From Difāʿ Al-Nisāʾ to Masʾalat Al-Nisāʾ in Greater Syria: Readers and Writers Debate Women and Their Rights, 1858–1900

Abstract

In this article we present a threefold argument—chronological, geographical, and sociocultural—in order to demonstrate that interest in the woman question and the lively and at times charged debate that it stimulated began in Greater Syria in the earlynahḍa(awakening) period and persisted throughout, drawing into its orbit leading intellectuals as well as members of the general public and permeating even peripheral areas of Greater Syria. We do so by examining the public reflection of this debate in the earlynahḍapress, mainly privately published Beirut journals and newspapers.