Women, the Homeland, and the Sectarian Frontier: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suwaydī's Narrative Accounts of Persian Campaigns in Ottoman Iraq.

In this article I analyze the texts of the Ottoman-Iraqi author ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suwaydī (1721–1785) to investigate whether models of participation in national processes available to women in Ottoman Iraq emerged as a result of the Ottoman Empire's adaptation of European nationalism or whether these models existed in some form prior to and helped accelerate the acceptance of European nationalism by the Ottomans. A close reading of al-Suwaydī's accounts of historical events shows that the relationship between women and the state was one in which women were cast as objects of protection. In al-Suwaydī's narratives of encounters with the Shiʿi-Persian Other, women are signifiers of ethnic and sectarian difference and objects of men's protection. Prior to the emergence of Europe as "Other" and as a threat to Ottoman hegemony, men's honor was tied to cloistering women to protect them from falling into captivity or corruption at the hands of Shiʿi Persians, who were cast as Other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]