Her Day in Court

This book is a study of the historical record of Muslim womens property rights and equity. Based on Islamic court documents of fifteenth-century Granadadocuments that show a high degree of womens involvementthe book examines womens legal entitlements to acquire property as well as the social and economic significance of these rights to Granadas female population and, by extension, to women in other Islamic societies. The microhistory of womens property rights is placed in a comparative historical, social, and economic context and is examined using a theoretical framework that suggests how this books conclusions might coexist with the Islamic feminist discourse on the law as a patriarchal system, serving to highlight both the uniqueness and the limitations of the Islamic case. The specifics presented in the case studies reveal the broader structures, constructs, rules, conditions, factors, and paradigms that shaped womens property rights under Islamic law. They show that womens property rights were more than just part of a legal system; they were the product of a legal philosophy and a pervasive paradigm that made property ownership a normal construct of the Muslim womans legal persona and a norm of her existence.