Women, Gender, and the Palace Households in Ottoman Tunisia by Amy Aisen Kallander

Abstract

248 BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS sultan and placed among the nobility. Usually taken at early age from ten years and over, female slaves particularly were either married to abid al-Bukhari or placed under wealthy aristocratic families for apprenticeship and future employment in the sultan’s palace. While chapter 5 reveals the various roles of slave women in Moroccan society, chapter 6 highlights the changing roles of the abid al-Bukhari and their demographic impact on the black population in Morocco. In chapter 7, El Hamel examines the protracted process of the abolition of slavery and the slave trade that followed Morocco’s ’s reluctance to succumb to European abolitionist pressure that prevailed in North Africa. The final chapter establishes links between Gnawa, referring to slaves who originated from various West African zones during the era of the slave trade, and Gnawa music, which illustrates the extent to which enslaved West Africans culturally enriched Moroccan society. Overall, this book has done well in engaging both the rich array of Arabic and European primary sources and the local Maghribi scholarship that adheres to a classic view of slavery in the Muslim context as benign and free of racial stereotypes and discrimination. The book is well written and insightful in its analysis. In terms of organization, the chapters would have aligned more evenly and neatly by dividing the book into three parts instead of two. That said, El Hamel has written a useful and important work that is bound to stimulate more research on slavery and its legacy not only in Morocco and the Maghreb region but also in the broader Muslim context. Scholars and students of slavery and the African diaspora elsewhere will find this book highly useful for its comparative value. ISMAEL M. MONTANA Northern Illinois University KALLANDER, AMY AISEN. WOMEN, GENDER, AND THE PALACE HOUSEHOLDS IN OTTOMAN TUNISIA. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN 2013 In her 2013 book Women, Gender, and the Palace Households in Ottoman Tunisia Amy Kallander, an American historian focusing on gender issues in the Middle East, examines family life in the beylical palace in Bardo, mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her book is based on broad archival research in Tunisia and France, and Kallander’s carefully scrutinised source material consists of account books, diplomatic correspondence and accounts by European diplomats and travellers, which she supports with a number of maps, reproductions of drawings and colonial postcards, her own photographs of the palace in Bardo, and tables and statistics. The supplementary information in the book is excellent BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS 249 and consists of a short chronology of the important dates, a glossary, index, and three appendices which greatly facilitate the reading process, especially the one presenting the genealogy of the families covered in the book. In this study of the social history of an elite family, Kallander covers a wide range of topics, ranging from Orientalism and marriage politics to the history of food, and she refreshingly points out the many similarities between palace life in Tunisia and the European monarchies. Among other things, she provides detailed descriptions of how the Tunisian beys and their families lived; in what quarters and with whom they lived; how they organised their days and financed their lives; how they travelled, married, and entertained – and, most importantly, what their political influence was in Ottoman Tunisia. According to Kallander, during that period Bardo housed around 1500 inhabitants belonging to the family and entourage of the bey, with the whole household comprising 4000 people at its peak. She observes that the 1500 members of the beylical family lived separately, divided into individual family units. Through the many details that she provides, Kallander paints a stimulating and convincing picture of court culture under the Husaynid family. In addition to palace life, Kallander also analyses the question of female agency, i.e. the various ways in which women belonging to the palace could attain and sustain different forms of power, as well as the European reaction to their influence. Kallander’s book historicises the pre-colonial and colonial obsession with women’s status, which, she claims, during the 19th century became “increasingly a barometer by which foreigners judged Tunisian civilization...