Child Marriage in the Late Ottoman Empire: A Registers-Based Reassessment

This study examines the prevalence of child marriage in the late Ottoman Empire through four primary marriage-permit registers (Tarsus nos. 419 and 401, Adana no. 138, Bakırköy no. 675) comprising 1,751 permits, none recording a case of child marriage. The finding is compared with previously examined Trabzon and Beşiktaş registers and against other scholars’ work on Antalya and Rize/Pazar. A second strand analyzes official correspondence between provincial and central authorities during the Second Constitutional Era, showing that the state framed child marriage through public-health rather than juristic terms. Within the urban registers examined, child marriage emerges as an exceptional practice.