The commonest reason for taking in a second wife is the inability of the first to produce surviving male children. A man without male heirs is expected to take another wife, with or without divorcing the first. Even when a first wife has had children, but can have no more, a second wife is quite justified. Secondly, a first wife might be incapable of doing her duty. One man seriously considered taking a second wife because his first was crippled with rheumatism; instead he married his fifteen-year-old son to his sister's daughter of about seventeen. Two men in Sakaltutan and at least two in Elbashï had been married to widows much their senior. Each had married in middle-age a younger woman, in order to continue their procreative life.
Thirdly, polygamy is sometimes the result of widow-inheritance by brothers. A man is said to be the most suitable stepfather to his brother's children. Moreover, his brother's land is felt to belong to the agnatic group, and adjoins his own. Left to her own devices, the widow might marry a stranger, who would take over the land, and might even disinherit his stepsons. It is far better for the dead husband's brother to take over, temporarily adding the land to his own, and if any disinheriting is to take place, to make sure he benefits by it; in the past, it seems, orphans very frequently lost their land, often to their fathers' brothers.
Elbashï provides a most interesting example of the possible complexity of such arrangements. Sefer, an old man in 1951, had married first his elder brother's widow, after she had borne two sons, Hashim and Shevket. She then bore Sefer himself another son, Ahmet. Hashim and Shevket were thus maternal half-brothers and also father's brother's sons to Ahmet. Sefer, about 1939, had also married his younger brother's widow, who already had one daughter, Ayshe. Sefer married his own son Ahmet to this niece-cum-stepdaughter. At some point, Hashim had separated from this household, taking with him his own wife, who was his father's sister's daughter from another village,