by Mehrdad Kia
The bridegroom and his friends, beautifully clothed, next mounted their horses and led a procession to the house of the bride. There they met her family and requested and received the permission of her parents to bring her to the house of the groom. When the groom and company first arrived at the bride’s house, however, they found the gates besieged by a crowd, who caused the young man to have to enter the house amid a storm of cheers, compliments, and benedictions. If he were particularly well to do, he responded by scattering a handful of coins to the crowd. At the entrance to the house or at the foot of the main staircase, the groom was met by his father-in-law, who embraced him, kissed him on both cheeks, and led him to the selamlik (the male section of the house), where he found male relatives and friends assembled. Coffee, sherbet, and other refreshments were served.
Meanwhile, in the women’s harem, the bride, covered by her wedding veil, sat on a throne at the end of the room, silent as a statue. She was surrounded by the women of her family as well as friends and acquaintances, all dressed beautifully and covered with all the jewelry they could find. They ate, drank, joked, laughed, complimented the bride on her beautiful dress, and examined the bridal gifts, which were “protected by a wire grating, to prevent pilfering” because “at a Turkish wedding, according to ancient custom, the poorest woman in the street” was “allowed to come up and see the bride and her presents.” Amid the noise and chatter, refreshments, sweetmeats, and sugar confectionery were served, and dancers and musicians performed.
After the conclusion of festivities at the harem and the selamlik, the bride was escorted to her horse or carriage. Dressed in her bridal veil and curtained with a red canopy, or baldachin, over her head, she rode with pomp and ceremony to the home of the bride-groom. She was accompanied by an older female relative and several male representatives who led the procession. Clowns, jesters, musicians, and dancers joined the procession and entertained the spectators, who emerged from their homes to cheer the groom and the bride. At the groom’s house, women often gathered in the harem and celebrated the arrival of the bride by showering her with coins, flowers, candies, and kisses.
Across various provinces of the empire, local elites mimicked the elaborate ceremonies and rituals of the ruling classes in Istanbul. Among the rich and the powerful in Albania, for example, armed horsemen and foot soldiers were sent to fetch the bride from her home in a village or town. Great banquets welcomed the men upon their arrival at the home of the bride, and volleys of cannons and muskets were fired into the air in celebration. When the men set off again to bring the bride to the home of the bridegroom, festivities continued along the road. Muslim youth lined the road to welcome the procession with dancing, and shouted the name of God—”Allah Allah!”—as the procession passed.
Among the Ottomans, particularly the wealthy classes, a sumptuous meal was served after the bridegroom and his friends had brought the bride to her new home. The menu usually included dishes of saffron rice, mutton pilafs, roasted pigeons, sweetmeats, fresh fruit, and different kinds of sherbets. After the meal, female guests accompanied the bride to the harem and the male guests joined the groom in the selamlik, or the male section of the house. In each place, musicians and dancers entertained. The guests did not, however, participate in dancing and singing. Dancing was frowned upon by religious authorities, and dancing by men and women together was specifically forbidden. Once the feast had ended and the guests had departed, the groom stood up and returned to his bedchamber, which had been specially decorated with carpets and cushions. This served “as the signal for the women to gather round the bride and amid laughter and joke, push her into her husband’s presence.” Once inside the chamber, the bridegroom lifted the bride’s veil and handed her a special present, which among the rich was usually a diamond that was pinned on the hair. They then exchanged candies and drank coffee. At times, an elderly woman, who had accompanied the bride to the house of the groom, remained in the room until the couple had finished drinking their coffee. To put the bride and the groom at ease, she served the couple a small meal. This was the first meal the newlyweds shared together. After the meal, the woman helped the bride to undress.
The actual wedding ceremony was usually held on a Thursday, and it was generally believed that the best time for the marriage to be consummated was Thursday evening, as Friday was the holy day in the Islamic week. On Friday morning, the newlyweds appeared before the family, “who scrutinized them to learn whether or not their stars had met.” The families then feasted on paça, or “sheep’s trotters cooked in a stew”; rice; cream; and, among the rich, “the delicacies of borek, sweets, dolmas, and hoşaf were also served.”
WEDDINGS AMONG THE POOR
Ceremonies held in various rural communities and small towns of Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Arab provinces of the Middle East were far less elaborate. At times, the entire village joined the festivities as men, women, and children cooked, danced, and listened to music. In Ottoman Iraq, the bridegroom, accompanied by an imam of the neighborhood in which he lived and a number of his friends, arrived at the house of the prospective bride and asked the girl’s father formally for his daughter’s hand in marriage. In the course of the visit, the amount of the mahr paid by the groom to the bride was discussed and settled. Once the negotiations had achieved the desired result, the accompanying imam prayed, gifts were exchanged, and the trousseau was displayed, before the marriage was formalized in a ceremony presided over by a kadi. While women did not give any dowries to their husbands, they brought “from their homes an abundance of household goods, which may be regarded suitable, depending on the bride’s status; not just the trousseau . . ., but also clothes, gold, and silver ornaments, jewels, beasts of burden, and even male and female slaves.”
As with Muslims, among the Armenian Christians, boys and girls were “always promised very young,” but they could not see one another until three days after their marriage. The bride was carried to church wearing a crown on her head, over which fell a red silky veil that covered her all over to her feet. The priest asked the bridegroom whether he was prepared to marry the young bride, “be she deaf, be she blind.” When the groom responded with a “yes,” the bride was led to the house of her new husband “accompanied with all the friends and relatives on both sides, singing and dancing.” Once she had arrived at her new home, the bride was “placed on a cushion in the corner of the sofa, but her veil was not lifted up, not even by her husband,” until she had been married for three days.
Among the Muslim subjects of the sultan, once the bride had arrived in her new home, she was kissed and welcomed by her husband’s family. She had left her home to join them, and from that moment on, she would become part of their family, although she was expected to maintain a close relationship with her own family, particularly with her parents, brothers, and sisters. Besides their husbands, fathers and brothers were the only other males with whom a woman could converse and maintain a relationship, without violating social taboos and conventions. On rare occasions, when the groom was very poor and the bride’s family did not have any sons, the husband would move in with his wife’s family.
The prearranged marriages characteristic of the Ottoman Empire have been criticized for a lack of respect and sensitivity toward the opinions and feelings of the young men and women who were getting married. Equally troubling to modern-day critics is the absence of love as the principal reason and cause for marital union. It is important to recognize that under the Ottoman system many marriages were, in fact, based on romantic love. In rural and nomadic communities, men and women lived and worked in close proximity, and boys who caught a glimpse of a beautiful girl could request the intercession of their mothers in arranging a marriage. On these occasions, the mother of the boy initiated the process by convincing her husband that the marriage between the lovebirds would be a wise move. Once she had secured his approval, negotiations could begin in earnest with the family of the prospective bride.
At times, the mother�
�s intercession failed, or even if the family of the boy approved, the girl might come from a family that demanded a large sum toward the payment of the bride settlement. On these occasions, when faced with parental disapproval or lack of sufficient funds to pay the mehr, bride stealing (kiz kaçirma) provided an alternative of sorts. The general custom among Muslim communities in Anatolia was that a man who had seduced and stolen a virgin was obligated to marry her, because a man and a woman who had spent a night together had inevitably engaged in sexual intercourse. The standard procedure was to abduct the girl and leave her with a relative overnight. Though no sexual intercourse had taken place, the act was sufficient to force parents on both sides to agree to marriage. The danger in stealing the girl lay in the retaliation that could potentially come from her father and brother, who, in protecting their honor, might resort to violence. This possibility forced the lovers to flee the village or town and seek a hiding place where they could elope. Once children were born to such marriages, many grandparents came round and forgave their children for their youthful indiscretions.
WOMEN’S LEGAL RIGHTS AFTER MARRIAGE
Ottoman jurists “viewed married couples as enjoying reciprocal, as opposed to symmetrical rights.” From this perspective, a husband was obliged to support his wife. He assumed full responsibility for all the expenses associated with the family home, as well as his wife’s personal expenses. Accordingly then, a wife owed her husband obedience. A “husband could restrict” his wife’s “freedom of movement by forbidding her to leave the house (except to visit her family) or he might insist that she accompany him on a journey.”
Ottoman women were viewed as full-fledged subjects of the state “as soon as they reached puberty,” and they retained control over their property even after they were married. Ordinary “women as well as women of the elites not only possessed moveable and immoveable property in appreciable amounts, but actively tended to their property rights.” They “made and dissolved contracts, sold, bequeathed, rented, leased and invested property, and they did so in substantial numbers.” Women could also file a complaint in front of a kadi at a court of law, and many appeared in person in court without an accompanying male relative. At times, rich women who had inherited land and money from their family and husbands invested in commercial ventures and became successful capitalists. Indeed, court records from both early and late periods of the empire indicate that women owned flourishing businesses of considerable entrepreneurial worth. They were, however, disadvantaged by traditional beliefs and customs, which did not allow them to operate their businesses in person. Thus, female investors could not accompany the caravans in which they had invested, although they could run their business through male agents and employees. In the villages and among tribal groups of the empire, particularly in Anatolia and the Arab provinces, women played an important role in the economic life of their communities. Many, especially in villages and nomadic tribes, raised money by spinning wool or cotton and producing handicrafts.
With the introduction of capitalism in the 19th century, textile production expanded and the work of rural women assumed greater importance for businesses in search of cheap labor to produce yarn, rugs, and carpets. New textile factories in the urban centers of the empire hired Muslim and Christian women from lower classes. In the second half of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th century, the growing “participation of girls and women” was “most visible in the export industries that grew dramatically—raw silk, carpets and lace—” where they “formed a very strong majority of the knotters and probably all of the reelers and lace-makers.” Women also dominated “the various spinning industries, of cotton, linen and wool,” with some engaged “in household spinning, weaving, knotting, embroidering and lacemaking,” while others worked outside the home. Aside from dominating all of the mechanized cotton-spinning and silk-reeling mills and some wool yarn plants and cloth factories, women also played an important role in other industries such as shoemaking and tobacco processing, where they received a fraction of wages obtained by men. The economic integration of women broke the old and traditional stereotypes, but the low wages and poor conditions were condemned as exploitative and inhuman.
POLYGAMY
According to Islamic law, a man was entitled to four wives, while for a woman polyandry was impossible and monogamy remained the rule. In the Quran, men were told that, “you may marry other women who seem good to you: two, three, or four of them. But if you cannot maintain equality among them, marry one only or any slave-girls you may own. This will make it easier for you to avoid injustice.” To many Western writers, this practice, more than any other, highlighted the fundamental difference between Christian Europe and the Islamic world, and symbolized the inequality between the sexes in the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim states. Available evidence, however, indicates that, among men, monogamy was the dominant norm and that those with more than one wife constituted a minute group in the Ottoman society. Saomon Schweigger, a German Protestant minister who travelled to the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 16th century, wrote: “Turks rule countries and their wives rule them. Turkish women go around and enjoy themselves much more than any others. Polygamy is absent. They must have tried it but then given it up because it leads to much trouble and expense.”
In the 18th century, rich and powerful families in Istanbul frowned upon men of status who married more than one wife. In some cases, the wife vehemently opposed the presence of a second woman in her husband’s life and refused to allow him back into her room if he proceeded with marriage to a new wife. The news of such marital discord could spill into the public sphere and become part of everyday gossip. Many men would, therefore, avoid serious conflict within the household as well as public embarrassment and scandal by eschewing a second marriage. Protocol at court required dignitaries and high government officials to separate from former wives and concubines if they wished to marry a princess of the royal household. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who visited the Ottoman Empire from 1717 to 1718, wrote that although the Islamic law permitted Muslim men to marry four wives, she could find no instance “of a man of quality” who made “use of this liberty, or of a woman of rank that would suffer it.” Among all “the great men” at the Ottoman court, the English author could only name the imperial treasurer who kept “a number of she-slaves for his own use,” and he was spoken of “as a libertine.” Montagu recalled that the treasurer’s wife refused to see him, though she continued “to live in his house.” Even when a husband established an intimate relationship with another woman, he kept his mistress in “a house apart” and visited “her as privately” as he could.
By the last two decades of the 19th century, polygamy was confined to palace officials and the upper echelons of the religious establishment, but it hardly existed among the merchants and craftsmen of Ottoman society. Among these latter classes, horror stories and anecdotes circulated regarding the misfortunes visited upon a family when a married man decided to take a second wife. In her memoirs, the Turkish writer Halidé Edib, who had grown up in Istanbul during the reign of Abdülhamid II (1876–1909), recounted the story of a rich and successful Ottoman merchant who “married for the second time the widowed wife of his brother,” claiming that his act was out of sympathy and kindness. Edib wrote that since polygamy was “rare in the families who had no slaves,” this development “brought bad luck to the household.” Their “house was burnt down soon after in one of the big fires in Istanbul,” and the wealthy merchant lost his money as well. Blaming himself for his family’s trials and tribulations, the man divorced his second wife and begged for forgiveness from his first wife, confessing “that all his domestic calamity was due to having made her suffer.”
Muslim men could marry Jewish or Christian women, provided that the man allowed his non-Muslim wife to retain her religion and attend religious services required by her faith. The children of a mixed marriage were considered Muslims. A non-Muslim wife could not inherit from her Muslim husband, n
or could the husband inherit from his wife. Muslim women could not marry non-Muslim men. Even after the Republic of Turkey removed the prohibition of marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man, customs strongly urged the bridegroom’s conversion to Islam. Christian and Jewish men married within their respective communities. In sharp contrast to Muslim men, they could not maintain concubines, whether the woman was a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. If a non-Muslim man was found with a concubine, the religious judge forced him to marry her. In the Ottoman Empire, Christian women from one denomination could marry men from another Christian community. They could even marry Christian men from a European country with the consent of their parents.
10 - SEX AND FAMILY
Islamic law “assigned men and women distinct social roles, and made many rights and obligations contingent upon gender identity.” Along “with distinctions between free and slave, and between Muslim and non-Muslim, gender difference was one of the most significant distinctions of the Islamic legal system in the Ottoman Empire.”
