Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (31 page)

The actual wedding ceremony was usually held on a Thursday,
and it was generally believed that the best time for the marriage to be
consummated was Thursday evening, as Friday was the holy day in the Islamic
week. On Friday morning, the newlyweds appeared before the family, “who
scrutinized them to learn whether or not their stars had met.” The families
then feasted on
paça,
or “sheep’s trotters cooked in a stew”; rice;
cream; and, among the rich, “the delicacies of
borek,
sweets
, dolmas,
and
hoşaf
were also served.”

WEDDINGS AMONG THE POOR

Ceremonies held in various rural communities and small
towns of Anatolia, the Balkans, and the Arab provinces of the Middle East were
far less elaborate. At times, the entire village joined the festivities as men,
women, and children cooked, danced, and listened to music. In Ottoman Iraq, the
bridegroom, accompanied by an imam of the neighborhood in which he lived and a
number of his friends, arrived at the house of the prospective bride and asked
the girl’s father formally for his daughter’s hand in marriage. In the course
of the visit, the amount of the
mahr
paid by the groom to the bride was
discussed and settled. Once the negotiations had achieved the desired result,
the accompanying imam prayed, gifts were exchanged, and the trousseau was
displayed, before the marriage was formalized in a ceremony presided over by a
kadi.
While women did not give any dowries to their husbands, they brought “from
their homes an abundance of household goods, which may be regarded suitable,
depending on the bride’s status; not just the trousseau . . ., but also
clothes, gold, and silver ornaments, jewels, beasts of burden, and even male
and female slaves.”

As with Muslims, among the Armenian Christians, boys and
girls were “always promised very young,” but they could not see one another
until three days after their marriage. The bride was carried to church wearing
a crown on her head, over which fell a red silky veil that covered her all over
to her feet. The priest asked the bridegroom whether he was prepared to marry
the young bride, “be she deaf, be she blind.” When the groom responded with a “yes,”
the bride was led to the house of her new husband “accompanied with all the friends
and relatives on both sides, singing and dancing.” Once she had arrived at her
new home, the bride was “placed on a cushion in the corner of the sofa, but her
veil was not lifted up, not even by her husband,” until she had been married
for three days.

Among the Muslim subjects of the sultan, once the bride had
arrived in her new home, she was kissed and welcomed by her husband’s family.
She had left her home to join them, and from that moment on, she would become
part of their family, although she was expected to maintain a close
relationship with her own family, particularly with her parents, brothers, and
sisters. Besides their husbands, fathers and brothers were the only other males
with whom a woman could converse and maintain a relationship, without violating
social taboos and conventions. On rare occasions, when the groom was very poor
and the bride’s family did not have any sons, the husband would move in with
his wife’s family.

The prearranged marriages characteristic of the Ottoman
Empire have been criticized for a lack of respect and sensitivity toward the
opinions and feelings of the young men and women who were getting married.
Equally troubling to modern-day critics is the absence of love as the principal
reason and cause for marital union. It is important to recognize that under the
Ottoman system many marriages were, in fact, based on romantic love. In rural
and nomadic communities, men and women lived and worked in close proximity, and
boys who caught a glimpse of a beautiful girl could request the intercession of
their mothers in arranging a marriage. On these occasions, the mother of the
boy initiated the process by convincing her husband that the marriage between
the lovebirds would be a wise move. Once she had secured his approval,
negotiations could begin in earnest with the family of the prospective bride.

At times, the mother’s intercession failed, or even if the
family of the boy approved, the girl might come from a family that demanded a
large sum toward the payment of the bride settlement. On these occasions, when
faced with parental disapproval or lack of sufficient funds to pay the
mehr,
bride stealing (
kiz kaçirma
) provided an alternative of sorts. The
general custom among Muslim communities in Anatolia was that a man who had
seduced and stolen a virgin was obligated to marry her, because a man and a
woman who had spent a night together had inevitably engaged in sexual
intercourse. The standard procedure was to abduct the girl and leave her with a
relative overnight. Though no sexual intercourse had taken place, the act was
sufficient to force parents on both sides to agree to marriage. The danger in
stealing the girl lay in the retaliation that could potentially come from her
father and brother, who, in protecting their honor, might resort to violence.
This possibility forced the lovers to flee the village or town and seek a
hiding place where they could elope. Once children were born to such marriages,
many grandparents came round and forgave their children for their youthful
indiscretions.

WOMEN’S LEGAL RIGHTS AFTER MARRIAGE

Ottoman jurists “viewed married couples as enjoying
reciprocal, as opposed to symmetrical rights.” From this perspective, a husband
was obliged to support his wife. He assumed full responsibility for all the
expenses associated with the family home, as well as his wife’s personal
expenses. Accordingly then, a wife owed her husband obedience. A “husband could
restrict” his wife’s “freedom of movement by forbidding her to leave the house
(except to visit her family) or he might insist that she accompany him on a
journey.”

Ottoman women were viewed as full-fledged subjects of the
state “as soon as they reached puberty,” and they retained control over their
property even after they were married. Ordinary “women as well as women of the
elites not only possessed moveable and immoveable property in appreciable
amounts, but actively tended to their property rights.” They “made and
dissolved contracts, sold, bequeathed, rented, leased and invested property,
and they did so in substantial numbers.” Women could also file a complaint in
front of a
kadi
at a court of law, and many appeared in person in court
without an accompanying male relative. At times, rich women who had inherited
land and money from their family and husbands invested in commercial ventures
and became successful capitalists. Indeed, court records from both early and
late periods of the empire indicate that women owned flourishing businesses of
considerable entrepreneurial worth. They were, however, disadvantaged by
traditional beliefs and customs, which did not allow them to operate their
businesses in person. Thus, female investors could not accompany the caravans
in which they had invested, although they could run their business through male
agents and employees. In the villages and among tribal groups of the empire,
particularly in Anatolia and the Arab provinces, women played an important role
in the economic life of their communities. Many, especially in villages and
nomadic tribes, raised money by spinning wool or cotton and producing
handicrafts.

With the introduction of capitalism in the 19th century,
textile production expanded and the work of rural women assumed greater
importance for businesses in search of cheap labor to produce yarn, rugs, and
carpets. New textile factories in the urban centers of the empire hired Muslim
and Christian women from lower classes. In the second half of the 19th and the
first decade of the 20th century, the growing “participation of girls and women”
was “most visible in the export industries that grew dramatically—raw silk,
carpets and lace—” where they “formed a very strong majority of the knotters
and probably all of the reelers and lace-makers.” Women also dominated “the
various spinning industries, of cotton, linen and wool,” with some engaged “in
household spinning, weaving, knotting, embroidering and lacemaking,” while
others worked outside the home. Aside from dominating all of the mechanized
cotton-spinning and silk-reeling mills and some wool yarn plants and cloth
factories, women also played an important role in other industries such as
shoemaking and tobacco processing, where they received a fraction of wages
obtained by men. The economic integration of women broke the old and
traditional stereotypes, but the low wages and poor conditions were condemned
as exploitative and inhuman.

POLYGAMY

According to Islamic law, a man was entitled to four wives,
while for a woman polyandry was impossible and monogamy remained the rule. In
the Quran, men were told that, “you may marry other women who seem good to you:
two, three, or four of them. But if you cannot maintain equality among them,
marry one only or any slave-girls you may own. This will make it easier for you
to avoid injustice.” To many Western writers, this practice, more than any
other, highlighted the fundamental difference between Christian Europe and the
Islamic world, and symbolized the inequality between the sexes in the Ottoman
Empire and other Muslim states. Available evidence, however, indicates that,
among men, monogamy was the dominant norm and that those with more than one
wife constituted a minute group in the Ottoman society. Saomon Schweigger, a
German Protestant minister who travelled to the Ottoman Empire at the end of
the 16th century, wrote: “Turks rule countries and their wives rule them.
Turkish women go around and enjoy themselves much more than any others.
Polygamy is absent. They must have tried it but then given it up because it
leads to much trouble and expense.”

In the 18th century, rich and powerful families in Istanbul
frowned upon men of status who married more than one wife. In some cases, the
wife vehemently opposed the presence of a second woman in her husband’s life
and refused to allow him back into her room if he proceeded with marriage to a
new wife. The news of such marital discord could spill into the public sphere
and become part of everyday gossip. Many men would, therefore, avoid serious
conflict within the household as well as public embarrassment and scandal by
eschewing a second marriage. Protocol at court required dignitaries and high
government officials to separate from former wives and concubines if they
wished to marry a princess of the royal household. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
who visited the Ottoman Empire from 1717 to 1718, wrote that although the
Islamic law permitted Muslim men to marry four wives, she could find no
instance “of a man of quality” who made “use of this liberty, or of a woman of
rank that would suffer it.” Among all “the great men” at the Ottoman court, the
English author could only name the imperial treasurer who kept “a number of
she-slaves for his own use,” and he was spoken of “as a libertine.” Montagu
recalled that the treasurer’s wife refused to see him, though she continued “to
live in his house.” Even when a husband established an intimate relationship
with another woman, he kept his mistress in “a house apart” and visited “her as
privately” as he could.

By the last two decades of the 19th century, polygamy was
confined to palace officials and the upper echelons of the religious
establishment, but it hardly existed among the merchants and craftsmen of
Ottoman society. Among these latter classes, horror stories and anecdotes
circulated regarding the misfortunes visited upon a family when a married man
decided to take a second wife. In her memoirs, the Turkish writer Halidé Edib,
who had grown up in Istanbul during the reign of Abdülhamid II (1876–1909),
recounted the story of a rich and successful Ottoman merchant who “married for
the second time the widowed wife of his brother,” claiming that his act was out
of sympathy and kindness. Edib wrote that since polygamy was “rare in the
families who had no slaves,” this development “brought bad luck to the
household.” Their “house was burnt down soon after in one of the big fires in
Istanbul,” and the wealthy merchant lost his money as well. Blaming himself for
his family’s trials and tribulations, the man divorced his second wife and
begged for forgiveness from his first wife, confessing “that all his domestic
calamity was due to having made her suffer.”

Muslim men could marry Jewish or Christian women, provided
that the man allowed his non-Muslim wife to retain her religion and attend
religious services required by her faith. The children of a mixed marriage were
considered Muslims. A non-Muslim wife could not inherit from her Muslim
husband, nor could the husband inherit from his wife. Muslim women could not
marry non-Muslim men. Even after the Republic of Turkey removed the prohibition
of marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man, customs strongly urged
the bridegroom’s conversion to Islam. Christian and Jewish men married within
their respective communities. In sharp contrast to Muslim men, they could not
maintain concubines, whether the woman was a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. If
a non-Muslim man was found with a concubine, the religious judge forced him to
marry her. In the Ottoman Empire, Christian women from one denomination could
marry men from another Christian community. They could even marry Christian men
from a European country with the consent of their parents.