| marriage transaction. In Turkish the ordinary word for selling, “sakmak”, is often used of giving a girl in marriage for a bride price. Sometimes the words for giving and taking are used, but these also commonly refer to buying and selling in ordinary usage. But although it is often spoken of as “sale”, the suggestion that a man sells his daughter for profit is always indignantly rejected. “A man does not sell his daughter like he would sell a beast”. It is, I was repeatedly assured, a man’s moral duty to spend as much or more of his daughter’s trousseau and the wedding than he receives in cash for her. One contemporary rationalisation of the bride price is to regard it simply as a quid pro quo for the trousseau, but I am doubtful whether such an explanation has much sociological validity. At best such a function only serves to maintain a custom, in which formerly it played little part. The view that it is at least in many societies equivalent to a closely associated with blood money (2) cannot be tested now in the villages in which I was working, because government law and order seems to have abolished, or at least driven underground, the payment of compensation for homicide. But the ceremonies of the wedding emphasise the loss of the bride’s household and the gain of the groom’s - for the bride’s household it is a time for weeping, and for the groom’s a time for laughter. There is no direct evidence to disprove the suggestion that bride price is at least in part compensation for her. One villager, discussing this matter, asked if he did not deserve some recompense for having raised his daughters only to see them go to others. But if we call this suggestion a theory, saying that bride price is a payment to the head of a group in compensation for the loss of a member, parallel to blood money, then certain objections arise. In the area in which I worked, there were only villages only a few hours away towards Kayseri which had a different practice, whereby no payment is made to the girl’s father, but a large sum is spent by the father of the boy on gold ornaments which remain, or should remain, the girl’s property all her life. Here there can be no question of a sociological explanation for one group of villages, why does it not hold for the other? This objection does not, of course, prove the suggested explanation is totally false, only that alone it is not adequate. But there is another objection to the theory, a more fundamental one, which belongs more to a treatise on sociological method than in this thesis. What is meant by saying that blood money and bride price are connected, or parallel? Simply that they resemble each other in certain aspects? If this is all, does it constitute a theory? Or is it meant that the two phenomena are explicitly linked in the native’s thought? If so, then, this is no theory, but a point of observable ethnological fact, which may be true of some societies but is not true of Sakaltutan. If neither of these meanings is intended, then what is intended, and how does it explain bride price? |
| In the society in question, bride price is looked upon by the villagers as performing another social function. A woman, on being told that there is no bride price in our country, immediately exclaimed to my wife: “Then what happens if your husband divorces you? Does your father get no money?” At the time I found this remark incomprehensible and it is only since returning from the field that I have discovered that both in Arab Palestine (3) and in the Ottoman Empire before European legal reforms, it was customary for all, or a stipulated part, of the bride price to be paid in compensation to the father of the girl if she were divorced. This custom is Sakaltutan requires further field investigation, but it is clearly part of the explanation of bride price in the minds of the people. Nevertheless, it is not a rational explanation, since obviously it would be a simply matter to arrange such a guarantee without a bride price being paid at all. In any case, under the Republic, with no religious courts, such payment could not be enforced. In a case of this sort, if we ask, why do the people in this group of villages now behave in this way, then the answer must include some discussion of local history. That Kayseri has social customs different in some respects from the rest of Turkey, or at any rate from the villages immediately around it, is due in some way to the history of Kayseri. The range and spread of her customs in the villages may partly be explained in terms of geography and administration in the past, partly, perhaps, in terms of a functionalist type of theory that the Kayseri type of marriage custom was more easily adopted by the richer villages on the more fertile plain. Or it might turn out that the explanation is in terms of movements of peoples, that the population of the upland villages, where I was working, was drawn mainly from nomads or from the area to the east, not from Kayseri direction. The point I wish to make is that the sociologist cannot reject history, and confine himself to functional explanations. The amount usually paid in the area in which I was working is from about 300 to 500 T.L. (approximately £40 to £50 at the present rate of exchange). The price is not determined by a recognised scale, but depends on the wealth of the families concerned and is arranged by negotiation in each individual case. As I have already said, it is disgraceful for a man to seek to make a profit on the sale of his daughter, in fact they say marriage of a daughter incurs outgo, not profit. A trousseau should be provided in proportion to the bride price. Although vague promises do enter into the discussion, the trousseau is not the subject of bargaining and precise stipulation, but depends on a man’s honour. The custom by which the village women gather to inspect the trousseau before it goes ensures full public criticism of any attempt at skimping. In fact, a man must usually derive an immediate cash advantage, though loath to admit it, |
| because much of the trousseau has been prepared by the household women over a long period and requires no outgo corresponding to the amount of the bride price. The relation between a bride price and the size of the trousseau limits and bride price which a man will ask to one in proportion to what the can provide. Thus poor men get less for their daughters because they cannot afford to spend so much on the weddings. Huseyn’s (DT 2) son and Nazim’s (DT 1) son, who were both about nineteen years old, were both married. Nazim paid 500 T.L. for the daughter of Hasan (PA 1), a well-to-do man, Huseyn only 200 T.L. for the daughter of Abdullah (PB 2), a poor old man. Not only the trousseau, but the scale of the wedding, and the extent to which the less obligatory ceremonies and festivities are carried out, are proportional to the bride price. Of course, the correspondence is not exact, two weddings at which the bride price was the same might differ in scale; but roughly, if the bride price is high, the trousseau will be large and the wedding gay and sumptuous. The highest bride price I came across was 750 T.L. paid for a girl from Ck village who went to a village some seventy miles away, owing to patrilateral connections resulting from migration about seventy years ago. In this case the guests arrived to fetch the girl on Wednesday after, in a lorry, and were entertained in three different oda all through the night, departing the next morning. One or two men known for their ability to entertain, and also several kinsmen of the bride, were invited from surrounding villages, and coffee and food were liberally supplied. The bride price and the scale of the proceedings also varies with the social distance between the parties involved. I have already mentioned the marriage of Huseyn (VA 3) to his father’s brother’s daughter (VA 2), at which the bride price was only 200 T.L. and there was no public celebration at all. The examples quoted above also illustrate this point. Abdullah (PB 2) is brother to Huseyn’s (DT 2) wife, whereas Nazim’s (DT 3) daughter-in-law was not his kinswoman. The scale of the wedding in CK village was directly connected to the very great physical distance, which would form a more or less complete social barrier, and make visiting a difficult matter. Unless kinship is very close it does not affect the scale. Discussing the negotiations for the marriage of his son to the daughter of Musa (IB 1), Osman (AG 1) told me that Musa had begun at 750 T.L. and had come down to 400 T.L. He referred to Musa as “emmesa”, so I said I supposed the reduction had been because of the kinship tie. “No”, he said, “only brothers reduce the price for each other”. Between villages, a kinship tie, usually cross cousin, does not seem to have much effect on bride price of scale. Abdil (AM) accepted 500 T.l>, a fairly high price, from his sister’s son for the marriage of his daughter to the sister’s son’s son. In such cases, the fact that the girl is going out of the village is |
| more important than the fact that she is going to a mother’s brother or father’s sister’s household, and perhaps part at least of the reason is the felt need to maintain the prestige of the village among its neighbours. The scale of weddings often enters into village boasting, and every village tells one quietly that of course the only really good weddings are those in their own village. The question of prestige applies also within the village. Households which regard themselves as belonging or almost belonging to the aga class, such as DT, will boast of the money spent on the weddings of their sons, and the wealthy seek renown by the size of the trousseau which they send with daughters. At the second marriage of a women, few ceremonies are observed, and there is no organised festivity or entertaining. The marriage of Mehmet (BA 2) perhaps represents the extreme case. The bride price was only 100 T.L., there was no trousseau at all, and we fetched her by night, with only one woman “yenge”, dressed not in wedding finery, but simply in her newest every day clothes. apart from a little singing on the way home, the only formality was the religious ceremony, at which, abnormally, all the party was present; and the dressing of the middle aged groom in the best clothes the party could raise between them. Other examples confirm that at a women’s second marriage, the price is much less, usually about 200 T.L., and the whole procedure vastly attenuated. |
| 4. | Death in Marriage |
| The death of a wife, unless a man is old, and has a gelin in the household to do the women’s work, is a serious calamity, and she must be replaced as soon as possible. If the man is poor this may not be easy, but kinsmen will usually come to his assistance. Haci (AG 2) told me that on the death of his first wife, he went straight the next day in search of another and found one for 500 T.L. in Zk village. He had to raise the money by loans, but he needed someone to cook his bread and care for his children, and he was married within a fortnight. Mehmet’s (BA 2) wife died in May, and being without money or resources he had to find a widow, whose family would not demand a high bride price. It was August before his elder brother at last succeeded in finding one. During this period neighbours helped, his sister and his married daughters came for short stays, and his twelve year old daughter did the best she could. But the infant child looked very weak and thin when we left the village. Theoretically, although to marry a living wife’s sister is counted as incest, to remarry to a dead wife’s sister is right and proper. It is obvious, however, |
| that the chances of a younger sister being available, marriageable but still unbetrothed, at the time of the death of an elder sister, are remote, and in fact, I did not come across any instance where this arrangement would have been possible. In such cases, I was told, a second but smaller bride price would be paid, and a second wedding would take place, but on a lesser scale. For a woman the situation is different. She can manage from day to day without male assistance, and she can rely for protection and such masculine matters as dealings with the government on her near kinsmen. If she is too young or poor to manage on her own, or, as a gelin, does not wish to remain with her parents-in-law, she can readily return to her father’s house, or to his nearest of kin. In fact, we found examples of widows who remained on their own and brought up their children - there are three such in Sakaltutan at present, one very poor - of widows who married their husband’s brother, or even, in two cases, nephews, and of women who returned to their father’s house. A young woman will almost certainly remarry, though village to be brought up in her father’s house, and remained there unmarried. Children seem to be disposed of according to circumstances and mutual convenience. If the widow marries into her husband’s kabile, no problem arises. When she returns home she generally takes young children with her, and quite often then remains with her family for good. Under Islamic law, a widow may not remarry for three months after widowhood or divorce, or if she is pregnant till after she has given birth and waited the required forty days. I did not discuss this question with the villagers, but on general evidence, I think it highly probable that they are aware of this provision and generally observe it. |
| 5. | Divorce |
| Stability of marriage seems fairly high. I have not collected systematic statistics on the subject, but in Sakaltutan, in this generation and the last, I only know of thirteen men who divorced their wives. Two of these were regarded as definitely immoral by village standards, two were men who had moved out of the village altogether, whereupon their first wives returned to, or remained in Sakaltutan and remarried. Three other cases were divorced on grounds of infertility or the death of all children born, perhaps adequate ground in village eyes, and one was for infidelity during the husband’s military service. One marriage and divorce took place entirely in Kayseri, though the husband recently brought his second wife and his children back to Sakaltutan. Thus only four marriages out of some 250 of which I had sufficient information broke down in normal circumstances, and in one of these it was the woman who left, after her husband (PA 2) had inherited his brother’s widow. In |