V. Doubleday, Three women of Herat, Austin, Tex. 1988.
S. Farman-Farmaian, Daughter of Persia, New York 1992.
E. Friedl, Women of Deh Koh. Lives in an Iranian village,
Washington, D.C. 1989.
S. Guppy, The blindfold horse. Memories of a Persian
childhood, Boston 1988.
H. Hansen, The Kurdish woman’s life, Copenhagen 1961.
M. Kousha, Voices from Iran. The changing lives of
Iranian women, Syracuse, N.Y. 2002.
N. Tapper, Bartered brides. Politics, gender, and marriage
in an Afghan tribal society, Cambridge 1991.Erika Loeffler FriedlThe Ottoman EmpireEtymology and methodology
The household, usually termed hane, was the
base layer of society in the Ottoman Empire. Ad-
ministratively, the term meant a fiscal unit until the
nineteenth century, but after the first census was
carried out in 1828–9, the term came to mean a
census unit. Substantial research has been done
since Ömer Lutfi Barkan discovered that the hanes
recorded in ta™rìr(survey) registers in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries could be important sources
for the study of historical demography (Barkan
1953). Research on households in the Ottoman
Empire before the nineteenth century is rare, how-
ever, with only a few instances (for example, Laslett
and Clarke 1972). Even after the nineteenth cen-
tury, because of limited accessibility to census
records, analysis is primarily in urban areas such as
Istanbul, Cairo, and Damascus (Duben and Behar
1990, Fargues 1999–2000, Okawara 2003). House-
holds in rural areas are not well understood except
for some Balkan and Egyptian examples (Hammel
1972, Cuno 1995). Only Maria Nikolaeva Todo-
rova’s study (1993) of Bulgarian households covers
both urban and rural areas.
A variety of approaches and definitions have
been applied to household forms and composition.
The definition adopted by the Cambridge Group
for the History of Population and Social Structure,
the most widely used criterion at present, defines a
household as a domestic group, members of which
slept habitually under the same roof (a locational
criterion), shared a number of activities (a func-
tional criterion), and were related to each other by
blood or by marriage (a kinship criterion). Resident
servants or maids are also members of the house-
hold (Laslett 1972, 23–7).Household formation
The most typical Ottoman household formation
system is the joint family household, a kind of mul-
tiple family household characterized by early mar-254 household forms and composition
riage for men and rather earlier marriage for
women, young married couples frequently starting
life together in a household in which an older cou-
ple is in charge, and formation by the fission or
fusion of one or more existent households. The
death of a household head is more important than
marriage in this type of household formation. The
system contrasts with the northwest European sys-
tem, which is characterized by later marriage for
both sexes, all couples in charge of their own house-
holds after marriage (neolocalism), and young peo-
ple frequently circulating between households as
servants before marriage (Hajnal 1983, 68–72).
The joint family household system became the
ideal in the Ottoman Empire for three reasons:
property holding, living space, and family strate-
gies. For example, Islamic law (Sharì≠a) requires an
equalized inheritance system (a female’s share,
however, is half that of a male), and therefore a
household’s property can easily be subdivided fur-
ther between heirs. Households in rural areas that
include agricultural land, and urban households
that include large estates, seemingly prefer to main-
tain a joint household for economic reasons. The
system is also confirmed by the large courtyard-
style houses that afforded ample living space for
such a household, and by the domestic servants and
maids who took care of domestic affairs before, and
in some cases even after, the abolition of slavery.
Finally, in terms of family survival strategies a sim-
ple family household was not preferable because
high mortality and short life expectancy would
increase the risk of extinguishing the family.Household composition and
size
Even in societies where the joint family house-
hold was ideal, such as Ottoman societies, house-
holds did not always tend toward a large and
complex structure. In reality, any joint family
household was difficult to continue through gener-
ations; a father had no guarantee that his son(s)
would arrive at maturity and marry.
The domestic cycle was also a problem. The rule
for Ottoman-Turkish domestic cycle households is
as follows: a simple family household is transformed
into a multiple family household, composed of
married offspring and their children in patriviri-
local residence. Daughters leave their natal house-
holds as they marry. The fission of the household
into extended or simple family households is pre-
cipitated by the death of the father (Duben 1985,
84). In contrast, the rule for the Ottoman-Syrian
domestic cycle is that even after the death of the
patriarch, and even after the death of the mother,