NEGATIVE INCIDENTS AT THE WEDDINGS AND OTTOMAN EMPIRE’S PRECAUTIONS

Abstract

The effective elements at the wedding ceremonies, just like in many social incidents, are the customs, manners and traditions of the society. At the wedding ceremonies, people would like to share their happiness, gaiety and merriness with their friends and relatives. People are invited, gathered for this reason and their happiness is celebrated all together. Entertainments carried out during the ceremonies increase people‟s happiness, joy and merriness. The intended purpose during all these activities is having a lasting happiness and avoiding any negative incident. At the wedding ceremonies of the 19th century, the State always acted responsibly in case of any probable negative incident, wanted everyone to be cautious by sending orders to the authorities and stated that anyone who acts recklessly or imprudently would be punished in any occasion. However, despite many precautions and sent decrees, negative incidents kept occurring. Sometimes guns have been pulled out during the wedding ceremonies and shot randomly and some people were injured or killed accidentally. In addition, the house in which people gathered for the wedding could not take the weight of the attendants and collapsed; as a result, people‟s dead bodies were taken out of the wedding house. In this study, such negative incidents occurred at the wedding ceremonies of 19th century Ottoman society and the precautions taken by the State for these incidents both in city centres and the countryside have been discussed. In this respect, in order to put forward both the negative incidents occurred and the precautions, related documents and papers from the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives have been referred