Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates In contrast to the earlier era of the
Islamic prophet Muhammad and the
Rashidun Caliphate, women in
Umayyad and
Abbasid society were absent from all arenas of the community's central affairs. It was very common for early Muslim women to play an active role in community life and even to lead men into battle and start rebellions, as demonstrated in the
Hadith literature. But by the time of the
Abbasid Caliphate, women were ideally kept in seclusion. The practice of gender segregation in Islam was influenced by an interplay of religion, customs and politics.The harem system first became fully institutionalized in the Islamic world under the
Abbasid caliphate. Seclusion of women was established in various communities of the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and Persia before the advent of Islam, and some scholars believe that Muslims adopted the custom from the
Byzantine Empire and Persia, retrospectively interpreting the Quran to justify it. Although the term
harem does not denote women's quarters in the
Quran, a number of Quranic verses discussing modesty and seclusion were held up by Quranic commentators as religious rationale for the separation of women from men, including the so-called
hijab verse (33:53). In modern usage
hijab colloquially refers to the religious attire worn by Muslim women, but in this verse, it meant "veil" or "curtain" that physically separates female from male space. Although classical commentators agreed that the verse spoke about a curtain separating the living quarters of Muhammad's wives from visitors to his house, they usually viewed this practice as providing a model for all Muslim women. The growing seclusion of women was illustrated by the power struggle between the Caliph
Al-Hadi and his mother
Al-Khayzuran, who refused to live in seclusion but instead challenged the power of the Caliph by giving her own audiences to male supplicants and officials and thus mixing with men. Her son considered this improper, and he publicly addressed the issue of his mother's public life by assembling his generals and asked them: :'Who is the better among us, you or me?' asked Caliph al-Hadi of his audience. :'Obviously you are the better, Commander of the Faithful,' the assembly replied. :'And whose mother is the better, mine or yours?' continued the caliph. :'Your mother is the better, Commander of the Faithful.' :'Who among you', continued al-Hadi, 'would like to have men spreading news about your mother?' :'No one likes to have his mother talked about,' responded those present. :'Then why do men go to my mother to speak to her?' many of whom had been dependents or harem-members of the defeated
Sassanian upper classes. In the wake of the conquests an elite man could potentially own a thousand slaves, and ordinary soldiers could have ten people serving them.
Al-Andalus The harem system that developed in the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates was reproduced by the Islamic realms developing from them, such as in the Emirates and Caliphates in Muslim Spain,
al-Andalus, which attracted a lot of attention in Europe during the Middle Ages until the
Emirate of Granada was conquered in 1492.
Caliphate of Cordoba The most famous of the Andalusian harems was perhaps the harem of the
Caliph of Cordoba. Except for the female relatives of the Caliph, the harem women consisted of his slave concubines. The slaves of the Caliph were often European
saqaliba slaves trafficked from Northern or Eastern Europe. While male saqaliba could be given work in a number offices such as: in the kitchen, falconry, mint, textile workshops, the administration or the royal guard (in the case of harem guards, they were castrated), but female saqaliba were placed in the harem. The harem could contain thousands of slave concubines; the harem of
Abd al-Rahman I consisted of 6,300 women. The
saqaliba concubines were appreciated for their light skin. The concubines (
jawaris) were educated in accomplishments to make them attractive and useful for their master, and many became known and respected for their knowledge in a variety of subjects from music to medicine. Several concubines were known to have had great influence through their masters or their sons, notably
Subh during the Caliphate of Cordoba, and
Isabel de Solís during the
Emirate of Granada. However, concubines were always slaves subjected the will of their master. Caliph Abd al-Rahman III is known to have executed two concubines for reciting what he saw as inappropriate verses, and tortured another concubine with a burning candle in her face while she was held by two eunuchs after she refused sexual intercourse. The concubines of
Abu Marwan al-Tubni (d. 1065) were reportedly so badly treated that they conspired to murder him; women of the harem were also known to have been subjected to rape when rivaling factions conquered different palaces.
Al-Bakri (c. 1040–1094) described how excellent trained cooks and light skinned girls for concubinage were sold on the slave market in
Awdaghust. Slaves were given away as gifts between members of the Almoravid dynasty: the Amir
Yusuf ibn Tashfin, for example, are known to have given slaves as material gifts to his cousin
Abu Bakr ibn Umar. In islam, the child of a slave and her enslaver were counted as legitimate despite being born outside of marriage, as long as the father acknowledged paternity, in which case the slave mother was given the position
umm walad and automatically manumitted on the death of her enslaver. Only one woman in his harem, Safiyya bint Abi Imran, are clearly stated to be a free woman and his legal wife, and she is the only woman named by name except for Fatima of Fez, who was the mother of his son Abu al-Hasan Ali. After the Almohad conquest however, the Almohad dynasty started to acquire slave concubines in the same way as other Islamic dynasties by import of
kafir slave girls from
dar al-Harb; the slave girls were captured alongside borders to non-Muslim lands, and the concubines to the Almohad harem were often captured from military campaigns or slave raids to Christian North Spain or Pagan Africa South of Sahara.
Emirate of Granada The rulers of the
Nasrid dynasty of the
Emirate of Granada (1232–1492) customarily married their cousins, but also kept
slave concubines in accordance with
Islamic custom. The identity of these concubines is unknown, but they were originally Christian women (
rūmiyyas) bought or captured in expeditions in the Christian states of Northern Spain, and given a new name when they entered the royal harem. The Royal Nasrid Harem of the
Emirate of Granada (1238–1492) was modelled after the former Royal Harem of Cordoba. The rulers of the
Nasrid dynasty normally married their cousins, (al-hurra), who became their legal wives (zawŷ), but additionally bought enslaved concubines (ŷawārī, mamlūkāt); the concubines were normally Christian girls (rūmiyyas) kidnapped in slave raids to the Christian lands in the North. A concubine who gave birth to a child who was recognized by her enslaver as his, was given the status of ummahāt al-awlād, which meant she could no longer be sold and would be free (
hurra) after the death of her enslaver. The mothers of both
Yusuf I and
Muhammad V had been captured Christian women, as had
Rīm, enslaved by
Yusuf I of Granada, and mother of
Ismail II of Granada.
'Alawi dynasty of Morocco The Royal harem of the
Alaouite dynasty of Morocco has historically not been the subject of much research. Known from the 17th century onward, the royal harem is known to have followed the common model of a royal Muslim harem, including wives, enslaved concubines, female slave-servants and enslaved eunuchs as guards and officials. The rulers of the Alaouite dynasty often conducted political marriages, cementing strategic alliances with internal tribal and aristocratic men by marrying female members of their family. Aside from their legal wives, they also, similar to other Muslim rulers, followed the custom of having concubines. The enslaved concubines of the Alaouite dynasty famously often came from the
Barbary slave trade, as well as from the
Trans-Saharan slave trade. It was not unheard of for a ruler to marry one of his concubines. Many slaves were also provided to the harem from Africa via the Trans-Saharan slave trade. This was particularly true about the enslaved maidservants, as well as the eunuchs. The Alaouite harem is most known during the reign of
Moulay Ismail,
Alaouite sultan of
Morocco from 1672 to 1727. Moulay Ismail had over 500 enslaved concubines. He is said to have fathered a total of 525 sons and 342 daughters by 1703 and achieved a 700th son in 1721. Many of his concubines are only fragmentarily documented. As concubines, they were slave captives, sometimes acquired via the
Barbary slave trade from Europe. One of them, an Irishwoman by the name Mrs. Shaw, was brought to his harem after having been enslaved. She was forced to convert to Islam when the Sultan wished to have intercourse with her, but was manumitted and married off to a Spanish convert when the Sultan grew tired of her. The Spanish convert being very poor, witnesses described her as being reduced to beggary. Other slave concubines would become favorites and thus allowed some influence, such as an Englishwoman called
Lalla Balqis. According to the writings of the French diplomat
Dominique Busnot, Moulay Ismail had at least 500 concubines and even more children. A total of 868 children (525 sons and 343 daughters) is recorded in 1703, with his seven-hundredth son being born shortly after his death in 1727, by which time he had well over a thousand children. The final total is uncertain; the
Guinness Book of Records claims 1042, while Elisabeth Oberzaucher and Karl Grammer of the
University of Vienna put the total at 1171. This is widely considered to be the largest number of children of any human in history. A French diplomat who visited the court of Molay Islam in 1712 reported that the senior wife of the Sultan was in charge of the supervision of the harem concubines. The concubines were kept secluded in separate cells in the palace harem; they were given one slave maid and one slave eunuch each, but were kept under such tight seclusion that they were rarely allowed to visit even each other; fourteen concubines were reportedly punished by having their teeth pulled out for visiting each other without permission. The slave trade to the Royal Harem decreased after the end of the Barbary slave trade in the early 19th century. White concubines were however still provided via the
Circassian slave trade during the 19th century. In the early 20th century, African slaves also decreased due to the end of the Trans-Saharan slave trade, which was forced closed by the Spanish and French colonial authorities in the 1920s. However, descendants of slaves continued to work as servants and concubines of the Royal Harem in the 20th century. The traditional Royal Harem still existed during the reign of king
Hassan II of Morocco (r. 1961–1999): the Royal Harem included forty personal concubines (who by Islamic law were by definition slaves) as well as an additional forty concubines who the king had inherited by his father; additional concubines who worked as domestic servants in the Royal Harem, as well as male slaves performing other positions such as chauffeurs in the Royal Household. The slaves of the Royal Household were descended from enslaved ancestors inherited within the household.
Afghanistan The
Barakzai dynasty rulers of Afghanistan (1823–1973) customarily had a harem of four official wives as well as a large number of unofficial wives for the sake of tribal marriage diplomacy. In addition, they also had
enslaved harem women known as
kaniz ("slave girl") and
surati or
surriyat ("mistress"
Habibullah Khan (r. 1901–1919) famously had at least 44 wives and hundreds of slave women (mostly
Hazara) in his harem in the Harem Sara Palace. The women of the royal harem dressed in Western fashion as far back as the reign Habibullah Khan, but did not show themselves other than completely covered outside of the enclosed area of the royal palace. The royal harem was first abolished by king
Amanullah Khan, who in 1923 freed all slaves of the royal harem as well as encouraging his wife, queen
Soraya Tarzi, and the other women of the royal family to unveil and live public lives. While the royal women returned to the purdah of the royal complex after the deposition of Amanullah in 1929, it was dissolved with the final unveiling of the royal women in 1959.
Ayyubid Sultanate The Royal harem of the
Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt and the Levant (1171–1250) was similar to its predecessor, the Fatimid harem. The wives and mothers and female relatives of the Ayyubid sultans are rarely known in more detail. In some cases, the Ayyubid sultans married free Muslim women: Sultan
Saladin was married to several wives, the most known of whom was
Ismat ad-Din Khatun, and Sultan
Al-Kamil was married to
Sitti Sawda. However, in most cases it appears the Sultans preferred to use slave concubines for procreation. Non-Muslim female slaves were imported as
kafirs (infidels) from
dar al-harb (the non-Muslim world) and forced to convert to Islam upon arrival. In the harem, female slaves would work as servants or chosen for sexual slavery as
concubines. Some slave-girls were trained in accomplishments of the arts to perform as
qiyan-entertainers, and some of the most favored royal Ayyubid concubines had been qiyan-artists, such as
Surur (qiyan) and
Adschība (qiyan). A Sultan did not have to marry, and some of them did not. Instead, they procreated via concubines. A concubine who had given birth to a child whose paternity was awknowledge by the Sultan, raised to the status of
Umm Walad, and as the mother of a royal child was considered a true member of the royal dynasty. Slaves in Brunei were often non-Muslim Javanese, brought to Brunei by merchants. The royal harem were described by a British resident in the 1850s as an institution where the women were isolated from the outside world to such a degree that the sultan preferred to attend to the repairs of the building himself, assisted by female slaves: :"The harem of the Brunei sultan is no splendid abode. It reminds one rather of a barn than of Haroun Alraschid's palace. In a building some seventy feet by forty, fourscore women live-wives, concubines, and slaves. I do not know that any white person has beheld the inside of it, for his majesty carries jealous care to the verge of hypochondria [...] Putting aside the prosaic question of securing a good meal every day, inmates of a royal harem who receive but one set of clothes a year - and those of cotton or cheapest silk - will always be plotting to get finery and cash. The house is old, constantly needing repair, and the sultan will not allow even a carpenter to go inside it. [...] The old monarch handled tools himself, assisted by the female slaves.".
Crimean Khanate In the Muslim dynasties of Central Asia, the harem culture did not initially exist, since the customary nomadic culture made it impractical. The wives of the rulers of the
Golden Horde did not live secluded in a harem but were allowed to show themselves and meet men who were not their relatives. The system of harem gender segregation was not fully implemented in the Islamic dynasties of Central Asia until they stopped living a nomadic lifestyle, such as in the Crimea. It is clear that there were separate women's quarters in the court of Sahib I Giray, however complete gender segregation in the form of a harem does not appear to have been introduced until the 1560s. In 1669, the khan reportedly received fifteen Circassian slave virgins as an annual tribute from his subjects in the Caucasus; in the 1720s khan Saadet Giray reportedly owned twenty-seven slave concubines, and in the 1760s khan Qirim Giray owned about forty. Other slave girls served the consorts of the Sultan in a number of domestic tasks as harem servants, known as qahramana or qahramaniyya. Sultan
As-Salih Salih (died 1354) gave his mother great influence: he arranged a royal banquet inside the royal harem, where he served her himself and organized a royal procession, a
mawkib sultani, which was a ceremony otherwise customarily only given to sultans. During the
Burji dynasty (1382–1517) the Mamluk Sultanate were no longer an inherited monarchy, and the
Burji mamluk sultans were succeeded by their emirs. However, a certain dynastic continuity existed, in which the Sultans married the widow, concubine or female relative of his predecessor. The Burji Mamluk often married free Muslim women of the Mamluk nobility. However, the Burji harem, as its predecessor, maintained the custom of slave concubinage, with Circassian slave girls being popular as concubines, some of which became favorites and even wives of the Sultan. Sultan
Qaitbay (r. 1468–1496) had a favorite Circassian slave concubine,
Aṣalbāy, who became the mother of Sultan
Al-Nasir Muhammad (r. 1496–1498) and later married Sultan
Al-Ashraf Janbalat (r. 1500–1501).
Urdubegis were the class of women assigned to protect the emperor and inhabitants of the
zenana. Because the women of the Mughal court lived sequestered under
purdah, the administration of their living quarters was run entirely by women. The division of the administrative tasks was dictated largely by the vision of
Akbar, who organized his zenana of over 5,000 noble women and servants. The women tasked with the protection of the zenana were commonly of
Habshi,
Tatar, Turk and
Kashmiri origin. Kashmiri women were selected because they did not observe purdah. Many of the women were purchased as slaves and trained for their positions. Individual women of the Mughal harem are known to have attained political influence.
Nur Jahan, chief consort of
Jahangir, was the most powerful and influential woman at court during a period when the Mughal Empire was at the peak of its power and glory. More decisive and proactive than her husband, she is considered by historians to have been the real
power behind the throne for more than fifteen years. Nur Jahan was granted certain honours and privileges that were never enjoyed by any Mughal empress before or after. Nur Jahan was the only Mughal empress to have coinage struck in her name. She was often present when the Emperor held court, and even held court independently when the Emperor was unwell. She was given charge of his imperial seal, implying that her perusal and consent were necessary before any document or order received legal validity. The Emperor sought her views on most matters before issuing orders. The only other Mughal empress to command such devotion from her husband was Nur Jahan's niece
Mumtaz Mahal, for whom
Shah Jahan built the
Taj Mahal as a mausoleum. However, Mumtaz took no interest in affairs of state and Nur Jahan is therefore unique in the annals of the Mughal Empire for the political influence she wielded.
Muhammad Ali dynasty of Egypt The royal
harem of the Muhammad Ali dynasty of the
Khedivate of Egypt (1805–1914) was modelled after Ottoman example, the khedives being nominally the Egyptian
viceroys of the Ottoman sultans.
Muhammad Ali was appointed viceroy of Egypt in 1805, and by Imperial Ottoman example assembled a harem of slave concubines in the Palace Citadel of Cairo which, according to a traditional account, made his legal wife
Amina Hanim declare herself to henceforth be his wife in name only, when she joined him in Egypt in 1808 and discovered his sex slaves. Similar to the
Ottoman Imperial harem, the harem of the khedive was modelled on a system of
polygyny based on slave concubinage, in which each wife or concubine was limited to having one son. The women harem slaves mostly came from
Caucasus via the
Circassian slave trade and were referred to as "white". The khedive's harem was composed of between several hundreds to over a thousand enslaved women, supervised by his mother, the
walida pasha, and his four official wives (
hanim) and recognized concubines (
qadin). However, the majority of the slave women served as domestics to his mother and wives, and could have servant offices such as the
bash qalfa, chief servant slave woman of the walida pasha. The enslaved female servants of the khedivate harem were manumitted and married off with a trousseau in strategic marriages to the male freedmen or slaves (
kul or
mamluk) who were trained to become officers and civil servants as freedmen, in order to ensure the fidelity of their husband's to the khedive when they began their military or state official career. A minority of the slave women were selected to become the personal servants (concubines) of the khedive, often selected by his mother: they could become his wives, and would become free as an
umm walad (or
mustawlada) if they had children with their enslaver.
Muhammad Ali of Egypt reportedly had at least 25 consorts (wives and concubines), and
Khedive Ismail fourteen consorts of slave origin, four of whom where his wives. The Egyptian elite of bureaucrat families, who emulated the khedive, had similar harem customs, and it was noted that it was common for Egyptian upper-class families to have slave women in their harem, which they manumitted to marry off to male protegees. This system gradually started to change after 1873, when
Tewfik Pasha married
Emina Ilhamy as his sole consort, making monogamy the fashionable ideal among the elite, after the throne succession had been changed to primogeniture, which favored monogamy. The wedding of Tewfik Pasha and Emina Ilhamy was the first wedding of a prince that were celebrated, since the princes had previously merely taken slave concubines, who they sometimes married afterward. The end of the
Circassian slave trade and the elimination of slave concubinage after the
Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention also contributed to the end of the practice of polygyny in the Egyptian and Ottoman upper classes from the 1870s onward. In the mid-19th century, the Ottoman
Tanzimat reforms abolished the custom of training male slaves to become military men and civil servants, and replaced them with free students. All of this gradually diminished the royal harem, though it, as well as the harem of the elite families, still maintained a smaller number of male eunuchs and slave women until at least
World War I. Khedive
Abbas II of Egypt bought six "white female slaves" for his harem in 1894, and his mother still maintained sixty slaves as late as 1931. The royal harem was finally dissolved when the royal women escaped seclusion and took on a public role in the 1930s.
Ottoman Empire , daughter of
Suleiman the Magnificent The Imperial Harem of the
Ottoman sultan, also called
seraglio in the West, was part of
Topkapı Palace. It also housed the
valide sultan, as well as the sultan's daughters and other female relatives.
Eunuchs and enslaved servant girls were also part of the harem. During the later periods, the sons of the sultan lived in the Harem until they were 12 years old. It is becoming more commonly acknowledged today that the purpose of harems during the Ottoman Empire was for the upbringing of the future wives of upper-class and royal men. These women would be educated so that they would able to appear in public as wives. In general, however, the separation of men's and women's quarters was never practiced among the urban poor in large cities such as Constantinople, and by the 1920s and 1930s, it had become a thing of the past in middle and upper-class homes. The Ottoman sultans normally did not marry in the period circa 1500–1850, but instead procreated with enslaved concubines provided via the
Crimean slave trade. Some women of an Ottoman harem, especially wives, mothers and sisters of sultans, played very important political roles in Ottoman history, and during the period of the
Sultanate of Women, it was common for foreign visitors and ambassadors to claim that the Empire was,
de facto ruled by the women in the Imperial Harem.
Hürrem Sultan (wife of
Suleiman the Magnificent, mother of
Selim II), was one of the most powerful women in Ottoman history and wielded vast political power. The title of
Haseki Sultan, was created for her and was used by her successors.
Kösem Sultan was also one of the most powerful women in
Ottoman history. Kösem Sultan achieved power and influenced the politics of the
Ottoman Empire when she became
Haseki Sultan as the favourite consort and later legal wife of
Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603–1617) and
valide sultan as mother of
Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) and
Ibrahim (r. 1640–1648), and grandmother of
Mehmed IV (r. 1648–1687). Kösem's son, Sultan
Ibrahim the Mad, Ottoman ruler from 1640 to 1648, is said to have drowned 280 concubines of his harem in the
Bosphorus. At least one of his concubines,
Turhan Sultan, a
Russian girl (from the area around modern Ukraine) who came into the Ottoman Empire as a
slave sold by
Nogai slavers, survived his reign.
Safavid Empire The royal harem played an important role in the history of
Safavid Persia. The Safavid harem consisted of: mothers, wives, slave concubines, female relatives; it was staffed with female slaves, and eunuchs who acted as their guards and channels to the rest of the world. Shah Sultan Hossain's (r. 1694–1722) court has been estimated include five thousand slaves: male and female, black and white, of which one hundred were black eunuchs. The monarchs of the Safavid dynasty preferred to procreate through slave concubines, which would neutralize potential ambitions from relatives and other inlaws and protect patrimony. In contrast to the common custom in Islamic courts allowing only non-Muslim women to become harem concubines, the Safavid harem also contained Muslim concubines, as some free Persian Muslim daughters were given by their families or taken by the royal household to the harem as concubines. The enslaved harem women could achieve great influence, but there are also examples of the opposite. Shah
Abbas II (r. 1642–1666) burned three of his slave-wives alive because they refused to drink with him, and another wife for lying about her menstruation period. Shah Safi (r. 1629–1642) stabbed his wife to death for disobedience. Suleiman set up a privy council, which included the most important eunuchs in the harem, thereby depriving traditional state institutions of their functions. The eunuchs' influence over military and civil affairs was checked only by their internal rivalries and by the religious movement led by
Muhammad Baqir Majlisi. As in prior royal Islamic harems, there were women of different nationalities among the wives and concubines. For example, the mother of Prince Tallal was an Armenian, while the mother of Prince Fahd was an Arab of the
Sudairi tribe. Ibn Saud informed
Harry St John Philby that he had taken the virginity of hundreds of slave girls and then given them away as presents; specifically, he claimed to have deflowered 135 virgin slave girls and to have had sexual intercourse with an additional 100 enslaved women. However, he told Philby, he had decided henceforward to only marry two new wives per year and limit himself to "four concubines, wives in all but name... and four slave-girls, to say nothing of his right to select from the damsels at his disposal". In 1945,
Winston Churchill noted that Ibn Saud: :...still lived the existence of a patriarchal king of the Arabian desert, with his forty living sons and the seventy ladies of the harem, and three or four official wives, as prescribed by the Prophet, one vacancy being kept. Ibn Saud is reported to have been the father of 42 sons and 125 daughters. The children were raised by and named after their mothers, sharing their status in the harem's hierarchy; the sons of
umm walad slaves had lower status than the sons of wives. His mother had been a house slave before she was given as a concubine to the prince; her son has stated: "My mother was not related to any tribal leader that would provide me with power, nor was she from a royal family." The Seljuk harem were referred to as the
mukhaddarat-i haram. As was the custom for royal Islamic harems, it included the mother, the four legal wives and the non-Muslim slave-concubines of the sultan, as well as the unmarried sisters, daughters and infant sons of the sultan, although the exact hierarchy of the harem is unconfirmed. The Byzantine historian
Doukas remarked: :"The people of this shameless and savage nation, moreover, do the following: if they seize a Greek woman or an Italian woman or a woman of another nation or a captive or a deserter, they embrace her as an Aphrodite or Semele, but a woman of their own nation or of their own tongue they loathe as though she were a bear or a hyena". The sultans could have four wives, and were known to marry free Muslim women as well as former slave-concubines. The Royal harems in South East Asia where generally relatively small with the exception of the one in Aceh, which reached a considerable size in the 16th and 17th centuries. The court of Aceh also used enslaved dancing boys (
Nias) of the age 8–12, who were also used for sexual slavery, as late as in the 1870s. In contrast to the rest of the Muslim world, the concubines (
gundik) in the harems of South East Asia where not always slaves, but could also be free Muslim women, which was illegal in Islamic Law. Particularly in Java, the Javanese aristocracy and royalty frequently used free women as concubines. A Chinese non-Muslim man had a female Indonesian who was of Muslim Arab Hadhrami Sayyid origin in
Solo, the
Dutch East Indies, in 1913 which was scandalous in the eyes of
Ahmad Surkati and his
Al-Irshad Al-Islamiya. The local royal rulers in Southeast Asia continued their custom of slave concubinage also after they had become vassals of Western powers; in
Lampung, slave concubines were still kept as late as
World War I. The monarchs of the Timurid dynasty broke Islamic law by having free Muslim women as concubines. The women of the harem were attended to and guarded by slave eunuchs. The founder
Ahmad ibn Tulun (r. 868-884) owned a number of concubines, and appears to have had sons with at least three; he also had legal wives, of which one was the daughter of Yarjukh (d. 872), a Turkish commander of Samarra and early patron of his father (Ahmad ibn Tulun), and mother of al-Abbas, Ibn Tulun's eldest son and designated heir; his next son and heir,
Khumarawayh, was the son of a concubine. Khumarawayh ibn Ahmad ibn Tulun (r. 884-896) himself, the son of a concubine, reportedly suspected that his jawari-concubines were comitting adultery with his eunuchs, and were killed by hs eunuchs in 896. Ibn al-Athir descrbed the event of 896: :"Khumarawayh was told that his jawari in his palace in Egypt would have eunuchs as lovers, and enjoyed affairs with them like a husband would. He ordered his deputy to investigate the matter with the jawari. The eunuchs close to him in Damascus feared his reaction if the truth of their situation was revealed, and so decided collectvely to kill him".
Qajar Empire , from a Qajar era painting. The harem of the monarchs of the
Qajar dynasty (1785–1925) consisted of several thousand people. The harem had a precise internal administration, based on the women's rank. As was customary in Muslim harems, the highest rank of the harem hierarchy was that of the monarchs' mother, who in Qajar Iran had the title
Mahd-e ʿOlyā (Sublime Cradle). She had many duties and prerogatives, such as safeguarding the harem valuables, particularly the jewels, which she administered with the help of female secretaries. In contrast to what was common in the Ottoman Empire, where the sultans normally only had slave consorts, the Qajar shahs also had a custom of diplomatic marriages with free Muslim women, daughters of Qajar dignitaries and princes. Another phenomenon of the Qajar harem was that the Shah entered into two different kinds of marriages with his harem women:
ṣīḡa (temporary wife), which was often done with concubines, and
ʿaqdī (permanent wives); this was a promotion. The wives and slave concubines of
Fath-Ali Shah Qajar came from the harems of the vanquished houses of Zand and Afšār; from the Georgian and Armenian campaigns, as well as from slave markets, and were presented as gifts to the shah from the provinces. Every consort had white and black slave servants (women or eunuchs), whose number varied according to her status. Some wives had their own residence and stables. There were different types of female officials within the harem: some managed the royal coffeehouse inside the harem, a body of female sentinels commanded by women officials "protected the king's nightly rest", and women called
ostāds (masters) supervised the group of female dancers and musicians who entertained the harem; they were housed with their servants in a separate compound. Young slave boys below puberty (ḡolām-bačča) were used as servants and playmates in the harem. Eunuchs were mainly African slaves. Nāṣer-al-Din Shah's favorite wife
Anis-al-Dawla brought about the dismissal of the Premier
Mirza Hosein Khan Moshir od-Dowleh in 1873. Both Persian policymakers as well as foreign diplomats, therefore, sought support within the royal harem.
Uzbekistan In the Islamic Khanates of Central Asia, harems existed until the introduction of Communism by the Soviets after the Russian Revolution.
Khiva The royal harem of the Arabshahid dynasty (Yadigarid Shibanid dynasty) and the Qungrad dynasty of the
Khanate of Khiva (1511–1920) in Central Asia (
Uzbekistan) was composed of both legal wives and slave concubines. The khan had four legal wives, who were obliged to be free Muslim women. Aside from his legal wives, enslaved women were acquired from slave markets and were obliged to be non-Muslims since free Muslim women could not be slaves. The enslaved girls were initially given as servants to the khan's mother. She provided them with an education to make them suitable for concubinage, after which some of them were selected to be the concubines to the khan. Only the khan's legal wives were allowed to give birth to his children, and the slave concubines who conceived were given forced abortions. The women could be sold off if they did not please the khan, or given in marriage to his favored subjects. The son of the khan was not allowed to inherit his father's concubine, so when a khan died, his concubines were sold at the slave market. The harem was abolished when the Soviets conquered the area and the khan
Sayyid Mir Muhammad Alim Khan was forced to flee; he reportedly left the harem women behind, but did take some of his dancing boys with him. The concubines were referred to as
sarari or
suria, and could be of several different ethnicities, often Ethiopian or Circassian. and the King and Imam of Yemen,
Ahmad bin Yahya (r. 1948–1962), were reported to have had a harem of 100 slave women. Sultan
Said bin Taimur of Oman (r. 1932–1970) reportedly owned around 500 slaves, an estimated 150 of whom were women, who were kept at his palace at
Salalah. In the 20th century, women and girls for the harem market in the Arabian Peninsula were kidnapped not only from Africa and Baluchistan, but also from the Trucial States, the
Nusayriyah Mountains in Syria, and the Aden Protectorate, and 1943, it was reported that Baluchi girls were shipped via Oman to Mecca, where they were popular as concubines since Caucasian girls were no longer available, and were sold for $350–450. Harem concubines existed in Saudi Arabia until the very end of the abolition of
slavery in Saudi Arabia in 1962. In August 1962, the king's son Prince Talal stated that he had decided to free his 32 slaves and fifty slave concubines. After the abolition of slavery in Saudi Arabia in 1962, the
Anti-Slavery International and the
Friends World Committee expressed their appreciation over the emancipation edict of 1962, but did ask if any countries would be helped to find their own nationals in Saudi harems who might want to return home; this was a very sensitive issue, since there was an awareness that women were enslaved as
concubines (sex slaves) in the seclusion of the harems, and that there were no information as to whether the abolition of slavery had affected them. Since the early 1980s, a rise in conservative Islamic currents has led to a greater emphasis on traditional notions of modesty and gender segregation, with some radical preachers in Saudi Arabia calling for a return to the seclusion of women and an end of female employment. Many working women in conservative societies have adopted hijab as a way of coping with a social environment where men are uncomfortable interacting with women in the public space. Some religious women have tried to emulate seclusion practices abandoned by their grandmothers' generation in an effort to affirm traditional religious values in the face of pervasive Westernization. ==Eunuchs and slavery==