape and domestic violence. An important argument of this second part is that neighborhood policing of morality looms large in the court registers. Traditionally, such policing has been thought of as being imposed “top-down” by an Ottoman state that often held neighborhoods collectively responsible for behavior. Semerdjian effectively demolishes this position. The initiative behind morality prosecutions typically came from neighbors, and there is no evidence that the underlying motive was one of fear of punishment by the state.