Harem (Turkish from Arab Ḥarām, forbidden) refers to the sphere of women in a usually polygynous household and their quarters which is enclosed and forbidden to men. It originated in the Near East and came to the Western world via the Ottoman Empire. In more modern usage, it may also denote a number of female followers of a man.
The term serraglio (Italian from Persian sarāy "palace, enclosed courts") carries a similar meaning.
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The word has been recorded in the English language since 1634, via the Turkish harem, from the Arabic Ḥarām (forbidden), originally entailing "women's quarters," literally: "something forbidden or kept safe," from the root Ḥarama "he guarded, forbade." The triliteral Ḥ-R-M is common to Arabic words entailing forbidden. The word is cognate to the Hebrew Ḥerem, rendered with Greek ’anáthema when it applies to excommunication pronounced by the Jewish Sanhedrin court - all these words mean that an object is "sacred" or "accursed".
Female privacy in Islam is emphasized to the extent that any unlawful breaking into that privacy is Ḥarām "forbidden". 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, other female relatives, etc.; 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.
It is being more commonly acknowledged today that the purpose of Harems during the Ottoman Empire were for the royal upbringing of the future wives of noble and royal men. These women would be educated so that they were ready to appear in public as a royal wife. No forms of sexual activity took place in those Harems.
The Imperial Harem of the Turkish Padishah, which was also called seraglio in the West, 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, and of course dancing girls and pleasure slaves for the Sultan. 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 Topkapı 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 3000 wives, as well as 12,000 other females) and lasted well into the Qajar Dynasty.
The women of the Persian 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 "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.[citation needed]
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 brothel consisting of many sensual young women lying around pools with oiled bodies, with the sole purpose of pleasing the powerful man to whom they had given themselves. Much of this is recorded in art from that period, usually portraying groups of attractive women lounging nude by spas and pools.
A centuries-old theme in Western culture is the depiction of European women forcibly taken into Oriental harems - evident for example in the Mozart opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail ("The Abduction from the Serraglio") concerning the attempt of the hero Belmonte to rescue his beloved Konstanze from the serraglio/harem of the Pasha Selim; or in Voltaire's Candide, in chapter 12 of which the old woman relates her experiences of being sold into harems across the Ottoman Empire.
The same theme was and still is repeated in numerous historical novels and thrillers. For example, Angélique and the Sultan, part of the bestselling French Angélique series by Sergeanne Golon, in which a 17th Century French noblewoman is captured by pirates, sold as a pleasure slave to the King of Morocco and installed in his harem, she is dressed in exotic clothing and prepared for the king's pleasure. But when the king has her brought into his bedchamber and tries to make love with her she stabs and wounds him with his own dagger and stages a dramatic and successful escape.
H. Beam Piper used the theme in a science fiction context, portraying a gang which kidnaps girls from a Western-dominated, technologically advanced timeline and sells them to a Sultan's harem in an Asian-dominated timeline (see[1]).
Much of the plot of "The Janissary Tree" - 2006 historical crime novel by Jason Goodwin, set in Istanbul at 1836 - takes place in the Sultan's harem, with the main protagonist being the eunuch detective Yashim. The book in many ways seeks to overturn the above stereotypes and rooted conventions. For example, in one scene the Sultan groans inwardly when a new concubine is brought to his bed, since he does not feel sexual at all and would much rather send her away and curl up with a book. He does not, however, have that option; were he to reject the concubine, "she would spend the whole night crying bitterly, by the morning the whole palace will hear that the Sultan has become impotent, by noon all Istanbul will know it, and within a week the rumour will reach the entire empire."
 Terrace of the Seraglio, Gérôme, Jean-Léon, 1824–1904, French |
 Shopping in the Harem, Swoboda, Rudolf, 1859-1914. Austrian |
 Harem Scene, Blas Olleras y Quintana, 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 |
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