Document Type
Article
Peer Reviewed
1
Abstract
Gender and gender roles routinely appear across different genres of Islamic literature. Since each genre’s handling of the subject of gender is evaluated within the borders of that genre, studies in the field have been based on specific texts or genres. The Ādāb-ı menāzil (“Manners of the Household”), written by ʿAbdü’l-Laṭīf ibn-i Ṭurmış Ḳaramānī (d. 1516), is a unique Ottoman Turkish text that brings together the perspectives of different genres. It is a book of morals, advice, and religious knowledge written for women, as Ḳaramānī explicitly declares in the preface. The work includes Qur’anic verses, hadiths, stories, and legends about every subject discussed, giving references for its sources. The Ādāb-ı menāzil provides advice to women and aims to regulate male-female relations in early modern Ottoman Turkish families and society by bringing evidence from a wide range of texts, from Islamic jurisprudence to hagiographies. This article examines how the Ādāb-ı menāzil compiles and brings together the gender perspectives of different genres of medieval Islamic literature. It also explores how Ḳaramānī reinforces prescribed gender roles in early modern Ottoman Turkish society by using medieval Arabic texts.
Acknowledgements
I presented the earlier version of this article at the International Workshop “Intersections of Gender and Genres in Medieval Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, September 19–20, 2022 within the framework of the research project, “Writing Religious, Transcultural, and Gendered Identities and Alterities in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean,” financed by the Spanish government and the European Union (ref. no. PGC2018-093472-B-C2, MICIU/AEI/FEDER). I am grateful to the participants, in particular Linda G. Jones, the organizer of the workshop, and anonymous reviewers for providing insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft. I am indebted to Tonicha Upham and Jonathan Hoare for their substantive comments and valuable input that helped shape this final version. When I first discovered the Ādāb-ı menāzil, I had constructive conversations with Rafet Atalay, who had written a doctoral dissertation on the text, and Ebu Hureyre Kam. I also would like to thank Dr. Atalay for sharing with me a copy of his dissertation and his knowledge in regard to the copies of the manuscript in Turkey.
Keywords
Ādāb-ı Menāzil, ‘Abdü’l-Laṭīf ibn-i Ṭurmış Karamānī, Ottoman adab literature, women’s advice literature, male-female relations, gender and Islamic literature
Recommended Citation
Felek, Özgen "Gender and Genres in the Ādāb-ı Menāzil." Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 61, No. 2 (2026)
