Musings from Miklagard: A trip to the Harem

The Sultan's Harem sounds like such a romantic and beautiful place. Only a small part of the harem at Topkapi Palace is open to the public, and I went there for the first time on a cold January day. Even if I loved the visit, and I could sense the forgotten, overwhelming beauty, I had a hard time imagine living there being romantic. Every Ottoman household had a harem, and the word literarily means "private", and it was the description of the women and children's section of the household. So the harem of the palace was the family section, where the sultan and his sons retreated to "after work". I have read that at times as many as 300 concubines lived at the Topkapi Harem, and their only purpose was to be more beautiful and powerful than all the other women. The only other people allowed in the harem (except for the Sultan and his sons) were a large group (up to 200) of mutilated men whose purpose was to guard the women. Both the concubines and the eunuchs were slaves imported from other countries, because Islamic law forbade enslaving muslims. Imagine being a 12 year old girl, stolen from, or sold by your family and brought to a lazy life in luxury where you had to learn a new language, culture and religion. Where you would learn the arts of make-up, dress, comportment, music, reading, writing, embroidery and dancing, and then compete with hundreds of other beautiful and talented girls who would even kill you if they saw that beneficial.

And you thought girls in Middle School nowadays are mean...