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Meaning and Society in the Near East: Examples from the Black Sea Turks and the Levatine Arabs (II)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Michael E. Meeker
Michael E. Meeker
Affiliation:
Cornell UniversityIthaca, New York
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Extract

In this part,* the concept of honor among Black Sea Turks is compared with the concept of honor among clans (hamûla) of Levantine Arabs. The system of meaning among the Arabs is similar to that among the Black Sea Turks, but the cultural structuring of this system of meaning is different. First, the differences in cultural structuring are explained in detail. Then, the two contrasting structurings are shown to provide an understanding of a number of contrasts between the two societies with regard to ‘marriage’ and ‘affinal and maternal relationships.’

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , July 1976 , pp. 383 - 422
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

page 383 note 1 Massignon, Louis, ed. and trans., Le Dîwân d'àl-Hallâj (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1955), p. 93.Google Scholar

page 383 note 2 Stirling, Paul, Turkish Village (London: Weidenfeld, 1965),Google Scholar and Meeker, Michael E., “The Black Sea Turks: A study of Honor, Descent and Marriage” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1970).Google Scholar

page 384 note 1 For a comment on hamûla segmentation together with an example of the qualifications made necessary by a social structuralist theory, see Cohen, Abner, Arab Border- Villages of Israel (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1965), pp. 108–11. For comments on clan segmentation in Of, see Meeker, “The Black Sea Turks”, chap. iv.Google Scholar

page 384 note 2 See Cohen, Arab Border- Villages, pp. 68–71, for a detailed case. The Turks in Of see a payment of blood-money as barbaric and uncivilized, but the lack of such a means of solving a killing sometimes leads to tragic results.Google Scholar

page 384 note 3 The principal leaders in Cohen's study are generally men of wealth or office. For comments on the relationship between aghas and wealth or office, see Meeker, Michael E., “The Great Family Aghas of Turkey,” in Antoun, Richard T. and Hârik, Iliya (ed.), Rural Politics and Social Change in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

page 384 note 4 Among the Arabs of the Levant, nâm1ûs refers to a general moral code. This is the broader meaning of namus in Turkey, too. Among the Turks, the word írz which is derived from the Arabic ‘ard refers specifically to a woman's chastity, a particular meaning of the word ‘ard in theL evant. The same set of words can be found in both areas, but the semantic boundaries are slightly shifted. I am indebted to Mr Awni Habash, a sociology student of Hebrew University and Cornell University, with whom I have discussed the meaning of Arabic shharaf, nâmûs, and 'ard. Mr Habash is not responsible for my conclusions regarding these categories, however. Also see Cohen, Arab Border- Villages, pp. 105 and 110, where there are passages indicating a close relationship between sharaf and a patrilineal kin group. For an explicit connection of sharaf with tribe, lineage, and group among the Bedouin,Google Scholar see Abou-Zeid, A. M., “Honour and Shame among the Bedouins of Egypt,” in Peristiany, J. G., Honour and Shame (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965).Google Scholar Also see Farès, Bichr, L'Honneur chez les Arabes avant l'Islam (Paris: Librairie d'Aménique et d'Orient, 1932).Google Scholar

page 384 note 5 This observation is amply demonstrated by many passages in Cohen, Arab Border -Villages. In particular see “The case of Khâlid and Fâtima,” pp. 71–93. The latter is probably the best description and analysis of a particular case involving ‘sexual honour’.Google Scholar

page 385 note 1 The concept of ‘love’ pervades Islamic religious thought, is closely related to concepts of legitimate rule, is a theme in common everyday expressions, and is at the core of the Near Eastern customs of hospitality. Certainly the failure of social structuralist analyses to mention the problem of ‘love’ indicates a serious omission. The omission undoubtedly results from the disassociation of ‘love’ from what the social structuralists view as “structure,” and the tendency to see ‘love’ as a sentiment. In this paper, itis acknowledged that ‘love’ represents a concept of “sentiment,” as we say, but this concept is interpreted as a meaning, not as a “sentiment” per se. In the Near East ‘love’ can be a fundamental part of interpretations of the social world, and it therefore can be a fundamental aspect of the sweep of events.Google Scholar

page 385 note 2 It is impossible to express anything but interconnections and unity by ‘love’, therefore it is in this sense structureless. It is possible to express a structure with ‘significances,’ because they state a definition and purpose and thereby set off those who believe one thing from those who believe another.Google Scholar

page 386 note 1 This fact sometimes makes ethnographers appearto be the seven blind men examining the elephant. We hear reports that fathers are loving and nurturing, followed by conflicting reports that fathers are authoritarian. Saddled with a rigid concept of “role,” social structuralists can only ask themselves which view is “true.” A related problem, the puzzling transformation of female unities into male unities, constitutes the central issue ofGoogle ScholarSmith's, W. RobertsonKinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (Boston: Beacon Press n.d.). Only one argument is mentioned: “….it was often not settled whether a tribe should have a male or a female eponym, though the tide was running toward the former” (pp. 22–3). And in another place, “And in general the system of male eponyms everywhere triumphed over the grammatical rule that tribes are feminine collectives” (p. 34). And later, “There is no tribe with a female eponym in which the main groups have not male eponyms….” He concludes that patrilineality was replacing an earlier form of matrilineality. What his argument reveals in fact is that there are essentially two interrelated but independent ways of attributing a meaning to collectivities among these peoples. Maleness ‘signifies’ and femaleness ‘unites.’ Maleness is active and structures, while femaleness is a formless overarching unity of ‘love.’ It is ironic that W. Robertson Smith's evolutionary approach, unsatisfactory as it was, is able to take into its scope more of the essential elements of Arabian society than the later social structuralists who devastated the evolutionary approach. Social structuralists cannot face the possibility that a collectivity might have more than one meaning and in their view this one meaning must be related to “interest.”Google Scholar

page 386 note 2 This is implied by the “bilaterality” of ties of ‘love’ in kinship and by the indistinguishability of the ‘significance’ of kinship collectivities and other types of collectivities.Google Scholar

page 387 note 1 “Affinal relationships” often appear to be divisive and hostile, but this appearance is a reflection of two separate sharafs (significances) being juxtaposed. As one moves to modern urban society, clan sharaf plays less and less a role and is replaced with Islamic and nationalist ‘significances’ of a ‘community’. The result is that in this context kinship ties are expressed more completely in the idiom of ‘love’, that is, as an amorphous solidarity radiating outward from individuals.Google Scholar

page 387 note 2 The male ‘control’ of female ‘passion’ has been described in impressive detail by Antoun, Richard T., “On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages: a Study in the Accommodation of Tradition,” American Anthropologist, 70 (1968), 671–97. His neglect of the other elaborations of male—female ‘love’ embodied most clearly in the brother—sister tie, among other things, has led to a spirited attack on his analysis byCrossRefGoogle ScholarAbu-Zahra, Nadia M., “On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages: A Reply,” American Anthropologist, 72 (1970), 1078–88. For comments on the comparison of the ‘love’ between husband and wife and the ‘love’ between brother and sister,CrossRefGoogle Scholar see Granqvist, Hilma, Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village. Part I. Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum, vol 3, no. 8 (Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1931), Part I, pp. 60–2, Part II, pp. 202–3, 252–6. Granqvist uses the same English word for both kinds of love, but nevertheless clearly establishes a contrast between the two: passionate love and true love.Google Scholar

page 388 note 1 See Meeker, “The Black Sea Turks,” pp. 192–8.Google Scholar

page 388 note 2 See Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part II, pp. 254–5; Cohen, ArabBorder- Villages, p. 123; Antoun, “On the Modesty of Women,” pp. 691–2.Google Scholar

page 390 note 1 For the Arabs, see Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part I, p. 38.Google Scholar

page 390 note 2 The contrasting ways of making this point represent the difference between an interpretation based on “rights and obligations” and an interpretation based on meaning. By the expression, “have no reason to intrude,” I seek to underline the lack of any ‘significance’ for their intrusion. In some cases, fathers and brothers do intrude, but this results from a complication of the situation outlined here and is not relevant.Google Scholar

page 391 note 1 For the idea of a ‘covering’, see Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part I, pp. 67, 81, n. 3, Part II, p. 253; and Antoun, “On the Modesty of Women,” p. 692, where he gives the proverbs, “The death of girls is a covering” and “A man (husband) is a covering.”Google Scholar

page 391 note 2 This structural distinction between brother and sister has never been clarified in the literature of hamûla Arabs or Arab Bedouin. Abou-Zeid's account in his article, “Honour and Shanie among the Bedouins of Egypt,” in Peristiany, Honour and Shame, p. 257, is almost faultless, except for his omission of the relationship between the husband's ‘ard and his Sons' sharaf.Google ScholarKhuri, Fuat, “Parallel Cousin Marriage Reconsidered,” Man, 5, 4 (1970), 597–618, takes Abou-Zeid to task for this omission, but generally confirms the gist of the latter's description. See also Antoun, “On the Modesty of Arab Women,” p. 692.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 391 note 3 The loss of 'ard is serious for both husband on the one hand and father and brothers on the other, but it is serious in different ways.Google Scholar

page 391 note 4 Even when a husband fails to ‘respond,’ a father and brothers may fail to take up the case in Turkey, but the question is complicated when one considers that the tie of ‘love’ between a married woman and her natal kinsmen in Of is one that “normally” can be developed (recognized) ox attenuated (ignored). The Arabs do not have such an alternative at their disposal.Google Scholar

page 392 note 1 Among the hamûla Arabs, this is best expressed in the concern to marry “endogamously.” See Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part I, pp. 63–7, where the general fastidiousness of Arab marriage arrangements is described. Also see Cohen, Arab Border- Villages, pp. 122–3. Among Arabs in general, where it is clear that the important brother- sister relationship is identical with that among hamûla Arabs, one frequently finds an intense concern for marriage among those “equal in status,” a concern that has crept into Islamic tradition. See, for example,Google ScholarGoldziher, Ignaz, Muslim Studies, vol. 1 (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1967), pp. 115–25. See the later discussion of the mother's brother and sister's son.Google Scholar

page 392 note 2 Unlike the Arab case, there is no special concern to marry endogamously among Turks in Of and social rank is not terribly important in marriages. Also see Stirling, Turkish Village, pp. 201–8 for a case similar to that in Of. See the later discussion of the mother's brother and sister's son.Google Scholar

page 393 note 1 That is, the father can only ‘love’ his daughter, otherwise he must treat her as though she were not his daughter. I am not trying to describe how the father feels, only to point out the way that “fatherness” is expressed in relation to “daughterness.” This relation is not totally structured in terms of ‘love’, of course. The father partly ‘controls’ his daughter before her marriage, later he ‘protects’ her, but this is shifting the problem of meaning to the microscopic problem of fatherness and daughterness and away from the relationships of meaning involved in marriage. Brother-sisterness, for example, is a ‘love’ not so complicated by ‘control’ and this tie commonly receives the most explicit attention among Arabs as a bond of ‘love’; see Antoun, “On the Modesty of Arab Women,” p. 677, for an example of ritual brother-sisterhood between unrelated men and women. On the other hand, father-daughterness sometimes is developed into a theme of protective ‘love’ that exceeds the ‘love’ of brother-sistemess; see the later discussion of female infanticide in this paper.Google Scholar

page 394 note 1 Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part I, pp. 81, 192–4; Cohen, Arab Border- Villages, pp. 93, III, 123; Stirling, Turkish Village, pp. 202–4; Meeker, “The Black Sea Turks,” pp. 258, 269.Google Scholar

page 396 note 1 The best description of a situation where divorces are frequent among Arab townsmen is Hurgronje, C. Snouck, Mekka in the Latter Part of the Ninetieenth Century (Leiden:E. J. Brill, 1931), pp. 86–93. Such a situation seems bizarre and outlandish to Turks and there are no reports from Asia Minor of equivalent conditions among Turkish townsmen. There are scattered reports of high Bedouin divorce in much of the literature concerning them but no reliable statistics so far as I am aware.Google Scholar

page 396 note 2 For a geographical display of official divorce rates in Turkey, see Meeker, “The Black Sea Turks,” p. 238. Official rates must be approached with a measure of skepticism, but they are not without value.Google Scholar

page 397 note 1 Cohen, Arab Border-Villages, p. 120: “There can be no single sociological explanation of this kind of marriage…. Furthermore, a sociological explanation is relevant to a specific sociological problem which, as in this case, implies the consideration of only a specific aspect of parallel cousin marriage, such as economic, political, or domestic.”Google Scholar

page 398 note 1 Barth, Fredrik, “Father's Brother's Daughter Marriage in Kurdistan,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 10 (1954), 164–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 398 note 2 See p. 9, n. 2 above.Google Scholar

page 398 note 3 Murphy, Robert F. and Kasdan, Leonard, “The Structure of Parallel Cousin Marriage, American Anthropologist, 61 (1959), 17–29. The quote is on p. 27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 398 note 4 Ibid.

page 399 note 1 Murphy, Robert F. and Kasdan, Leonard, “Agnation and Endogamy; Some Further Considerations,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 23 (1967), 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 399 note 2 Lewis, M., A Pastoral Democracy (London: Oxford University Press, 1961). The problem of lineage segmentation is, of course, a principal concern of Lewis in this book. Some comments on Somali lineage exogamy are found on pp. 5–6, 180. The only way to sustain the social structuralists' connection of Bedouin-like segmentation and marriage endogamy is to rule the Somali to be hors concours.Google Scholar

page 399 note 3 This is generally the interpretation of Cohen, Arab Border-Villages. See, for example, pp. 123 and 178. For such an interpretation of Bedouin social structure,Google Scholar see Peters, Emrys, “The Proliferation of Segments in the Lineage of the Bedouin of Cyrenaica,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 90 (1960), 42–3.Google Scholar

page 400 note 1 For a more general criticism of this kind of social structuralism including comments on the interpretation of caste as well as on the interpretation of segmentation, see Dumont, Louis, Homo Hierarchicus (n.p.: University of Chicago, 1970), chap. 11.Google Scholar

page 400 note 2 Levi-Strauss, Claude, The Elementary Structure of Kinship (Boston: Beacon Press,1969).Google Scholar

page 400 note 3 This represents my interpretation of Cuisenier, Jean, “Endogamie et Exogamie dans le Mariage Arabe’, l'Homme, 2, 2 (1962), 80–105. Consider the following quote: “C'est la pensée indigène elle-même qui met sur la voie d'un modèle explicatif. Celle-ci se représente en effet les alliances nouées dans un groupe à partir dune opposition fondamentale entre deux frères, dont l'un doit se marier dana le sens de l'endogarnie pour maintenir au groupe sa consistance, et l'autre dans le sens de l'exogamie pour donner au groupe des alliances. Cette opposition des deux frères se trouve à tous les niveaux du groupe agnatique….” (p. 104). Cuisenier points out the connection between this interpretation and that of Murphy and Kasdan, “The Structure of Parallel Cousin Marriage.”CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 401 note 1 See Levi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures, chap. xxix.Google Scholar

page 402 note 1 In general, my comments with regard to the Circassians derive from conversations with Circassians in Turkey. Similar points have also been made with respect to Circassians in the Caucasus. See, for example, Longworth, J. A., A year among the Circassians, 2 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1840), II, 129–30. For a Circassian description of Seref and namus,Google Scholar see Baj, Jabagi, Çerkesya'da Sosyal Yasayis-Âdetler (Ankara: Fon Matbaasí, 1969), pp. 15–16.Google Scholar AlSo see Koch, Karl, Reise durch Russland nach dem Kaukasischen Isthmus in den Jahren 1836, 1837 und 1838, 2 vols. (Stuttgart and Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1842), esp. vol. 1.Google Scholar

page 402 note 2 See Abou-Zeid, , “Honour and Shame among the Bedouins of Egypt,” and Lewis, I. M., Marriage and the Family in Northern Somaliland, East African Studies No. 15 (Kampala: East African Institute of Social Research, 1962). I have concluded this from similar aspects of betrothal, marriage brideprice, dowry, and the concern for the control of women among hamûla Arabs and the Northern Somali. This is not to say that all these matters are absolutely identical. Lewis interprets all these matters social structurally. Although he provides an immense amount of material, the “ideological side” of these matters is not well filled out. The case must rest, of course, on the ultimate determination of cultural formulations rather than on deductions from an abstracted social structure.Google Scholar

page 403 note 1 Lewis, A Pastoral Democracy, p. 180.Google Scholar

page 404 note 1 These observations about the marriage practices of Circassians are also drawn from my interviews with Circassians in Turkey.Google Scholar

page 404 note 2 One should not quibble with an account that provides such a rich mine of information, but it must be said that Lewis does not deal adequately with this problem. Lewis states that men of diya paying groups do not intermarry and that men of primary lineages (six to ten agnatic generations) tend not to intermarry, (Lewis, Marriage and the Family, p. 25). The vagueness of these boundaries of marriageability is never satisfactorily explained: “Marriage within this prohibited range, however, is not regarded as incestuous nor is it subject to ritual sanctions” (p. 25). Affinal relations, he says, are associated with the roots of a tree (agnation) (p. 26). We have here the suspicious connection of affinity with roots-nourishment-milk-mothers-love, common associations throughout the Near East. He also states that the religious leaders of tariqa (organisations of ‘love’) “make full use of affinal connections (as of other ties) to attract adherents” (p. 23), a principle that contradicts segmentation and agnation in a suspicious context. Matrilateral marriage is also left vague: “While there is no enjoined or even preferred marriage with the mother's brother's daughter, men sometimes marry from their mother's lineage….” (p. 26). In addition to this, we may observe that distant agnatic ties among the Somali come under the purview of remote ascendants who are seen as saints, have tombs, and express unity (Lewis, A Pastoral Democracy, pp. 129–30). Again these are features connected with ‘love’ and a different situation from Bedouin or Berber tribes where saints have separate lineages altogether. There is then the possibility that marriage occurs where ‘significance’ is weak and ‘love’ is strong. Lewis has given us no explanation of this problem other than the rationalization of a social structuralist: “Because it [the primary lineage] is so strongly integrated in agnation, although it has no formally installed leader, its members feel little need to supplement their already strong agnatic ties by subsidiary links through marriage” (ibid. pp. 5–6).

page 406 note 1 Cohen, Arab Border-Villages, p. 121.Google Scholar

page 407 note 1 Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part I, pp. 123–4.Google Scholar

page 407 note 2 It should not be understood from this argument that Arabs have no “reason” for stating a dislike for FBD marriage or for marrying women who are distant. Such statements and practices occur among Arabs, and I do not wish to deny that this is so. Rather, I have been pointing out the unavoidable meanings of such statements and practices and thereby providing an understanding of why Arabs typically eschew them in opinion and practice. Circumstances frequently require that an unsatisfactory arrangement must be tolerated.Google Scholar

page 407 note 3 Cohen, Arab Border-Villages, p. 54.Google Scholar

page 408 note 1 Ibid. p. 113. For the Bedouin, see Peters, “The Proliferation of Segments,” p. 46. At some level, of course, the MB and ZS may be tied by a ‘significance’ due to the possibility of “endogamy.” The case analyzed represents an instance where the ‘love’ between MB and ZS is relatively untroubled by ‘significance.’

page 409 note 1 Antoun, “On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages”, pp. 687–8,Google Scholar and idem, “Antoun's Reply to Abu-Zahra,” American Anthropologist, LXXII (1970), 1088–92.

page 409 note 2 See Forster, Edward Seymour, trans., The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Buspecq (Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople, 1554–1562) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), pp. 28–9, 117–18, for some provocative remarks about the Sultans, their wives, and the relations between married women and their natal kin among Ottomans in Istanbul.Google Scholar

page 409 note 3 Goldziher, Ignaz, Muslim Studies, vol. 1 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), pp. 115–25.Google Scholar

page 409 note 4 Abu-Zahra, “A Reply,” p. 1084.Google Scholar

page 410 note 1 Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part I, p. 119.Google Scholar

page 410 note 2 Ibid. p. 117.

page 410 note 3 Ibid. pp. 109–19, 193.

page 412 note 1 Ibid. Part II, p. 254.

page 412 note 2 Ibid. Part I, pp. 68, 93–109; Part II, pp. 248–56.

page 413 note 1 Ibid. Part II, chap. ix.

page 413 note 2 Ibid. p. 253.

page 413 note 3 My italics. Ibid. pp. 253–4.

page 414 note 1 Ibid. p. 219. Also see Cohen, Arab Border-Villages, pp. 71–93 for an example of a serious situation precipitated by a semi-abduction.

page 414 note 2 For a complete study of abduction in Turkey, see Yasa, Ibrahim, Türkiyede Kíz Kaçírma Gelenekleri ye Bununla Ilgili Bazí Idarî Meseleler, Türkiye ye Orta Dogu Âmme Idaresi Enstitüsü, Köy Etüdleri Serisi, No. 3 (Ankara: Ajans-Türk Matbassí, 1962).Google Scholar

page 415 note 1 For an analysis of marriage festivities and ceremonies in Of, see Meeker, “The Black Sea Turks,” chap. vii. This can be compared with the account in Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part II, chaps. i–vi. Arabs also pay a brideprice, but this brideprice does not have the same meaning as it does in Of. It allows the groom to become a husband of the girl, but it does not transfer her so completely to him.Google Scholar

page 415 note 2 See Yasa, Türkivede Kíz Kaçírma, pp. 4–6.Google Scholar

page 416 note 1 Sending a woman back does not rid the Turkish husband of the disgrace as it does to a degree the Arab husband. Sending a woman back only serves to insult the woman's natal kin by “improperly” forcing upon them a fallen woman. In the Arab case, the disgrace of the woman is already in the laps of her natal kin.Google Scholar

page 416 note 2 Granqvist, Marriage Conditions, Part I, pp. 31–41.Google Scholar

page 416 note 3 Ibid. p. 146.

page 417 note 1 Nicholson, Reynold A., A Literary History of the Arabs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 90–1.Google Scholar

page 417 note 2 Antoun, “On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages,” p. 692.Google Scholar

page 417 note 3 Ibid.

page 418 note 1 Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, pp. 91–2. The poem dates from the ninth century.Google Scholar

page 418 note 2 Ibid.

page 418 note 3 Ibid.