divorces; it is also true that some of the current marriages would probably end in
divorce. Indeed by 1955 one had done so Even so the divorce rate does not strike
me as high, and I would describe marriage as stable.
An analysis of the circumstances of divorce in the Sakaltutan cases confirms this impression. Of the twenty-eight cases, five did not directly involve men of the village. One rather slow-witted young girl had returned home from four different attempts to marry her off and was rather precariously married for the fifth time while I was in the village. One wife imported into the village had apparently walked out on a previous husband in another village. Seven of the twenty-eight cases involved deceased men of the village, six being accounted for by the marital histories of two of these, who were not regarded as altogether reputable. Two other cases involved living men born in Sakaltutan who had migrated with their Sakaltutan-born first wives to marry bigamously more sophisticated second wives in villages nearer Kayseri. In both cases the first wife had returned home and married someone else.
Of the fourteen cases which involved resident men of Sakaltutan, two are guesses, as I have said. Of the twelve better established cases five wives had been divorced because they failed to produce sons, three in succession by Haci Osman (H) (p. 26). In a further five cases the divorced woman was a secondary wife. In one of these five cases the cause of divorce
Table 9
DIVORCE CASES IN SAKALTUTAN
129 married men, 132 married women
Poor girl running home
Women leaving for her natal village
Deceased men. Divorce of replacement wife
(at least)
Deceased men. Unknown causes
Failure to produce male children
Replacement divorces (including one for
alleged adultery and two guesses)
Men leaving the village for bigamous unions
Co-wife deserting bigamous household
Total
4
1
4
3
5
7
2
2
_
28