On Sources, Reading Strategy, and Theoretical Orientation

This study investigates the historical transformation of the Weather Change Wedding, while also confronting the source limitations that hinder historical ethnographic research in the Ottoman provinces. Rather than treating these limitations as mere obstacles, the study incorporates them into its reading strategy and methodological orientation. It draws on a two-tiered body of sources.

The first group of sources consists of ethnographic accounts produced between the late Ottoman period and the early years of the Republic. Among these, the writings of authors who blend local historiography with folkloric knowledge stand out: Böcüzade Süleyman Sami, Besim Zühdü, Hikmet Turhan (Dağlıoğlu), Mehmet Ali Tütüncü, and Salahattin Ezen.Footnote ⁴ Süleyman Sami’s Isparta Tarihi (History of Isparta), published in 1915, should be viewed not only as a local history but also as a folkloric archive that documents the region’s cultural codes and ritual practices in detail. The accounts and observations of Zühdü, Turhan, and Ezen particularly emphasize the growing role of women in shaping the ritual from the early 20th century onward.

The second group of sources consists of central state archival documents, official yearbooks, travelogues, and administrative reports. Although these sources do not directly refer to the Weather Change Wedding, they contain data on the rise of women’s labor in the carpet-weaving sector and the demographic transformations experienced by the town. These materials offer a broader perspective on the ritual’s social context, one that goes beyond explaining it solely through the withdrawal of men. By making visible the socioeconomic and demographic shifts that historically shaped women’s agency in the ritual, these sources enable an understanding of women’s involvement not as a substitute role, but as part of a structurally grounded process of transformation.

The absence of any direct reference to the ritual in Ottoman and Republican archives is noteworthy. Although this silence is not surprising, it is nevertheless meaningful. The modern state apparatus often marginalized local rituals by dismissing them as “superstition.”Footnote ⁵ This coding of such practices as superstition also shaped men’s relationship to them. The modern mindset—shaped by rationalist discourses of political authority and increasingly bureaucratized public roles—created the conditions for men to distance themselves from the ritual.

On the other hand, the classification of the ritual as “superstition” also points to the idea that its unofficial and local character may in fact be indicative of its embedded social power. Local narratives suggest that the performance of the Weather Change Wedding required official permission from the qadi (Islamic judge), and some sources even claim that a written permit once existed. Three different local sources include documents said to be examples of this permit. However, a review of the Isparta shariʿa court records from the late Ottoman period yielded no trace of such a record among surviving archival materials.

This absence does not necessarily imply that no permit was issued; rather, it suggests that the authorization may have functioned less as a formal administrative procedure and more as a performative gesture that symbolically conferred legitimacy upon the ritual. This archival ambiguity reveals not only the uncertain status of the Weather Change Wedding itself, but also the broader ambiguity and flexibility of such local rituals in navigating the space between religious orthodoxy and communal need.

At this point, it is also necessary to consider what the available sources reveal—and fail to reveal—about the ritual’s decline. Although it is difficult to determine precisely when the Weather Change Wedding fell out of practice, local accounts suggest that by the mid-20th century the ritual had largely lost its prominence, particularly in Isparta’s urban core. This gradual decline is closely linked to the broader modernization process: the expansion of formal education, the bureaucratization of religious life, and growing tensions between the state-centered modernization project and local cultural traditions all contributed to this shift.Footnote ⁶ During this period, rituals that lacked political function, did not establish strong ties with central authority, and had no representation within “high culture” gradually lost their public legitimacy.

However, it would be misleading to claim that the ritual has entirely disappeared. A practice documented by Gülşah Yiğit in the early 2010s in Aliköy, a village in the province of Isparta, reveals that certain symbolic elements of the Weather Change Wedding have continued to survive in localized forms. In this enactment, shaped entirely by women’s agency, a group of women carrying frame drums (def) reenacted the ritual through a symbolic procession; starting from a house in the northern part of the village, they walked southward to “ask for the daughter of Lodos.” Once the bride was symbolically given, the women proclaimed, “We are marrying off Vefiye, the daughter of Lodos, to Zāil, the son of Poyraz,” and began a celebratory procession. Along the way, they turned their palms downward and prayed, “O God, grant us our sustenance from the earth and your mercy from the sky.” After the bride-taking ceremony, the group returned north, gathered straw from seven households—each linked to a man named Mehmet—and burned it on the snow. At the end of the day, food prepared collectively from ingredients voluntarily contributed by the women was shared and consumed together. As Yiğit notes, the event was conducted in the spirit of an actual wedding, and it was widely believed that the weather would soften in the days following the ritual.Footnote ⁷

However, this example does not indicate the full continuity of the Weather Change Wedding, but rather its partial revival in a limited rural context and reduced form. Given the factors outlined above, it is reasonable to conclude that by the mid-20th century the ritual had undergone a center-to-periphery shift, resulting in a marked contraction of both its scope and function.

The archival silence surrounding the Weather Change Wedding—a highly localized ritual practice embedded with symbolic meaning, much like many other vernacular traditions—complicates efforts to trace its sociopolitical transformation. Moreover, the uncertain conditions under which the available ethnographic accounts were produced constitute one of the study’s central methodological challenges. That all such accounts were authored by men has resulted in a limited and indirect representation of women’s experiences and perspectives. Similarly, available data on the ritual’s broader social context remain fragmentary. The absence of concrete demographic information—such as participants’ ages, socioeconomic status, and marital status—and the lack of data on the involvement of different ethnic or religious communities make it difficult to assess the ritual’s intergenerational transmission and its wider social reach.

In response to these methodological challenges, this study adopts a historical-interpretive reading strategy. Inspired by the work of Natalie Zemon Davis, this approach foregrounds the need to interrogate the conditions under which sources were produced and to assemble disparate fragments into the most coherent and plausible historical narrative.Footnote ⁸ Within this framework, silences and narrative gaps are not viewed as mere absences or deficiencies, but as productive interpretive spaces. This strategy is further informed by the microhistorical method articulated by Carlo Ginzburg through what he terms the “evidential paradigm.”Footnote ⁹ As Ginzburg contends, the close analysis of seemingly marginal or everyday phenomena can yield critical insights into broader historical and cultural structures.

Within this interpretive framework, the absence of direct testimony from women is addressed through a feminist methodological lens. This study approaches the implied roles and partial representations embedded in male-authored sources with a reading strategy aimed at reconfiguring female agency. Drawing on Saba Mahmood’s work, agency here is understood not as resistance to patriarchal norms, but as the capacity to act creatively within them. Mahmood reframes agency as an embodied negotiation of power that does not necessarily challenge dominant structures, but operates from within their moral logic.Footnote ¹⁰ This approach is complemented by Deniz Kandiyoti’s concept of “patriarchal bargaining,” which highlights the pragmatic strategies women employ to navigate constraint—sometimes by adapting to traditional roles when they offer security or advantage.Footnote ¹¹ Finally, Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performatively constituted offers a framework for understanding the Weather Change Wedding as a cultural practice that, over time, came to be enacted and reshaped by women themselves.Footnote ¹² Taken together, these theoretical perspectives make it possible to conceptualize women’s agency not merely as a secondary role filling spaces vacated by men, but as an active and historically situated process of subject formation that emerged within the structural opportunity spaces created by socioeconomic transformations.

Local Accounts of the Weather Change Wedding

The earliest account of the Weather Change Wedding is found in Süleyman Sami’s Isparta Tarihi, in which he emphasizes the ritual’s uniqueness, claiming it “has not been seen or heard of anywhere else,” and suggests it may date back “three to five centuries.” Although the exact origins remain unknown and this time frame cannot be historically verified, the narrative reflects how deeply the ritual was embedded in local memory as a long-standing tradition. According to his account, the ritual took place during the harshest part of winter, with meals prepared in large cauldrons at foundation-run inns using donations from local tradesmen, then distributed to the poor and schoolchildren. A formal component involved obtaining permission from the qadi, typically secured by prominent tradesmen. In a symbolic gesture reminiscent of a bridal procession, the document was tied to a long stick and displayed on a large tree in the town square, accompanied by hymns, prayers, and later the recitation of marriage and consummation prayers before the food was served. Despite some officials’ religious objections, the widespread belief in the ritual’s power ensured its continued performance, including the preservation of its formal approval process.Footnote ¹³

In 1922, Dr. Besim Zühdü, the director of public health in Isparta, referred to the ritual as māhiyya—a term used in Isparta folklore to describe the act of gathering and feeding the poor, orphans, and children “for the sake of God.”Footnote ¹⁴ In contrast to Süleyman Sami, Zühdü emphasized the role of women in the performance of the ritual. Defining the ritual as superstition (hurāfāt) and widely held popular beliefs, Zühdü explained that women would go door to door asking for the daughter of Lodos, to be given to the son of Poyraz and would then prepare and distribute food using the provisions they had collected.Footnote ¹⁵

Known for his research on local history and folkloric compilations, and also a regular contributor to various People’s House (Halkevi) journals, Hikmet Turhan personally witnessed this symbolic wedding in 1925 and shared his observations in detail in the journal Halk Bilgisi Haberleri (Folklore Bulletin) in 1930.Footnote ¹⁶ Turhan wrote that the tradition originated in response to the extreme cold of Isparta’s winters, particularly the wind that blew from the snow-covered peaks of Davras Mountain, which on frosty days “cut through everything like a sword.” According to what Turhan learned from his oral sources, this wedding had been held in Isparta since ancient times to shift the weather from the cold Poyraz to the warm Lodos. Local belief, particularly among the elderly, held that the weather would usually soften after the ritual and transform from Poyraz to Lodos. If the weather failed to change, people would say, “Poyraz did not like Lodos’s daughter.”Footnote ¹⁷

Turhan remarked that the ritual closely resembled an actual wedding and was not confined to a single site but rather performed across multiple neighborhoods in the town. He gave particular emphasis to the role of women, offering detailed descriptions of their presence in the ritual, their attire, and the way they carried out the invitation process:

Turhan notes that women gathered in the neighborhoods, ate food from boiling cauldrons, and exclaimed, “Zāil Bey, our daughter is very beautiful; you’ll regret it if you don’t marry her.” He also recorded an example of the permission document, multiple certified copies of which were hung on tree branches in every neighborhood where the wedding was performed, as follows:

In an article published in 1941, Mehmet Ali Tütüncü, editor in chief of the Isparta newspaper, interpreted the Weather Change Wedding as a practice reflecting social solidarity.Footnote ²⁰ Referring to accounts dating back forty years—namely, to the late 19th century—Tütüncü emphasized that the main purpose of the practice was for the wealthy to assist the poor, and noted that this form of mutual aid was organized especially through guilds and other communal institutions.Footnote ²¹

Tütüncü’s account presents the Weather Change Wedding as a mechanism of redistribution that both stabilized the urban social fabric during the harshest days of winter and reinforced the continuity of the vernacular order. Framed as a symbolic economy, the ritual allowed charitable aid to be delivered in the form of a “gift,” enacted through a collective performative structure that preserved personal dignity and concealed overt social hierarchies. Contributions—such as bread from bakers, meat from butchers, and clothing from drapers—enabled tradesmen and guild members to perform their designated roles, thereby reinforcing the central function of guild organizations in orchestrating the ritual:

Salahattin Ezen, a researcher of Isparta’s folk culture whose numerous articles on the subject also were published in Ün (Voice), the journal issued by the Isparta branch of the People’s House, had attended the Weather Change Wedding as a child with his mother and later reflected on his experience in a 1944 article, written while he was teaching Turkish at the Isparta Middle School. His account, shaped by both personal memory and local ritual knowledge, provides a valuable perspective on the practice. Ezen states that the ritual was once performed by men in the town bazaar and was formalized through a permit issued by the qadi.Footnote ²³ However, drawing on childhood memories likely dating to the early 20th century, he also writes that women had begun to play an increasingly central role in its performance.

Ezen recounts that the ritual began with the designation of the bride’s and groom’s houses. A female wedding inviter was sent from the groom’s house—symbolically identified as the house of Poyraz—to invite women from the neighborhood, collecting bulgur (parboiled cracked wheat) and molasses in the process. The gathered provisions were used to prepare pilaf and aşure (a festive pudding) at the groom’s house, which were served to guests. Ezen notes that a wedding notice had been posted on a mulberry tree in the courtyard, bearing the message: “We are taking Lodos’s daughter for Poyraz’s son; you are invited to our wedding.”Footnote ²⁴

While these preparations and symbolic gestures were taking place at the groom’s house, the bride’s house—associated with Lodos—hosted musical performances with frame and goblet drums, accompanied by the bride’s lamentation ceremony (gelin okşaması), in which women sang melancholic songs to move the bride to tears as a symbolic farewell. Ezen provides several examples of the folk songs performed during this part of the ceremony:

According to Ezen, after the bride’s lamentation ceremony concluded, two members of the bride’s household symbolically representing the bride and groom would walk arm in arm to the groom’s house. There, following the ceremonial meal, a prayer would be recited: “Praise be to Allah who has fed and quenched us and made us among the Muslims. For the fullness of the table, for divine abundance, for covenant, for peace, for faith in the last breath, for Allah’s sake, for the soul of the beloved of Allah, for the pleasure of Allah, al-Fatiha.” The ritual marriage was then solemnized, followed by the invocation “May God grant harmony and order,” as the groom was symbolically led to the bridal chamber. According to popular belief, if the match proved harmonious, the wind would shift to Lodos and the snow would begin to melt.Footnote ²⁶

In these local accounts, the Weather Change Wedding appears as a symbolically dense, seasonally activated ritual at the intersection of gendered labor, communal solidarity, and cosmological belief. Sources emphasize different aspects, such as its structure, religious legitimacy, public participation, or redistributive function, revealing both its layered meanings and the broader social transformations that took shape between the late Ottoman and early Republican periods.

The sources indicate that this ritual, once organized under the leadership of local guilds and notables in the urban center, gradually evolved into a form increasingly carried out by women. Women came to play a leading role in many stages of the ritual, from its planning to its performance. This transformation redefines the ritual as a dynamic cultural practice in which gender roles were renegotiated and social structures reshaped. Fully understanding the ritual requires situating it within the broader context of economic and social changes that defined this transitional period in Isparta.

The Social Ecology of Ritual: Climate, Economy, and Gender in Isparta

Situated in southwestern Anatolia at 1,036 meters above sea level, Isparta lies on the northern edge of the Mediterranean climate zone. Surrounded by the Hisar, Sidre, and Akdağ mountains to the south, Gelincik to the north, İlyas to the west, and Davras to the east, the region’s mountainous topography has played a central role in shaping its climate and economy (Fig. 1). These mountain ranges block the moderating influence of the Mediterranean, resulting in prolonged, harsh winters and arid summers.Footnote ²⁷

Figure 1.

A view of Isparta and Davras Mountain in the 19th century. Source: Alexandre Louis Joseph de Laborde, Voyage de l’Asie Mineure (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1838), 110.

Climatic conditions have played a decisive role in shaping Isparta’s economic structure. Due to limited agricultural potential, the town developed as a center of craft-based production until the second half of the 19th century.Footnote ²⁸ For many years, the local economy was sustained primarily by male-dominated trades such as leatherworking, blacksmithing, tinsmithing, and coppersmithing. Agriculture, by contrast, remained a secondary, seasonal activity focused on viticulture and garden cultivation.Footnote ²⁹

The continuity of this production regime was sustained by local communities’ livelihood practices, which were closely attuned to climatic cycles. The collective use of limited resources gradually gave rise to systems of shared production and harvesting, evolving into social practices embedded in seasonal rhythms. Periodic activities like grape and cherry harvests served not only as economic tasks but also as communal events organized around seasonal transitions.Footnote ³⁰

Within this ecological and economic framework, ritual practices like the Weather Change Wedding functioned both as collective mechanisms for resource redistribution and as cultural arenas through which local communities responded to climatic uncertainty, redefined social cohesion, and circulated affective and symbolic belonging.Footnote ³¹

However, from the late 19th century onward, Isparta underwent a significant socioeconomic transformation that redefined the role and meaning of its seasonal practices. As traditional modes of production gave way to a more dynamic, outward-facing commercial economy, the town was given the name “Hamidabad” in 1891—a symbolic marker of this shift.Footnote ³² Reflecting on these changes, Vital Cuinet described Isparta as “the center of commercial operations in the interior of southern Anatolia,” noting a seasonal influx of approximately 2,500 residents, primarily Greek merchants, who lived in the town for half the year.Footnote ³³ This pattern of demographic mobility can be evaluated as a visible index of Isparta’s emerging economic reorientation.

During this period, carpet weaving emerged as the primary sector driving structural transformation in Isparta’s economy. This shift reflected a broader economic reconfiguration across the Ottoman Empire. From the mid-19th century onward, rising demand in Europe and America for “Oriental carpets” prompted mostly foreign merchants to reorganize the Anatolian carpet industry. As a result, Ottoman carpet production expanded significantly from the 1870s until the outbreak of World War I.Footnote ³⁴

Rising external demand not only increased carpet production but also reshaped modes of production and labor organization. By the late 19th century, weaving had shifted from domestic to workshop-based settings, merchant control had intensified, and the household’s central role in production had diminished. At the same time, carpet weaving expanded geographically, reaching beyond its traditional centers.

The significant expansion of carpet production in Isparta—and its emergence as a central pillar of the town’s economy—occurred in the 1890s, precisely as the carpet sector itself was undergoing structural transformation. This development is evidenced by indicators such as the operation of 2,000 looms in private households, the establishment of five carpet manufacturing and trading houses by merchants from Izmir, and the establishment of the Carpet Company in 1892 with 2,000 shareholders.Footnote ³⁵

During the same period, traditional trades, particularly leatherworking, coppersmithing, tinsmithing, and shoemaking, began to decline with the growing influx of French manufactured goods into local markets, which eroded their competitiveness.Footnote ³⁶ This development does not mean that men withdrew entirely from public production. However, the decline of these trades suggests that they began to work for lower wages and that their economic roles gradually weakened, increasing the likelihood that their contribution to household income diminished within the changing economic structure.

This economic erosion also catalyzed a broader reconfiguration of the social structure. As the guild system weakened, traditional networks of solidarity began to erode, creating space for new forms of economic relations. One of the most notable consequences of this transformation was the increasingly visible role of Muslim women in production. The growth of the carpet-weaving sector brought women’s labor to the center of the local economy. In the early phases of this shift, Muslim women began working on looms in Christian households. Through domestic production and small-scale workshops, they not only supplemented family income but also emerged as key participants in the evolving production regime. (Fig. 2).Footnote ³⁷

Figure 2.

Female carpet weavers from Isparta. Source: The author’s personal archive.

The growing visibility of women’s labor outside their own households also put pressure on traditional patriarchal structures of control. Archival records from the late 19th century, before the widespread shift to workshop-based production, indicate that Muslim women in Isparta entered the labor market by working at carpet looms and by taking on paid domestic roles in Christian households. These forms of employment reflect their expanding involvement in both productive labor and the broader social sphere of urban life. However, such developments were perceived by contemporary bureaucratic and religious authorities as violations of public morality and incompatible with Islamic norms.Footnote ³⁸

The growing prevalence of this form of employment prompted the central administration to intervene, resulting in an official inquiry into the circumstances that led Muslim women to seek work, particularly as domestic servants in non-Muslim households. The investigation focused on whether these women had male relatives to support them, whether they were widowed, and whether they faced issues related to mahr (Islamic marriage payment) or nafaqa (spousal maintenance under Islamic law).Footnote ³⁹ These lines of questioning reflected not only moral and economic concerns but also revealed an implicit interrogation of traditional masculine roles—those of provider, head of household, and guardian.

The continued debate over this issue in the early 20th century reveals that men’s failure to fulfill their economic responsibilities and women’s involvement in wage labor were increasingly perceived as threats to patriarchal authority. Archival documents from 1905 vividly reflect this tension. One such case involved a 13- or 14-year-old Muslim girl named Hatice, who was working as a domestic servant in an Armenian household. Rumors circulated that her virginity had been compromised and that she had been taken to church, revealing the heightened “moral panic” surrounding women’s labor. Although the subsequent investigation showed that Hatice had been sent to work by her own family, the incident did not remain isolated; rather, it reignited an earlier debate that had emerged several years earlier about the practice of Muslim women and girls in Isparta working in Christian households as domestic servants or carpet weavers. This practice was ultimately deemed to be “contrary to shariʿa and Islamic morality.”Footnote ⁴⁰

This case, along with earlier debates on the issue, illustrates that women’s labor could be legitimized on economic grounds, even as it remained subject to intense moral scrutiny. The employment of Muslim women in Christian households was perceived not merely as a means of subsistence but as a potential threat to the prevailing gender order. Indeed, another memorandum written by police officers later that same year included complaints about the “conduct contrary to the noble shariʿa” allegedly attributed to Muslim women in Isparta.Footnote ⁴¹

During the period when these debates were taking place, rising labor demand in the carpet-weaving sector signaled the emergence of a new labor regime across the empire—one in which production was shifting from households to workshops. Women’s labor became a central component of this regime as a cheap and flexible resource. Isparta quickly became part of this transformation, as women’s labor was gradually incorporated into workshop-based production under conditions characterized by low wages and limited rights.Footnote ⁴²

This structural transformation soon became statistically visible through a significant rise in female employment. By 1906, approximately three thousand women were working at eight hundred looms across the town.Footnote ⁴³ In 1908, the Izmir-based Oriental Carpet Manufacturers Limited opened workshops in Isparta. By 1913, official reports indicate that 6,481 workers were employed in 2,160 workshops throughout the town.Footnote ⁴⁴ Although the figure is likely inflated, in his memoirs, Papaioakeim Pesmatzoglou, the spiritual leader of the Greek Orthodox community in Isparta, claimed that on the eve of World War I around four thousand weaving looms were operating in Isparta.Footnote ⁴⁵

Despite the rapid expansion of the sector, working conditions and wage levels did not improve for female workers. By 1914, a woman in Isparta earned just 4 kurush for tying approximately ten thousand knots during an eight-hour day, whereas more experienced weavers who tied fifteen thousand knots earned 6 kurush.Footnote ⁴⁶ Although this represented a workload two to four times more intense than that of home-based production, the increased labor intensity was not reflected in wages.Footnote ⁴⁷ In addition, companies routinely imposed wage deductions of 50 to 100 kurush per carpet, often citing alleged “deficiencies” in the finished product.Footnote ⁴⁸

Another factor that kept women’s wages low was the rise of unionization among carpet weavers in Izmir. As labor organizing pushed wages higher there, companies began shifting production to nonunionized centers like Isparta, where labor was cheaper. As a result, wages in Isparta were intentionally suppressed.Footnote ⁴⁹ Within this system, women workers became part of a labor regime marked by mounting productivity demands and minimal room for collective bargaining.

The socioeconomic transformation in Isparta during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire was not limited to shifts in production methods; it also coincided with a period of political and demographic disruption that weakened the patriarchal structure. During World War I and the subsequent War of Independence, a significant portion of the town’s young male population was conscripted and sent away. Many did not return immediately, or at all, leading to a notable demographic shift in the gender balance.

Population data from the period confirm this imbalance. Although the urban population of Isparta had shown a relatively even distribution between men and women since the late 19th century, by 1927 this balance had shifted in favor of women (Table 1).

Table 1.

Population Data for Isparta

^a Konya Vilayet Salnamesi (Konya Province Yearbook), no. 22 (Konya: Vilayet Matbaası, 1888/1889), 170.

^b Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population 1830–1914, Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, WI: University of Wisconcin Press, 1985), 142.

^c Konya Vilayet Salnamesi, no. 29 (Konya: Vilayet Matbaası, 1904/1905), 185.

^d Umumi Nüfus Tahriri 28 Teşrinievvel 1927: Muvakkat Rakamlar (Ankara: Türk Ocakları Merkez Heyeti Matbaası, 1927), 9.

This demographic imbalance, although directly tied to the impacts of war and military mobilization, also played a central role in shifting gender dynamics in favor of women. For one, the expansion of the carpet-weaving sector—particularly through the transition of production from domestic spaces to workshops—created new opportunities that extended beyond increased workload or harsher conditions. These workshops became key spaces where women engaged collectively in public production for the first time, fostering new experiences of social mobility and visibility.Footnote ⁵⁰ In addition, military mobilization and the absence of men from the public sphere allowed women to take on more active roles in both economic and communal life.Footnote ⁵¹ These expanded forms of public presence laid the groundwork for the transformation of local rituals like the Weather Change Wedding.

An Anatomy of the Ritual in Light of Socioeconomic and Demographic Transformation

One way in which socioeconomic transformation manifested in everyday life was through changes in ritual and festival traditions. These shifts often appeared subtly, revealing themselves first through indirect signs. The critiques of cultural decline voiced by Süleyman Sami—a local conservative intellectual of the era—can be seen as a reflection of the broader social anxieties provoked by these transformations.

Sami’s criticisms followed two main lines. First, he questioned the legitimacy of certain ritual practices, dismissing them as “remnants of bedouin backwardness” or, at best, as pragmatic responses to crises like droughts or epidemics.Footnote ⁵² Second, he argued that Isparta’s seasonal festivals had become corrupted, now characterized by music, dancing, and alcohol—elements which, in his view, signaled moral decay and the erosion of cultural values.Footnote ⁵³

However, it is more meaningful to interpret these critiques not merely as a moralistic discourse on cultural decay, but as a conservative response to a period in which the classical patriarchal order was being unsettled and labor and gender roles were being redefined. Süleyman Sami’s discourse should be understood as an intellectual expression of the social tensions produced by the structural transformations taking place in provincial towns like Isparta during the late Ottoman period.

One of the indirect yet tangible outcomes of the socioeconomic transformation, along with the demographic shift triggered by the prolonged years of war, was the increased participation of women in public festivals.Footnote ⁵⁴ This development signals a broader reconfiguration of gender norms. Beginning in the late 19th century, as the male role of provider eroded under the pressures of economic restructuring and military mobilization, women expanded their weaving activities—originally based in the household—into workshop-centered production. In the process, they emerged as increasingly visible and influential agents in the renegotiation of gender roles. Festivals and rituals, in turn, became symbolic arenas where these transformations were both enacted and made legible—culturally, spatially, and through the embodied presence of new social actors.

The Weather Change Wedding is an example of how socioeconomic and demographic transformations shaped cultural practices. By the early 20th century, belief in the ritual’s power to influence weather appears to have significantly declined among the local population. In fact, Besim Zühdü described the ritual as a “superstitious belief” and a “folk superstition” practiced by women.Footnote ⁵⁵ Likewise, in a 1925 article, Hikmet Turhan remarked that “many simpletons still believe in this legend; yet there is no shortage of those who laugh at it and find it absurd,” suggesting a growing divergence within the local belief system.Footnote ⁵⁶

However, the rupture in the ritual’s symbolic world was not limited to a mere weakening of belief. It also entailed a notable historical transformation in the organizational structure of the Weather Change Wedding. The sources allow for a comparative analysis of two distinct historical phases of the ritual. In the first phase, which extended into the late 19th century, the organization of the ritual was undertaken by actors embedded within the period’s economic and social structures—particularly guild members, local notables, and religious authorities. These actors understood the ritual both as a means of intervening in climatic conditions and as an expression of a craft and guild–based social organization, as well as a redistributive mechanism serving a collective function. In this respect, the Weather Change Wedding shares structural and functional similarities with the rain prayer rituals organized by the same actors in Isparta. These rituals likewise involved the distribution of food to the poor and were referred to as māhiyya, being legitimized within a moral framework as “acts performed for the sake of God.”Footnote ⁵⁷

In more recent sources, although women’s central role in the Weather Change Wedding is emphasized, the earlier organizing figures are no longer mentioned. This shift cannot be attributed solely to changes in documentation practices; rather, it reflects a significant transformation in the ritual’s social context and its attributed meanings. From the late 19th century onward, the socioeconomic transformation in Isparta, along with the intensified military mobilization during the protracted years of war and the resulting demographic upheaval, weakened traditional centers of public authority such as guilds, local notables, and religious hierarchies. The social vacuum created by this dissolution was gradually filled by newly emergent forms of women’s agency. That the Weather Change Wedding came to be performed by women stands as a significant indicator of this broader social reconfiguration.

The increasing role of women in the ritual also signals a shift in the symbolic structure of the gender regime. Local accounts particularly emphasize that the female inviters had become one of the most prominent features of the ritual. By going door to door, these women not only preserved the traditional invitation custom associated with weddings, but also took over a public function once performed by male town criers in the bazaar, who used to announce the ritual. Similarly, in later performances of the ritual, the emotional labor enacted by women, particularly through the bride’s lamentation ceremony, laments, and folk songs, becomes especially prominent. These symbolic elements point to a growing emphasis on the family unit and the institution of marriage within the structure of the ritual, suggesting that it had shifted from a seasonal transition practice to a performative site where gender norms were actively reproduced.Footnote ⁵⁸

The ritual’s transformation within the prevailing gender regime raises two key questions: Why did the themes of family and marriage become increasingly central symbolic elements in the performance of the Weather Change Wedding? More importantly, why did women—despite becoming more visible in public life—not articulate demands for equality more explicitly, but instead exercise forms of agency that emphasized symbolic responsibility and social cohesion?

The growing centrality of family and marriage in the Weather Change Wedding appears to reflect a symbolic shift that is intertwined with a contradictory relationship between the increasing public visibility of women’s labor and the continued reproduction of patriarchal norms. From the late 19th century onward, women in Isparta, particularly those working in the carpet-weaving sector, became the invisible carriers of the production regime, laboring under precarious conditions for low wages. Yet this labor was largely regulated within normative frameworks such as “moral purity” and “familial loyalty.” As women’s presence in public space expanded, this transformation often unfolded not outside the boundaries of patriarchy, but rather through continuous negotiation within its norms.

Indeed, studies conducted in comparable production centers—such as that described in Yaşar Tolga Cora’s research on Armenian weaving workshops in Erzincan—demonstrate that although women assumed an increasingly visible and central role in production processes, this role was legitimized in fragile and conditional ways.Footnote ⁵⁹ Women occupied more prominent positions in manufacturing, yet they did so under the moral supervision of men. Such a labor regime granted women only limited access to public life, positioning domesticity and the family as the primary basis for their visibility.

This structural precarity rendered women’s symbolic attachment to marriage and family not merely a cultural tendency, but also an economic necessity. In a labor regime lacking union organization and social security, the family became the primary safety net for women. Accordingly, the prominence of marriage themes in the performance of rituals also can be interpreted as one of the strategies women employed to cope with the insecurities they faced in their everyday lives.Footnote ⁶⁰

The Republican period did not interrupt this labor regime; on the contrary, women’s labor was relegitimized through the discourses of “national economy” and “development.” Following the long years of war and the subsequent transformation of property structures within the carpet-weaving sector, women’s labor was increasingly framed as both a vital economic asset and a symbol of national value. Women were positioned as the invisible carriers of this developmental project. One article published in the newspaper Isparta even presented low-cost women’s labor as a competitive advantage in international markets, arguing that providing women with enough to “fill their stomachs” was an adequate form of compensation.Footnote ⁶¹ Such expressions reflect how women’s labor was devalued, while this devaluation was obscured by the rhetoric of national development (Fig. 3).

Figure 3.

Female carpet weavers in the 1930s. Source: Isparta, 29 October 1938, 10.

The growing emphasis on themes of family and marriage within the ritual also may be understood as a parallel development shaped by the social dislocations and anxieties triggered by wartime conditions. Amid ongoing uncertainty and vulnerability, the increasing symbolic weight of familial and domestic themes may reflect a search for emotional grounding in more traditional structures of stability, such as the household. In this context, wedding aesthetics, domestic imaginaries, and affective practices appear to have functioned both as spaces of shared mourning and as imaginative grounds for continuity in times of uncertainty.

Nevertheless, this reconfiguration cannot simply be characterized as a conservative or tradition-bound orientation. The growing emphasis on familial themes within the ritual also signaled a space in which women became agents—not by directly challenging the prevailing gender regime, but by symbolically reinterpreting its boundaries.Footnote ⁶²

Women’s appropriation of the ritual implies a void left by the historical retreat of male roles associated with public authority and communal leadership. It also corresponds to a symbolic reactivation and, in some cases, a representational assumption of those roles. In this sense, women’s transformation of the ritual into a stage that reminds the community of men’s former responsibilities suggests that while they appear to reproduce traditional values, they are simultaneously redefining the content of those values within a new social context.

This dual dynamic aligns with Kandiyoti’s concept of the “patriarchal bargain.”Footnote ⁶³ Women strategically navigated the limited spaces for agency offered by the patriarchal order. This approach did not constitute direct resistance, but rather a form of negotiation that allowed for the system’s gradual transformation through flexibility. Within this framework, the growing economic agency and public visibility of women did not entirely overturn existing gender norms. However, in conjunction with the erosion of men’s economic and symbolic power, it produced a zone of tension in which gender relations were subject to renegotiation. Patriarchal authority was not openly challenged but became a site of negotiation, within which women developed forms of subjectivity grounded in both symbolic and emotional labor.

From the perspective of Mahmood’s theoretical framework, this form of subjectivation demonstrates that agency can be exercised without conforming to conventional models of resistance.Footnote ⁶⁴ In the case of the ritual, women’s agency became visible on four interrelated levels.

The first was the central role of the female inviters and the transformation this role entailed. In a society where women were expected to remain within the private sphere, their movement from house to house wearing long feraces and red shoes allowed them to carve out an alternative space of authority in the public domain. The ferace served both to preserve modesty and to legitimize their newly acquired role within the ritual. Paired with red shoes—typically worn on special occasions—this attire reinforced traditional gender norms while simultaneously rendering women’s public actions socially acceptable.

Second, women’s control over the collection of food supplies and the distribution of meals constituted a sphere of economic power that reinforced their position within the social hierarchy. The public visibility and economic authority afforded to them through the ritual created a space in which women could strategically exercise agency within patriarchal frameworks that they may not have been able to fully transcend. Indeed, although operating within established social expectations, the women emerged as central figures of the ritual, successfully carving out an autonomous space within the prevailing gender order.

Third, the content and intergenerational transmission of bridal songs and laments functioned as an auditory archive of women’s emotional and historical experiences. Through these practices, women demonstrated an expressive and transformative form of agency. Constructed through the prism of mother-daughter relationships, these narrative forms moved visible women’s lived experiences beyond official discourse, while also reinforcing intergenerational solidarity and serving as a medium for transmitting collective memory.

Fourth and finally, women’s agency became particularly evident in the spatial reconfiguration of the ritual. Whereas it had traditionally been performed in mosques and in public spaces such as bazaars and foundation-run inns until the late 19th century, its relocation to homes and neighborhood settings can be interpreted as a strategy through which women expanded their zones of control. This shift in spatial practice enabled the extension of women’s domains of cultural production and mutual support.

These multilayered forms of agency are not merely tactical maneuvers within normative structures; they also point to the continual reconstitution of these structures through social action. At this point, Butler’s theory of “performativity,” which posits that gender is constructed through repeated acts that simultaneously reinforce and transform normative structures, offers a productive framework for analyzing women’s roles in the ritual as gendered performances that are both reiterative and transformative.Footnote ⁶⁵ Through these performances, gender appears as a “natural” identity. The bride and groom representation constructed through the characters of Vefiye and Zāil provides a striking example of this performative transformation. At first glance, these characters seem to reflect the gender ideology of the period: Vefiye (from vefa, meaning faithful) embodies softness and harmony, and Zāil (meaning fleeting or transient) represents volatility and force.

However, upon closer examination, Vefiye’s role in tempering the harshness of Poyraz underscores women’s mediating and transformative potential, evident both in the domestic sphere and during broader social crises. The character of Zāil, in contrast, represents a form of masculinity marked by volatility and impermanence, unable to sustain balance on its own and requiring external intervention, particularly through a female figure. This representation reframes the woman not as a passive entity but as a conciliatory and order-producing actor. In this way, the symbolic structure of the ritual legitimizes women’s capacity to reshape the social order and creates space for their agency. The softening of the weather at the ritual’s conclusion can be read as a material reflection of women’s transformative influence within this symbolic system.