A man and a woman get married and consummate the union. After the wedding night, the man claims that his bride was already deflowered and sends her back to her family. He proceeds to kidnap his wife’s sister, who is already married, and asks to annul his marriage. His wife maintains that she was a virgin. Is her testimony accepted in court? Rather surprisingly, the court believes the woman, stating that virginity can be lost by jumping, age, or menstruation. The husband must pay the dowry and cannot annul the marriage. Furthermore, he must return his wife’s sister to her husband’s home and will be imprisoned until he does so. Through fatwas, or legal opinions, like that of Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, the seventeenth-century jurist quoted above, In the House of the Law examines how law shaped gender roles in Palestine and Syria during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Challenging prevailing views on Islam and gender as well as contemporary Islamist interpretations of the tradition, Judith Tucker shows that Islamic law was more fluid and flexible than has generally been thought. Using primary materials previously unmined by scholars, Tucker explores the ways in which Islamic legal thinkers and the court system understood the message of Islam for women and gender relations. Tucker’s conclusions will surprise many. She finds that by using the rich textual heritage of the law, jurists considered cases within the larger frame of the community, drawing on different legal elements depending on the situation, and resulting in opinions that often championed women’s rights and mitigated gender distinctions.

Judith E. Tucker is professor of history at Georgetown University. She is the author of Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (1985) and the editor of Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers (1993).