| Elementary families with other relatives | 8 |
| Elementary families with son married, no grandchildren | 6 |
| Multiple Elementary families (brothers with families still sharing one “ev”) |
| 3 |
| Three Generation Families:- |
| With son’s children | 15 |
| With nephew’s children | 1 |
| Incomplete Families:- |
| Widows and children | 3 |
| Old widows living alone | 2 |
| ___ 105 |
| (nb. This total includes widows living alone, elsewhere not reckoned as households.) death, nearly half the households should be simple elementary families consisting only of father, mother and children, and that only twenty-two out of one hundred and three should contain married sons, six of these without grandchildren. In fact, it is to a greater extent natural misfortune which has prevented the achieving of the three generation ideal, than the failure of the members to live up to the ideal. Only five sons with living fathers are among the simple families, and three of these (VA7, 8 and 9) were on good terms with their father (VA5) and still co-operated with him economically. The village average age of death much be low, and in addition a large number of men of the present grandfather generation were killed in the wars of Turkey which lasted from 1911 to 1922. Infertility, the birth of girls, the death of sons, the taking of young wives by old men whose sons are thus very much younger than their fathers, are all factors which lead to a man having to bring up young children on his own after his father’s death. This is clearer if we think of the family cycle. A man marries in his father’s house, then later his father dies and he is left with small children. These grow up and marry, and he in turn becomes a grandfather, and head of a joint household. If all men |
| had sons before they were thirty and if all men lived to sixty, then no one would ever be in the position of bringing up children without either his father or adult children to help him, except perhaps for youngest sons. Variations in wealth between households in Sakaltutan are not great. The richest household in the village (T1), owned approximately 100 acres of land, two horses, about eight head of cattle, seven of the more valuable water- buffalo, and about forty sheep. The old head of this family was one of three to go to Mecca in the autumn of 1949. The family dressed and behaved like any other in the village. There are some dozen households at about or near this level, while the remainder formed a continuous line of decrease in wealth down to the village watchman, landless and witless, who had to provide for himself, a wife and baby daughter, on his annual pay of 150 measures of grain (weighing roughly forty cwt.), with little or no income from other sources. Only six households are completely without land, though many have insufficient for their needs. There is no sharp break, no group forming a clearly defined economic category, no social exclusiveness. |
| V. | KINSHIP AND NEIGHBOURHOOD: KABILE AND ODA |
| 1. | Kabile |
| (Note: For the key to the letter-figure references to households, see appendix C.) The population of the villages is remarkably stable. All the present inhabitants of Sakaltutan were brought up there. Haci Mehmet (T1) and Hasan (VH) say that their fathers came to the village; and Niyazi (BT) was born of a Sakaltutan mother in Al village, only one hour away, and on his father’s death was brought back by his mother to her father’s house. The rest of the village have been there for generations. A few men have moved away to other villages in the area, always to their wife’s or their mother’s village - often the same village is both at once. This permanence of the male core of the village gives rise to patrilineal kin groups, to which most of the village households belong. The most obvious and active links are between households headed by brothers, or brothers’ sons. Beyond this point, common patrilineal descent may be recognised up to a depth of four or five generations. The word used for these groups is “kabile”, which I propose to use, to avoid the circumlucation “patrilateral kin group”. In practice the word “kabile” is not heard very frequently in the village, common membership of a kabile being indicated by direct use of the |
| relationship term for father’s brother, or father’s brother’s son. These groups have no organisation of any sort. A man has certain obligations towards his patrilateral kinsman, and in fulfilling these, he may on occasion find himself acting in common with part or all of them, but the ire is nothing formal about membership of the kabile. The kabile has no definite span, and the word may be given a wider application in discussions of original genealogical connection than it has for practical purposes. At its widest, any persons of common paternal descent may be said to belong to the same kabile. I shall mostly use the word to refer to the groups to which I have given separate letter references in appendix C, that is descendents of a common paternal grandfather or great-grandfather. Every village family used, it seems, to have a family name, that is, the name of the kabile to which they belonged. These names were not much used in differentiating people in every day life, but they were used in official documents. They are still remembered, and I was given a list of nine by one informant, to which others suggested one or two additions. Finding a good deal of vagueness, disagreement and lack of interest in the precise application of these old names, I did not pursue my enquiries to any great depth, and cannot allot every household to one of them. The function of these names has in the contemporary society largely been taken over by the modern surnames, on a European model, which the government imposed in 1935, and which everyone is compelled to use for all official purposes. It appears to have been deliberate policy that the new name should not coincide with the old, even where the old fulfilled the condition of being “truly Turkish”. The women and children hardly ever, the men rarely, use these new surnames for distinguishing people in the village. They are never used in address. The old names will be found in appendix C. The patrilocal organisation of the household conforms comfortably to the basic biological ties between men, but not to those between women. The extension of this patrilocal organisation to the system of kabile ties between households is equally largely a male interest, and based on male membership. The ties between households of the same kabile are several. In the case of attack or a quarrel, the kabile makes common cause with any member who is in trouble. In time of want, it is mainly to his kabile that a man turns for help. In certain contexts, authority and control rest in the hands of the senior member of a kabile. On special ceremonial occasions, members of a kabile act together. Lastly, in the day to day life of the village, men often associate mainly with their own kabile, and their houses, fields and threshing floors are |
| often side by side. The opportunities for the observation of kabile solidarity in quarrels and fights are limited now-a-days by the law and order which is maintained by the Republic. During may stay, I did not witness any actual fights, but one or two had taken place the previous year, and I had reports of fights which had happened recently in nearby villages. It was in this context that I heard the word kabile most used. I was not able to reconstruct in detail any of these past fights, but every reference to and discussion of the subject made it clear that solidarity and support on these occasions is the main function of the kabile, and the primary duty of any man to his paternal kindred. During a discussion of land shortage, they told me of parts of Turkey where there was said to be plenty of land. “Why do you not go there then?”, I asked. “If we had a quarrel, who would come to our side?” was the immediate reply. In fights, it is the normal duty of all members of a kabile to come to the help of each other, but for other kabile in the village it is their duty, not to take sides, but to endeavour to restore peace. This point came out clearly in a discussion of a fight which was said to have taken place in Kz village during the winter. On this occasion, I was told, and on all occasions of a clash between the main kabile, peace was restored by the intervention of the kabileler which were not involved. In a serious quarrel in Sakaltutan, which I witnessed, arising out of a fight between two water buffalo, one belonging to Melik (CS2), and the other to the son of Mehmet (T1), this principle was clearly illustrated, all members of CS coming to the aid of Melik, and the neighbours, notably Mustafa (BA1), striving, successfully, to prevent the matter coming to serious blows. The narrow span within which kabile obligations are normally recognised, the fact that they are real kin groups, not political groups rationalised in genealogical terms, means that there is a limit to the extent to which a fight can spread by the operation of this principle. I would not claim that it always works out in this way, and that line ups of distinct kabileler with each other are unknown, since I have nothing like enough evidence for such a claim, which would be against common sense expectations. Nevertheless, the only case of breakdown of the principle which came to my notice does in fact serve to illustrate it, an exception which tests and confirms the rule. In Kb village, one kabile claimed to represent half the village, and to be descended from the original land-owning “aga”; the rest of the village was divided among some dozen other kabile. At the last election of muhtar, in 1946, they told me, there was fighting for several days between this kabile and the rest of the village, in which one man was killed. The large kabile succeeded in getting their candidate adopted. On this occasion it was precisely the atypical width |
| which this kabile, with its tradition of influence and wealth in the village, recognised for itself, that led to the unusual alliance against it. The alliance did not follow genealogical lines but was simply an ad hoc matter of expediency. Above the kabile there is no unit to which a man owes loyalty below the village. On the other hand, below the kabile, a segmentary system does operate, that is to say, disputes within the group are the concern of no one outside the group, unless direct intervention to prevent violence or to settle the dispute is called for. The widow Fatma (AK3) claimed land said to have been the inheritance of her husband’s father, from his brother, old Ibrahim (AK1). Everyone in the village acknowledge that he was wrongly withholding the land, which belonged by right to Fatma and her fifteen year old son. On one occasion when the dispute flared up into an open quarrel, neighbours watched with amusement, intervening only to prevent blows, and from time to time counselling the old man to give her her rights. But no pressure was put on him to do so, and he was treated with general courtesy by everyone, possibly in virtue of his reputation for religious learning koranic spells. He was even called upon to perform the ceremony at the marriage of Mehmet (BA2), although the wronged widow was his father’s brother’s daughter. Details of another dispute within a kabile will be found in Chapter XI. p.169. In both these cases, the dispute seems likely to end in permanent deadlock, leaving the status quo undisturbed. At the marriage of a man who does not have a living father to carry out the necessary negotiations and arrangements, his kabile assist him, and the head of the senior household will take responsibility and exercise a certain amount of authority. At the marriage of Mehmet (FB 4), the brunt of responsibility was borne by his paternal first cousin, Haydar, one of the richer villagers. His own elder brother, Mustafa, was away on military service, but even if he had not been, I feel sure that Hayder, being the only senior close kinsman, would have played much the same part. The bride was the daughter of Hayder’s next door neighbour and close friend (VA13), and he was regarded by the village throughout the three days of festivities as the host. The Mehmet was only a youth, but when Mahmet (BA2) lost his wife, although he was a middle-aged man, and indeed a grandfather, it was his elder brother who took the responsibility for searching for a new wife. He went off on long expeditions to other villages, wherever he heard that a suitable girl was available, accompanied by a kinsman or neighbour or two, but never by Mehmet himself, who relied completely on his brother’s decision. Even when Yunus, Melik’s son (CS2), was married, Ali, his father’s uncle, lent his oda for the occasion and acted as joint host. On the other hand, when Hasan (PA1) wanted |