The Harem Through The Eyes Of The Europans: Reality And Fantasy

“Haremi Hümayun”, as generally known Harem, was the Sultan’s private quarters. In fact, as a word derived from Arabic, it meant a secluded or forbidden place, usually a home or a private property. It was called as “Golden Cage” in which most beautiful odalisques were in competition to capture the heart of ‘Sultan’ and where the most dangerous tricks were played to obtain power. The Harem, in the Ottoman Empire, was first founded in the reign of Orhan Gazi (1326-1360) and, during the reign of Mehmet the Conqueror (1451-1481), it turned into a kind of social institution that would influence the state affairs in the future (Pierce 42). From the late sixteenth century onward, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Harem became a center of attraction for western travelers, artists and writers. However, it was impossible for the Europeans to observe it closely. That’s why they fictionalized the Harem both in their paintings and writings. Lady Mary Wortley Montague who resided in Istanbul in the early eighteenth century as a wife of an English Ambassador tried to depict the reality from a different and female perspective. She presented her point of view in her Letters. In this paper, these highly fictionalized representations of the Harem will be discussed with reference to the English writings, and the reasons why the life in the Harem appealed to the Western imagination will be analyzed by drawing upon the fictional accounts.

Keywords

Ottoman, XVII. century, İstanbul, harem, fictionalization, sexuality, education, Lady Mary Wortley M