A harem in the broad sense of the word means the female half of the house in Muslim countries: women and children lived there, no men were allowed there, except the owner. But the more common meaning of this word is a group of wives, slaves, concubines and other women of a noble Muslim who live in his palace.
The history of the harem
The word "harem" comes from the Arabic "forbidden place": so for a long time was called the area of the house where women and children lived. No one was allowed to enter the harem, only the owner of the house could visit him without hindrance. Women rarely left their premises, and if they went out, it was only in a burqa so as not to embarrass other men with their beauty.
Muslim women have not always lived so closed. During the reign of the first Abbasid caliphs, in the VIII-IX centuries AD, the wives of rich and noble Muslims had their own houses, palaces and households and led a relatively open, active lifestyle. In the X century, women began to be given separate rooms in palaces, and stricter rules began to be imposed on their behavior. Some heads of families locked the harem for the night and always carried keys with them.
Harem rules
Harems were arranged on the upper floors of the house, usually in front of it. They always had a separate entrance, and next to the door leading to the rest of the palace there was a hatch - women passed cooked food through it.
Thanks to the completely closed and inaccessible views of outsiders, the harem acquired the features of a territory of luxury and sexual licentiousness with its own laws and regulations.
Not only wives, but also slaves from all over the world lived in the harems - Islamic laws forbade the slavery of Muslims. Caliphs and other noble people brought themselves concubines from North Africa, the Byzantine Empire, and even Europe. The age of the harem women was different: from sixteen to sixty years. Every day, the owner of the harem could choose any woman for the night. Children of slaves had the same rights as children of official wives - many famous rulers were born to concubines.
In the past, women were not trained as doctors, but male doctors were denied access to the harem. It was possible to treat residents of the female half of the house either in words, according to the description of the disease, or by the hand that the patient could stretch out from behind the screen.
The only men in the harem were eunuchs - male-incapacitated men, not Muslims, who were redeemed from Jews or Christians. They were very expensive - not everyone survived after such an operation, and many who went through this torture lost their minds. Eunuchs lived on female territory as servants. At first, the mistress of the owner ruled the harems, but later the power passed to the mothers of the head of the family.
Today, polygamy among Muslims is a very rare phenomenon; therefore, harems are almost not preserved, at least in their traditional form.
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