Even senior Egyptian officials circumvented Mehmed Ali’s marriage regulations

Evidence

The first case concerned the governor of Safad after it fell to Mehmed Ali’s control: the governor was suspected of forcing a local muleteer (katircɩ) to divorce his wife to allow him to marry her himself. On investigation it was discovered that the muleteer had two wives, that they were constantly fighting with each other and that in fact they had come to the governor to help them with their husband. The governor told the muleteer that he was too poor to keep two women and that he had to divorce one of them. After they left, the governor sent a special messenger to one of the women telling her that if her husband divorced her, he would be willing to marry her himself. When the muleteer got to know about this, he took it to be the governor’s wish and divorced his wife in court after writing a testimony (hüccet) saying that he did so voluntarily. When Munib Efendi heard about the case, however, he reprimanded the governor politely and told him that since he was a high-ranking Egyptian official (cenab-ɩ şerifiniz devlet-i Mɩsɩriyyenin ümerasindan madud olub), and although he was not, strictly speaking, a military man, he should have sought permission from the military authorities to get married. In response, the governor said, “I have been married a number of times while I was in Egypt, and never before was I asked for a permit. It did not occur to me that I needed one now.” The fact that he took no heed of the authorities’ opinion on what he regarded to be a private matter and, moreover, the apparent abuse of his position, is an example not only of how difficult it was for the authorities to control the activities of its senior officials, but more generally, of the discrepancy between al-qānūn (the law, the regulations) and ḥukm al-wāqi’ (reality) that is characteristic of Mehmed Ali’s rule. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1181

Categorization

• XREF: The al-qanun vs. hukm al-waqi discrepancy parallels the gap between law and practice documented in the diamond trade’s extralegal regimes and in Milgrom’s trade institutions.
• SHARE: The governor’s casual ‘It did not occur to me that I needed one now’ is a great anecdote for anyone interested in Ottoman provincial administration.