| a new wife after a divorce, being himself the senior member of his kabile, he carried out the negotiations himself, though not without the help and encouragement of his kinsmen. This general responsibility of the eldest head of household of a kabile for the other members is not confined to marriage matters, though marriage in the stable village society is the most obvious and the most important. To what extent the senior member influences the economic affairs of the kabile, it is impossible to say, since they would never be discussed in the presence of a stranger, and are always kept as far as possible from prying eyes of neighbours. But since the criterion of separate households is economic independence, it is probably, in most cases where there is no definite arrangement for co-operation, very little. But in general affairs, respect for senior authority can be observed, Ibrahim the plumber, (SI3), talking of joining his brother in Argentine, spoke most enthusiastically of the blessings of that country. “You have the money”, I said, “why do you not go?”. “My elder brother does not send me”, he replied. In times of want or illness, a man’s kabile come to his aid. Two villagers received such help during the harvest. The search for a wife for Mehmet (BA2), which I have just referred to, produced no results before the harvest arrived. Wifelessness at such a time is a very great misfortune, since a man has no one to prepare and send food out of him during the long days of reaping in the fields, and no one to reap his barley and vetch. Mehmet’s one small daughter had to take care of the baby, and did her best to cook the bread for her father. Nor could his married daughter or his sisters come to his assistance, since they were required at such a season by their husbands. Normally, each man reaps alone in his own fields assisted only by members of his own household. But the whole of Mehmet’s kabile, together with his son- in-law from Kb village, and two close neighbours, spent a full day working together on his fields. The food was provided by Mehmet, cooked by the old mother of one of the party. Similarly, Iba (FA3), was seriously ill with tuberculosis, and his eldest son, a lad of fifteen, was suffering from rheumatism. Although he was not among all the members of his kabile, except the old man FA1, worked together on his fields two or three days, including two of the four brother, (FB4), who were in the village at the time. In the first of these two cases of assistance, Mehmet, the recipient, was able to work for himself, and the reciprocal principle of a day’s work for a day’s work was clearly stated. In fact, the same party, without the outside help that had been present on the first occasion, that is, the five household heads of BA, and Ali Osman (BK1), gave similar aid to Selahaddin (BA5) and Safer (BA4), and then repaid Ali Osman for his help by a day together on his fields, and |
| also their elder brother Mustafa (BA1) by a day on his. Bilal was repaid direct by Mehmet working one day on his fields, and the others were not repaid at all. The day for a day principle was carried out, but only roughly. The obligation to repay the service does not make them think of it any the less as help given in time of trouble. In the other case, I did not discuss the question of repayment, and cannot say whether Iba will discuss the question of repayment, and cannot say whether Iba will recognise a debt to his kinsmen in terms of working days; he did of course provide their food while they were working for him. To a less definite degree, the kabile comes into play on festal occasions, that is, at weddings and on religious feast days. The two sides are distinguished throughout the proceedings of a wedding. Members of the kabile of the boy are called “oglan basi”, boy’s side, literally, “boy’s head”, and the girl’s kabile likewise as “kiz basi”, girl’s side. The opposition between the two sides, which is maintained, if not very seriously, throughout the wedding games and ceremonies, concerns most nearly the close kin on either side, especially the patrilateral kin. The boy’s side laugh, they say, the girl’s side weep. At the climax of the wedding, when the boy’s side come to fetch the girl, the girl’s side have the right to play practical jokes and inflict humiliations on the boy’s side. At the wedding of VA13’s daughter, Osman, an adult but unmarried son of Hasan (VA1), came to fetch the bride with the boy’s side, arm-in-arm with the singing young men who head the procession. Although this did not seem to arouse any serious anger or cause open offence, it was the subject of joking, and the young man was caught and duly “hung” and bedaubed with paint along with close members of the groom’s kabile. This exception was made the occasion for asserting, if mildly, the rule of kabile solidarity at such ceremonies. After the bride has gone at midday to her new house, and the groom has been shaved and dressed, the boy’s household give a ceremonial meal to the whole village. The guests at this meal are the heads, not of households, but of kabileler, or units of kabileler. There is no explicit reference to kabile by the villagers, who call them simply “buyukler”, the great ones. But they do in fact roughly represent the groups as set out in my table of reference (Appendix C). The total of these groups as given there is thirty-four, and on the three occasions on which I was present at one of these meals, there were about thirty-four guests. The correspondence was by no means one for one, however, because one or two groups would have more than one representative, and some would have none. VA, with its thirteen households, would be represented by several members. At one such feast, I remember, VA12 was helping to serve, and VA1, 4, 5, 10 and 13 were presented as |
| guests. Only once did I see both branches of SI represented, if a man did not wish to attend himself, or cannot do so, the next senior member of his kabile will accept the invitation in his stead. Only in cases where there was no adult male present in the village was a group not represented, with the exception of the very poor and fragmentary households. The watchman (BY), for example, who was very poor and a bit simple, Niyazi (BT), who was not a true member of the village, Mehmet (SC2) who was only about sixteen, and Mehmet (VS), who was not held in much esteem, and was perhaps thought of as represented by Ahmet (VK1), were normally left out - they certainly do not seem appropriate people to include with “the great ones”. Otherwise, the poor or the young who represented their kabile were invited - for example, Nail (KA 4) who was only about twenty, and landless Mustafa (C 1). The procedure for deciding who should be invited, and who not, is in no way systematic. On two occasions, I found Ali Osman, as the best able to write in the village, and one or two members of the boy’s household, composing the list of guests an hour or so before the meal was due to begin. A young man would then be sent round the village with this piece of paper to invite each guest by word of mouth. Hence there were apt to be minor discrepancies between one such feast and the next, according to the personal feelings of the host, and even in part of his memory. A class of “great ones”, heads of groups of households, is socially recognised but it exact boundaries are not precisely or formally defined. Even more informal is the association of members of a kabile with each other at the “Seker Bayrame”, (literally “Sugar Feast”), the feast which marked the end of the holy month of fasting, Ramazan. After special extra morning prayers, a ceremonial meal is eaten, which the wealthier kabileler eat together in groups, inviting poorer villagers to their table according to neighbourhood and matrilateral ties. After this meal everyone visits every oda in the village in turn, except that one or two senior men remain behind in each oda to receive the guests. On this occasion fourteen guest rooms were open the highest number at any one time during my stay. The villagers visited in groups, staying only a few minutes to give a greeting and accept a sweet in each oda. These parties were composed of those who had eaten together, or had close ties with each other, following for the most part kabile affiliations. Thus the young men of VA and VT went around together in a body, so did SI, DT and DS, BA and BK, and so on. Even Mustafa (AM’s son) and Osman (AG 1), who were not normally on very good terms, did the round of the odalar together. This is a family festival, time for visiting close senior kin, and for settling, or behaving as though one had settled, disputes between kinsfolk and neighbours. Although the closest ties are emphasised, it is not a matter simply for the household but explicitly for ties which go beyond the household, explicitly an occasion for visiting, and for peace in the village. |
| Although overlapping with neighbourhood and with matrilateral and affinal kinship, the kabile plays a conspicuous part in every day life, in the formation of informal gatherings for conversation, and in work groups. In one important social institution, the oda, it is a main factor. “Oda” means in Istanbul Turkish “room”, but in the village it is confined to the special rooms used as club rooms by the men. I shall analyse below the composition of the groups which centre on these odalar. Here I wish only to discuss their ownership and distribution. These rooms vary in size from quite small ones, usually built into the fabric of the house, to large ones, which will hold up to a hundred men and boys, and which more usually stand apart from the ev. Besides the fourteen of these which were in use at the Seker Bayrami, mentioned just above, there are four more; two large old ones, one belonging to Mehmet the boy (SC), one belonging to the PB kabile, who are now all too poor to use it; one small one belonging to Niyazi (BT), a small new one which he never uses; and one belonging to Selahaddin (BA 5), which is normally in use during the winter, and was not used for the Seker Bayrami only because the kabile could not afford to dispense the traditional hospitality necessary on that occasion. All these odalar except one are the personal property of a head of a household. Very roughly there is one for each of the larger and richer kabile, but in some cases close kinsmen have separate ones. Zubeyr, the carpenter, (SI 4), and his father’s brothers’ sons had divided in two and remodelled the large and ancient oda which had been their common heritage. The split seems to have resulted from a clash of temperament - they are all rather strong and self-opinionated. Haci Ahmet, whose connection with the Sikisar (see appendix C) is in any case doubtful and remote, had an oda of his own, close to theirs, and to the large ancient oda now belonging to the boy SC2, used at present only for storing onions and potatoes. The well-to-do DT had two oda side by side, nominally belonging to the eldest and the youngest brother respectively, but in fact used communally by the whole DT group. Ali (CS 1) possesses a large oda, and Melik (CS 2) has built in a small one in a new house which he has built for himself and his five sons. These are the only existing examples of two oda being owned by one kabile. On the other hand, several of the kabileler, which I have distinguished by letter references, contain no oda-owning household. The one oda which is communally owned is the largest in the village, said to be a hundred and fifty years old. It seems to have been the original Duranlar oda, and DS and DG own it between them, though within this group the rights in it are thought of in terms of who provides fuel and furnishings. DT also have a nominal share in it, but having two oda of their own, they do not make any use of it. |
| 2. | Patrilateral Kinship and Terminology |
| The kabile does not, like a village or a nation, form a suprapersonal entity, towards which a man directs loyalty regardless of personal relationships with other individual members. It consists rather in the operating of a set of direct personal mutual ties. Perhaps one might draw a rough parallel with a group of college friends, in that the group is a group only in the spontaneous mutual affections of the members, unlike the college, which claims their loyalty apart from and above their personal relations with each other. It is characteristic of patrilateral relationships in patrilineal, patrilocal, residentially stable societies that they should add up to and become membership of a local and recognisable group, in contrast with matrilateral and affinal ties which link a man with people scattered over a wide area and unrelated to each other, who in no sense constitute a social group. This point is emphatically made by Professor Fortes in “The Web of Kinship among The Tallensi”, and there is no need to elaborate it here. In dealing with the kabile I have automatically covered much of the ground of the relationships between patrilateral kin, and more will be said about them under the heading of the household. The terminology of Turkish kinship of simple, and not strikingly unlike our own. Father’s and mother’s brothers and sisters are distinguished from each other, and there are corresponding terms for their children. One word however does duty for the English words nephew and niece, “yigen”, meaning sibling’s child. The word father “baba”, or more rarely “peder”, from the Persian, is used only in the correct kinship situation - it is never used for a father’s brother, even by an orphan to a father’s brother who is bringing him up. It is used by step children if no other kinship tie exists, and for addressing, but not for referring to, a spouse’s father. It is sometimes used as a term of respect to old men, especially when addressing strangers. The word “emme”, (Istanbul Turkish “amca”) for father’s brother has a much wider extension of meaning. His children are usually so called, “emmem oglu, emmem kizi” - “son” or “daughter of my father’s brother”. They also use, less often and only for reference, a word “emm’usage” (Istanbul Turkish “amcazade”). In practice, these terms are used for any member of the speaker’s kabile, with or without the name preceding them. Emme is used for any member of the kabile senior to the speaker in years; it is decidedly a term of respect, - Ali Osman (BK 1) always spoke of BA 1, Mustafa, his paternal second cousin, who was about twenty years his senior, as his emme. They were of the same generation, but it is not the generation count, but seniority |