Harem - Knowledge

495: 3012: 359: 2930: 2050:) in the harems of South East Asia where not always slaves, but could also be free Muslim women, which was illegal in Islamic Law. Particularly in Java, the Javanese aristocracy and royalty frequently used free women as concubines. Enslaved concubines where however used alongside free concubines. Girls where kidnapped from their villages or by sea by pirates and slave traders. The Banten Sultanate followed Islamic law more strictly and therefore banned free Muslim concubines and only used enslaved non-Muslim concubines in accordance with Islamic law. Banten acquired their concubines by enslaving girls from 'those villages which during the period of Islamisation had refused to embrace the new religion, and had thereupon been declared to be slaves'. Chinese slave girls ( 2338:

dialects of these tongues. Both at Bet il Mtoni and at Bet il Sahel the meals were cooked in the Arab as well as in the Persian and Turkish manner. People of all races lived in these two houses — the races of various beauty. The slaves were dressed in Swaihily style, but we were permitted to appear in Arab fashion alone. Any newly-arrived Circassian or Abyssinian woman had to exchange her ample robes and fantastic attire within three days for -the Arab costume provided for her. On the seventh day after the birth of a child my father used to' pay a visit to the infant and its mother to present some article of jewellery to the baby. In the same way a new Surie received at onco the necessary jewels, and had her servants assigned to her by the chief eunuch."

1268:. Similar to what was normal in the royal harem of other Islamic dynasties, the khans had four official wives (all with their own separate quarters within the harem), and an unknown number of enslaved concubines. In 1669, the khan reportedly received fifteen Circassian slave virgins as an annual tribute from his subjects in the Caucasus; in the 1720s khan Saadet Giray reportedly owned twenty-seven slave concubines, and in the 1760s khan Qirim Giray owned about forty. But not all slave concubines were Circassians. Some royal children are recorded to have been born by slave mothers from Central and Eastern Europe; the occurrence of European women in the royal harem diminished in the 18th century when the Crimean slave raids to Eastern Europe (and thus the 2584:. The whole society became more gender segregated after the Muslim conquests. In Bengal, for example, where men and women had previously worked together reaping, men started to do the reaping alone and women were relegated to the more domestic task of husking. Male Hindu rulers commonly had harems as well as Muslim rulers in India from the Middle Ages until the 20th-century. One of the reasons why upper-class Hindu men started to seclude women in harems after the Muslim conquest was due to the practice of the Muslim conquerors putting the wives of defeated Hindus into their harems. Disruption of the Hindu social system followed from the mixing of Hindus and Muslims. The seclusion of Hindu women was thus a way to preserve the caste system. 2997: 1487: 3100: 3085: 3031: 3069: 3050: 445:; while the women and children of the pharaoh, including his mother, wives, and children, had their own living quarters with its own administration in the Palace of the Pharaoh, the royal women did not live isolated from contact with men or in seclusion from the rest of the court in the way associated with the term "harem". The custom of referring to the women's quarters of the pharaoh's palace as a "harem" is therefore apocryphal, and has been used because of incorrect assumptions that Ancient Egypt was similar to later Islamic harem culture. 2963: 1960:(1571–1629), who largely banished the princes to the harem, where their social interactions were limited to the ladies of the harem and eunuchs. This deprived them of administrative and military training as well as experience in dealing with the aristocracy of the realm. This, together with the princes' indulgent upbringing, made them unprepared to carry out royal responsibilities, and often they were uninterested in doing so. The confinement of royal princes to the harem was an important factor contributing to the decline of the 5950: 6262: 1272:) were suppressed. Some of these women, though all formally concubines, would not have been the khan's concubines in practice, instead acting as the servants of his wives. This was the case in the Royal Ottoman harem as well, which served as the role model of the Giray harem. The Giray princesses were normally married off to poor noblemen and vassals who would be provided with great dowries, putting the princesses in an advantageous position over their husbands, thus causing the husbands to be loyal to the Girays. 2244:) was composed of both legal wives and slave concubines. The khan had four legal wives, who were obliged to be free Muslim women. Aside from his legal wives, enslaved women were acquired from slave markets and were obliged to be non-Muslims since free Muslim women could not be slaves. The enslaved girls were initially given as servants to the khan's mother. She provided them with an education to make them suitable for concubinage, after which some of them were selected to be the concubines to the khan. 1092:(r. 1961-1999): the Royal Harem included forty personal concubines (who by Islamic law were by definition slaves) as well as an additional forty concubines who the king had inherited by his father; additional concubines who worked as domestic servants in the Royal Harem, as well as male slaves performing other positions such as chauffeurs in the Royal Household. The slaves of the Royal Household were descended from enslaved ancestors inherited within the household. The Royal Harem was dissolved by 2945: 487:(in which Greek culture eventually became dominant), though the rigid idealistic norms of seclusion expressed in Byzantine literature did not necessarily reflect actual practice. The Byzantine Emperors were Greek Orthodox and did not have several wives, or official concubines, secluded in a harem. When Greek culture started to replace the Roman in the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century, it came to be seen as modest, especially for upper-class women, to keep to a special women's quarters ( 2981: 2141: 2430:, came to acquire a great deal of power within the Ottoman Empire. He not only managed every aspect of the harem women's lives but was also responsible for the education and social etiquette of the young women and young princes in the harem. He arranged all the ceremonial events within the harem, including weddings and circumcision parties, and even notified women of death sentences when "accused of crimes or implicated in intrigues of jealousy and corruption." 1438:(r. 1293–1341) expanded the harem to a major institution, which came to consummate as much luxury and slaves as the infamously luxurious harem of the preceding Fatimid dynasty. The harem of Sultan Al-Nasir Muhammad expanded ot a larger size than any preceding Mamluk sultan, and he left a harem of 1,200 female slaves at his death, 505 of which were singing girls. He married the slave Tughay (d. 1348), who left 1,000 slave girls and 80 eunuchs at her own death. 1190:"The harem of the Brunei sultan is no splendind abode It reminds one rather of a barn than of Haroun Alrashid's palace. In a building some seventy feet by forty, fourscore women live - wives, concubines, and slaves. I do not know that any white person has beheld the insde of it, for his majesty carries jealous care to the verge of hypochondria. Putting aside the prosaic question of securing a good meal every day, inmakes of a royal harem who recieve [ 9847: 126: 1359:("Her Highness"). The concubines of the Fatimid Caliphs were in most cases of Christian origin, described as beautiful singers, dancers and musicians; they were often the subject of love poems, but also frequently accused of manipulating the Caliph. The third rank harem women were slave-girls trained in singing, dancing and playing music to perform as entertainers; this category were sometimes given as diplomatic gifts between male power holders. 2366: 2064:, when the sales where called adoptions to avoid attention from the colonial Dutch authorities, who banned the slave trade. In contrast to normal Islamic law, the child of a concubine where not given equal status to the child of a wife, and could even be deprived of inheritance rights; to be the slave of a concubine was seen as shameful, and many concubines in Aceh used contraception and practiced infanticide for this reason. 7872: 1742: 8784: 1968: 8797: 54: 395:

prevalence of women in agricultural work leads to wider practice of polygamy but makes seclusion impractical. In contrast, in Eurasian and North African rural communities that rely on male-dominated plough farming, seclusion is economically possible but polygyny is undesirable. This indicates that the fundamental characteristic of the harem is seclusion of women rather than polygyny.

5741: 4689: 2313:, and could be of several different ethncities, often Ethiopian or Circassian. Ethiopian, Indian or Circassian (white) women were much more expensive than the majority of African women sold in the slave market in Zanzibar, and white women in particular were so expensive that they were in practice almost reserved for the royal harem. White slave women were called 1917:. The Safavid harem consisted of: mothers, wives, slave concubines, female relatives; it was staffed with female slaves, and eunuchs who acted as their guards and channels to the rest of the world. Shah Sultan Hossain's (r. 1694–1722) court has been estimated include five thousand slaves: male and female, black and white, of which one hundred were black eunuchs. 2357:

in conservative societies have adopted hijab as a way of coping with a social environment where men are uncomfortable interacting with women in the public space. Some religious women have tried to emulate seclusion practices abandoned by their grandmothers' generation in an effort to affirm traditional religious values in the face of pervasive Westernization.

1571:

independently when the Emperor was unwell. She was given charge of his imperial seal, implying that her perusal and consent were necessary before any document or order received legal validity. The Emperor sought her views on most matters before issuing orders. The only other Mughal empress to command such devotion from her husband was Nur Jahan's niece

1800:

upper-class and royal men. These women would be educated so that they would able to appear in public as wives. In general, however, the separation of men's and women's quarters was never practiced among the urban poor in large cities such as Constantinople, and by the 1920s and 1930s, it had become a thing of the past in middle and upper-class homes.

572:

with their husbands, participated in hunting and in feasts; at least the chief wife of a royal or aristocratic man did not live in seclusion, as it is clearly stated that wives customarily accompanied their husbands to dinner banquets, although they left the banquet when the "women entertainers" of the harem came in and the men began "merrymaking".

624:). The rank of these titles has been a matter of debate and it appears that their status varied depending on circumstances and that the highest female rank was not necessarily borne by the chief wife, but could be held by a daughter or a sister. The Sasanian harem was supervised by eunuchs, and also had female singers and musicians. 2485:, lived alone in the women's quarters of the Royal Palace. They were allowed to receive only female visitors in the harem, and they themselves normally did not leave it and thus were rarely seen in public. Their seclusion was tied to the religion of Benin City, which held them to be sacred as wives of the Oba. 766:, who refused to live in seclusion but instead challenged the power of the Caliph by giving her own audiences to male supplicants and officials and thus mixing with men. Her son considered this improper, and he publicly addressed the issue of his mother's public life by assembling his generals and asked them: 2550:-wives. Other palace women became servants, singers or dancers. The harem women could only be seen in public on a few ceremonial occasions; otherwise they were not allowed contact with the outside world and communicated with it through go-betweens in the form of old female palace women servants called 1196:] but one setof clothes a year - and those of cotton or cheapest silk - will always be plotting to get finery and cash. The house is old, constantly needing repari, and the sultan will not allow even a carpenter to go inside it. The old monarch handled tools himself, assisted by the female slaves". 2557:

When Cambodia became a French colony, the French colonial officials viewed the abolition of the royal harem and an emancipation of harem women as a part of modernization, as well as a way of cutting the costs of the royal court. After the death of king Norodom in April 1904, the French officials took

2521:

There is no support for a harem in Buddhist writings. Nevertheless, harems have been common for Buddhist royal rulers. Normally, the royal Buddhist harems of South East Asia were not as strict as Muslim harems, allowing women some limited freedom outside the harem, but the royal harem of Cambodia was

2356:

region. Since the early 1980s, a rise in conservative Islamic currents has led to a greater emphasis on traditional notions of modesty and gender segregation, with some radical preachers in Saudi Arabia calling for a return to the seclusion of women and an end of female employment. Many working women

2317:

and imported to Oman and Zanzibar via Persia (Iran) and had the reputation of "soon renders the house of a moderately rich man unendurable". The white slave women were generally referred to as "Circassian", but this was a general term and did not specifically refer to Circassian ethnicity as such but

1377:

Ibn Muyassar described a hall of relaxation used by vizier al-Afdal with a line of mechanic mannequins (siwar) facing each other at the entrance: four depicting white slave girls made of camphor, and four depicting black slave girls made of amber, who bowed down when the vizier enterred the room, and

583:

secluded from contact with men, and royal women were not allowed to participate in the royal banquets. Also aristocratic Parthian men appear to have had harems, as Roman sources report of rich men travelling with hundreds of guarded concubines. However, the Roman reports about Parthian harems seem to

551:

The royal household was controlled by the chief wife and queen, who as a rule was the daughter of a Persian prince and mother of the heir to the throne, and who was subject only to the king. She had her own living quarters, revenue, estates and staff, which included eunuchs and concubines. The second

394:

Where historical evidence is available, it indicates that the harem was much more likely to be monogamous. For example, in late Ottoman Istanbul, only 2.29 percent of married men were polygynous, with the average number of wives being 2.08. In some regions, like Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia,

378:

describe the social norms that governed women's lives. Women were not supposed to be seen in public. They were guarded by eunuchs and could only leave the home "veiled and suitably chaperoned." Some of these customs were borrowed from the Persians, but Greek society also influenced the development of

2529:

had a royal harem consisting of hundreds of women. In a custom common for royal rulers in South East Asia, girls were sent to the king's harem by powerful local families all over the country, as tributes and living acknowledgements of their submission, and the king's right to rule. Those sent became

2418:

The dark eunuch was held as the embodiment of the sensual tyranny that held sway in the fantasized Ottoman palace, for he had been "clipped" or "completely sheared" to make of him the "ultimate slave" for the supreme ruler. In the Ottoman court, white eunuchs, who were mostly brought from castration

2162:

In contrast to what was common in the Ottoman Empire, where the sultans normally only had slave consorts, the Qajar shahs also had a custom of diplomatic marriages with free Muslim women, daughters of Qajar dignitaries and princes. Another phenomenon of the Qajar harem was that the Shah entered into

1799:

and enslaved servant girls were also part of the harem. During the later periods, the sons of the sultan lived in the Harem until they were 12 years old. It is becoming more commonly acknowledged today that the purpose of harems during the Ottoman Empire was for the upbringing of the future wives of

1275:

Initially, the royal women did not live in seclusion in the harem. Notably, they gave their own audiences to men, such as during the ceremonial visit of the Russian ambassador, who would present them with diplomatic gifts. But in 1564, the Russian ambassador was given the message that such audiences

1067:, Moulay Ismail had at least 500 concubines and even more children. A total of 868 children (525 sons and 343 daughters) is recorded in 1703, with his seven-hundredth son being born shortly after his death in 1727, by which time he had well over a thousand children. The final total is uncertain; the 599:

In the Sassanian Empire, Roman reports say that it was common for men to have multiple wives. The hierarchy of the Sassanian harem is not clear. The Sassanian kings had one chief consort, who was the mother of the heir to the throne, as well as having several wives of lower rank, and concubines, all

567:

However, it is a matter of debate if the Achaemenid court had a full harem culture, as women do not appear to have been fully secluded in the harem. The fact that women lived in separate quarters at the Royal Palace does not necessarily mean that they were secluded from contact with men, and despite

3994:

Purdah refers to the various modes of shielding women from the sight primarily of men (other than their husbands or men of their natal family) in the South Asian subcontinent. The purdah, as veiling, was possibly influenced by Islamic custom, But, in the sense of seclusion and the segregation of

2668:

A distinct, imaginary vision of the harem emerged in the West starting from the 17th century when Europeans became aware of Muslim harems housing numerous women. In contrast to the medieval European views that conceived Muslim women as victimized but powerful through their charms and deceit, during

2204:(r. 1848–1896), the harem was a place of intense struggle by mothers of potential heirs to have their own sons elected to the throne, as well as having material benefits for themselves, higher ranks for members of their own families, or precedence for their own children. Nāṣer-al-Din Shah's mother, 2031:

of Sulawesi. The conversion of Islam to East Asia made the Islamic law around sexual slavery and other forms of slavery relevant; however, South East Asia did not practice Sharia fully but combined it with customary law, which resulted in harems and slavery being partially different there from how

1084:

during the 19th-century. In the early 20th-century, African slaves also decreased due to the end of the Trans-Saharan slave trade, which was forced closed by the Spanish and French colonial authorities in the 1920s. However, descendents of slaves continued to work as servants and concubines of the

970:

However, concubines were always slaves subjected the will of their master. Caliph Abd al-Rahman III is known to have executed two concubines for reciting what he saw as inappropriate verses, and tortured another concubine with a burning candle in her face while she was held by two eunuchs after she

917:

slaves trafficked from Northern or Eastern Europe. While male saqaliba could be given work in a number offices such as: in the kitchen, falconry, mint, textile workshops, the administration or the royal guard (in the case of harem guards, they were castrated), but female saqaliba were placed in the

643:

was the most extravagant in his hedonism. He searched his realm to find the most beautiful girls, and it was rumored that about 3,000 of them were kept in his harem. This practice was widely condemned by the public, who abhorred the fact that he kept the women in seclusion, denying them the benefit

460:

A number of regulations were designed to prevent disputes among the women from developing into political intrigues. The women were guarded by the eunuchs who also prevented their disputes from developing into political plots; they were banned from giving gifts to their servants (as such gifts could

2192:

The harem women had daily entertainments such as music, dance, theatrical performances and games. They studied the arts, calligraphy and poetry, and entertained themselves and the shah with music, dance and singing, and by reciting verses and telling stories, which the shah enjoyed at bedtime. The

2188:

The women of the harem were responsible for everything inside the harem quarters, but the harem was guarded from the other parts of the palace (biruni) by the eunuchs, who together with visits from relatives, physicians and tailors served as links to the outside world for the women; the women were

1920:

The monarchs of the Safavid dynasty preferred to procreate through slave concubines, which would neutralize potential ambitions from relatives and other inlaws and protect patrimony. The slave concubines (and later mothers) of the Shah mainly consisted of enslaved Circassian, Georgian and Armenian

1051:

from Europe. One of them, an Irishwoman by the name Mrs. Shaw, was brought to his harem after having been enslaved. She was forced to convert to Islam when the Sultan wished to have intercourse with her, but was manumitted and married off to a Spanish convert when the Sultan grew tired of her. The

390:

Female seclusion has historically signaled social and economic prestige. Eventually, the norms of female seclusion spread beyond the elites, but the practice remained characteristic of upper and middle classes, for whom the financial ability to allow one's wife to remain at home was a mark of high

2247:

Only the khan's legal wives were allowed to give birth to his children, and the slave concubines who conceived were given forced abortions. The women could be sold off if they did not please the khan, or given in marriage to his favored subjects. The son of the khan was not allowed to inherit his

571:

Royal and aristocratic Achaemenid women were given an education in subjects that did not appear compatible with seclusion, such as horsemanship and archery. It does not appear that royal and aristocratic women lived in seclusion from men since it is known that they appeared in public and traveled

2180:

Every consort had white and black slave servants (women or eunuchs), whose number varied according to her status. Some wives had their own residence and stables. There were different types of female officials within the harem: some managed the royal coffeehouse inside the harem, a body of female

1705:

as his sole consort, making monogamy the fashionable ideal among the elite, after the throne succession had been changed to primogeniture, which favored monogamy. The wedding of Tewfik Pasha and Emina Ilhamy was the first wedding of a prince that were celebrated, since the princes had previously

1524:

The king's wives, concubines, dancing girls and slaves were not the only women of the Mughal harem. Many others, including the king's mother, lived in the harem. Aunts, grandmothers, sisters, daughters and other female relatives of the king all lived in the harem; male children also lived in the

1979:

The mothers of rival princes in league with eunuchs, engaged in palace intrigues in an attempt to place their candidate on the throne. From the middle of the sixteenth century, rivalries between Georgian and Circassian women in the royal harem gave rise to dynastic struggles of an ethnic nature

1955:

chief who acted as a guardian) and were eventually given charge of important governorates. Although this system had the danger of encouraging regional rebellions against the shah, it gave the princes education and training, which prepared them for dynastic succession. This policy was changed by

1449:

sultans were succeeded by their emirs. However, a certain dynastic continuity excisted, in which the Sultans married the widow, concubine or female relative of his predecessor. The Burji Mamluk often married free Muslim women of the Mamluk nobility. However, the Burji harem, as its predecessor,

754:

colloquially refers to the religious attire worn by Muslim women, but in this verse, it meant "veil" or "curtain" that physically separates female from male space. Although classical commentators agreed that the verse spoke about a curtain separating the living quarters of Muhammad's wives from

2473:

have historically had as many as three hundred of them. Usually, African royal polygamy does not expect wives to be secluded from men or to be prevented from moving outside the harem. Where this is not the case, and the royal wives do live in the harems in isolation, they tend to have a ritual

2433:

Nineteenth-century travelers' accounts tell of being served by black eunuch slaves. The trade was suppressed in the Ottoman Empire beginning in the mid-19th century, and slavery was legally abolished in 1887 or 1888. Late 19th-century slaves in Palestine included enslaved Africans and the sold

2337:

Arabic was the only lauguage really sanctioned in my father's presence. But as soon as he turned his back, a truly Babylonian confusion of tongues commenced, and Arabian, Persian, Turkish, Circassian, Swahely, Nubian, and Abyssinian were spoken and mixed up together, not to mention the various

815:

The marketing of human beings, particularly women, as objects for sexual use meant that elite men owned the vast majority of women they interacted with, and related to them as would masters to slaves. Being a slave meant relative lack of autonomy, and belonging to a harem caused a wife and her

517:

There is no evidence among early Iranians of harem practices, that is, taking large numbers of wives or concubines and keeping them in seclusion. However, Iranian dynasties are said to have adopted harem practices after their conquests in the Middle East, where such practices were used in some

4425:

Braithwaite, John, The history of the revolutions in the Empire of Morocco, upon the death of the late Emperor Muley Ishmael; being a most exact journal of what happen'd in those parts in the last and part of the present year. ... Written by Captain Braithwaite, ... With a map of the country,

2660:. However, aristocratic Muscovite women were not entirely secluded from mixing with men; it was a common custom for the lady of the house to greet a male guest with a welcoming drink ritual when he arrived. She was also waited upon by male as well as female staff upon retiring to her chamber. 1016:

of Morocco has historically not been the subject of much research. Known from the 17th-century onward, the royal harem is known to have followed the common model of a royal Muslim harem, including wives, enslaved concubines, female slave-servants and enslaved eunuchs as guards and officials.

1988:

and effectively seized control of the state. Suleiman set up a privy council, which included the most important eunuchs in the harem, thereby depriving traditional state institutions of their functions. The eunuchs' influence over military and civil affairs was checked only by their internal

560:(daughter). The fourth group of women in the harem were the royal slave concubines who were bought in slave markets, received as a gifts as tribute, or taken as prisoners of war. The concubines were trained to entertain the king and his guests as musicians, dancers and singers. The harem of 382:

The ideal of seclusion was not fully realized as social reality. This was in part because working-class women often held jobs that required interaction with men. In the Byzantine Empire, the very ideal of gender segregation created economic opportunities for women as midwives, doctors, bath

1927:. In contrast to the common custom in Islamic courts allowing only non-Muslim women to become harem concubines, the Safavid harem also contained Muslim concubines, as some free Persian Muslim daughters were given by their families or taken by the royal household to the harem as concubines. 1020:

The rulers of the Alaouite dynasty often conducted political marriages, cementing strategic alliances with internal tribal and aristocratic men by marrying female members of their family. Aside from their legal wives, they also, similar to other Muslim rulers, followed the custom of having

1570:

for more than fifteen years. Nur Jahan was granted certain honours and privileges that were never enjoyed by any Mughal empress before or after. Nur Jahan was the only Mughal empress to have coinage struck in her name. She was often present when the Emperor held court, and even held court

2722:

takes place in the harem of the Pasha Seid, where Gulnara, the Pasha's favorite, chafes in captivity, longing for freedom and true love. She eventually falls in love with the dashing corsair Corrado and kills the Pasha to escape with the him—only to discover that he loves another woman.

1218:

did not live secluded in a harem but were allowed to show themselves and meet men who were not their relatives. The system of harem gender segregation was not fully implemented in the Islamic dynasties of Central Asia until they stopped living a nomadic lifestyle, such as in the Crimea.

2039:) where not as common in South East Asia as in the rest if the Muslim world, with the exception of the Persian influenced Aceh Sultanate, where there where about 500 eunuchs in 1619-1622, before the use of eunuchs ended around 1700. The court of Aceh also used enslaved dancing boys ( 2185:(masters) supervised the group of female dancers and musicians who entertained the harem; they were housed with their servants in a separate compound. Young slave boys below puberty (ḡolām-bačča) were used as servants and playmates in the harem. Eunuchs were mainly African slaves. 811:. As the size of the harem grew, men indulged to satiety. Satiety within the individual harem meant boredom for the one man and neglect for the many women. Under these conditions ... satisfaction by perverse and unnatural means crept into society, particularly in its upper classes. 2196:

Inside the harem, women performed religious functions such as rawża-ḵᵛāni (the commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Ḥosayn at Karbalā); they preached from the pulpit on the day of ʿĀšurā (q.v., the 10th of Moḥarram) and directed the ritual of sina-zadan (beating of the chest).

480:. However, while gender segregation was the official ideal in Classical Athens, it is debated how much of this ideal was actually enforced, and it is known that even upper-class women appeared in public and were able to come in contact with men, at least on religious occasions. 1237:

The Giray court appears to have been organized in the slave-household manner that was normal in other Muslim dynasties. Many of the officials and courtiers (such as the viziers and equerries) as well as the servants were enslaved, while some were free Muslim noble clients and

1418:

of the Sultan, who in some cases chose to marry them. Other slave girls served the consorts of the Sultan in a number of domestic tasks as harem servants, known as qahramana or qahramaniyya. The harem was guarded by enslaved eunuchs, until the 15th-century supplied by the

373:

as "a man's right to keep his women concealed—invisible to other men." Ahmed identifies the practice of seclusion as a social ideal and one of the major factors that shaped the lives of women in the Mediterranean Middle East. For example, contemporaneous sources from the

491:), and until the 12th century, men and women are known to have participated in gender-segregated banquets at the Imperial Court; however Imperial women still appeared in public and did not live in seclusion, and the idealized gender segregation was never fully enforced. 1525:

harem until they grew up. Within the precincts of the harem were markets, bazaars, laundries, kitchens, playgrounds, schools and baths. The harem had a hierarchy, its chief authorities being the wives and female relatives of the emperor and below them, the concubines.

2889:, civilization breaks down due to global war. With the world reverting to barbarism, a strongman takes over a town and starts forcing young women into a harem that he is building up. The protagonist must fight and kill him to save his girlfriend from being included. 2673:, the "imaginary harem" came to represent what Orientalist scholars saw as an abased and subjugated status of women in the Islamic civilization. These notions served to cast the West as culturally superior and justify colonial enterprises. Under the influence of 2562:(concubines) he had prior to his accession, but no more were added, and the custom of giving daughters as tribute to the royal harem had waned by 1913; after this, the palace women, at least officially, were servants; they also staffed the royal ballet corps. 1185:

The royal harem were described by a British resident in the 1850s as an institution where the women were isolated from the outside world to such a degree that the sultan preferred to attend to the repairs of the building himself, assisted by female slaves:

256:

paintings dating to the 16th century portray the women of the Ottoman harem as individuals of status and political significance. In many periods of Islamic history, individual women in the harem exercised various degrees of political influence, such as the

1693:

The Egyptian elite of bureaucrat families, who emulated the khedive, had similar harem customs, and it was noted that it was common for Egyptian upper-class families to have slave women in their harem, which they manumitted to marry off to male protegees.

346:

The practice of female seclusion is not exclusive to Islam, but the English word harem usually denotes the domestic space reserved for women in Muslim households. Some scholars have used the term to refer to polygynous royal households throughout history.

2347:

The practice of female seclusion witnessed a sharp decline in the early 20th century as a result of education and increased economic opportunity for women, as well as Western influences, but it is still practiced in some parts of the world, such as rural

1234:; most court offices were initiated by Sahib I Giray. It is clear that there were separate women's quarters in the court of Sahib I Giray, however complete gender segregation in the form of a harem does not appear to have been introduced until the 1560s. 1160:, and the other women of the royal family to unveil and live public lives. While the royal women returned to the purdah of the royal complex after the deposition of Amanullah in 1929, it was dissolved with the final unveiling of the royal women in 1959. 1149:) in his harem in the Harem Sara Palace. The women of the royal harem dressed in Western fashion as far back as the reign Habibullah Khan, but did not show themselves other than completely covered outside of the enclosed area of the royal palace. 1029:. It was not unheard of for a ruler to marry one of his concubines. Many slaves were also provided to the harem from Africa via the Trans-Saharan slave trade. This was particularly true about the enslaved maidservants, as well as the eunuchs. 5460:

Hamid, Usman. 2017. Slaves in the name Only: Free Women as Royal Concubines in Late Timurid Iran. In Concubines and Courtesans:Women and Slavery in Islamic History. Edited by Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn A. Hain. New York: Oxford University

1937:

Slave eunuchs performed various tasks in many levels of the harem as well as in the general court, where they had offices such as in the royal treasury, as the tutors and adoptive fathers of non-castrated slaves selected to be slave soldiers

2248:

father's concubine, so when a khan died, his concubines were sold at the slave market. Men were normally not allowed to visit the harem, but Jewish tradeswomen were allowed in to sell their wares, such as clothes, to the harem inhabitants.

383:

attendants and artisans since it was considered inappropriate for men to attend to women's needs. At times women lent and invested money, and engaged in other commercial activities. Historical records shows that the women of 14th-century

537:. Herodotus reported that each Persian royal or aristocratic man had several wives and concubines who came to the husband on a well-regulated, turn by turn basis. and had sole control over their children until they were five years old. 2558:

control of the royal finances, reviewed the allowances of each person in the royal palace, and reduced the number of women that the king could support, in effect, dissolving the harem. King Sisowath (r. 1904–1927) did keep some of the

1732:

bought six "white female slaves" for his harem in 1894, and his mother still maintained sixty slaves as late as 1931. The royal harem was finally dissolved when the royal women escaped seclusion and took on a public role in the 1930s.

2193:

harem had its own theatre where passion plays (taʿzia) were performed, and one of the shah's wives was the custodian of all the paraphernalia and props. Toward the end of the Qajar dynasty, foreign tutors were allowed into the harem.

1566:, was the most powerful and influential woman at court during a period when the Mughal Empire was at the peak of its power and glory. More decisive and proactive than her husband, she is considered by historians to have been the real 718:

society were absent from all arenas of the community's central affairs. It was very common for early Muslim women to play an active role in community life and even to lead men into battle and start rebellions, as demonstrated in the

1975:

The administration of the royal harem constituted an independent branch of the court, staffed mainly by eunuchs. These were initially black eunuchs, but white eunuchs from Georgia also began to be employed from the time of Abbas I.

461:

be used as bribes) and were not allowed any visitors who had not been examined and approved by officials. When the king traveled, his harem traveled with him, strictly supervised so as not to break regulations even under transport.

4360:

GALLARDO, BARBARA BOLOIX. “Beyond the Haram: Ibn Al-Khatib and His Privileged Knowledge of Royal Nasrid Women .” Praising the ‘Tongue of Religion’: Essays in Honor of the 700th Anniversary of Ibn al-Khaṭīb’s Birth (2014): n. pag.

2414:

states that Talmudic law counts castration among mutilations that entitle a slave to immediate release; thus the ability of Jewish slave traders to supply eunuchs to harems depended on whether they could acquire castrated males.

1056:. Another favorite was a Spanish captive renamed Al-Darah, mother to Moulay Ismail's once favorite sons Moulay Mohammed al-Alim; and Moulay Sharif, whom he, himself educated. Around 1702, Al-Darah was strangled by Moulay Ismail; 1997:(1668–1726) that it consumed a large part of state revenues. After the fall of the Safavid dynasty, which occurred soon afterwards, eunuchs were never again able to achieve significant political influence as a class in Persia. 1257:, which were given to the khan's mother and to the khan's first wife or the eldest Giray princess, respectively. The royal women had their own property and administered it from the harem through their legal agents, known as 1414:(1250-1382) were originally slave girls. The female slaves were supplied to the harem by the slave trade as children; they could be trained to perform as singers and dancers in the harem, and some were selected to serve as 819:

Elite men expressed in literature the horror they felt for the humiliation and degradation of their daughters and female relatives. For example, the verses addressed to Hasan ibn al-Firat on the death of his daughter read:

2318:

could refer to any white women, such as Georgian or Bulgarian. Emily Ruete referred to all white women in the royal harem as "Circassian" as a general term, one of whom was her own mother Jilfidan, who had arrived via the

2530:

court ladies and were given a number of different tasks. After every coronation, the new king and his main wife-queen would assign different ranks and tasks to the palace women: after the queen came the four wives called

1934:(r. 1642–1666) burned three of his slave-wives alive because they refused to drink with him, and another wife for lying about her menstruation period. Shah Safi (r. 1629–1642) stabbed his wife to death for disobedience. 631:

in general did not live in seclusion; elaborate harems were detested and appear to have been exceptions to the rule, which is illustrated by the fact that big harems – when they occurred – were abhorred by the public.

251:

In the West, the harem, often depicted as a hidden world of sexual subjugation where numerous women lounged in suggestive poses, has influenced many paintings, stage productions, films and literary works. Some earlier

5727:

The anti - Husayn position was also taken by Idaran Zaman who reported that twenty beautiful young Javanese girls were found in the palace of his son, Sharif ' Ali in Jeddah. These girls were used as his concubines

1921:

women, captured as war booty, bought at the slave market or received as gifts from local potentates. The slave concubines were sometimes forced to convert to shia Islam upon entering the harem, and referred to as

7587: 853:

Courtesans and princesses produced prestigious and important poetry. Enough survives to give us access to women's historical experiences, and reveals some vivacious and powerful figures such as: the Sufi mystic

2570:

The harem likely existed in Hindu India before the Islamic conquest; it is mentioned in the ancient stories of the Buddha. However, it appears to have become more common and strict after the Islamic conquests.

391:

status. In some regions, such as the Arabian peninsula, seclusion of women was practiced by poorer families at the cost of great hardship, but it was generally economically unrealistic for the lower classes.

579:. Parthian royal men reportedly had several wives and kept them fairly secluded from all men except for relatives and eunuchs. According to Roman sources, Parthian kings had harems full of female slaves and 2679:, the harem was often conceived as a personal brothel, where numerous women lounged in suggestive poses, directing their strong but oppressed sexuality toward a single man in a form of "competitive lust". 1615:

was appointed vice roy of Egypt in 1805, and by Imperial Ottoman example assembled a harem of slave concubines in the Palace Citadel of Cairo which, according to a traditional account, made his legal wife

792:

Conquests had brought enormous wealth and large numbers of slaves to the Muslim elite. The majority of the slaves were women and children, many of whom had been dependents or harem-members of the defeated

4660:"Morocco: Date of the abolishment of slavery in Morocco; whether descendants of ex-slaves are singled out in any way; and fate of the Palace household and grounds staff when King Mohamed V was in exile" 415:

communities, especially where polygamy was permitted. In pre-Islamic Assyria and Persia, most royal courts had a harem, where the ruler's wives and concubines lived with female attendants, and eunuchs.

3156:

maintained a harem with at least twelve women who were described as his "pleasure wives". One of them was Jill Dodd, a former model and fashion designer, whom he met in 1980. Dodd wrote a memoir named

734:. Seclusion of women was established in various communities of the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and Persia before the advent of Islam, and some scholars believe that Muslims adopted the custom from the 4938:

Albrecht Fuess, “How to marry right: Searching for a royal spouse at the Mamluk court of Cairo in the fifteenth century”, DYNTRAN Working Papers, n° 21, online edition, February 2017, available at:

4926:

4914:

2177:

came from the harems of the vanquished houses of Zand and Afšār; from the Georgian and Armenian campaigns, as well as from slave markets, and were presented as gifts to the shah from the provinces.

2126:

and concubinage was met with criticism from the 1870s among the local indigenous elite after it had been identified by the colonial powers as a reason for the decay of the local indigenous rulers.

4351:

Barton, S. (2015). Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia. USA: University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated. p. 38

1052:

Spanish convert being very poor, witnesses described her as being reduced to beggary. Other slave concubines would become favorites and thus allowed some influence, such as an Englishwoman called

975:(d. 1065) were reportedly so badly treated that they conspired to murder him; women of the harem were also known to have been subjected to rape when rivaling factions conquered different palaces. 4169: 933:) were educated in accomplishments to make them attractive and useful for their master, and many became known and respected for their knowledge in a variety of subjects from music to medicine. A 730:

The practice of gender segregation in Islam was influenced by an interplay of religion, customs and politics.The harem system first became fully institutionalized in the Islamic world under the

1669:) who were trained to become officers and civil servants as freedmen, in order to ensure the fidelity of their husband's to the khedive when they began their military or state official career. 1276:

were no longer allowed. The Giray women did continue to play a role in diplomacy, however, since they were allowed to exchange formal diplomatic correspondence with female rulers and consorts.

1672:

A minority of the slave women were selected to become the personal servants (concubines) of the khedive, often selected by his mother: they could become his wives, and would become free as an

6699: 3011: 2929: 2305:

had three legal wives, but despite all his marriages being childless, he nevertheless had 36 children, who must thus have been born to slave concubines. The concubines were referred to as

6779: 4486: 1724:

All of this gradually diminished the royal harem, though it, as well as the harem of the elite families, still maintained a smaller number of male eunuchs and slave women until at least

468:, which appears to have adopted the harem custom. Reportedly, the Median nobility each had five wives, and employed eunuchs (though these eunuchs may have been non-castrated officials). 4952: 2035:

The Royal harems in South East Asia where generally relatively small with the exception of the one in Aceh, which reached a considerable size in the 16th- and 17th-centuries. Eunuchs (

898:

The harem system that developed in the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates was reproduced by the Islamic realms developing from them, such as in the Emirates and Caliphates in Muslim Spain,

746:, a number of Quranic verses discussing modesty and seclusion were held up by Quranic commentators as religious rationale for the separation of women from men, including the so-called 648:

every year with an offer of the possibility of leaving his harem with a dowry for marriage, but that their luxurious lifestyle always prompted the women and girls to refuse his offer.

2159:(Sublime Cradle). She had many duties and prerogatives, such as safeguarding the harem valuables, particularly the jewels, which she administered with the help of female secretaries. 568:

the (possibly biased) Greek reports, there is no archeological evidence supporting the existence of a harem, or the seclusion of women from contact with men, at the Achaemenid court.

277:, which can mean "a sacred inviolable place", "harem" or "female members of the family". In English the term harem can mean also "the wives (or concubines) of a polygamous man." The 6848: 2294:

were employed to guard and manage the affairs of the harem, while female slave maids were employed to see to the needs of the slave concubines, the wives and the female relatives.

1362:

The lowest rank of harem women were the slave-girls selected to become servants and performed a number of different tasks in the harem and royal household; these women were called

1583:

as a mausoleum. However, Mumtaz took no interest in affairs of state and Nur Jahan is therefore unique in the annals of the Mughal Empire for the political influence she wielded.

1044:

from 1672 to 1727. Moulay Ismail had over 500 enslaved concubines. He is said to have fathered a total of 525 sons and 342 daughters by 1703 and achieved a 700th son in 1721.

644:

of marriage and progeny; this was counted as the fourth of the eight crimes for which he was later tried and executed. Khosrow himself claimed that he sent his favorite wife

3068: 2423:, were responsible for much of the palace administration, while black eunuchs, who had undergone a double-castration, were the only male slaves employed in the royal harem. 1214:

In the Muslim dynasties of Central Asia, the harem culture did not initially exist, since the customary nomadic culture made it impractical. The wives of the rulers of the

2996: 1807:. Some women of an Ottoman harem, especially wives, mothers and sisters of sultans, played very important political roles in Ottoman history, and during the period of the 2782:, involving relationships between Western women and Arab sheiks. They have received strong criticisms for the central plot element, the notion that rape leads to love by 1450:

maintained the custom of slave concubinage, with Circassian slave girls being popular as concubines, some of which became favorites and even wives of the Sultan. Sultan

1114:

rulers of Afghanistan (1823-1973) customarily had a harem of four official wives as well as a large number of unofficial wives for the sake of tribal marriage diplomacy.

2067:

Another custom breaking Islamic law was that Muslim slave women could be sold to non-Muslim men, such as Chinese men, which became a big trade in the 18th-century. In

7566:

The Harēm: An Account of the Institution as it Existed in the Palace of the Turkish Sultans with a History of the Grand Seraglio from its Foundation to the Present Time

2876:

of a Mormon elder, where she dies. Having failed to rescue her, the protagonist vows deadly revenge on the kidnappers – the background of the mystery solved by Holmes.

236:

Although the institution has experienced a sharp decline in the modern era due to a rise in education and economic opportunities for women, as well as the influence of

6812: 807:

The choicest women were imprisoned behind heavy curtains and locked doors, the strings and keys of which were entrusted into the hands of that pitiable creature – the

1080:

The slave trade to the Royal Harem decreased after the end of the Barbary slave trade in the early 19th-century. White concubines were however still provided via the

4745:

Bosma, U. (2019). The Making of a Periphery: How Island Southeast Asia Became a Mass Exporter of Labor. Tyskland: Columbia University Press.

1942:). Inside the harem they served as a channel between the secluded harem women and the outside court and world, which gave them a potentially powerful role at court. 2574:

After the Islamic conquest of India and the loss of Hindu rulership, gender segregation and seclusion of women practiced by the Muslim conquerors was adopted by

494: 6551: 1264:

The princes and the khans normally married free Muslim daughters of the Circassian vassal begs and trusted high officials; the khans also customarily practiced

6488: 2904:

is forced into the harem of corrupt planetary governor, Harald. The futuristic harem follows the well-established literary depictions, except that traditional

1717:

also contributed to the end of the practice of polygyny in the Egyptian and Ottoman upper classes from the 1870s onward. In the mid 19th-century, the Ottoman

7952: 972: 797:

upper classes. In the wake of the conquests an elite man could potentially own a thousand slaves, and ordinary soldiers could have ten people serving them.

6798: 6660: 4645: 3084: 1661:

The enslaved female servants of the khedivate harem were manumitted and married off with a trosseau in strategic marriages to the male freedmen or slaves (

1242:

family members. However, the servants of the royal harem were definitely slaves, including the eunuchs of Black African origin, taken from Africa via the

2399:

slaves captured in the Nile vicinity and transported through ports in Upper Egypt, the Sudan and Abyssinia, or European slaves such as Slavs and Franks.

1182:

included both wives as well as female enslaved concubines and servants. Slaves in Brunei were often non-Muslim Javanese, brought to Brunei by merchants.

1539:, the administration of their living quarters was run entirely by women. The division of the administrative tasks was dictated largely by the vision of 7384: 1064: 1555:

origin. Kashmiri women were selected because they did not observe purdah. Many of the women were purchased as slaves and trained for their positions.

2200:

The Qajar harem also had the political influence and intrigues common in royal harems. Until a regulated succession to the throne was established by

100: 6703: 4736:

A Comparative Study of Thirty City-state Cultures: An Investigation. (2000). Danmark: Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. p. 425

4194: 7419:

Alan Duben, Cem Behar, Richard Smith (Series editor), Jan De Vries (Series editor), Paul Johnson (Series editor), Keith Wrightson (Series editor).

5473:

Sherley, Anthony, Robert Sherley, and Thomas Sherley. 1983. The Travelogue of the Sherley Brothers. Translated by Avans. Tehran: Negah.(in Persian)

1410:, as did its predecessor the Fatimid harem. The mother of the sultan was the highest ranked woman of the harem. The consorts of the Sultans of the 584:

mirror the traditional Greek reports about the Achaemenid harems, and they similarly are biased, and cannot be verified by archeological evidence.

5390:

Sussan Babaie, Kathryn Babayan, Ina Baghdiantz-MacCabe, Mussumeh Farhad: Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran, Bloomsbury Academic, 2004

4960: 4905:

Levanoni, A. (2021). A Turning Point in Mamluk History: The Third Reign of Al-Nāsir Muḥammad Ibn Qalāwūn (1310-1341). Nederländerna: Brill. p. 184

5451:

Taheri, Abolghasem. 1970. Political and Social History of Iran from Teymur's Death until the Death of Shah Abbas II. Tehran: Habibi. (in Persian)

1923: 913:. Except for the female relatives of the Caliph, the harem women consisted of his slave concubines. The slaves of the Caliph were often European 6761: 3030: 7662: 7004: 6903: 4494: 1366:

and had some contact with the outside world, as they trafficked goods from the outside world to the harem via the underground tunnels known as

171:'a sacred inviolable place; female members of the family') refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a 2114:

The local royal rulers in Southeast Asia continued their custom of slave concubinage also after they had become vassals of Western powers; in

1385:

managed the women of the harem, guarded them, informed them and reported on them to the Caliph, and acted as their link to the outside world.

476:

Female seclusion and a special part of the house reserved for women were common among the elites of ancient Greece, where it was known as the

195:

have varied depending on the family's personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs. Similar institutions have been common in other

7510: 2682:

A centuries-old theme in Western culture is the depiction of European women being forcibly taken into Oriental harems. Some examples are the

2155:

As was customary in Muslim harems, the highest rank of the harem hierarchy was that of the monarchs' mother, who in Qajar Iran had the title

6142:"Panoptic Bodies: Black Eunuchs as Guardians of the Topkapı Harem". In Booth, Marilyn. Harem Histories: Envisioning Places and Living Spaces 5787: