Note 117 — Chapter VI · HOME LIFE OF THE OSMANLIS IN ANATOLIA

“It is an amusing fact,” writes an English woman who had an intimate knowledge of Turkey, “that an idea of impropriety is attached by Europeans who have never visited the East, to the very name of harem, while it is not less laughable they can never give a reason for their prejudice. How little foundation exists for so unaccountable a fancy must be evident at once when it is stated that harem, or woman’s apartment, is held so sacred by the Turks themselves, that they remain inviolate even in cases of popular disturbance, or individual delinquency; the mob never suffering their violence to betray them into an intrusion on the wives of their victims; and the search after a fugitive ceasing the moment that the door of the harem separates him from his pursuers.” Julia Pardoe, in The Bosphorus and the Danube, p. 126 (London, 1839).

Another English woman, Grace Ellison, who is familiar with the life of the harem and who has given public lectures in London on Turkish life, was seriously told by the secretary of a certain society: “You must not put the word ‘harem’ on the title of your lecture. Many who might come to hear you would stay away for fear of hearing improper revelations, and others would come hoping to hear those revelations and go away disappointed!” Cf. A Turkish Woman’s European Impressions, p. 16 (by Zeyneb Hanoum, Philadelphia, 1913).