There are no secondary sources or studies focusing on early modern and modern discourses of love in the late Ottoman Empire. Current research on the Ottoman family focuses on Istanbul, drawing on archival and literary sources, yet does not attempt an analysis of the transformation of discourses on love and marriage (for example, Cebeci 1993, Ortaylı 2000). Such discourses prevail only in anecdotal stories, gossip accounts, and folk songs and poems that are not subjected to analytical readings. Women's studies has yet to direct its focus on premodern notions of marriage and love.

In Otto…