From Concubines to Capitalists: Women, Property, and Power in Eighteenth-Century Cairo

This article shows how property rights granted to women under Islamic law empowered women in the eighteenth century. Elite women exercised their property rights to amass estates of considerable size. Their ownership, inheritance, and management of property as well as the importance of marriage alliances and concubinage to the reproduction of power enhanced women's power within households. Also, women supplied important elements of cohesion, stability, and continuity crucial to the household's survival. The major source for this study is the records of women's pious endowments (waqf), which provide detailed information about the donor's property as well as personal information about the donor, including her sexual and marital history, the household to which she belonged, and the relationships within her family and household.