UC Davis

This dissertation examines the various constructions of Muslim womanhood in early modern Ottoman society. Centering the discussion around the transformation of Islam and using the confessionalization paradigm as a heuristic tool, this dissertation argues that in the seventeenth century particular manuscript pieces found in mecmuas (religious compilations; The Story: This Story Declares the Rights of Men Over Women, These Hadiths Proclaim the Conditions/States of Women, The Testament of the Prophet for Fâtıma and a sermon/testament [vasiyyet] of Kadızade Mehmed Efendi) propagated a husband-centric and domestically oriented Islam for women. These manuscript pieces are numerous and found in various libraries in Turkey and Bosnia. This discourse created greater intolerance, a punitive character, and restricted practices for Muslim women, which is strikingly different from the idealized image of Muslim womanhood constructed in pre-sixteenth-century epic religious narratives (Epic of the Girl, Epic of the Woman, and Epic of Fâtıma) written in Old Anatolian Turkish. By comparing pre-sixteenth-century religious texts with those from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and discussing a book about Sufi woman written for Hatice Turhan Sultan (A Sultanic Gift), this dissertation shows the shifts that happened over time in the construction of idealized Muslim womanhood in religious texts. Since it is crucial to acknowledge that religious texts were not the only medium constructing womanhood, this study also incorporates diverse literary and visual sources produced in the late medieval and early modern periods to illustrate the multifaceted constructions of womanhood in Ottoman society, which offers a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of the topic. By gendering the transformation of Ottoman Islam, this research addresses a significant gap in existing literature and provides a nuanced comprehension of the construction of womanhood in early modern Ottoman society.