Women in the Modern History of Libya

Exploring Transnational Trajectories

Barbara Spadaro, Katrina Yeaw

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000033649
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: History of Education

Women in the Modern History of Libya features histories of Libyan women exploring the diversity of cultures, languages and memories of Libya from the age of the Empires to the present.

The chapters explore a series of institutional and private archives inside and outside Libya, illuminating historical trajectories marginalised by colonialism, nationalism and identity politics. They provide engaging and critical exploration of the archives of the Ottoman cities, of the colonial forces of Italy, Britain and the US, and of the Libyan resistance – the Maws??at riw?y?t al-jih?d (Oral Narratives of the Jih?d) collection at the Libyan Studies Center of Tripoli – as well as of the private records in the homes of Jewish and Amazigh Libyans across the world. Developing the tools of women's and gender studies and engaging with the multiple languages of Libya, contributors raise a series of critical questions on the writing of history and on the representation of Libyan people in the past and the present.

Illuminating the sheer diversity of histories, memories and languages of Libya, Women in the Modern History of Libya will be of great interest to scholars of North Africa; women's and gender history; memory in history; cultural studies; and colonialism. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of North African Studies.

Centre and periphery: variations in gendered space among Libyan Jews in the late Ottoman period

Rachel Simon

ABSTRACT

To what an extent did ‘women space’ among Libyan Jews refer only to the home and a secluded female environment? Were there any inter-gender contacts except for those among close family relatives? This article examines gendered space among Libyan Jews in the late Ottoman period (mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries) in the urban coastal centres and the rural hinterland. It shows that the answers to these questions varied depending on locale, socioeconomic status, foreign influence, cultural development, and the passage of time. The available data indicates that the further one was from the geographical and political ‘centre’ and the lower one’s socioeconomic status, the wider the space each gender held, the more flexible and blurred its boundaries, and the greater the possibilities for inter-gender contacts. The study also explores the elasticity of gendered space and how various groups viewed it, as well as its economic, social and communal rationale, based on indigenous and foreign sources. While the sources, which were mostly composed by men, focus on Jews, it is highly likely that the situation among the Muslim majority and in the region in general was similar.

To what an extent did ‘women space’ among Libyan Jews refer only to the home and a secluded female environment? Were there any inter-gender contacts except for those among close family relatives? This article examines gendered space among Libyan Jews in the late Ottoman period (mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries) in the urban coastal centres and the rural hinterland. It shows that the answers to these questions varied depending on locale, socioeconomic status, foreign influence, cultural development, and the passage of time. The available data indicates that the further one was from the geographical and political ‘centre’ and the lower one’s socioeconomic status, the wider the space each gender held, the more flexible and blurred its boundaries, and the greater the possibilities for inter-gender contacts. The study also explores the elasticity of gendered space and how various groups viewed it, as well as its economic, social and communal rationale, based on indigenous and foreign sources. While the sources, which were mostly composed by men, focus on Jews, it is highly likely that the situation among the Muslim majority and in the region in general was similar.

Body bounds

One manifestation of inter-gender relations is the attitude towards the body. This is reflected in the way people dress, how they deal with intimate apparel, and how the body and its functions are treated. Various customs and regulations were set to ensure women’s chastity and segregation, yet social, economic, and cultural pressures could at times bring about some easing of these rules.

When women¹ ventured outside the home, they had to cover themselves with a sheet so that no part of the body, except for one eye, could be easily discerned, especially by strange men. This practice was explained as a means to prevent lasciviousness (zimah) (Hacohen 1978, 47).² Jewish women used their clothing to distinguish themselves from the general population in several ways. They used to wear, for example, a cap embroidered with silver threads and silk diadems on their forehead, which totally concealed their hair. In addition, they wore wide sleeves made of silk, and covered their chest and neck with a vest made of silver bars in the form of buds and flowers. Over the vest women wore a long silk coat (kaftan) embroidered with silver threads, covering the neck, chest and arms, and a red silk or woollen sheet wrapped around their body (Hacohen 1978, 47–48). As a result, women’s faces were hardly seen and the shapes of their bodies were hidden. On various occasions, they wore special garments. Thus, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, they covered themselves with a white sheet and the girls wore elegant attire (Hacohen 1978, 192).

Until the early eighteenth century women in Libya did not wear pantalets, because it would have been considered shameful, and they covered their thighs with a sheet. The notable Shelomoh Khalfon was the first to break this habit when in 1732 he gave his daughter Aziza a pair of pantalets as part of her dowry. Gradually, this fashion spread although pantalets remained a garment of the private domain, and women took special precautions when they laundered them (Hacohen 1978, 48, 291). By the beginning of the twentieth century, it became more customary for women to wear pantalets, their shirt sleeves had narrowed, and they replaced caps with scarves to cover their hair. Many men, women and children started wearing bootlegs, something that was unheard of before (Hacohen 1978, 48). As a result, the public, including non-related men, could see the women’s faces as well as make up the shape of their bodies. Socioeconomic conventions further eased these dress codes in the rural society, where women had to perform several physical tasks outside the home. In other words, outside the cities, women’s clothing was better suited to work requirements than to constraints of modesty: they had to have their arms free, be able to move easily, and have nothing block their sight (Simon 1992, 29–33).

Until the end of the nineteenth century urban women took special care in drying their laundered intimate apparel: they did not dry their pantalets in the sun for everyone to see, but only behind closed doors. This, however, changed over time, and in the twentieth century women started to dry them in the open, spread in the sun (Hacohen 1978, 48). Thus, not only could men have an idea how women’s bodies looked like, but they could also get a glimpse of women’s apparel, which suggesting intimate contact was unheard of in previous times.

Bathing was usually done in private and mostly for ritual purity purposes rather than for hygienic concerns. According to Jewish law, women are considered impure during menstruation or after giving birth, and they can purify themselves only by immersing themselves in a mikveh (ritual bath), which is a required institution in a Jewish community, because only following the ritual purification does Jewish law allow a couple to resume sexual relations. Furthermore, Jewish law requires women to wait seven ‘clean’ days following menstruation. The regulations were even more strict following giving birth: it was customary in Libya that women wait forty days following the birth of a boy and eighty days following the birth of a girl, before they could purify themselves, namely, a woman was considered twice as impure following the birth of a girl as after giving birth to a boy. Thus, according to the customs prevailing in Libya, every month, during a period of about ten to fourteen days, the husband was forbidden to touch his wife or have any physical contact with her, even by throwing objects to her. In some Libyan villages the husband would not even step on a mat that his menstruating wife had stepped on, nor did he even look at her or talk with her except for the most essential matters, and then only in short and quick manner. In the early twentieth century, some urban women became less strict regarding purification regulations, and while they still went to the mikveh, they did so immediately after the bleeding stopped without waiting the customary number of clean days (Hacohen 1978, 252, 272, 285, 300, 304, 317, 320, 329).

Women usually went to the mikveh in the evening. They used public spring or rainwater mikvehs, and some wealthy Jews had a private mikveh at home. In 1913 several public mikvehs had heated water (Hacohen 1978, 252, 272). In some small places, the mikvehs were in poor shape, such as that in the village Disir in Jebel Nefusa region in Central Tripolitania, which had turbid and stinking water during the summer (Hacohen 1978, 297). Some small communities did not even have a mikveh at all: this, for example, was the case in Zanzur, and as a result women had to immerse themselves in the sea (Hacohen 1978, 319). This, obviously, raises the issue of privacy and modesty, as well as the extent to which the male-dominant community leadership was actually trying to ease the purification process for the women.

In addition to a purification following menstruation and childbirth, women went to the mikveh on other occasions. For example, many people – both men (with separate hours for each gender) and women – went to the mikveh to purify themselves prior to the Three Festivals of Pilgrimage (Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles), as well as on the eves of Yamim nora’im (High Holidays) (Hacohen 1978, 252). Moreover, going to the mikveh was not only for washing and purification purposes: a bride would go to the mikveh on the eve of her wedding, and female relatives of the bridegroom accompanied her and furtively check if she had any bodily blemishes (Hacohen 1978, 275; there is no mention of a similar inspection of bridegrooms).

Jewish women in Libya had special regulations regarding washing and wearing clean clothing following the shiv’ah (seven prescribed days of mourning for a close relative) and the Ninth of Av Fast (commemorating the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem). Following the shiv’ah, women wore clothing cleaned in water but without the use of natron (a substance which they usually used for laundry) (Hacohen 1978, 207). When the mourning period was over, women customarily washed in warm water, because it was difficult to comb their hair after washing it in cold water. Consequently, when the last day of mourning fell on the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest, women extended it for a day, so that they would be able to heat water (considered ‘work’ on the Sabbath) and wash their hair. It was even forbidden to wash in water which was kept warm from Friday (Hacohen 1978, 219–220; Hacohen regarded this custom of extending the mourning period as stupid).

Sanitary provisions were rare in most Libyan homes until the twentieth century. Thus, for example, for the lack of latrines, people in Jebel Nefusa, used to relieve themselves in the early hours of the day in the field in special empty places, and then clean themselves with stones (Hacohen 1978, 291). No mention is made as to whether there were designated areas for men and women. Towards the end of the Ottoman period, with the greater attention of the state to public health and municipal improvements, the authorities created for themselves and for the inhabitants of Tripoli special restrooms, with ditches from which the waste rolled out to an external large pit (Hacohen 1978, 291). In Mislata, meanwhile, every house had a cavern serving as a toilet, because they did not relieve themselves in the fields as was done in Yefren and Gharian (Hacohen 1978, 321).

Women’s work

In principle, women’s work was confined to the home. Yet the definition of ‘home’ and ‘home related work’ had different meanings in urban and rural settings, with a broader definition for the latter. Certain tasks were traditionally considered ‘women’s work’: grinding flour, baking, laundry, cooking, spinning wool, making sheets and carpets, drawing water and chopping wood (Hacohen 1978, 308–309). In addition, some occupations were restricted to women because they dealt with the female body. Economic necessity, however, required women at times to work outside their homes for tasks not related to their family. But even in both latter categories, it was preferred that women work in an all-female environment, although this was not always possible.

Preparing food for the family and guests was a female task, and women were often praised for their industrious and fast work (Hacohen 1978, 194, 290). A subsidiary of this task was grinding flour. Women using hand mills usually ground flour at home, in private, at dawn, often accompanying their grinding with special songs. In the early twentieth century, some places had camel-driven mills operated by Muslim men, but many women continued to grind their daily supply at home (Hacohen 1978, 308). It is possible that it was hard to break with tradition, or, by going to the camel-driven mills, women might have to interact with men who were not kin. Going to the camel-driven mill also required some sort of payment, whereas grinding at home was ‘free’, namely, it required ‘only’ women’s time and labour.

In the Jewish month of Nissan women had to comply with the particular Passover regulations, which forbid any leavened goods. Since this festival commences in the middle of Nissan, women ground a two-week supply of flour at the beginning of the month for the days prior to Passover. They then had to properly clean the mills, following which they prepared special flour for Passover, which extends for seven days (Hacohen 1978, 302). In Mislata, however, grinding flour for Passover was done only in the camel-driven mills, while during the rest of the year it was done both there and at home (Hacohen 1978, 322).

Food was always prepared ahead of time for the Sabbath, but keeping it warm and in good shape was difficult at times. Rabbis used to complain that when women saw that the dish that had been kept warm from Friday became cold they brought it to be re-warmed at an oven operated by gentiles (Hacohen 1978, 213). Thus, although the women themselves did not work on the Sabbath, they made others work for them, and came in contact with gentile, unrelated men.

Laundry was also one of the women’s tasks. In Jebel Nefusa they did their laundry infrequently: every three months or in preparation for the holidays (Hacohen 1978, 292).

In the rural areas, it was much more common than in town for women to work outside the house. The distance from the house varied and at times their work required that they not only could, but often should have worked even at a great distance from home. Most of the women’s daily work, though, was in the garden next to their house, while their children played around them. There they did some agricultural work, including plowing and harvesting, beating olive trees in order to get the olives off the trees and make olive oil, and raising chicken for eggs (Hacohen 1978, 309).

Women were also involved in agricultural surplus trade, which could bring them in contact with non-kin men. In 1886, the scholar and merchant Mordecai Hacohen started to buy chicken eggs from a Jewish woman in Jebel Yefren, whose husband was often absent on business for long periods of time, like many Jewish peddlers in the region. She started this business because she barely had enough to feed her children, but did not receive any charity from the community, as communal-sponsored charity was not customary in that region. Hacohen offered to pay her twice the price of eggs, and while this enabled her to make some money, he c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Gender and transnational histories of Libya
• 1. Centre and periphery: variations in gendered space among Libyan Jews in the late Ottoman period
• 2. Finding women and gender in the sources: toward a historical anthropology of Ottoman Tripoli
• 3. Gender, violence and resistance under Italian rule in Cyrenaica, 1923– 1934
• 4. Remembering the ‘Italian’ Jewish homes of Libya: gender and transcultural memory (1967– 2013)
• 5. Our star: Amazigh music and the production of intimacy in 2011 Libya
• Index