Secrets of the Harem

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 16, 9 April 1927, Page 17

Secrets of the Harem

Abdul’s Seraglio Is Now a Museum

TTNDER Abdul Hamid (“Abdul The Damned”) the harem of the old seraglio was a sort of overflow for his dependents and for wives and offspring of former Sultans. Since his time it has been unoccupied, but such was the power of the past that it remained locked and guarded even under the Angora regime. Recently Turkish museum authorities have restored many of the kiosks and rooms of the seraglio area, and soon they will throw open the treasury, divan, library, harem and sanctuary, where are preserved such relics as the Prophet’s mantle and a lone tooth and wisp of beard, treasured under the impression that they were Mohammed’s.

The Gate of Felicity led into a restricted section of the seraglio. Planked by two towers was the chamber of execution. More than one Brand Vizier and Minister who had incurred a Sultan’s displeasure was seized here as he came from the Throne ‘Room and executed. In this gruesome place foreign Ambassadors were compelled to wait humbly for permission to pass through another door and into the Throne Room. Those were the days when representatives of Occidental powers might be so fortunate as to obtain a peep at the reigning Sultan sitting behind a grille. Such an honour was more than they were deemed entitled to, for the Turk was not then scoffed at as Europe's sick man. Alliance with the Sultan was sought by more than one Western nation, and even Queen Elizabeth besought his aid against the Spanish Armada. Had she not sent a Pipe organ at the same time as a Kih. the observing Dallam, its maker who accompanied it, would not have handed down one of the few known accounts of the Sultan’s seraglio at ■ts greatest and deadliest. Apparently Dallam was one of the a" ° ccld entals who ever saw within the seraglio any woman members of the Sultan's household. The Elizaorgan builder succeeded in winning the friendship of the harem

i guards and one of them allowed him to peer through a grille into a garden on the other side of the wall, where Dallam noticed about 20 persons tossing a ball from one to another. "At first syghte," he wrote, “I thoughte they had been young men. But when I saw their hare hung doone on their backs platted with small perles and by other plain tokens did I knowe them to be women and verie prettie ones indeed. They wore a little capp, fair chaines of perles and juels in their ears, coats like a souldiers mandilyon some of red sattan and some of blew, britches of fine clothe made of cotin wool as white as snow and fine as lawne. Some did wear fine cordovan buskins and some had their legges naked with a goulden ring on the small of her legge.’’ One day Dallam had most of the pipe organ in pieces like a jig-saw puzzle on the floor of a kiosk in the seraglio. He looked up and saw his Turkish assistants animated by a fear as tremendous as was their haste to get elsewhere. “X called after my drugaman asking him the cause,” Dallam wrote. “He said the Grand Sinyori and his conquebines were cominge and we must be gone on pain of deathe. Before I gott out of the house they had run over the green quite out of the gate and I ran as faste as my legges would carrie me after. And four neagers or blackamores came running toward j me with their semetares drawn; if they could have catched me they would have hewed me all in pieces.” Although he was not “catched” Dallam was made ill with fright by these experiences and did not recover until he reached England. It is to the abode of such rulers as these that within a short time the Turkish Government will admit tourists. The first visitors will have a privilege that for nearly 400 years has been denied to all except the seraglio’s inmates. Few Occidentals have yet seen behind the bronze doors of the harem. j

Some of the oldest sections of the harem afford excellent examples of pure Turkish decoration. Tiny rooms many of them are, but delicately embellished with mother-of-pearl inlays, faience tiles with colourings as soft as those of a Persian shawl. It is not to be wondered at that the transition from the confinement of the Kafess to the unlimited but hazardous power of the Sultanate generally begat peculiarities and excesses. There was the fury of one Sultan who hated even the sight of women. For him to be domiciled in a gigantic warren in which most of the inmates were women must have been something like the presence of a ham sandwich at a banquet. Finally, there was the mad Ibrahim, who became dissatisfied with the personnel of his harem and decided upon a new deal. Accordingly 200 and more of his wives and slaves were said to have been sewn up in sacks and dropped into the Bosphorus. Yet, from all accounts of the Sultans there was little difficulty in recruiting royal harems. Its inmates, like the Janissaries in an adjacent courtyard, were “tributes” largely from subject races—Circassians, Georgians. Armenians, Syrians, Greeks. Some were purchased slaves. Others were presents from pashas, and frequently a Sultan would reciprocate this courtesy by marrying one of the occupants of his harem to a subordinate official. One Sultan married his four-year-old daughter to an officer of the guard, a man of great wealth. His son-in-law soon after met a sudden, violent and suspicious death, and the fact that the Sultan inherited his estate causert unfavourable comment among his subjects.