In Cairo, Egypt in the early 1800s an unmarried man who did not own a female slave was not permitted to rent a house or apartment in most areas. If he could not reside with parents or near relations, a single man without a female slave was usually reduced to living in a wekaleh (a building designed to receive merchandise). French men were exempt from this rule.
Englishman and Egyptian Scholar Edward Lane once had his rental monies returned to him and was denied lodgings because he had no wife or female slave to reside with him.
– source: Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians by Edward W. Lane, first published in 1836
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