ABSTRACT
The women question was at the centre of Egyptian reform movement led by intellectual elites who just returned from their European scholarships by the late nineteenth century. Inspired by their education and cultural experience in Europe, Egyptian elites had extensively questioned the marginal and oppressed position of women in the predominantly patriarch culture of households that excluded them from education, work and public life. It was apparent that the elites’ call for the liberation of women and their rights to education moved the women from their peripheral position to be at the centre of modernising Egypt. These debates had inevitably extended to question the spatial organisation of houses and the way the harem quarter was isolated. For the elites, this was no longer a suitable spatial order for modern Egypt. The intellectual debate on the position of woman within society had destabilised the traditional form of courtyard house, inviting radical change towards a form of shared tenancy in multi-story apartment buildings. Women’s social sphere of activities had significantly changed and the tolerance towards women’s exposure in the public scene combined with the shrinkage of domestic areas resulted in more integrated environment between private and public spaces.
