ABSTRACT
European travelers to Egypt and other parts of the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century wrote disparagingly of women in the societies where they traveled, describing them as oppressed, deprived of rights, and virtual captives in the harems of lascivious men. The Comte de Volney, who visited Egypt and Syria between 1783 and 1785, blamed what he considered the miserable condition of women on Muhammad and the Qur’an for not doing women the honor of treating them as part of the human species. He also blamed the government for depriving women of all property and personal liberty and making them dependent on their husbands or fathers, which he described as slavery.1
