This book offers an insight into the harem and harem life, focusing on the famed Seraglio of Topkapi Palace. The author uses her first-hand experience to describe the absolute rule of the sultans, the slave markets and the eunuchs. The book is illustrated with paintings by Delacroix, Ingres and Renoir, Turkish woodcuts, Persian miniatures, photographs and film stills. Croutier investigates the middle class harems, looking at the polygamous life of ordinary Middle Eastern households, including marital customs, child rearing, medical practices, superstitions and the expression of desire and jealousy. "Harem" shows how this Eastern institution invaded the Victorian imagination, in the form of decorating, costume and art and how Western ideas, in turn, eroded a system which had seemed to be absolutely powerful.

I am usually more into light reading, fiction type stuff but I really enjoyed this book. There was so much I did not know about 'Harem Life' and even more that I assumed, but was completely wrong about. There were some parts that got a bit dry and dull causing me to start skimming, but overall the book was a great read.

The book was published in 1989. After traveling to Cyprus to witness the conflict between Turkey and Greece, visiting Blue Mosque, Haghia Sophia, Topkapi museum... the book is a great addition to my learning about the Islamic culture. Sultan (emperor), Grand Seraglio harem, Golden Cage, Ottoman Dynasty 1540-1990, polygamy with 4 kadins (wives), Koran reading and praying at the mosque, dalisques (female slaves for servants), slave markets in Alexandria and Cairo, black eunuchs, kismet (fate), one thousand and one nights, Turkish hamams (bath), plus an exquisite collection of the art work, make this a great book to read. The book would be better if it includes stories about a specific sultan and his kadins, dalisques and eunuchs.

This is a wonderful book filled with lots of interesting info and beautiful photos and illustrations. It's the kind of book you don't want to put down. If you're interested in learning about harems and Turkish history and culture, read this book.

I returned from Turkey last year with more questions about the Imperial harem than I could find answers too. The tour of the harem was short and rather superficial. This book is a wonderful work, the hours it must have taken to write, and research all the pictures from private collections. In an age of fast produced books, this is a marvel!
I am leading a small tour to Istanbul this spring, and am happy I found this treasure, happy reading.

This book could be considered a companion to "Inside the Seraglio" by John Freely. Whereas the latter volume describes the harem from the point of view of the Sultan, this book describes it from the point of view of the women. The author herself lived in Turkey, in an old building that was once the harem of a pasha. Her paternal grandmother, Zehra, lived in a harem until 1909 when the institution was abolished and declared unlawful after the fall of Abdulhamid, the last Osmanli Sultan.

"Harem" is lavishly illustrated with photographs, Turkish woodcuts, and Persian miniatures of tastefully clad ladies within their private world. There are also paintings of what European artists imagined (for the most part) the interior of a Turkish bath or seraglio might look like. "La grand Odalisque" by Ingres adorns the cover and Gérôme, Delacroix, Renoir, and John Frederick Lewis are among other European artists whose paintings embellish these pages.

The details of everyday life in a wealthy sultan's harem (the author focuses on the Seraglio of Topkapi Palace in Istanbul) stuns the reader's senses. Dinners were set on velvet cloths embroidered with silver. The napkin rings were mother-of-pearl set with diamonds. The sherbet might have been concocted from the essence of violets or roses, as well as more commonplace fruit juices.

And the clothing! Veils of sheerest muslin, tasseled caps of velvet embroidered with pearls, trousers of Bursa silk, vests and girdles encrusted in precious stones. European males may have fantasized about the state of undress in a harem (as witnessed by their paintings), but their wives and daughters--those who were fortunate enough to actually visit a harem--wrote home about the intricate and beautiful costumes. Even the color of a lady's handkerchief could convey an unspoken message, rather like the Victorian Language of Flowers. Red signified passionate love. Purple meant 'suffering from love.' A torn, burned handkerchief signaled that its owner was dying of heartache.

Wives, concubines, and female relatives were not the only inhabitants of a rich man's harem. There were also the eunuchs. The author goes into quite a bit of detail (as she does with everything in this wonderful book) about the different types of eunuchs and how they were created. Male readers might even want to skip this chapter since it involves verbs like 'bruising and crushing,' 'dragging,' 'twisting,' and 'searing.' A prepubescent boy had the best chance of surviving the various operations.

Eunuchs were also employed by the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, as attendants for the female worshippers.

One of the questions most frequently asked of the author is whether harems still exist, and in the last section of her book, "Harems Today," she answers, "yes, they do." The only disappointment in this otherwise fantastic and opulent history is that Alev Lytle Croutier was not able to include a photograph of a modern harem. A still from the James Bond movie, "The Spy Who Loved Me" has to serve as a rather silly substitute.