Authors

Rozaliya Garipova¹;  ¹ Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan

Discussion

This paper looks at the agency, factors and institutions that influenced Islamic family law and women’s lives in the long nineteenth century. It will discuss the interaction between law, gender and empire at a time of sweeping changes. How did the Russian empire affect, or did not affect, law and gender, and family law in particular? What was unique in Muslim women’s lives in the Russian imperial context? How did they exercise their agency through their knowledge and utilization of law? What were the constraints of law, both Islamic and imperial, and how were various institutions important in overcoming those constraints? I suggest that Volga-Ural Muslim women skillfully utilized law to their benefits and defined and redefined it in the ways that transformed cultural and customary norms.