Daily Life In The Ottoman Empire (30 page)

On the day of signing, the fathers of the bride and the
groom or, in their absence, the male representatives of both parties, gathered
at the home of the bride. In the presence of male witnesses, the imam read the
conditions and clauses of the marriage contract loudly enough for the bride and
her relatives and friends in the adjoining room to hear him clearly. When he
had finished reading the contract, the imam asked the bride if she consented to
the conditions outlined in the document. To this she simply answered, yes. Having
received the consent of the bride, the imam signed the contract, congratulated
both parties, and prayed for a long lasting union. He then proceeded to
register the contract with the
kadi.
All marriages were recorded in the
court register. Otherwise, “the man and woman concerned would be summoned to
court for ‘cohabiting out of wedlock’ and their illegitimate relationship would
be recorded in the same registry.” Meanwhile, the families on both sides
attended a banquet celebrating the signing of the marriage contract. The
festivities that followed, and included nearly a week of activities, could
immediately follow the signing of the marriage contract or could be postponed
to a date in the near or distant future. The following account of wedding
festivities, which has been adopted from Fanny Davis’s
The Ottoman Lady, A
Social History from 1718 to 1918,
describes only one possible sequence of
Ottoman wedding ceremonies. This description should not, however, be construed
as the only possible traditional wedding organized by families in the Ottoman
Empire.

On the first day of festivities, following the signing of
the marriage contract, the bride’s trousseau was carried in a procession from
her home to the house of the groom. Among royalty, as well as among the rich
and powerful, this procession served as an opportunity to display the wealth
and power of the bride’s family. A large band of musicians played a variety of
instruments, such as flutes, fifes, drums, and bagpipes. Servants and
attendants carried gilded cases, like bird cages, containing all kinds of
expensive gifts, carpets from every part of Anatolia and Iran, embroideries,
ornaments of gold and silver, parrots, rare songbirds, jewels, fans, and
sweetmeats. Each case was covered with a pink veil sufficiently transparent for
the eager crowd to identify the contents.

After the gilded cases came an artificial tree (
nahil)
about sixty feet in height, the branches and leaves of which were thickly gilt
and hung with presents, such as toys and ornaments suspended by colored
ribbons. On one occasion at least, during the wedding procession of the
daughter of Ahmed III (1703–1730), the
nahil
was so large that “it
demolished the balconies of the houses on the narrow streets through which it
passed.” These initial processions were followed by more musicians and foot
soldiers. Finally came black slaves with long whips in their hands running in
front of a large tent made of cloth of gold, beneath which female attendants
carried the bride in a litter atop their shoulders. If the bride was a member
of the royal family, the sultan graced the procession with his presence. To
mark the occasion, he wore a special turban, which was decorated by a heron’s
plume clasped with a crescent brooch of huge diamonds. As the sultan passed,
his subjects “touched the ground with their heads before him so as to avoid
being dazzled by the glory of the Shadow of God.”

The next pre-wedding ceremony required the bride and her
female companions to meet at a public bathhouse. All the female friends and
relatives from both families assembled at the bathhouse, where the older and
married women sat on the marble sofas, while the young and unmarried girls
removed their clothing and, without any ornaments or covering other than their
own long hair, braided with pearl or ribbon, prepared to receive the bride. When
the bride arrived with her mother and an older female relative, two of the
girls led her to the gathering inside the bathhouse. Ornately dressed and
shimmering with jewels, the bride was immediately undressed as two other girls “filled
silver gilt pots with perfume.” Once finished, they began a procession with the
rest of the girls following in pairs. The leading girls sang “an epithalamium
answered by others in chorus,” while the last two ladies led the bride forward,
“her eyes fixed on the ground with a charming affection of modesty.” In this
fashion, the women marched through the large rooms of the bathhouse. After they
had completed their procession, the bride was “soaped, pummeled, shampooed,
scalded, and perfumed.” Her body hair was removed with depilatory paste, “her
hair was braided in eight or ten tresses and entwined with strings of pearls
and gold beads or coins,” and her eyebrows were blackened.

Once she had been bathed, cleaned, and prepared, the bride
again was led to every matron, who saluted her with a compliment and a gift. Some
offered pieces of jewelry, others embroidered handkerchiefs, which the bride “thanked
them for by kissing their hands.” The bride was then dressed in fine clothes
and seated on a gilt-edged throne built of gauze and ribbon. From this seat she
viewed a variety of performances by a group of gypsies, whom she paid at the
end with gold coins and candies. After food and refreshments had been served,
the bride and her companions departed. They had to prepare themselves for the
following day, when the female relatives of the groom would come to pay a
visit.

The female members of the bride’s family received the
female relatives of the groom at the door of the bride’s home and led them to
the women’s quarter, where the hosts and guests were served coffee. After they
had finished their coffee and exchanged compliments and niceties, the bride
entered the room to greet the visitors and kiss the hand of her future
mother-in-law. After she had left the room, the visitors were entertained by
musicians, singers, and dancers. Neither the visitors nor the guests
participated in the dancing and singing. When the guests stood up to leave, the
bride appeared again to bid them farewell and was showered with coins by the
visitors.

Later that evening, the women of both families assembled
again to celebrate the “henna night,” when the bride said farewell to her
girlhood by dyeing her hands with henna paste. Prior to the actual ceremony,
the girl was escorted through the garden of the house with her unmarried
friends, while musicians and professional dancers played and danced. The henna
was applied to the bride’s hands by her new mother-in-law, who rubbed a small
quantity of the paste first on the bride’s right hand and then her left as the
guests pressed gold coins into the orange material. The hands of the bride were
then wrapped in a small bag or a piece of fabric, allowing the dye to leave its
orange stain.

The next day, the bride was prepared for the final
procession, which would celebrate her departure from her parents’ home for the
house of her new husband. Her hair was braided, her face “was whitened and
rouged and gold dust, spangles, even diamonds were affixed to her forehead,
cheeks, and chin.” She also wore her wedding dress, which consisted of a fine
white shirt, baggy pants, a richly embroidered long red or purple dress that
she wore on top of her shirt and pants, and a pair of calfskin boots. Along with
her wedding dress, she wore a pearl necklace, a pair of earrings, and bracelets
and rings of precious stones that glowed on her hands and fingers. To cover her
face and body, she donned a crimson-or red-colored veil, which skimmed over the
top of her dress. On her head over the veil, her mother placed a bridal
aigrette, tiara, or crown made of cut glass that could come in a variety of
colors. Before leaving her house, the bride appeared in front of her father for
the last time as a virgin. She kneeled in front of her father and kissed his
hands and feet. He raised her and “clasped about her waist the bridal girdle,
which might be a jeweled belt, a fine shawl, or, in late Ottoman times, simply
a ribbon symbolic of the girdle.” During this short and highly emotional
ceremony the girl cried and, at times, the father shed tears as he bid his
daughter a final farewell. Meanwhile, an attendant announced that the groom and
his party had arrived.

Earlier in the day, the groom had arrived at his own home,
accompanied by relatives and friends, astride horses adorned with gold and
silver mountings on their saddles and bridles. One European observer, who
witnessed an Ottoman wedding procession, reported that entertainers, such as
musicians and fire-eaters, accompanied by men carrying silver dinner services
wrapped in silk cloth, followed the bridegroom and his retinue. He also
observed numerous pieces of sugar-candy products, bowls, pitchers, candelabras,
and even animals such as horses, elephants, lions, sea creatures, and a variety
of birds, participating in the march toward the wedding ceremony. At the tail
end of the procession, donkeys ferried household goods such as carpets and
beds, intended for the newlyweds’ use. While the guests were being entertained,
the bridegroom’s family dispatched a string of donkeys to the home of the bride
to transport her clothes, personal belongings, and furniture to the new home
where she would be living with her husband. The animals wore decorative
harnesses and bells hung from their necks. Although “ten donkeys would have
been sufficient to transport her dowry,” reported one observer, “twice that
number would be sent to make the procession more impressive.”

The bridegroom and his friends, beautifully clothed, next
mounted their horses and led a procession to the house of the bride. There they
met her family and requested and received the permission of her parents to
bring her to the house of the groom. When the groom and company first arrived
at the bride’s house, however, they found the gates besieged by a crowd, who
caused the young man to have to enter the house amid a storm of cheers,
compliments, and benedictions. If he were particularly well to do, he responded
by scattering a handful of coins to the crowd. At the entrance to the house or
at the foot of the main staircase, the groom was met by his father-in-law, who
embraced him, kissed him on both cheeks, and led him to the
selamlik
(the
male section of the house), where he found male relatives and friends
assembled. Coffee, sherbet, and other refreshments were served.

Meanwhile, in the women’s harem, the bride, covered by her
wedding veil, sat on a throne at the end of the room, silent as a statue. She
was surrounded by the women of her family as well as friends and acquaintances,
all dressed beautifully and covered with all the jewelry they could find. They
ate, drank, joked, laughed, complimented the bride on her beautiful dress, and
examined the bridal gifts, which were “protected by a wire grating, to prevent
pilfering” because “at a Turkish wedding, according to ancient custom, the
poorest woman in the street” was “allowed to come up and see the bride and her
presents.” Amid the noise and chatter, refreshments, sweetmeats, and sugar
confectionery were served, and dancers and musicians performed.

After the conclusion of festivities at the harem and the
selamlik,
the bride was escorted to her horse or carriage. Dressed in her bridal veil
and curtained with a red canopy, or baldachin, over her head, she rode with
pomp and ceremony to the home of the bride-groom. She was accompanied by an
older female relative and several male representatives who led the procession.
Clowns, jesters, musicians, and dancers joined the procession and entertained
the spectators, who emerged from their homes to cheer the groom and the bride.
At the groom’s house, women often gathered in the harem and celebrated the
arrival of the bride by showering her with coins, flowers, candies, and kisses.

Across various provinces of the empire, local elites
mimicked the elaborate ceremonies and rituals of the ruling classes in
Istanbul. Among the rich and the powerful in Albania, for example, armed
horsemen and foot soldiers were sent to fetch the bride from her home in a
village or town. Great banquets welcomed the men upon their arrival at the home
of the bride, and volleys of cannons and muskets were fired into the air in
celebration. When the men set off again to bring the bride to the home of the
bridegroom, festivities continued along the road. Muslim youth lined the road
to welcome the procession with dancing, and shouted the name of God—”Allah
Allah!”—as the procession passed.

Among the Ottomans, particularly the wealthy classes, a
sumptuous meal was served after the bridegroom and his friends had brought the
bride to her new home. The menu usually included dishes of saffron rice, mutton
pilafs, roasted pigeons, sweetmeats, fresh fruit, and different kinds of
sherbets. After the meal, female guests accompanied the bride to the harem and
the male guests joined the groom in the
selamlik,
or the male section of
the house. In each place, musicians and dancers entertained. The guests did
not, however, participate in dancing and singing. Dancing was frowned upon by
religious authorities, and dancing by men and women together was specifically
forbidden. Once the feast had ended and the guests had departed, the groom
stood up and returned to his bedchamber, which had been specially decorated
with carpets and cushions. This served “as the signal for the women to gather
round the bride and amid laughter and joke, push her into her husband’s
presence.” Once inside the chamber, the bridegroom lifted the bride’s veil and
handed her a special present, which among the rich was usually a diamond that
was pinned on the hair. They then exchanged candies and drank coffee. At times,
an elderly woman, who had accompanied the bride to the house of the groom,
remained in the room until the couple had finished drinking their coffee. To
put the bride and the groom at ease, she served the couple a small meal. This
was the first meal the newlyweds shared together. After the meal, the woman
helped the bride to undress.