Bücher von Jane (Ohio State University) Hathaway

Eunuchs were a common feature of virtually all Islamic empires yet remain mysterious to modern scholars. Using a wide range of primary sources, Jane Hathaway analyzes the origins of the Chief of the African eunuchs and traces the evolution of this powerful official from the late sixteenth through the early twentieth century.

In this 1996 study of military society in Ottoman Egypt, Jane Hathaway contends that the basic framework within which this elite operated was the household, a conglomerate of patron-client ties. This pioneering study will have a major impact on the understanding of Egyptian history, and will be essential reading for scholars in the field, and for pre-modern historians generally.