Sex Work in Pre-modern Cairo: Between Prohibition and Regulation

Tolino, Serena (2021). Sex Work in Pre-modern Cairo: Between Prohibition and Regulation. In: Angelo, Carlo De (ed.) Fede, Sapienza e dialogo. Atti in memoria di Agostino Cilardo (pp. 189-207). Lugano: Agorà & Co.

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This chapter looks at sex-work in Egypt from a longue-durée perspective, before and after the colonial period. Far from ‘essentialising’ or ‘ahistoricizing’ prostitution in the Middle East, the chapter argues that a longue-durée perspective would allow us to see that forms of state-regulated prostitution existed in Egypt centuries before the European invasion. However, it also argues that modernity brought a qualitative and quantitative change in the organization of sex work, and that biopolitics had the effect of creating a specific category, that of the ‘prostitute,’ which was something that is missing in pre-modern sources.
The chapter is divided in two main parts. In the first part it gives an overview of how sex work was addressed in Islamic law, showing that there was a certain plurality of approaches. Given the lack of court records for most of this period, the second part of the chapter focus on chronicles from the Fatimid and the Mamluk period, which can shed a light not only on social but also, to a certain extent, judicial practices.

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