Ottoman Salonika
by descendants of the Yakubi, Karakaş, and Kapancı, which like genealo-
gies of other diaspora groups, have both open and closed aspects.^14 When
compiling a genealogy, a family has to decide what and whom to include,
and what and whom to exclude, in order to stake claims, which are often
of a religious nature. What gets left out? Is the genealogy to be patriar-
chal, or matrilateral? Are men or women or both included? Is the impor-
tance of women emphasized? A balance is established between exclusion
of the elements that do not fit the ideology of the narrative, which itself is
a claim to history, argued by the genealogy, and inclusion of the elements
that strengthen that narrative. Genealogies are important for groups that
live on the frontier, which is the limit of their geographical space, and the
boundary between insiders and outsiders, and for diaspora groups who
are beyond the range of the homeland and need to police membership
in the group when there is a great potential for mixing with others. They
complement means of daily contact, such as marriage, trade, news, and
postcards, with a more historical, authoritative record.
While other diasporic groups’ genealogies express connections to new
societies, the Dönme genealogies were used to preserve group boundar-
ies, not expand them. Dönme kept genealogies in part to ensure proper
Levirate marriages, in which a widow was required to marry one of her de-
ceased husband’s brothers. One does not find (except in the most recent ge-
nealogies) Dönme wives in western and central Europe, for example, until
after the Dönme began to deteriorate as a social group. Dönme genealo-
gies begin with male progenitors, but include daughters and wives, spelling
out the choice of partners, who can marry whom. Unlike other diasporic
Muslim groups, among whom patrilineal descent was crucial, making in-
termarriage normal, the Dönme, who had both Islamic and Jewish roots,
not only preserved patrilinealism, but added the matrilocal, thus combin-
ing Jewish and Muslim definitions of descent. Hence the importance of
both one’s father and one’s mother being Dönme. Individuals who do not
fit the image the family is trying to present of itself, individuals who break
the chain of continuity going back to illustrious forebears, are excluded.
One does not expect to find prostitutes, concubines, and bastards in family
genealogies. But what is remarkable about the Dönme, and another reason
they did not later fit into the bourgeois framework of the nation-state, was
how the Dönme included second and even third wives in their genealo-
gies, women who were very close family members, as well as children who
would be considered bastards by other groups, such as Jews.