Outside the Palace Walls: Daily Life

Abstract

For almost a century following the foundation of Cairo, Egypt enjoyed a period of economic prosperity that, coupled with political and administrative stability, contributed, notwithstanding a broader demographic decline that had affected Egypt and Syria since the eighth century, to a relative growth in urban population. The famous Fatimid physician Ibn Ridwan provides us with a vivid description of eleventh-century living conditions amongst the people inhabiting the main sections of the Fatimid capital: Fustat, al-Qarafa and Cairo. This chapter explores daily life outside the palace walls during the Fatimid dynasty. It first looks at sects and religious diversity in the Fatimid capital and its environs and then discusses houses and housekeeping, women's restrictions under the imam-caliph al-Hakim, and free and slave women. It also focuses on women's education and educated women, women's legal rights, marriage and divorce, inheritance, crime and punishment, feminine hygiene and sexuality in legal theory and medical practice, contraception, and purity laws and personal hygiene.