The Wedding Water (Neke Sui) and the Blending of Ancestral and Islamic Rituals in the Kazakh Traditional Marriage

Today the Kazakh wedding ceremony is a festival following the civil and often Muslim record of the union; it is generally organized in the groom’s family with the support of the bride’s side and preceded by the exchange of the brideprice and dowry. During the pre-Soviet period, the traditional wedding ceremony was matrilocal, including stages going from matchmaking and premarital rituals culminating in the patriarchal blessing (bata) from the bride’s father and the Muslim consecration by a mullah (neke kiyu). It was followed by the first nuptial night, the morning paying of respects by the newlywed groom to the bride’s family and the send-off ritual of the bride. Only after that would begin the patrilocal phase of the marriage, made up of the reception of the bride and the opening of her face (Betashar) to the groom’s family. The custom in late Islamized regions to hold the religious wedding ceremony (neke kiyu) after the nuptial night ending the premarital meetings and the final payment of the brideprice would indicate that in ancient times, the lawful union of the consorts occurred at the performance of the last premarital game kalindyk tartu, the bride’s capture, when possibly the groom would receive and take away the bride to his village. The use of cultural symbols in the wedding ceremony belonging to both adat and sharia repertoires underlines priority values such as harmony (binary codes of natural opposites), purity (white colour), family strength (arrow) and protection (horse bristle, arrow ribbon). The matrilocal performance of the wedding ceremony is not only conserved in China, Turkey and Iran but also partially preserved inside wedding rituals of the Aral-Caspian region as relics of an intangible cultural heritage deserving protection and the analysis proposed hereby.