Keeping It Within the Family, 1862–1908 additional children, including Osman ( 1880 – 1932 ). Osman is also discussed
at length in this book. The year Yusuf died, Osman was widowed when his
wife Sabite died in labor. Three years later, in 1913 , İbrahim, who served as
a journalist and correspondent of Austrian newspapers, was accidentally
killed the same day King George I of Greece was assassinated in Salonika.
Osman then married his brother İbrahim’s wife Aisha ( 1881 – 1960 ), his first
cousin, since she was the daughter of Mehmet.^18 They lived in a wooden
house next to the Church of the Ascension (Ekklisia Analipseos) oppo-
site Mehmet’s seaside mansion. Osman’s first daughter, Nevber, became
Yusuf ’s cousin and stepsister, because Yusuf ’s mother Aisha married her
father. Osman and Aisha then had a daughter, whom they named Wonder
(Harika). Osman followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps.
A descendant of the Kapancı Osman Ehat provided me with a fam-
ily genealogy.^19 The family traces its origins to Sarrafzade [Son of the
Money Changer] Halil Efendi, who was born in Salonika between 1835
and 1840 and passed away there by 1899. His son Sarrafzade Osman Ehat
was a merchant and money changer. Mustafa Fazıl and Sarrafzade Osman
Ehat came from different branches of a larger family. Osman Ehat’s son
Sarrafzade Ahmet Tevfik Ehat, a tobacco merchant, married Nasibe
Emine Fazıl, the daughter of Mustafa Fazıl. Sarrafzade Ahmet Tevfik
Ehat’s brother, Sarrafzade Kudret Ehat married Acile Akif, daughter of
the important tobacco merchant Duhani Hasan Akif. The Akifs also
formed another branch of the same Sarrafzade family. Another branch of
the family, named Ata, was well known for its role in textile production
and distribution. Mustafa Fazıl’s youngest daughter, Nefise Mukbile Fazıl,
married Ahmet Feyzi Ata in Istanbul in 1919.
In another Kapancı family, first-cousin marriage was practiced as late as
the early twentieth century. Hasan Akif ’s oldest daughter Fatma Akif ’s son
Ali Rıza married Nuriye, the daughter of another of Hasan Akif ’s daugh-
ters, Emine Akif. The two sisters may have been five years or so apart.
There is a photo of Fatma Akif and Emine Akif when the two were young,
wearing identical dresses. These two sisters married their children to each
other. The two first cousins married in 1920.
Detailed genealogies compiled to ensure endogamy, including Levirate
and first-cousin marriages, enabled the Dönme to maintain strict sepa-
ration from other people, and most often also from members of other
Dönme sects. This served to maintain their cohesiveness in the imperial
period, but as will be discussed in Part III, it would haunt them in the