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Harem

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For other uses, see Harem (disambiguation).

Coming from the Arab tradition, the harîm حريم (compare haram) is the part of the household forbidden to male strangers. The world knows the harem by way of the Ottoman Empire.

In Western languages such as English, this term refers collectively to the women in any polygynous household as well as the "no men allowed" area, or in more modern usage to a number of women followers or admirers of a man.

Image:Giovanni Antonio Guardi 005.jpg

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[edit] Word history

The word has been recorded in the English language since 1634, via the Turkish harem, from the Arabic haram (forbidden), originally entailing "women's quarters," literally: "something forbidden or kept safe," from the root harama: "he guarded, forbade." The triconsonantal H-R-M is common to Arabic words entailing forbidden. The word is cognate to the Hebrew herem, rendered in Greek as ’anáthema when it applies to excommunication pronounced by the Jewish Sanhedrin court - all these words mean that an object is "sacred" or "accursed".

Contrary to the common belief, a Muslim harem does not necessarily consist solely of women with whom the head of the household has sexual relations (wives and concubines), but also their young offspring; and it may either be a palatial complex, as in Romantic tales, in which case it includes staff (women and eunuchs), or simply their quarters, in the Ottoman tradition separated from the men's selamlik.

[edit] History

Image:Haremhatemi.jpg The harem of the Turkish Great Sultan, which was in the Topkapi Palace seraglio, typically housed several hundred -at times over a thousand- women including wives. It also housed the Sultan's mother, daughters and other female relatives, as well as eunuchs and slave girls to serve the aforementioned women. During the later periods, the sons of the Sultan also lived in the Harem until they were sixteen, when it might be considered appropriate for them to appear in the public and administrative areas of the palace. The Topkapi Harem was, in some senses, merely the private living quarters of the Sultan and his family, within the palace complex.

It is claimed that harems existed in Persia under the Ancient Achaemenids and later Iranian dynasties (The Sassanid Chosroes II reportedly had a harem of 3,000 wives, as well as 12,000 female slaves) and lasted well into the Qajar dynasty. The women of the royal harem played important though underreported roles in Iranian history, especially during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution. However this claim is disputed by some Persian historians [1].

Harem is also the usual English translation of the Chinese language term hougong, 後宮—literally meaning "the palaces behind." Hougong are large palaces for the Chinese emperor's consorts, concubines, female attendants and eunuchs. The women who lived in an emperor's hougong sometimes numbered in the thousands.

While some Muslims assert that Islam never proscribes the use of harems, and that they (re)emerged rather as part of Ottoman culture, the institution pre-dates Islam and even Christianity (obviously under other names), but the Prophet Muhammad and his followers practiced slavery, accumulating women (and prisoners of war) as war booty. The Qur'an allots these captured women, married or not, as property "of the right hand," and calls sexual relations with them halal (lawful) as a mean of setting the woman free[2]; while they were not always kept in harem-style sections of the household, the tradition existed from the start in Islamic slavery, which was an improvement on ancient slavery, more akin to the fate of a domestic servant in feudal Europe.

The institution of the harem exerted a certain fascination on the European imagination, especially during the Age of Romanticism (see also Orientalism), due in part to the writings of the adventurer Richard Francis Burton. Many westerners imagined a harem as a top-of-the market brothel consisting of many promiscuous women laying around pools with oiled bodies, with the sole purpose of pleasing the powerful man for whom they had given themselves for service. Much of this is recorded in art from that period, usually portraying groups of nude attractive women lounging by spas and pools, congregating nude together, leisurely.

[edit] Harem Art

Harem Art
Terrace of the Seraglio, Gérôme, Jean-Léon, 1824–1904, French
Shopping in the Harem, Swoboda, Rudolf, 1859-1914. Austrian
Harem Scene, Olleras Quintana-Blas, 1851-1919, Italian
Harem Pool, Gérôme, Jean-Léon, 1824–1904, French
The Reception, Lewis, John Frederick, 1805-1875, English
The Harem Fountain, Bridgeman, Frederick Arthur, 1847-1928, American
Ingres, Odalisque with a Slave
Ingres, Grande Odalisque
Lefebvre, Odalisque
Spitzweg, Im Harem
The Harem Servant, Trouillebert, Paul Desiré, 1829-1900, French

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources and references

(incomplete)

  • Mohammed Webb: The Influence of Islam on Social Conditions Paper, World Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893
  • TheOttomans.org Historical Web-site.
  • Leslie P. Peirce: The Imperial Harem : Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire Oxford University Press, USA; New Ed edition (September 2, 1993 ISBN 0-19-508677-5
  • Suraiya Faroqhi: Subjects of the Sultan : Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire I. B. Tauris (November 10, 2005) ISBN 1-85043-760-2
  • Billie Melman: Women's Orients : English Women and the Middle East, 1718-1918 University of Michigan Press (July 15, 1992) ISBN 0-472-10332-6
  • Alan Duben, Cem Behar, Richard Smith (Series Editor), Jan De Vries (Series Editor), Paul Johnson (Series Editor), Keith Wrightson (Series Editor): Istanbul Households : Marriage, Family and Fertility, 1880-1940 Cambridge University Press; New Ed edition (August 8, 2002) ISBN 0-521-52303-6
  • Emmanuel Todd: The explanation of ideology: Family structures and social systems B. Blackwell (1985) ISBN 0-631-13724-6
  • Oleg Grabar: The Formation of Islamic Art Yale University Press; Rev&Enlarg edition (September 10, 1987) ISBN 0-300-04046-6

[edit] Non-Fiction

[edit] Fiction

es:Harén fr:Harem ko:하렘 id:Harem it:Harem lt:Haremas nl:Harem ja:ハレム pt:Harém ru:Гарем fi:Haaremi sv:Harem tr:Harem

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