Mehir (Dower), Gifts of Gold, and Intimate Economies of Marriage in Istanbul

Islamic mehir practices (dower) and other financial arrangements during a marriage reveal how marriage, gender and religion are understood and reconfigured in Istanbul today. Drawing on religious women’s narratives of mehir and gifts of gold, this article examines the complex interplay between economic transactions and intimate marital relationships in Istanbul, as well as the relation between my interlocutors’ practices of mehir and wedding gifts and their sense of propriety. It suggests that women’s ways of understanding and practising economic marriage transactions are ambivalently shaped by intimate entanglements of religion, nuclear family, conjugal love, secular civil law, and reputation and honour. Women uneasily navigate the ambivalences of the intimate sphere as they make decisions and engage in practices related to economic marriage transactions.