Amina Bin Qarrish of Tetuan: records of the life of a Moroccan woman of the 19th century

This article records the attempt to write a biography of a woman of 19th century Tetuan, Amina Bin Qarrish (d.1889), wife of 'Abdalkrim ar-Razini (d.1909). She was a wealthy woman, the last surviving member of the family of the Zawiyat Ben Qarrish, a Sufi fraternity founded in Tetuan in the late 17th or early 18th century. The principal sources for the biography are a small collection of unpublished documents (legal documents, letters and jottings in notebooks) in the Razini archive in Tetuan. These documents deal with the inheritance, marriage, divorce, property, power of attorney, gifts, awqaf, experience of war, and family life of Amina Bin Qarrish, and those of contemporary women. It is also possible to use oral history to help interpret these documents.

Amina Bin Qarrish; Inheritance; Moroccan Women; 19th Century