provided not only efficiency, enforceability, and
registry, but also better served the interests of
claimants. Christian women, for example, sought
divorce in these courts, where wife-instigated
divorce was available and more likely to be
granted. Moreover, “by availing themselves of the
courts in pursuit of personal interests, they demon-
strated an impressive knowledge of Islamic legal
practice, an acceptance of shared cultural-legal
norms, and a pragmatic outlook on marital and
familial issues” (al-Qattan 1999, 433–4).
Male-female relationships
The laws regarding male and female relation-
ships clearly placed men over women by allowing
far greater rights for divorce and remarriage. For
example, while the husband could remarry after
divorce from an adulterous wife, the woman could
not. In fact, the woman had no right to leave an
adulterous husband permanently (Thomson 2000,
133–4). She could also not instigate divorce if the
husband were impotent, in the same way that the
husband could not leave her if she were barren
(Thomson 2000, 129, 196, 221–2, 241; see also
chapter 11). It seems that the latter custom survived
into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Otto-
man-Armenian communities (Villa and Matossian
1982, 91). Furthermore, a woman could not remarry
for seven years after abandonment or the disap-
pearance of her husband and could be brought back
by force if she abandoned him (Thomson 2000,136,
242). It seems the only possible reasons for the allow-
ance of wife-instigated divorce was if the husband
had a “passion for sodomy or bestiality” (Thomson
2000, 135, 222–3), or apostasy (Thomson 2000,
139), or “pollution with foreigners” (heremeaning
Muslims) (Thomson 2000, 135). In all cases, rec-
onciliation was preferred and encouraged.
Regional variations and
similarities
While there are regional variations, some distinct
similarities or patterns emerge for eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century Armenian communities in dif-
ferent parts of Anatolia, from Van in the east, to
Bursa in the west, Amasya to the north, and Kessab
and Zeytun to the south, and Iranian-Armenian
communities in northwestern Iran, specifically the
Azerbaijan province and Isfahan, both places hav-
ing large Armenian populations.
Dress
Armenian women as members of a religious and
ethnic minority retained their cultural distinctive-
ness far more than Armenian men who were much
overview 11more likely to come into contact with the dominant
group of Muslims. For instance, Armenian women
in Iran retained their distinctive dress well into
the first quarter of the twentieth century while men
by that time had some elements of Iranian cloth-
ing (Berberian 2000, 74). Like that of Ottoman-
Armenian women, Iranian-Armenian women’s
dress generally consisted of several layers of under-
garments, shirts, long skirts, aprons, ornaments of
beads and silver coins, head and mouth covers,
usually in white (Berberian 2000, 74; for Anatolia,
see A. Poghosyan 2001, 182, Villa and Matossian
1982, 60). While Armenian women in western
Anatolia often wore an apron falling over the dress,
eastern Armenian women wore no apron. Some
women wore baggy trousers (Villa and Matossian
1982, 59–60). Eastern Armenian women’s costume
included a partial, undecorated face cover to hide
the mouth, and sometimes the tip of the nose, and
a white kerchief for younger women and black for
older women and widows. Married women tended
to cover the head and part of the face with scarves
(A. Poghosyan 2001, 180). Similarily in Iran,
youngergirls wore a distinct headcover; unmarried
older girls did not have a nose or mouth cover while
new brides covered both with a white cloth.
Middle-aged women dressed more simply, in
darker colors, sometimes mixed with white, and
wore no ornaments, while elderly women dressed
even more simply and wore a white head cover and
often did not cover their noses or mouths (Berbe-
rian 2000, 75). Not surprisingly, the costumes of
Iranian-Armenian women resembled to a great
extent those of Caucasian Armenian women in the
region of Zangezur and those of the Ottoman-
Armenian women of Ardahan and Van. In some
cases, they were also very much like those of the
Muslim tribal women of Lorestan and Kordestan,
with some variations. The same could be said of
other minority women in the Middle East whose
dress and other social customs were often not dis-
tinguishable from those of Muslim women. In addi-
tion, the dress of Isfahan’s Armenian women
seemed to be much more ornamental and studded
with more jewels and coins than those to the north,
signifying perhaps the greater prosperity of that
community (Berberian 2000, 74–5).Marriage
Both Ottoman- and Iranian-Armenian women
married between the ages of 14 and 17. Like the
grooms, they had little say in whom they married
and a couple may not even have seen each other
until the wedding ceremony, although it seems this
was more common in Iran (Villa and Matossian