Muslim orphans and the shar'a in ottoman palestine according to sijill records

According to shar'a, an orphan is an under-aged infant or child, until the age of puberty, whose father or both his/her parents have died. In the sijill cases (Muslim court records) under study here, under-aged children who lost their mother are not defined as orphans. This way of defining orphans reflects the different socio-economic roles fathers and mothers played. This paper, depending essentially upon the sijillt of Nablus, Jerusalem and Haifa during the Ottoman period, investigates the social status of the orphans, how families and relatives acted, and how the shar'a court fulfilled its job in this sphere.