Kenneth M. Cuno.Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Egypt.

Abstract

Kenneth M. Cuno’s book is a most welcome addition to histories of the family in the Middle East. It builds on current historiographies, usually focused on transformations of family law or on the emergence of companionate marriage as the new notion of the ideal family. The preface opens with an anecdote that captures Cuno’s central observation: “Khedive Ismail had multiple wives and concubines . . . However, his grandson . . . practiced polygyny surreptitiously, like a man with a mistress in a legally monogamous society, even though polygyny remains legal in Egypt to this day” (xv). The overwhelming power of the idea of monogamy, by the turn of the twentieth century, had made polygyny a culturally unacceptable practice even for the ruler of the country. Cuno argues that “these hegemonic ideas . . . have only a limited connection with Islamic concepts of an earlier time . . . The idea of the conjugal family as the basis of society comes from Enlightenment thought, as does the notion that the purpose of marriage is the formation of a family and childrearing” (2). Yet, he rightly resists any simple projection of the emerging hegemony of the ideal conjugal family as a colonial import. As Cuno notes, “the transition to conjugal family households seems to have been caused by multiple factors, including the development of modern education, a rising age of marriage for both sexes, and the adoption of European architectural styles” (7).