frérèches (households of married brothers) live
together, and thus fission of the household did not
take place easily (Okawara 2003, 63–4). This is
also the rule in Egyptian rural households (Cuno
1995, 490).
These findings indicate that any household could
experience the stages of simple family, extended
family, and multiple family, depending on its
domestic cycle. An average for the duration of a
joint family household could affect the proportion
of households in any given period and place. For
example, simple family households were dominant
in Istanbul in 1907 (40.0 percent), while multiple
family households were dominant in Damascus in
the same year (40.1 percent). Their mean house-
hold sizes also differ, 4.2 in the former and 6.6 in
the latter (Okawara 2003, 60–3).
Women, gender, and household
How did the Ottoman household system affect
the status, life course, and fate of Ottoman women?
First, in matters of marriage the system was often
harsh to women. For example, female early mar-
riage, particularly child marriage, was sometimes a
source of trouble. In general, marriage was likely to
be arranged by the patriarch for the purpose of
reproduction of the patriarchal system (Pierce 2003,
129–31, Meriwether 1999, 103). Also, a female’s
position was shakier than that of a male, as indi-
cated by the domestic cycle. Daughters might have
to leave their natal households as they marry, re-
turn if they divorce, or leave again if they remarry,
and new brides, as yet lacking their own identity,
had to establish full membership in the husband’s
household by childbearing and child-rearing rather
than by marriage itself (Pierce 2003, 150).
Various fiscal registers and census records before
1877–8 serve as evidence of this because they ex-
clude women from their listings. Even census records
after that date prefer male to female as a rule. In
census records, therefore, female household heads
appear in solitaries or no family households, which
may consist of a divorcee, aged woman, female
slave, or the like. Some simple, extended or multi-
ple family households are also composed of female
members only. Such a household rarely lasts long,
and is likely to be fused with another household of
relatives. In Istanbul, some independent house-
holds in the second half of the nineteenth century
were composed of manumitted female slaves
(Behar 2003, 144).
Nuclearization
The nuclear or simple family household exists in
any society to some extent. As for Ottoman soci-
south asia 255eties, even in the Istanbul of 1907, which set trends
for the rest of the empire, the simple family house-
hold was not overwhelmingly dominant. At the
same time, late marriage and a decline in fertility,
which are important factors of nuclearization, were
increasing in Istanbul due to modernization and the
more comprehensive integration of the empire into
the world economy. The empire itself, however, had
disintegrated before the nuclearization trend pre-
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Bulgaria, Washington, D.C. 1993.Tomoki OkawaraSouth AsiaModern scholars have defined the South Asian
household as a co-residential and commensal unit.
This scholarship has been fashioned by two different