Family Life in Seljuk Anatolia

Marriage connected households through contracts, gifts, property and continuing care. In twelfth- and thirteenth-century Anatolia, the Seljuks of Rum ruled a population that included Muslim, Greek Christian, Armenian and Syriac communities. Marriage could change where people lived and how households used wealth, while childcare and women’s patronage connected family life to wider networks.

Marriage, contracts and household property

For a Muslim marriage, the mahr was a payment promised to the bride. It differed from the dowry, or goods and property a bride’s family supplied for her new household, and from gifts exchanged at the wedding. The distinction helps explain who was entitled to claim a payment or retain an object. A marriage contract could be solemnized by a qadi, a Muslim judge, after the amount of the mahr was set; the ceremony did not require a mosque.

A royal marriage could make property a matter of diplomacy. In the late twelfth century, the Seljuk sultan (ruler) Kilij Arslan II arranged the marriage of his daughter Selçuk Hatun to Nūr al-Dīn Muhammad, ruler of the Artuqids, a regional dynasty, at Hisn Kayfa (modern Hasankeyf in Turkey’s Batman Province). The dowry included several castles near the Artuqid frontier. When the marriage later broke down, the castles were not returned, creating tension between the dynasties. Here a daughter’s marriage joined households and transferred strategic territory at the same time.

Preparing a royal dowry took time and skilled work. When Sultan Izz al-Din Kaykavus was to marry the daughter of the ruler of Erzincan in northeastern Anatolia, the bride’s family asked for three months to prepare. The resulting inventory, reported by historian Emine Uyumaz from the thirteenth-century chronicler Ibn Bibi, included embroidered clothing and head coverings, jewelry, gold and silver vessels, carpets, curtains, kitchen utensils and valuable books. The list shows both the craftwork needed to equip a household and the ceremonial display attached to a dynastic marriage.

The fourteenth-century devotional writer Aflaki recounts how a trousseau was assembled for Hediye Hatun, daughter of Sheikh Salah al-Din, a religious teacher. Hediye was to marry the calligrapher Nizam al-Din but had no dowry. Rumi, the thirteenth-century poet and religious teacher, asked Usta Hatun, who taught daughters of the powerful official Muin al-Din, known at court as the Pervane, to help. Usta Hatun took the request to women in the palace household. Pervane’s wife and other women gathered clothing, jewelry, carpets, curtains and a full set of kitchen equipment. Rumi divided the gifts between Hediye and Fatma Hatun, mother of his grandson Arif Çelebi. After the trousseau was assembled, Hediye and Nizam al-Din married. The story shows how women’s relationships could move resources to a bride.

Children, wet nurses and kinship

In a prosperous or ruling household, infant care could involve women beyond a child’s mother. A wet nurse, called a dâye in Seljuk sources, breastfed and cared for a child; a household might also place the infant with an experienced female attendant. Historian Zehra Odabaşı reports that nurses could be selected before a royal birth and remain close to the child as it grew. Rumi’s poetry refers to weaning, feeding and the nurse who helps an infant begin to crawl, showing how care involved both nourishment and early physical development.

Nursing could also create a continuing family tie. Children fed by the same woman were regarded as milk siblings, a relationship that could last after infancy. Islamic marriage rules recognized this tie: the Qur’an (4:23) lists a person’s nursing mother and nursing sisters among relatives whom they could not marry. In 1116, after his brother Mesud blinded and displaced him, former Seljuk ruler Sultan Şehinşah told his nurse that he could still distinguish light. The Byzantine historian Anna Komnene reports that the nurse told his wife; Mesud later learned the secret and ordered Şehinşah killed in 1117.

Women, household service and religious communities

Mahperi Huand Hatun, wife of Sultan Alā al-Din Kayqubad and mother of Sultan Kaykhusraw II, patronized religious buildings at Kayseri. The inscription over the mosque she founded names her and dates its completion to June 1238. The site also includes her tomb, a madrasa, a school for advanced religious study, and other buildings.

Marriage ceremonies differed between religious communities. In her survey of Byzantine Christian weddings, Uyumaz describes music and a procession to the church, where the couple exchanged rings and presented a marriage agreement before witnesses; a feast followed. Her discussion of Muslim marriage describes a contract and a specified mahr, with ceremonies and celebrations organized differently.

Some elite dowry inventories included people as well as furnishings. In the Erzincan marriage account, the dowry list includes enslaved men and women among horses, clothes and household objects. Their presence shows that royal marriage could transfer enslaved people into another household, tying domestic dependence to dynastic marriage and wealth.