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Women and Men in Late Eighteenth Century Egypt, by Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid Marsot (Modern Middle East Series, No. 18) 199 pages, notes, bibliography, index. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995. $35.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-292-75180-X

Women and Men in Late Eighteenth Century Egypt presents a way of looking at Egyptian history that contrasts with the normative view. While 'the coming of the West' paradigms emphasizing a demarcation line between a modern and traditional Egypt continue to hold sway, Marsot illustrates their futility by showing the important continuities that hold the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries together. By so doing, she strengthens the theoretical approach to questions of modernity that broke new ground with her Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge, 1984). What is particularly salient about this book, however, is the social analysis that gives important details about the lives of women and the nature of their relations, particularly in regard to elite and middle-class women. Using archival records that yielded details regarding "women's commercial and financial transactions and the kinds of property in which they invested" (p. 3), Marsot presents us with the astonishing result that "30 to 40 percent of deeds registered in the last half of the eighteenth century were made out by women" (p. 7). While Middle East women's history has grown significantly during the last decade and our knowledge of the life of women living in various provinces of the Ottoman Empire is getting richer, Marsot is right in pointing out that historians have yet to become seriously involved in studying waqf and litigation records, and registration of deeds that contain rich details of the property held by women and their various commercial activities: "We discover that women managed large estates, sued in court, and generally involved themselves in the marketplace" (p. 7). This confirms the new outlook on Middle Eastern women, becoming evident through new scholarly production, as active participants in their societies, rather than the passive and secluded picture that has been around for a long time. As active members of their communities, women controlled agricultural land and real estate and held iltizams, were partners in shops, and worked at various jobs like balanas or in bath-houses. Women associated closely together, and there were "normal bonds of friendship among these women, who visited and entertained on a regular basis" (p. 56).