| To say that the effective group normally has a common ancestor no more than three generations above the senior living generation is not to say that they do not know of more remote agnatic links. AY and AX (see genealogy), for example, are part of a common patrilineal stock, which they claim, now numbers more than sixty households in all. In several other cases, I was given a list of five or so ancestors above the living, going back to the man who had come to the village and founded the patrilineal stock. But this information was often difficult to get, and clearly not felt to be of much importance. The large stock A is typical in everything but its unusual size. It contained 48 households without question, according to my census of the village. Although some branches had moved away to the outskirts, the original quarter of the village which belonged to it still contained the majority of its member households. AY, though I have called it one effective lineage, was divided into two segments, one AYp, consisting of eight households, and the other, AYq, of ten. The group seemed to be led mainly by the brothers AY1 to AY4, and all AYp seemed to support them. Many members of AYq also associated closely with them, but not all—the estimate of nineteen households is based on genealogical completeness, not on certainty that all these people would in fact fight for AY in a quarrel. AX's genealogical link to AY1 did not discover, and though it was fairly close, they were very definitely distinct social groups. Besides these two main segments, there were a number of other small groups. One set of two well-to-do brothers, plus a son separated from his father, and a brother's son, appears to have been FFFSSS to AYE, but seemed fairly aloof. There was another group of five households, consisting of three fairly poor brothers (who had been brought up by their mother's brother), their brother's son, and a father's brother's son who seemed to have little to do with them. Another group of four agnatically inter-connected households, who also seemed aloof, were of the same patrilineal ancestry as, and neighbours to, the main group. Two other sets of poor brothers and one odd household also belonged, but were either ignorant of their agnatic link to the other groups, or else were not interested in it. Besides these, a set of six households claiming close and definite agnatic connections between themselves, were said by some to belong and by others not to belong to the same stock. The evidence was contradictory, the statements of informants being clearly influenced by current relations of friendship or hostility. In any case, no one was greatly interested in the matter. These fifty odd households then did not constitute a social group, in spite of their agnatic connections, and many of them belonged to no effective lineages at all. |
| The segmentation, and ultimately complete fission, of agnatically related groups is normally gradual. Since lineages have no formal constitution, there is no definite criterion by which one can say that a former lineage has now become two. Clearly, segmentation along the genealogical lines is normal— that is, a lineage with three sets of brothers who are FBS to each other would tend to operate as three related groups rather than as one undifferentiated group. Increasing genealogical distance, physical separation due to change of house sites, and the non-occurrence over a period of events in which all have a common interest or duty all weaken lineage ties, and in the end lead to total fission. Specific quarrels such as that between AX and AY cause a sudden and more definite break. But in most cases I came across, quarrels between agnates, however common, were unlikely to be accepted as beyond hope of reconciliation unless the genealogical distance was such as to justify total fission. So far, I have said only that the main duty of lineage members to each other is that of fighting on each other's behalf. To observe exactly who fights on a given occasion would be extremely difficult, and in any case, I never actually witnessed a fight. My estimate, therefore, as to who acknowledges lineage loyalty and who does not is bound to be impressionistic. Since people may in fact feel mutual loyalty without showing much mutual cordiality, this is not always reliable, but sufficient of these estimates are based on good evidence adequately to support my general argument. Only those households who are themselves sufficiently important to contend for power, or who are agnatically close to such households, constitute effective lineages engaged in more or less continuous quarrels. Defence in quarrels is not the only mutual duty of agnates. Lineage members are expected to help each other in distress from sickness, crop failure or other disaster. They attend in force at each other's weddings and funerals, and assist with the expense and chores. They are often close neighbors, and associate informally, especially in sitting together at seasons of leisure in the guest room of one of the better off members of the lineage. At religious festivals, they often do their visiting, sacrificing or entertaining together. But in none of these respects does the lineage act as a body. The group which is helping a man to celebrate a wedding, or bury a corpse, or help an ailing man out with his harvest will contain, besides a core of near agnates, other kin and neighbors. Agnates are expected to give each other their daughters in marriage. As in many other Islamic societies, FBd is said to be the preferred marriage partner, and people sometimes talk and behave as though a man had a right to the first option on his FBd. But in these villages only about 10% of the marriages of |
| which I hold records were with a FFBSd or closer agnate. Such marriages are both a symptom and a reinforcement of lineage solidarity. The effect is to overlay existing relations with even more intimate ones. Hence the overall structural consequences of a small percentage of marriages within the lineage is slight. On the other hand, marriages outside the lineage, which either create new links with other lineages or re-establish old ones, establish a network of ties between lineages very much as do marriages in societies with exogamous lineages.(6) A senior member of a lineage may have considerable influence —indeed, it is plain that such a group must have some kind of leadership. But outside the authority of an elder brother over his juniors, which is sometimes very marked, lineage leadership is informal, and divided counsels may be unresolvable. The dispute in AX lineage over the bethrothal of AX1's daughter in the story which follows is a good example.(7) Moreover, a well-to-do man in Blackrock who did not have the support of a large lineage, built up a body of rather less committed supporters from among his matrilateral and affinal kin, a process which in turn weakened the lineage affiliation of those supporters. Notably he claimed to be a man of peace, who quarrelled with no one. Could he afford to? To sum up, then, lineages are groups of households which will combine for mutual support in serious quarrels and fights. The genealogical range of membership is variable, but the group is always united. The members, in view of their agnatic kinship, owe each other many duties besides this support. But it is quarrelling which maintains the lineage, not because quarrels are the only situations where lineage ties are active, but because they are the only occasions when lineage ties are active to the exclusion of all other ties, and when failure to carry out obligations is tantamount to rejection of lineage membership. Each of the four lineages involved in the quarrel I am about to describe fits the general description I have just given. Each has a central local cluster, each has a guest room where most members of the lineage can be found foregathered on a winter evening, each is involved in quarrels, each contains one or two households of wealth and consequence, and each looks after its own in trouble. On the attached genealogies I have only put in marriages where these are known to me to bear directly on the relationships between the lineages, or where they are within the lineage. Since my information on marriages in this village was far from exhaustive, I cannot say that all marriages of these two classes are included, but most of the marriages which I have not noted can be assumed to be with people not directly concerned in this particular matter, very |
| often with people from other villages. The frequency of visiting and co-operation which resulted from the existing intermarriages between the various parties involved in the quarrel, naturally declined as a result of the open breach, but they were not forgotten and were felt to make matters even more deplorable. Both sides pointed out to me the connections between AX and C, and also that B11 I was mother's brother to AY1 to 4. Some kind of quarrel between AX and AY seems to have been going on for years. The evidence is scrappy, and some of what follows is perhaps 'conjectural history,' but I have sought to indicate clearly the degree of confidence I feel in the statements I make. The village has several stories of great men of the past, men who have been in charge of the district of which the village is still the administrative centre. One of these was the father of B11, who spent his wealth going on the pilgrimage to Mecca and died poor, leaving his heirs with very little. The last of the great men was Kara Osman. I met him when he came from his own village to visit some pilgrims who returned from Mecca to Blackrock during my first field trip. He was said 'to have held the whole district in his hand.' I gather he was a sort of semi-official boss of the immediate area during the disturbed period after the 1918 peace. He died, unfortunately, just before I arrived to do field work in his village. The poor of the village spoke well of him, and he was quoted as having simplified some details of the village marriage customs merely by setting the example himself. His house was far and away the most pretentious in the village, and he was rich by village standards. He had acquired far more land than anyone else in the village simply by ploughing it when a large village, whose lands lay adjacent to his own, was evacuated by its Christian population during the exchange of population with Greece (1923 onwards). He is said to have employed much labor in former days. He also bought farm machinery when it was still very rare in this part of Turkey, and each year, used to take it and hire it out in the fertile and early harvested Cilician plain south of the Taurus. People often said to me, that, after him, the village had no real aga, but only half a dozen or so pretenders to such standing.(8) Part of the dispute between AX and AY was to do with the revolt against his power—at least that is my reading of the events. My reason for believing this is partly based on national politics. |