Interfaith unions and non-Muslim wives in early twentieth-century Alexandrian Islamic courts

In late 1927 two Christian women, one Egyptian and the other British, entered into Islamic marriages with Egyptian Muslim men within three months of one another at the Alexandria Islamic court.2 While the two women faced similar treatment in the court, their marriages had very different consequences for them outside the courtroom. By marrying Shafiq Ghurbal, Sarah Gertrude Humberstone chose to ignore the warnings of the consul of her country, renouncing her British citizenship and relinquishing the protection of the consular courts3 in order to enter into an interracial, interfaith marriage. Such marriages were bitterly opposed by many of her British and Egyptian contemporaries, at a time of intense anti-colonial nationalist struggle between the pseudo-independent Egyptian nation and the British colonial power.4