property. As early as 1963, however, the law was
amended to basically apply the order of succession
in Shì≠ìinheritance law to the Sunnìpopulation as
well (Coulson and Hinchcliffe 1978, 47). In Jordan
reform has gone in a different direction: from 1990
on, the rules of Islamic law were extended to mìrì
land (Brand 1998, 105, 134).The nature of the property
One major divide in the literature about inheri-
tance is that between urban and rural women.
Historians working on Ottoman cities using court
documents have emphasized that women indeed
received their share in the estate (Gerber 1980, 232,
240, Jennings 1975, 98, 111, Marcus 1985, 120,
Reilly 1990). Anthropologists doing fieldwork in
rural areas have underlined that in practice women
often did not receive their inheritance share
(Granqvist 1935, 256, Rosenfeld 1960, 66, Antoun
1972, 140). Looking more closely at the nature of
the property involved, other differences come to
the fore. The Ottoman historians have pointed out
that urban women had more access to residential
than to commercial or agricultural property (Jen-
nings 1975, 101, Gerber 1980, 233, Marcus 1983,
144), while anthropologists have also provided
examples of settings in which women as a rule took
their share (Peters 1978 for South Lebanon and
Mundy 1979 for Highland Yemen, even if in the
latter case usually when they were in mid-life and
had adult sons to transfer the land to). Whether
women inherit or not seems to tie in with the struc-
tures of production, in particular with the nature of
the property-holding unit; women stand a better
chance to inherit land if it is individually owned
rather than held by a collectivity (Peters 1978,
Mundy 1988). Yet, in the latter case they may
receive compensation in the form of movable prop-
erty (Pastner 1980, 152), while they may also keep
a claim to land held collectively. Doumani (1998,
36ff) highlights the importance of particular politi-
cal economies in a comparison of family endow-
ments in Tripoli and Nablus in the early nineteenth
century. In the former, where the major economic
activity was horticulture with land held in private
ownership, women did inherit or were beneficiaries
in family endowments; in the latter, where land was
collectively owned and the key source of wealth
was control of the rural surplus that demanded per-
sonal mobility and political participation in non-
kin patron-client relationships, women had only
limited rights in family endowments.300 inheritance: contemporary practice
The women involved:
twentieth-century Nablus
The remainder of this entry investigates inheri-
tance practices of daughters in twentieth-century
Nablus, underlining the importance of taking fac-
tors such as the absence or presence of competing
heirs, class positions, and marital status into ac-
count. If for the sake of brevity structural elements
are highlighted in a rather generalizing manner, this
does not mean that these can be taken as a blue-
print. Rather, they point to the field of possibilities
that frames women’s ability to act.
Case studies, such as Moors (1995, 1996) about
Jabal Nablus, point out that it is not so much the
nature of the property that counts (mulk or mìrì,
urban or rural), but rather the presence of contend-
ing heirs. A daughter in a small property-owning
household often prefers to give up her share in the
estate in order to reaffirm and strengthen her ties
with her brothers (see also Granqvist 1935). Also,
after marriage women tend to identify with their
own kin and feel a special closeness to their natal
household, while at the same time they may well be
dependent on their male kin for their economic
security, especially if they have no access to educa-
tion and employment. By not claiming her share, a
woman enhances the status of her brothers (and by
implication her own) and accentuates their obliga-
tions toward her, as they are in the position of
owing their sister. If, in contrast, a woman demands
her share in the estate, she may receive this, but then
is often no longer able to invoke her brother’s help
and support, which in turn undermines her position
vis-à-vis her husband. The situation is different if
a daughter does not have brothers. Then it is
socially accepted if she claims her share (that other-
wise would go to her father’s brothers). Still, the
attempts to claim of daughters without brothers are
not easily successful and such daughters often
receive considerably less than what they are legally
entitled to.
Women tend to stand a better chance to inherit if
their families are wealthy or if they are single. It is
true that also in better off families productive prop-
erty and real estate are often transmitted patrilin-
eally and remain under (male) family control. If,
however, enough cash is available, giving daughters
a share in their father’s estate is seen as enhancing
the status of the family as a whole. In the case of
large estate owners whose major resource was agri-
cultural land, a common solution was to allow a
daughter to marry only her paternal cousin, so the
land would remain in the same lineage; if it was not
possible to arrange such a marriage, such a daugh-