| pair of brothers in Sakaltutan (DS 2), who shared a household on a permanent arrangement of this type. The separation of sons before their father’s death is rare. Sometimes it is due simply to overcrowding. If a man has several sons who all marry and have children his household may become unwieldy. In such a case the eldest son may move out and set up on his own. I found a case of such amicable separation in Ck village, where, at the harvest, the two families shared cooking arrangements to save valuable labour for the fields. The only possible case of this in Sakaltutan was Mustafa (VA 2), oldest living son of Hasan (VA 1). They lived on one courtyard, and certainly co-operated economically, but the households were separate. Mustafa insisted that he had nothing at all, but other reliable informants declared he had been given some ten donum of land by his father. The other usual cause of premature separation is friction in the household. Out of five cases of the separation of sons from their living fathers, in four their was a step mother. In three of these, the sons have remained on good terms with their fathers, and maintained a certain amount of economic co- operation. Mehmet (VA 11), son of Halil Ibrahim (VA 1), has nothing to do with his father at all, but blames the quarrel on his step mother. The fifth case seems to be simply a quarrel between father and son. Informants from other villages confirmed that premature separation often occurs where there is a step mother. The economic factors involved in separation will be discussed below. (4) In purely agricultural households the father has a greater economic hold over his sons, if he wished to exercise it, since he controls the land. If they leave him, then they will become at least temporarily landless. The wealthier the household and the higher the standard and status to which they are accustomed, the greater the deterrent this is likely to be. The spread of well- paid building trade skills in the last ten years has already begun to alter this situation, but all the five cases of premature separation of sons which I have mentioned above are in moderately poor or very poor families. |
| IX | MARRIAGE |
| 1. | Summary of Ceremonies |
| Because marriage impinges on and illustrates so many of the social institutions in the village, we have already been forced to discuss it piecemeal in several contexts. Weddings receive far and away more ceremonial stress than any |
| other social event, often lasting five or more days, and being the only occasions in village life for general merrymaking and festivities, barring only the great religious festivals of the Islamic calendar. They are one of the main centres of interest and gossip. For this reason it is necessary to give a single unified account of marriage, even at the expense of some repetition. But I do not intend to go into full details of the ceremonies, since this would be out of place in a study of social structure. On the other hand, it is impossible to discuss the place of marriage in the social structure without reference to some of this procedure and I therefore propose to give a brief summary of marriage ceremonies, without a full discussion of variants and without full documentation by example. Initiative lies with the boy’s father. His son may state a preference or even, in some cases, decline his father’s choice, but normally it is accepted as the father’s business to choose the bride. Sometimes he may have an understanding with a close kinsman or neighbour, but there seems to be no childhood betrothal, and arrangements are not usually made until a young man is ready for marriage. His age may vary from sixteen or seventeen, to twenty-three or so, after his return from military service. Two men in the village claim to have been married earlier than this in both cases to women older than themselves, but such early marriages are rare. The father, if there is no suitable girl close at hand, will search, with kinsmen of friends as go- betweens, for a girl from another village, or perhaps a girl may take his son’s fancy as she goes about her daily tasks. When he has fixed his choice on a girl, and the older women of his household have visited for inspection and expressed their approval, the boy’s father, taking with him senior elders of his village, goes on a formal visit to the girl’s home. They are welcomed with special hospitality, and the girl’s father also calls in senior kinsmen. The business is discussed, first by asking if the girl is available and if the parents are willing to give her, then, and then only, by bargaining. To come bluntly to the point would be indelicate. If agreement is reached, the first instalment of about half the bride price is paid either on the spot or within a few days. At the same time the girl receives a ring. Shortly after this, within a month or so, the boy’s womenfolk, about four or five in number, including his mother, but not necessarily only women of his household, pay a visit to the girl’s house. If the distance between the villages is more than half an hour on foot, they are accompanied by two or three men. Arriving in the evening, they are entertained to a special meal, which they reciprocate the following morning from supplies they have brought with them. The men then return home, leaving the women behind to “get to know” their future in-laws, spending their evenings dancing and singing with their |
| hostesses. They bring with them presents of gold ornaments and clothing for the bride, and throw coins at her when she dances for them. At the end of the visit, which may last up to a week, their men come to fetch them home. During the engagement period, the couple should not see each other, though if they are within reach they generally do so surreptitiously. If the young man has to visit the girl’s village on business he would probably bring her presents, but to visit frequently would be shameful. The engagement may be longer or shorter, no less than several months, and if there is some special reason for delay, such as the military service of the boy, or serious poverty, it may last years. In a long engagement, visits similar to the engagement visit will be made at the time of the religious festivals and at the harvest. When the boy’s father are ready to proceed with the wedding, the men go to town and buy a set of clothes, or at least material for the making of such a set, for the girl to wear on her wedding day. These are put in a specially purchased gaudy wooden chest, together with presents for the bride’s family. All the women of the boy’s village gather to inspect ceremially and criticise the purchases, bringing gifts of money for the grooms household. The chest and its contents, called the “duzen”, is taken to the girl’s household by a party of men who are called basket-men, “sepetciler”, whose duty it is to fix finally the dates, the number of guests from the boy’s side who will come to fetch the girl, and other such details. This visit takes place only a few days before the wedding is due to begin. The gifts are then subjected to another public criticism, being displayed to the women of the girl’s village, together with the trousseau which is provided by the girl’s family. Once again, gifts are brought, this time in kind, to be added to the trousseau. The trousseau in this area consists of home-woven rugs, a complete set of double mattress and bedding, a full outfit of clothes for the bride, and numerous presents such as socks, shirts and underwear for the groom, his family and his neighbours. The wedding begins with the arrival of a drummer and piper, the offering of general hospitality in a large oda, and the raising of a flag above the boy’s house. For a few days, the men, especially the young men, dance, play games, dress up as bandits and generally make merry during the day. In the evening, after the sundown prayer and meal, all the men foregather in the oda, for singing and foolery. The young men, especially those of the groom’s kabile, put on a sort of charades, usually involving dressing someone up as a girl, and some usually mild indecency. In the evening, the women also, who during the daytime have confined themselves to watching the men from a distance, also gather for their own celebrations, which are shorter and consist solely in repeated dancing of the same type. By this stage, about seven or eight women will have been invited to act as attendants to fetch the bride on the wedding |
| day. Among them will be women, other than his mother, from the boy’s household, kinswomen and neighbours, and a kinswoman or two from a nearby village. These women are known as “yengeler”. They each dance solo in turn in the women’s gatherings, dressed up in the fine clothes they wear for the wedding day. Either on the evening before or on the morning of the wedding day, which is always a thursday or Sunday, a party of about twenty to thirty men, and these yengeler, go to the girl’s village. There, up to this point, only women in the girl’s immediate kinship and neighbourhood circle have been concerned, gathering to dance in the evening for two or three days before the wedding. The day before the marriage, the bride’s right hand is ceremonially dyed with henna by her nearest kinswomen. The men are entertained in the odalar of the guest village, and are subjected to foolery and practical joking - they are said to be “in the hands of the girl’s side”. They take with them the drummer and piper, and there is more dancing. Finally they eat a large and expensive meal of a set type, and then go to fetch with their hostesses, a few of whom are dressed up for the wedding, and called “girl’s side yengeler”. Four visiting and one girl’s side yengeler then go into an inner room for the solemn ceremony, performed to a lament and much weeping, of dressing the bride. This done, she is left on her own, still weeping, and the women rejoin the rest of the party for more dancing, and finally eat a large meal, much like the men’s. As soon as everyone is ready, the procession moves off, the men in front, the women in the rear mounted on donkeys, with the bride on a horse, in the centre of them. The final parting of the girl from her mother is often the occasion of tearful delays, the father chivvying the women and bidding them hurry. The girl reaches the new house about, or not long after, mid-day, and enters it under the legs of her mother-in-law who is held up in the doorway. She then waits till evening, passively and without a word. On her arrival in the village, or at her new house, the festivities end and the drummer and piper leave. Two or three young married men take the groom away to shave and dress him, after which he too must observe strict silence. He is set on a cushion in the oda in the place of honour, and soon after a meal is given, similar to that given to the party in the bride’s village, to all the senior members of the village, the “great ones”. (1) After this, the men disband. The closer kin and neighbours come together again after sundown for the religious ceremony of dying, with henna, the right hand of the groom, and subsequently of all others present. All the men and the groom then go to the Mosque for the last ritual prayer of the day, “yasti”, and afterwards they escort him, chanting, to his house, where a close female kinswoman of his leads him to the bride, joins their hands and leaves them. |
| During the final day or so, two very important ceremonies are performed, with great secrecy, because an ill wisher can easily upset the success of the marriage by magic rites actually performed during either of them. One is the handing over the balance of the bride price, which takes place before or during the wedding days. The other is the religious marriage rite, the “nikah”, performed by the village imam in the presence of witnesses, and with proxies, usually the two fathers, acting for the young people. It is on this ceremony, usually performed inconspicuously during the wedding day, that the whole validity of the wedding rests. The bride is not allowed to leave the house for a week or two, and is only slowly broken in to her menial tasks. She continues to wear new clothes as a symbol of her position. If she has married out of her natal village, she is not allowed to visit it for a year. “For one year”, they say, “she is a stranger”. After a few weeks her husband’s family “open the road” between the two families by a formal visit, after which her people may visit her. Her real acceptance into the new house comes with the birth of a child, especially of a son. Some of the details of this account do not quite apply to a wedding between households in the same village, but the differences are not important. Weddings vary from full scale, such as those I have here described, to the marriages of poor households, or of very close kin, or widows and divorcees, at which little or no gift exchange and ceremonial is observed, beyond the secretly conducted religious “nikah”. |
| 2. | Choice of Bride |
| The incest rules in force are avowedly those of Islam. A man may not marry any female in the direct line up or down, nor his parents’ or grandparents’ sisters: nor his father’s wives or widows, nor his wife’s mother nor son’s wife, nor, so long as he is still married to his wife, his wife’s sister. For the reckoning of kinship for this purpose the breast feeding of an infant for a foster mother counts as biological kinship. Thus, for example, marriage to a foster-sister would be incestuous. Outside these limitations, marriage between kinsfolk is quite common, is, in fact, preferred. At least one in six of the marriage, in which both sides belonged to Sakaltutan, were to my knowledge between kinsfolk, probably more. I knew of twelve cases of marriage between brothers’ children, and of twelve cases between brothers’ sons’ children (paternal second cousins). There were also sixteen cases of cross cousin marriage involving one partner or both from Sakaltutan, these out of a total of some 250 marriages. |