Caucasian women were prohibited from taking
part in ≠àda or Sharì≠a legal proceedings, though
there were other forms of action open to them.
Women were able indirectly to participate in taking
vengeance: they could ask their sons or husbands to
act on their behalf. In cases involving disputing par-
ties Caucasian women could remove their kerchief
and break into a brawl or fight between men, and
the latter were obliged to stop their conflict. A hill-
man who had committed any crime could hide
from his pursuers in the female half of the house.
Introduction of Russian courts to the Caucasus
(Highlander Verbal Courts, Gorskiy Courts) in
the second half of the nineteenth century and the
beginning of the twentieth century brought no sig-
nificant changes to Caucasian women’s life. Mem-
bers of the Highlander Courts were male Russian
officials. Cases related to the defence of women’s
rights were rarely brought before these courts and
more usually passed to the ≠àdaor Sharì≠a courts.
The Soviet period
Soviet law was applied in the Caucasus from the
1920s to the 1980s. The Soviet judicial system
engaged women in both legal proceedings and in
defending their rights in the state court. The role in
juridical life of women in Transcaucasia expanded
noticeably. Women of the North Caucasus rarely
exercised their right to be a judge in the state courts,
which were still male.
The Soviet family code and court system did lit-
tle to change the marriage and family traditions in
the North Caucasus, which remained the domain
of religious laws. Traditionally marriage was per-
formed through abduction of the bride followed by
nikà™, religious marriage registration. The bride-
price was paid to the bride’s family, and the bride
received a mahr, which was hers to keep after
divorce. Official Soviet laws failed to have a pro-
found influence on North Caucasian woman’s life,
her rights or social standing. Soviet laws were more
widely used in Transcaucasian republics (in partic-
ular in Armenia and Georgia, to some extent in
Azerbaijan) where women saw significant emanci-
pation, real freedom, and a chance to defend their
rights in court.
Post-Soviet period
From the 1990s to the present there has been a
slight development of the state law in the North
Caucasus. A number of juridical traditions have
been kept, such as marriage as a way to settle rape
cases; traditional reconciliation when a girl is
abducted for marriage; the drawing up of a mar-
the caucasus and turkey 391riage agreement (nikà™); and the institution of
women encouraging their men to take vengeance.
The process of revival of use of the Sharì≠a in mat-
ters concerning divorce and and division of prop-
erty/inheritance is underway.turkeyThe history of the Turkish judicial system can be
divided into two periods. From the fourteenth to
the early twentieth century, Sharì≠a law was applied
in the Ottoman Empire. After the Kemalist revolu-
tion (1926) a secular state was declared and Islam
was made independent of the state, together with
its legal system. A secular civil statute was estab-
lished following the Swiss Civil Code and Islamic
law was declared illegal. Formal equalization of
men’s and women’s rights, equal access to legal pro-
cedures, and equal marriage, divorce, and property
succession rights followed. Changes in gender sta-
tus were slow. Informally, the Sharì≠a still applied,
especially in rural areas, in matters of polygyny,
Islamic weddings (nikà™), mahr, and divorce. The
division of inheritance whereby a woman received
half the share of a man also continued.BibliographyPrimary Sources
(all works cited are in Russian)
N. M. Agishev, V. D. Bushen, and N. M. Reinke,
Materials concerning the Gorskiy court in the
Caucasus, St. Peterburg 1912.
H. M. Dumanov and F. H. Dumanova (comps.),The legal
norms of Adygs and Balkaro-Karachains, Maikop
1997.
N. F. Grabovskiy,Courts and criminal cases in Kabarda.
A collection of information about the Caucasian peo-
ples, vol. 9, Tbilisi 1876.
H. O. Khashaev (comp.), The monuments of the
Daghestan customary law of the 17th–19th centuries,
Moscow 1965.
M. M. Kovalevskiy,≠âda of the Daghestan region and
Zakatalsky Krai, Tbilisi 1899.
——,Law and tradition in the Caucasus, 2 vols.,
Moscow 1890.
F. I. Leontovich, Caucasian ≠àda, 2 vols., Odessa 1882.Secondary Sources
T. Ansay and D. Wallace (eds.), Introduction to Turkish
law, The Hague 1996^4.
I. L. Babich, The evolution of legal culture of Adygs [in
Russian], Moscow 1999.
V. O. Bobrovnikov, The Muslims of North Caucasus[in
Russian], Moscow 2002.
Customary law in Russia [in Russian], Rostov-in-Don
1999.
D. E. Eremeev, Islam in Turkey [in Russian], Moscow
1990.
V. H. Kazharov, The traditional social institutions of
Kabardians and their crisis at the end of the 19th and