Disability in the Ottoman Arab World 1500-1800

Physical sensory and mental impairments can influence an individual''s status in society as much as the more familiar categories of gender class religion race and ethnicity. This was especially true of the Ottoman Arab world where being judged able or disabled impacted every aspect of a person''s life including performance of religious ritual marriage job opportunities and the ability to buy and sell property.Disability in the Ottoman Arab World 1500-1800is the first book-length historical study of blindness deafness intersex and madness in the Middle East and North Africa from the perspective of disability. Unlike previous scholarly works that examine disability as discussed in religious texts such as the Qur''an and the Hadith this study focuses on representations and experiences of impairments across a wide range of sources including chronicles biographical dictionaries medicine and legal texts.