At His Majesty’s Pleasure: Harems – Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, Turkey; and Tash-Khauli Palace, Khiva, Uzbekistan (plus an honorary mention for The Arabian Nights)
Have you ever read The Arabian Nights? I
have, but only because it formed part of my degree course. As you would expect
for a thousand and one nights of folk tales, it is rather long, with lots of
narratives within narratives, since the frame tale involves Scheherazade using
storytelling to delay her own death and decisively defeat the lethally
misogynistic prejudices of her husband, Schahriar. He was outraged when his
first wife and his brother’s wife both proved to be unfaithful spouses, so he
decided to embark on a project of serially marrying virgins and then having
them executed after one night. Bit excessive; bit murderous, but I suppose
everyone reacts to emotional upset differently. Scheherazade’s stories include
characters telling stories that often involve someone else telling a story. It all
gets rather confusing after a while. I suppose when you’re spinning yarns in an
attempt to entertain someone and the whole point is to delay your own otherwise
imminent death, it’s in your interests to, um, spin things out a tad more. Scheherazade
does her best to tell her husband tales of women who are strong, capable, and
even heroic. Demonstrations of female competence are, however, only acceptable
when reassuringly reinforcing male dominance and values. Obviously, the ‘right’
social order involves a wife submitting to her husband. In order to survive,
Scheherazade has to rehabilitate her homicidal husband through a mixture of
cleverness and subservience. Her tantalising storytelling combines moral
instruction (encouraging Schahriar to consider his views and behaviour towards
women) with romantic excitement, but essentially her feminine power remains
restricted to a form of seduction.
In real life, male determination to subjugate females was
expressed in the Islamic world in former centuries via the existence of the harem,
the living quarters reserved specifically for women of the household, alongside
their children (boys were housed there until puberty) and servants (other women
or eunuchs). Understandably, harems were more common in upper-class or royal
families, since all these people would be expensive to house and look after.
Inevitably, it therefore became something of a status symbol to keep a harem. Girls
entering the Ottoman harem were schooled in language, culture, and the arts
before becoming ladies-in-waiting and would then work their way up in a
strictly traditional and hierarchical system, serving others in the harem, then
the sultan’s mother, and finally the sultan himself if they were deemed to make
the grade. For a fascinating glimpse into the reality of a Turkish harem, we
have the contemporary account by Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu, an
eighteenth-century English aristocrat who was, due to her gender, able to visit
the women’s apartments, something naturally denied to men. I’ve written
previously on this blog about her observations regarding the lives of Turkish
females in the harem (see ‘A Worldly Woman of Words: The Turkish Embassy
Letters by Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu’). She certainly picked up on some of
the paradoxes of women leading a shrouded, secluded existence, suggesting they enjoyed
lives of leisurely indulgence, even engaging in impropriety, as a veiled woman
could conceal her identity. However, Lady Mary conceded that anyone caught
doing this could end up losing her life by way of penalty. Evidence suggests
that some women in a harem exercised considerable power and influence, not just
within the confines of the harem itself but politically and socially. Perhaps
this is the reality represented by the fictional, artful Scheherazade in the Nights.
Nevertheless, much of life in a harem must have been restrictive and boring, with
women subjected to sexual exploitation and ever-present fears of being cast
off, relegated, and even imperilled by the treachery of their peers in ongoing
power struggles between the inhabitants, all seeking to be favourites. In the
latter sense, I suppose there is some reflection of battles for political and
social dominance between men.
above: Topkapi Palace harem, Istanbul.
above: Tash-Khauli Palace harem, Khiva.
Anyway, I have visited two harems (obviously not in the way Lady Mary did, as they aren’t still functioning as such. What a thought). One was at Tash-Khauli Palace in Khiva, Uzbekistan; the other was the famous Topkapi Palace harem in Istanbul, once belonging to the Ottoman Sultans. In the Tash-Khauli Palace, the ruling khan had his own room (naturally the largest and most luxurious), then each of his four wives (you couldn’t have more than four official wives) had a room, and then two storeys were allocated to female relatives and concubines (once you’d run out of wives or got bored of them, you then had a selection of gorgeous girls to choose from. The joys of being rich and powerful, eh?). After a few years, the concubines would be married off to senior officials, and a new raft of young women would take their place. At Topkapi, the Ottoman sultans could maintain up to 300 concubines, although apparently there were usually fewer than this (so I should think; how on earth would the sultan have had time or energy to rule his empire otherwise?). In truth, harems were not hotbeds of debauchery but, as aforementioned, the private quarters of the ruling family and their servants, as suggested by the name: ‘harem’ means ‘forbidden’ or ‘private’. The system and the buildings used to house it were all about status rather than orgiastic indulgence.
Topkapi’s harem was constructed in the sixteenth century and
was added to in subsequent centuries by successive sultans. Tash-Khauli’s harem
was built in the nineteenth century under considerable pressure, as the Khiva
khan wanted his palace completed in double-quick time, and he executed master
builders who were unable to meet his exacting deadlines. It features beautiful
blue tilework incorporating geometric and floral patterns, and intricately
carved wooden pillars. Topkapi too is lined with exquisite tiles, some with
plant motifs and others including script from the Koran. The harems are
undoubtedly superb examples of Islamic architecture and clearly intended not
only for the comfort of the powerful but also to signify their wealth and
authority. They provoke mixed feelings because, whilst the aesthete in me appreciates
their beauty and the impressive standard of craftsmanship and artistry that
went into their design and construction, as a modern-day female, I am repelled
by the exhibition of male chauvinism they represent and sad for the women bound
to the harem system. Still, therein lie lessons about not judging the past by
the standards of the present and enduring questions as to whether we can or
should esteem works of art created against a background of what we consider to
be murky morals. I wonder what Scheherazade might have had to say about that.
Arabian Nights’ Entertainments edited
by Robert L. Mack ISBN: 9780199555871
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