to avoid the conclusion that even if a person had to
pay the slander penalty, publicly accusing a rapist
was an avenue to recovering some honor from a
morally fraught situation (Peirce 2003).
Why were rape victims willing to speak out? A
variety of reasons suggest themselves. First, be-
cause zinàwas considered a crime against God
(thus against the community at large), it fell to the
ruling authority to prosecute and punish sexual
crime, so accusations against rapists were not
always voluntary. Moreover, the Ottoman prefer-
ence for imposing fines rather than physical pun-
ishment meant that state officials who received
such fines as part of their stipends had an incentive
to bring rape out into the open. Second, the acute
sense of personal honor prevalent among Ottoman
subjects compelled individuals to speak out about a
whole array of assaults on the person (verbal har-
rassment, yanking beards and hair, touching, and
so forth); this encouragement to publicize dishonor
to one’s body lowered the threshold of courage
required to speak out about rape. Third, victimiza-
tion by rape was not gender specific, so that males
and females were both expected to speak out.
Lastly, there was a widespread culture of slander
and accusationism, with women not infrequently
making baseless accusations of harrassment and
rape (and being punished for doing so). In short,
talk of rape was neither hushed nor necessarily
damaging in the premodern Ottoman world.
The question of rape as a social problem in the
premodern Ottoman period can be studied through
a variety of legal sources, including works of
Islamic jurisprudence, fatwas, sultanic kanun, and
the large numbers of court records that survive
from the late fifteenth century onward. Chronicles
and other narrative sources occasionally provide
insights, as in the example of Evliya Çelebi.
However, only a small fraction of these materials
has been studied as yet, so it is difficult at present to
know if and how attitudes toward rape and its legal
treatment may have changed over time.Bibliography
R. Dankoff, The world of Evliya Çelebi, Leiden 2004.
M. E. Düzda‘(ed.), Çeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi fet-
vaları ıçı‘ında 16. asır Türk hayatı, Istanbul 1983.
Ibràhìm ibn Mu™ammad al-£alabì, Multaqàal-ab™ur,
Istanbul, 1309/1891 or 1892.
U. Heyd, Studies in old Ottoman criminal law, ed.
V. Menage, Oxford 1973.
C. Imber, Zinain Ottoman Law, in J.-L. Bacqué-Gramont
and P. Dumont (eds.), Contributions à l’histoire éco-
nomique et sociale de l’Empire ottoman, Leuven,
Belgium 1983, 59–92.
S. Laiou, Christian women in an Ottoman world.
Interpersonal and family relations brought before the
Ottoman judicial courts, 17th–18th centuries, in702 rape
M. Buturoviƒand I. Schick (eds.), Women in the Otto-
man Balkans(forthcoming).
≠Alìibn AbìBakr al-Marghìnànì, The Hedaya, or guide. A
commentary on the Mussulman laws, trans. C. Hamil-
ton, 2 vols., London 1791.
L. Peirce, Morality tales. Law and gender in the Ottoman
court of Aintab, Berkeley 2003.
A. E. Sonbol, Rape and law in Ottoman and modern
Egypt, in M. C. Zilfi (ed.), Women in the Ottoman
Empire. Middle Eastern women in the early modern
era, Leiden 1997, 214–31.
J. E. Tucker, In the house of the law. Gender and Islamic
law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine, Berkeley 1998.Leslie PeirceSouth AsiaIn South Asian societies, rape has been used
against women from minority communities and
from economically deprived social groups to intim-
idate women in particular and the targeted com-
munity/groups in general. This entry examines the
specific connections between rape and minoritism
in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh and state and
community responses to rape in these countries.Rape and minoritism
The connection between rape and male power
has been noted by South Asian feminists (Gandhi
and Shah 1989) who have also pointed to the con-
junction of factors that increase the vulnerability of
some women such as minority women and work-
ing-class women. Communalization and the social
and economic marginalization of Muslims in post-
independence India has resulted in sexual assaults
perpetuated on Muslim women, as was apparent
in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002
(Hameed et al. 2002). Similarly, Christian women
in Pakistan have suffered sexual assault following
the invasion of Iraq by American forces in 2003
(Duin 2003, Shakir 2003) and Hindu women have
been raped in Bangladesh during communal riots
following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in
Ayodhya, India by Hindu fundamentalists in 1992
(Nasrin 1994). In all these cases of sexual violence,
women are seen as repositories of community
honor. Thus rape is experienced as something more
than violence against individual women; members
of the communities of both the perpetuators and
the victims experience the rape of minority women
as symbolic dishonor of the community. However,
in the case of the Gujarat riots, it has been persua-
sively argued that the nature of violence against
minority women – stripping, beating, throwing
acid, raping, burning, killing of pregnant women,
and killing of children before their parents’ eyes –