| During the winter, when the men have practically o work to do, most senior villagers do regular namaz. A group in an oda when the time for one of the five prayers of the day domes round, may rise and do their namaz together. At each time of day, some of the namaz to be said can be said together under a leader, others must be said by each member independently. The most senior or most pious man present will act as imam for the group. XIV.4 223 Sometimes they simply rise in turn, and perform their namaz alone on the wooden platform at the back of the sedir,(1) or in any other suitable spot. Even in the winter by no means all of them do it regularly. The muhtar, son of Abdil (AM) never did namaz apart form his Friday visit to the Mosque. Bilal and even Ali Osman did not keep it up for long. At a guess, I would say that at the most, little more than half the adult men of the village would be doing it at any one time. Sometimes people go to the Mosque, if they are near and the spirit moves them; more often, unless there is some special reason, they do their namaz wherever they happen to be. As soon as the work in the fields begins, the number of men doing regular namaz falls sharply. If they are out ploughing all day, it seems, they do not trouble themselves. It only needs a break in the regularity to stop a man, and this may easily occur through a visit to town, or to another village, or simply through hard work. The lowest ebb of pious behaviour is reached during the harvest, when the villagers are working some sixteen hours a day. Attendance at the Mosque on Fridays at noon is somewhat different. During the winter every adult man and a good many of the older boys attend. The Mosque is packed on these occasions to overflowing. The muhtar, in spite of conspicuous slackness in religious matters, attended with regularity. The large numbers during the winter were partly due to the village being at its fullest. Almost all the migrant labour returns to the village at the beginning of the winter snow, and remains till the thaw. The villagers attach great importance to attendance on Fridays at the Mosque, and I was told, as I have said, that to miss three Fridays running at the Mosque without reason is a sin beyond forgiveness. Of course, it is immaterial where the Mosque is – a man away from home goes to the nearest. In spite of this seriousness, the attendance at the Mosque fell sharply as soon as the winter was over. A man who was ploughing was in the fields, relying on a special dispensation |
| XIV.4 224 For those engaged in hard work, did not generally leave his work to come to the village. During May, a season of comparative slackness between the spring sowing and the harvest, attendances rose again, but in the early part of the harvest, when almost all the men were reaping in the fields well away from the village, the attendance dwindled to about fifteen to 20. Later, as more and more households brought their crops into the threshing floor, so that the men were within earshot of the call to prayer from the Mosque, and the work could easily be left temporarily to the women and children, the attendance rose again. I noticed that a number of villagers missed more than three consecutive Fridays, including both Bilal and Ali Osman. During the autumn attendances slowly return towards the winter peak. In spite of its falling the height of summer, failure to keep the fast during Ramazan was remarkably rare. Only the muhtar (son of AM) refused to keep it and offered no apology or defence, but even he was known to suffer to some extent with stomach ache. Others who did not keep it had a reason of some sort. Young Osman (T 2) was home on sick leave from the army, and was too ill. He spoke of making it up – it is permitted to the sick to neglect the fast, provided that they make it up later – but I would say confidently that he would not do so. Others did not keep it because they were working at the time as labourers on Haci Ahmet's new mill, and said they could not stand it while doing a day’s work. There were few of these, all poor men. One or two who were working with them did in fact keep it, especially the ustalar, the skilled builders. Selahaddin (BA 5) returned to the village during Ramazan from working in the town as a plasterer, where he had not been able to begin, at the beginning of the month, so he only kept the last two days. Otherwise everyone in the village kept the fast, including those who were not doing namaz. Attendance at the Mosque for the special evening namaz, and the reading of the Koran was not so universal, but large numbers did attend, again including some who were not at the time doing regular namaz, five times a day. XIV.4 225 Age and piety have been observed to go together in other societies. (1) I seems perfectly comprehensible at a common sense level that old people should worry increasingly about the after life. Religion is thought of mainly |
| as a method of avoiding eternal damnation and ensuring reasonable comfort in the next world. Such preoccupation with religion among the old is certainly noticeable in Sakaltutan. The old men attend the Mosque, do their namaz regularly, and talk more about religion than the younger men. At the Mosque the old men always arrive in good time and take up positions in the from row. They go more often than the younger men to the Mosque for namaz at time other than Friday mid-day. Equally the young men often take little interest. A boy is supposed, according to Islam, to start namaz at the age of seven. This rule is far from observed. Several times, asking young men in their twenties if they did namaz, I was told “I have not begun yet”. Discussing Abdurrahman (T 1’s son), who was said to be forty-seven years old, I asked if he were religious. “he used to pay no attention at all”, was the reply, “but lately he has become pious”. Young men and even boys do not all ignore religious matters. During the winter, Mehmet (son of HK), aged about nineteen, and the sons of Mustafa (ST), who were even younger did regular namaz. The children of SI were all religiously inclined and one lad of eleven who wanted to be an imam, was often wandering about with a Koran from which he read out loud in the sing son manner always used for religious Arabic. Piety is also related to social status in the village. The richer villagers are eminent not only in social life and in village affairs but also in religious life. Conspicuous for piety and respect were the 3 Hacis. The trip to Mecca cost them about 1,500 T.L. each (£200), so that it is clear that the attainment of this level of holiness depends on being by village standards rich. Most of those in the village with a reputation XIV.4 226 For piety were among the richer – Haydar (FB 1), Mustafa (ST), Fazlid (HK), for example. But there were exceptions. Ibrahim (AK 1) was a poor man, but was known rather for skill with charms that for piety; old Abdullah (PB 4) was pious partly because of his years, but mainly because his father was a leading figure in the village, and famous for his learning and piety. It is the children of the more respectable households who show most interest in the early practice of religion. At the other end of the social scale, such men as the watchman (BY), |
| Ibrahim (VT 4), Yusuf (PB 3) were conspicuously careless and ignorant in religious matters. Even the older among the poor, such as Hasan (VK), Halil Ibrahim (FA1), though they practised their ritual regularly, were not in any way respected or regarded as authorities on religion in the way the richer men sometimes were. The connection is not between wealth and piety so much as between status and piety. I would like to call it respectability. A very poor household may in fact be respectable. Respectability belongs to those who conduct themselves according to the social norms, who marry property, who are considered to be morally good, who have a certain amount of knowledge, who are helpful to their neighbours and not grasping. Wealth often helps to confer respectability, but is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for it. One of the major criterion for this respectability is in fact piety. This appears to make the argument circular – piety is greater among the more respectable, and respectability is partly based on piety. There is, in actual practise, a two-way relation between piety and respectability. The muhtar (son of AM) whose religious interest and observance represented the minimum, was thought the less of for that reason, although by wealth his household was respectable. On the other hand, a poor old man like Abdullah, with a reputation for piety, was respected in spite of his poverty. |
| XIV. | p. 227 |
| 5. Women The difference between men and women in religious practice strikingly illustrates the gulf between the sexes. The women have none of the men’s familiarity with the and interest in Islamic doctrine and lore. Women never question one about religion, and it is not among them a normal topic of conversation as it is for the men. Their ideas of cosmology are cruder and often confused and inaccurate according to their own faith. Only on one occasion did my wife find herself being urged to become a Moslem, and then not by argument, as I was approached by the men, but by an impassioned appeal to her to save them the misery of seeing in hell fire. Such theology as they understand seemed to consist of terrible accounts of the punishments of the next world, and they seemed to live in terror of hell. The women did not attend the Mosque at all, except during Ramazan, when |
| the small gallery was curtained off, and a few of the oldest women attending the evening namaz and reading of the Koran. One night I counted thirteen coming out, which, out of some 130 adult women, is not many. Only the older women do namaz regularly. The ritual is much the same as the men’s, but with a very slight difference of stance at the beginning. During Ramazan, the women kept the fast with even more fervour than the men. Several women who were technically excused on grounds of pregnancy or illness insisted on keeping it. “We are afraid of Allah,” they would say if asked the reason for this insistence. Several of the older women not only keep the fast during Ramazan, but also fast every week, some on Thursdays, some on Wednesdays and on Thursdays. The principle is the same, nothing may pass the lips between sunrise and sunset. This practice was explained ass building up a reserve of credit - for thus fasting voluntarily, one earned special favour which would be reckoned to one’s credit, against one’s sins and omissions on the Day of Judgement. This principle was not confined to women, but I only came across one or two examples of gratuitous religious practices among the men, and these not in Sakaltutan. |
| XIV.5 | p. 228 |
| But in spite of the differences, the religious earnestness of the women varied in the same way as that of the men. The young women seemed to pay practically no attention whatsoever, and if questioned would say cheerfully that they would worry about that when they were older. We did meet one or two cases of young women doing namaz, but only in rich households, and not at all in Sakaltutan. About the time when they cease to bear children the women begin to worry, and to practice, for the most part fervently, the ordinances of the religion as the understand them. Moreover, such concern with piety is more to be found among what I have above called the respectable households than among the very poor, and the widows. Before leaving the subject of women, it is convenient to anticipate the next section, in which I mean to discuss the effect of religion on the rest of the life of the community, particularly on those behaviours with which I I have been concerned in this thesis. Not only does religious belief directly sanction the social segregation of men and women, and the superiority of men to women in that the authority of the Prophet can be quoted in their favour, but the actual practice of the religion powerfully reinforces them. The religious ignorance of the women, and their separation from all |