This thesis provides a critical reading of Fatma Aliye’s 1891 monograph Nisvân-ı İslâm against the backdrop of Hamidian society. Despite Fatma Aliye’s prominence in the late Ottoman period, and the fact that Nisvân-ı İslâm was quickly translated into French and Arabic in the 1890s, the text has remained largely unexamined, with limited scholarship devoted to the work in Turkish and even less in English. In Nisvân-ı İslâm, Fatma Aliye questioned social practices and enlarged the scope of what was possible for women within an Islamic framework. Through her writings, Fatma Aliye influenced public discourse and helped shift the definition of women in public space during her lifetime. Her pioneering efforts in opening up the privately-informed public sphere provided intellectual grist for the Republic’s efforts to improve the role of women in Turkish society.
Fatma Aliye’s legacy, however, has not been commensurate with her contributions to Turkish society. As Aliye was associated closely with the Ottoman Empire, she has suffered an ignominious fate in Turkish history. Her influence on Turkish society has been, at best, unrecognized and, at worst, denigrated. A careful reading of Nisvân-ı İslâm, however, reveals greater congruence between her feminist aims and those espoused by the Republic’s founders than her critics acknowledge. The evidence strongly suggests that Fatma Aliye’s occluded legacy needs to be reevaluated.