Harem

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HAREM

The practice of the harem (Ar., harim), or the seclusion of women, dates back to the pre-Islamic period. The root h-r-m also refers to al-haram al-sharif, the sanctuary of Mecca as the reserved space for Muslims. The form harem connotes a sacred and inviolable space, which is forbidden to any men, other than the members of the immediate family. Its institution and derivate forms have been common in the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures as an integral part of royal and upper-class families.

Culturally, the Mesopotamian, Greek antiquity, and Persian societies shared in common the practice of the harem. While women were confined to their quarters, men enjoyed the privilege of engaging in the public sphere. This segregation also marked a labor division based on sexual difference; females were responsible for the management of the household, whereas males served as head of the family and were responsible for public affairs. As the women's role was limited to managing the house, their presence in the public sphere was also regulated through a manner of dress that rendered them invisible from public gaze. Historically, followers of Judaism and Christianity also secluded women. For example, in the early Jewish family, where gender relations varied, women were nonetheless confined to a private sphere in which they performed household duties for the family as well as religious rites. In the early Christian era, women were often secluded within their own residence, guarded by eunuchs, and required to be veiled when they left the home. These practices found their way into the caliphate as the Abbasids conquered the lands inhabited by the dominant Christian and Jewish cultures, and so the elite female members of the Abbasid caliphate were secluded within their own quarters called "harem." The institution of harem flourished in Muslim societies during the successive invasions and conquests of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions, Africa, and India. The conquest of Persia during the Sassanian times led to the assimilation of Persian culture, especially in the garrison towns. This conquest and the subsequent expansion of the Muslim territory provided Muslim dynasties with the opportunity to own, inherit, and capture prisoners of wars, including eunuchs, slaves, and minors, as well as the wives of royal families. For example, the Abbasid nobles and leaders adopted the Persian custom of the ownership of hundreds and thousands of concubines and slaves. Muslim dynasties and the notables maintained a harem as a part of their palaces.

The inclusion of the harem fit well with the societal structure adopted from the Irano-Semitic culture in its Islamic form, called the a?yan-amir system. In this form of administration, the "notables" (a?yan) of the towns and villages and the umara? (leaders or commanders) of local or regional garrison courts shared power and authority. Within this web of social relationships, individual social status depended on the male's ability to settle formal quarrels among the tribes or factions and to invite sexual jealousy. The patterns of feuding and sex relations with numerous concubines marked masculine honor and worthiness in society. These masculine traits belonged exclusively to the notables (the a?yan) and the commanders/leaders (the umara). As the masculine honor within the a?yan system depended heavily on the honor of wives, concubines, and female slaves, the total control and the subservience of these females became necessary. For this reason, it was in the best interest of the masters to institute a severe seclusion and rigid privacy for the females.

For outsiders, the "imagined harem" came to represent the abased and subjugated treatment of women in Islamic civilization. This harem discourse emerged in the seventeenth century after the Europeans discovered harems filled with women. The explicit connection between the "imagined harem" and the status of women in Muslim society and Islam was generally produced and reproduced by the European Orientalists in the two centuries following the colonization of the Muslim lands. This harem element shifted the medieval discourse on Muslim women, which previously portrayed them as victimized, yet powerful in charm and deceit.

Stimulated by the translation from the Arabic of the folk story The Thousand and One Nights, the "imagined harem" produced narratives of Muslim women whose sexual desire was strong, yet subordinated, oppressed, veiled, and secluded. These harem narratives circulated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, functioning not only to feed the Orientalist imaginary of the harem, but also to serve the superiority of imperialist power over the Muslim world.

The harem as a social institution for women in the Muslim world, especially in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, finally came to an end in the early twentieth century. It ended not because Muslims discovered that it was incompatible with Islam, but because they lost control over their land and politics.

See alsoGender ; Marriage ; Purdah .