Problems in the Historiography of Women in the Middle East: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Egypt

Abstract

The study of women in the history of the Middle East has been subject, until recent times, to a benign neglect born of the general of scholarship in the field and common misconceptions, shared by historians of other regions as well, about the study of women. First and foremost, the general backwardness of Middle East historiography, widely attested to in periodic surveys of the state of the art, consigned women, along wiht many other groups and classes in society, to a minor, if not totally insignificant, place in history. Concentration on visible political institutions, diplomatic events, and intellectual currents of the high, as opposed to popular, culture effectively wrote all but upper-class males out of the historical process. That Middle East history remained, to a large extent, confined to this rather narrow sphere long after historians of Europe and the Far East had embarked on studies of social and economic history is related to the origins and the orientation of the field itself.