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Annulled: Marriage, Sex, And Violence In The Archives Of The Ottoman East, Matthew Ghazarian

Environmental Science and Policy: Faculty Publications

On October 2, 1878, Narduhi Magarian and Sahag Ağa Tevrizian were wed in the Ottoman border town of Erzurum. Soon afterwards, both of them sought freedom from this union, one foisted upon them by Narduhi’s wealthy, violent, and alcohol-addled father, Garabed Efendi Magarian. The toxic fallout of this failed marriage prompted the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople to order an investigation. The resulting witness testimonies, held in a fragment of the Patriarchate’s records in Paris, describe the beginnings of this coerced marriage, the domestic violence it involved, and the anxieties about sex and potency that it stoked. These letters also have …