Beshara B. Doumani uses a variety of local sources to examine everyday family life throughout the Ottoman Empire.

1. Maryam's final word; 2. Hamida's children come of age: the shari¿a court and its archives; 3. The different designs of Husayn and ¿Abd al-Wahid: the waqf as a family charter; 4. Good deeds: the family waqf as a social act; 5. Who's in? Who's out? The waqf as a boundary marker; 6. Property and gender: the political economy of difference; 7. Fatima's determination; Bibliography; Index.

Beshara B. Doumani is a Professor of History and Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, Rhode Island. His research focuses on groups, places, and time periods marginalized by mainstream scholarship on the early modern and modern Middle East. He also writes on the topics of displacement, academic freedom, politics of knowledge production, and the Palestinian condition. His books include Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (1995), and he is the editor of Academic Freedom after September 11 (2006) and Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property and Gender (2003). He is also the editor of a book series, New Directions in Palestinian Studies.