Exile of Women in the Ottoman State during the 12th Century AH / 18th Century CE

Abstract

Since ancient times, humans have used exile as a form of punishment to curtail the freedom of the guilty, the offender, or the criminal. The Ottomans used several terms for this type of punishment in their legal system, such as: exile, banishment, evacuation, and removal. Exile is the removal of the perpetrator of a crime or offense from their place of residence to a distant location for a specific period, as determined by a court ruling.

Exile was one of the punitive or administrative measures known in various human civilizations before and after Islam, and it acquired varying meanings according to the political, social, and legal contexts of each era. With the rise of the Islamic state and its transformation from a nascent community in Medina to a vast political entity spanning multiple continents, various practices emerged to regulate public conduct and protect the political order. Among these was the application of exile in limited and exceptional cases. Although original Islamic legislation did not make exile a general punishment for women, Islamic history records several instances of women being exiled for political, social, or moral reasons. This necessitates studying these instances within their historical context and comparing them with Islamic legal principles.

The importance of examining the topic of women's exile in Islamic history stems from its ability to open avenues for understanding the relationship between legal texts and their applications over time. This helps distinguish between established legal rulings and authoritarian practices that were subject to specific political or social circumstances. Furthermore, this topic allows for an examination of the legal structure of the Islamic state throughout its various periods and how it dealt with women as an essential part of society, whether in the context of rights, punishments, or administrative procedures. By tracing historical patterns from the time of the Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphate to the Umayyad and Abbasid states, and then to later periods such as the Mamluk and Ottoman eras, it becomes clear that exile was often linked to political necessities or considerations of social control more than to any inherent legal rulings.