Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 9609
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Shatzmiller , Maya.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Women and Wage Labour in the Medieval Islamic West: Legal Issues in an Economic Context
  • Source: Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 40, 2 (May 1997): Pages 174 - 206.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Journal Article
  • Subject (See Also): Contracts Economics Fatwas, Legal Pronouncements Islam Law Muslims Wages Wet Nurses Work
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: Iberia;Northern Africa
  • Century: 11- 12- 13- 14- 15
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table:
  • Abstract: The evidence of the late medieval period, 11th-15th centuries, indicates that women's participation in the labour market was both considerable and diversified. This paper studies whether and how women's wage labour was affected, controlled, and regulated by laws, courts, and judges, by using an array of Maliki legal sources from Muslim Spain and North Africa. It shows the existence of a legal approach straddling a strict application of the law of the "ijara," with adjustments to family law and admission of customary law, but more importantly, an approach inspired and adapted to the framework of women's property rights and therefore beneficial to them. [Reproduced by permission of Brill].
  • Related Resources:
  • Author's Affiliation: University of Western Ontario
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1997.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 00224995