A third case puzzled me a good deal at first. Haci Osman (H) of Sakaltutan had failed to produce children of his own in spite of trying four different wives. Finally he had adopted a sister's orphan son, who was also his agnate (a second-cousin's son). He had given no share of his father's land to his sisters, two of whom had surviving sons in the village. Two sons of one sister had spent much time in Izmir, leaving their young wives to share a household, and to work their father's land. Three sons of the other sister had derived very little from their father. One, the eldest, had acquired a sufficiency of land for his household from his wife's father, who was also his father's brother, but the other two were very poor. These three brothers were close neighbours of mine, and I discussed this matter with them. They were positive that they had rights to a share of Haci Osman's land, but they made no attempt to relieve their obvious poverty by taking action to establish them. When one of them lost his wife, Haci Osman helped with advice, influence, and a loan in a negotiations for a new one; and later, when he built and ran a mill in co-operation with other villagers, they became his employees.
The explanation that eluded me at the time was not in fact difficult. As I have said, inheritance is not so much a matter of rights under a definite set of rules, as of relative power. If the two poor brothers had pressed their claims, they would have alienated a useful, important and generally respected kinsman, and probably have turned other villagers against them. They would, even if successful, only have been entitled to one-ninth each of the land which Haci Osman had inherited from his father - and I suspect that he would have argued, probably correctly, that much of his land had come from other sources, for example, purchase, or simply seizure of land not in cultivation. This ninth then would have been very little, and would not have made any great difference to their poverty. Moreover,