Harem Manga

Harem (Persian: حرمسرا ''haramsarā'', ar, حَرِيمٌ ''ḥarīm'', "a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family") refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A harem may house a man's wife or wives, their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic servants, and other unmarried female relatives. In harems of the past, slave concubines were also housed in the harem. In former times some harems were guarded by eunuchs who were allowed inside. The structure of the harem and the extent of monogamy or polygamy has varied depending on the family's personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs. Similar institutions have been common in other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations, especially among royal and upper-class families, and the term is sometimes used in other contexts. In traditional Persian residential architecture the women's quarters were known as ''andaruni'' (Persian: اندرونی; meaning inside), and in the Indian subcontinent as ''zenana'' (Persian: زنانه).

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 Western culture, the seclusion of women is still practiced in some parts of the world, such as rural Afghanistan and conservative states of the Persian Gulf.

In the West, Orientalist conceptions of the harem as a hidden world of sexual subjugation where numerous women lounged in suggestive poses have influenced many paintings, stage productions, films and literary works. Some earlier European Renaissance 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, women in the harem exercised various degrees of political power, such as the Sultanate of Women in the Ottoman Empire.

Terminology

The word has been recorded in the English language since the early 17th century. It comes from the Arabic ''ḥarīm'', 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 triliteral ''Ḥ-R-M'' appears in other terms related to the notion of interdiction such as ''haram'' (forbidden), ''mahram'' (unmarriageable relative), ''ihram'' (a pilgrim's state of ritual consecration during the Hajj) and ''al-Ḥaram al-Šarīf'' ("the noble sanctuary", which can refer to the Temple Mount or the sanctuary of Mecca).

In the Ottoman Turkish language, the harem, i.e., the part of the house reserved for women was called ''haremlik'', while the space open for men was known as '' selamlık''.

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.

The ''ideal of seclusion''

Leila Ahmed describes the ''ideal of seclusion'' 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, contemporary sources from the Byzantine Empire describe the social mores 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 patriarchal tradition.

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 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 Mamluk Cairo freely visited public events alongside men, despite objections of religious scholars.

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 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.

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, prevalence of women in agricultural work leads to wider practice of polygyny 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.

Pre-Islamic background

The idea of the harem or seclusion of women did not originate with Muhammad or Islam. The practice of secluding women was common to many Ancient Near East 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. ''Encyclopædia Iranica'' uses the term ''harem'' to describe the practices of the ancient Near East.

Ancient Egypt

There has been a modern trend to refer to the women's quarters of the Pharaoh's palace in Ancient Egypt as a harem.

The popular assumption that Pharaonic Egypt had a harem is however an anachronism; 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".Silke Roth, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2012, escholarship.org 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.

Assyria

The kings of Ancient Assyria are known to have had a harem regulated by royal edicts, in which the women lived in seclusion guarded by slave eunuchs.A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, Locust Valley, New York, 1975.

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, banned from giving gifts to their servants (as such gifts could be used as bribes) and 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 breaking regulations even under transport.

In the 7th century BC, Assyria was conquered by the Median Empire, which appears to have adopted the harem custom, from whom it was in turn taken over by the Achaemenid Empire.

Greece and Byzantium

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 gynaeceum. 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 on at least religious occasions.

These traditional Greek ideals were revived as an ideal for women in the Byzantine Empire (in which Greek culture eventually became dominant), though the rigid ideal 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 for especially upper-class women to keep to a special women's quarters (''gynaikonitis''), 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.

The Median and Achaemenid Empires

There is no evidence of among early Iranians for harem practices, that is, to take 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 cultures such as Assyria (the Median Empire conquered Assyria in the 7th-century BC, and Media transformed into the Achaemenid Empire). According to Greek sources, the nobility of the Medes kept no less than five wives, who were watched over by eunuchs.

Greek historians have reported about the harems of the Achaemenid Empire. Herodotus reported that each Persian royal or aristocratic man had several wives and concubines, who came to the husband on a well-regulated turn-basis. and had sole control over their children until these were five years old.

The Old Persian word for the harem is not attested, but it can be reconstructed as ''xšapā.stāna'' (lit. night station or place where one spends the night).
The royal household was controlled by the chief wife and queen, who as a rule was the daughter of a Persian prince and the mother of the heir to the throne, and who was subject only to the king, with her own living quarter, revenue, estates and staff, which included eunuchs and concubines.
The second rank under the queen consisted of the legal secondary wives, with the title ''bānūka'' (“Lady”); the third rank consisted of unmarried princesses as well as the married princesses who lived with their own family, with the title ''duxçī'' (daughter), The fourth group of women in the harem were the royal slave concubines, who were bought in slave markets, received as a gifts or 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 Darius III reportedly consisted of his mother, queen-wife, children, over 300 concubines and nearly 500 household servants.

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 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.

Royal and aristocratic Achaemenid women were given an education in subjects which 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 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".

Little is known about the alleged harems of the Parthians. Parthian royal men reportedly had several wives and kept them fairly secluded from all men but relatives and eunuchs. According to Roman sources, Parthian kings had harems full of female slaves and hetairas 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 mirror the traditional Greek reports about the Achaemenid harems, and they similarly are biased, and cannot be verified by archeological evidence.

Sasanian Empire

The information about the Sasanian harem reveals a picture that closely mirrors the alleged Achaemenid customs.

In the Sassanian Empire, Roman reports 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 several wives of lower rank and concubines, all of whom accompanied him on travels, even on campaigns. Five titles are attested for royal women: “royal princess” (''duxšy'', ''duxt''); “Lady” (''bānūg''); “Queen” (''bānbišn''); “Queen of the Empire” ('' �rān�ahr bānbišn'') and “Queen of Queens” (''bānbišnān bānbišn''). The rank of these titles has been the 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.

However, while the Sasanian kings had harems, women in the Sassanid Empire in general did not live in seclusion and 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.

According to Sasanian legend, of all the Persian kings, Khosrow II 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 of him keeping those girls in seclusion and denying them the benefit of marriage and progeny, and it 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 Shirin every year to offer them a possibility of leaving his harem with a dowry for marriage, but that their luxurious lifestyle always prompted them to refuse his offer.

South Asia

South Asian traditions of female seclusion, called ''purdah'', may have been influenced by Islamic customs, but the practice of segregation by gender in Hindu society predates the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent.

Ashoka, the emperor of the Mauryan Dynasty in India, kept a harem of around 500 women, all of whom were under strict rules of seclusion and etiquette.

In Islamic cultures

Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates

In contrast to the earlier era of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the Rashidun Caliphate, women in Umayyad and Abbasid society were absent from all arenas of the community's central affairs. While it was very common for early Muslim women to play an active role in community life, and not unseen for women to lead men into battle and even start rebellions as demonstrated in the Hadith literature, by the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, women were ideally kept in seclusion.

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 Abbasid caliphate. 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 Byzantine Empire and Persia, retrospectively interpreting the Quran to justify it. Although the term ''harem'' does not denote women's quarters in the Quran, 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 ''hijab verse'' (33:53). In modern usage ''hijab'' 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 visitors to his house, they usually viewed this practice as providing a model for all Muslim women.

The growing seclusion of women were illustrated by the power struggle between the Caliph Al-Hadi and his mother Al-Khayzuran, 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.Mernissi, Fatima; Mary Jo Lakeland (2003). The forgotten queens of Islam. Oxford University Press. . Her son considered this improper, and he publicly addressed the issue of his mothers public life by assembling his generals and asked them:
:'Who is the better among us, you or me?' asked Caliph al-Hadi of his audience.
:'Obviously you are the better, Commander of the Faithful,' the assembly replied.
:'And whose mother is the better, mine or yours?' continued the caliph.
:'Your mother is the better, Commander of the Faithful.'
:'Who among you', continued al-Hadi, 'would like to have men spreading news about your mother?'
:'No one likes to have his mother talked about,' responded those present.
:'Then why do men go to my mother to speak to her?'

Conquests had brought enormous wealth and large numbers of slaves to the Muslim elite. The majority of the slaves were women and children,Morony, Michael G. Iraq after the Muslim conquest. Gorgias Press LLC, 2005 many of whom had been dependents or harem-members of the defeated Sassanian upper classes.Abbott, Nabia. Two queens of Baghdad: mother and wife of Hārūn al Rashīd. University of Chicago Press, 1946. In the wake of the conquests an elite man could potentially own a thousand slaves, and ordinary soldiers could have ten people serving them.

Nabia Abbott, preeminent historian of elite women of the Abbasid Caliphate, describes the lives of harem women as follows.

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 eunuch. 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.

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 children to have little insurance of stability and continued support due to the volatile politics of harem life.

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:
:: To Abu Hassan I offer condolences.
:: At times of disaster and catastrophe
:: God multiplies rewards for the patient.
:: To be patient in misery
:: Is equivalent to giving thanks for a gift.
:: Among the blessings of God undoubtedly
:: Is the preservation of sons
:: And the death of daughters.

Even so, 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 Raabi'a al-Adwiyya (714–801 CE), the princess and poet 'Ulayya bint al-Mahdi (777–825 CE), and the singing-girls Shāriyah (–70 CE), Fadl Ashsha'ira (d. 871 CE) and Arib al-Ma'muniyya (797–890 CE).

Al-Andalus

The harem system developed in the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates was reproduced by the Islamic realms which developed from them, such as in the Emirates and Caliphates in Muslim Spain, Al-Andalus, which attracted a lot of attention in Europe during the Middle Ages until the Emirate of Granada was conquered in 1492.

The most famous of the Andalusian harems was perhaps the harem of the Caliph of Cordoba. Except for the female relatives of the Caliph, the harem women consisted of his slave concubines. The slaves of the Caliph were often European saqaliba slaves trafficked from Northern or Eastern Europe; while male saqaliba could be given work in a number of tasks such as offices in the kitchen, falconry, mint, textile workshops, the administration or the royal guard (in the case of harem guards, they were castrated), female saqaliba were placed in the harem.

The harem could contain thousands of slave concubines; the harem of Abd al-Rahman I consisted of 6,300 women. They (the saqaliba concubines) were appreciated for their light skin. The concubines (jawaris) 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 jawaris concubine who gave birth to a child attained the status of an ''umm walad'', and a favorite concubine was given great luxury and honorary titles such as Marjan, who gave birth to al-Hakam II, the heir of Abd al-Rahman III, who called her ''al-sayyida al-kubra'' (great lady).
Concubines were however always slaves subjected to lack of freedom and the will of their master, and 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 when she refused sexual intercourse; the concubines of Caliph Abu Marwan al-Tubni (d. 1065) were reportedly so badly treated that they conspired to murder him, and women of the harem are also known to have been subjected to rape when rivaling factions conquered different palaces. Several concubines are known to have had great influence through their masters or their sons, notably Subh during the Caliphate of Cordoba, and Isabel de Solís during the Emirate of Granada.

Afghanistan

The rulers of Afghanistan customarily had a harem of four official wives as well as a large number of unofficial wives for the sake of tribal marriage diplomacy.
They also had a large amount of enslaved women in the royal harem known as ''kaniz'' and ''surati'', guarded by the ''ghulam bacha'' (eunuchs).Emadi, Hafizullah, Repression, resistance, and women in Afghanistan, Praeger, Westport, Conn., 2002 Habibullah Khan (r. 1901–1919) famously had at least 44 wives and hundreds of slave women (mostly Hazara) in his harem in the Harem Sara Palace. The women of the royal harem dressed in Western fashion since at least the reign Habibullah Khan but did not show themselves other than completely covered outside of the enclosed area of the royal palace. The royal harem were first abolished by king Amanullah Khan who in 1923 freed all slaves of the royal harem as well as encouraged his wife queen Soraya Tarzi 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 finally dissolved with the final unveiling of the royal women in 1959.

Crimean Khanate

In the Muslim dynasties of Central Asia, the harem culture did not initially exist, since the customary nomad culture made it impractical. The wives of the rulers of the Golden Horde did not live secluded in a harem but was allowed to show themselves and meet unrelated men,Maryna Kravets: Blacks beyond the Black Sea: Eunuchs in the Crimean Khanate and 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.

The household organization of the khans of the Giray dynasty in the Crimean Khanate is described first in the reign of Sahib I Giray, while 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.

The Giray court appear to have been organized in the slave household normal in other Muslim dynasties, and 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 ulema family members. The servants of the royal harem however were all clearly slaves, particularly the eunuchs, who guarded the harem and who were of Black African origin, imported from Africa via the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East and often trained in the Ottoman Imperial harem.

Inside the harem, the highest positions were that of ''ana biyim'' and ''ulug biyim (ulug hani)'', 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 their property from the harem through their legal agents, known as ''vekils'', who also acted as their intermediaries with supplicants and petitioners.

The princes and the khans normally married free Muslim daughters of the Circassian vassal begs, and trusted high officials; the khans also customarily practiced levirate marriage. 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.Maryna Kravets: From Nomads Tent to Garden Palace: Evolution of a Chinggisid House in the Crimea 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, but the occurrence of European women in the royal harem diminished in the 18th century when the Crimean slave raids to Eastern Europe were suppressed. Some of these women, though all formally concubines, would not have been the khan's concubines in practice but rather acted 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, which put the princesses in advantage to their husbands and made the husbands loyal to the Girays.

Initially, the royal women did not live in seclusion in the harem; they notably gave their own audiences to men, significantly the ceremonial visit of the Russian ambassador, who presented them with diplomatic gifts, but in 1564 the Russian ambassador was met with the message that such audiences were no longer to be given. The Giray women did continue to play a role in diplomacy, as they were allowed to exchange formal diplomatic correspondence with female rulers and consorts. Ğazı II Giray assigned his wife Han Tokai to act as a mediator and write to tsaritsa Irina Godunova, while he himself wrote to tsar Feodor I, negotiating the return of their son Murad Giray from Moscow in 1593.

There are few examples of politically active and influential women of the Giray harem. Only Nur Sultan, wife of Mengli I Giray, Ayse Sultan, wife of Devlet I Giray (r. 1551–1577) and Emine Sultan Biyim, wife of Mehmed IV Giray (1642–44 and 1654–66), have been historically acknowledged as politically influential.

Khedivate of Egypt

The royal harem during the Khedivate of Egypt (1805-1914) was modelled after Ottoman example, the khedives being the Egyptian vice roys of the Ottoman sultans. Similar to the Ottoman Imperial harem, the harem of the khedive was modelled on a system of polygyny based on slave concubinage, in which each wife or concubine was limited to having one son.Kenneth M. Cuno:
Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth- and Early ...
'

The khedive's harem was composed of between several hundreds to over a thousand enslaved women, supervised by his mother, the walida pasha, and his four official wives (hanim) and recognized concubines (qadin). However, the majority of the slave women served as domestics to his mother and wives and could have servant offices such as the bash qalfa, chief servant slave woman of the walida pasha. The enslaved female servants of the khedive harem were manumitted and married off with a trousseau in strategic marriages to the male slaves (kul or mamluk) who were trained to become officers and civil servants, in order to ensure the fidelity of their husband's to the khedive when they begun their military or state official career. 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 in any case become free as an umm walad (or mustawlada) if they had children with him. The Egyptian elite of bureaucrate 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. Muhammad Ali of Egypt reportedly had at least 25 consorts (wives and concubines), and Khedive Ismail fourteen.

This system started to change in 1873, when Tewfik Pasha married Emina Ilhamy as his sole consort, making monogamy the fashionable ideal among the elite, after the throne succession had been changed to primogeniture, which favored monogamy. Around the same time, the Tanzimat reforms abolished the custom of training male slaves to become military men and civil servants and replaced them with free students. The Anglo-Egyptian Convention for the Abolition of Slavery in 1877 officially banned the slave trade to Sudan, followed by the 1884 ban on the import of white women as slaves (the harem slave women were normally Circassian), a ban on the selling on existing slaves as well as the introduction of a law giving slaves the right to apply of manumission. All this gradually diminished the royal harem, though the royal harem as well as the harem of the elite families did still maintain a smaller number of both male eunuchs as well as slave women until at least World War I; Khedive Abbas II of Egypt 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.

Morocco

Moulay Ismail, Alaouite sultan of Morocco from 1672 to 1727, 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.

Many of his concubines are only fragmentary documented. As concubines, they were slave captives, sometimes from Europe. One of them, an Irishwoman by the name Mrs. Shaw, was brought to his harem after having been enslaved and was made 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 Spanish convert being very poor, she was described by contemporary witnesses as reduced to beggary.Bekkaoui, Khalid., White women captives in North Africa. Narratives of enslavement, 1735-1830, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2010 Other slave concubines became favorites and as such were allowed some influence, such as an Englishwoman called Lalla Balqis. Another favorite was a Spanish captive renamed Al-Darah, mother to Moulay Ismail's once favorite son that he himself educated: Moulay Mohammed al-Alim; and to Moulay Sharif. Around 1702, Al-Darah tragically died strangled by Moulay Ismail whom Lalla Aisha had made believe she had betrayed him.

According to the writings of the French diplomat Dominique Busnot, 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 ''Guinness Book of Records'' claims 1042,. while Elisabeth Oberzaucher and Karl Grammer of the University of Vienna put the total at 1171. This is widely considered among the largest number of children of any human in history.

Mughal Empire

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 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 were the concubines.

Urdubegis were the class of women assigned to protect the emperor and inhabitants of the zenana. Because the women of the Mughal court lived sequestered under purdah, the administration of their living quarters was run entirely by women. The division of the administrative tasks was dictated largely by the vision of Akbar, who organized his zenana of over 5,000 noble women and servants. The women tasked with the protection of the zenana were commonly of Habshi, Tatar, Turk and Kashmiri origin. Kashmiri women were selected because they did not observe purdah. Many of the women were purchased as slaves and trained for their positions.

The women of the Mughal harem could exercise enormous political power. Nur Jahan, chief consort of Jahangir, 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 power behind the throne for more than fifteen years. Nur Jahan was granted certain honours and privileges which 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 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 Mumtaz Mahal, for whom Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal 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.

Ottoman Empire

The Imperial Harem of the Ottoman sultan, which was also called ''seraglio'' in the West, was part of Topkapı Palace. It also housed the valide sultan

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