Red pill me on Hareems Veeky Forums

Harem ("a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family"), also known as zenana in South Asia, properly refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family and are inaccessible to adult males except for close relations.

In the West, Orientalist imaginary conceptions of the harem as a fantasy world of forbidden sexuality where numerous women lounged in suggestive poses have influenced many paintings, stage productions, films and literary works. There are several Renaissance paintings dating to the 16th century that defy Orientalist tropes and portray the women of the Ottoman harem as individuals of status and political significance. In many periods of Islamic history women in the harem exercised various degrees of political power.

>as we've seen with the sex slaves ISIS has kept its actually horrific
ISIS is Basement Dad tier.

Most harems were for the rich and the ladies were pampered and cared for as the valuable property they were.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem#The_Ideal_of_Seclusion

>The ideal of seclusion was not fully realized as social reality. One reason for this is because working class women often held jobs that required interaction with men.[11] Women participated in economic life as midwives, doctors, bath attendants and artisans. At times they lent and invested money and engaged in other commercial activities. [18] Female seclusion has historically signaled social and economic prestige.[11]

Harems also refer to the Sultan's physical household, not just his wives/concubines.

>You will never be an Ottoman sultan and fill your harem with qts like Anzu
Why even live

>its okay to rape and enslave people if you buy them nice things after

Jesus Christ dude

Nope.

Harems weren't necessarily a sexual thing. It's just where female family members hung out. Westerners just jumped to the conclusion it was a sex thing because of polyamory and the meme stuck.

No you are incorrect.

Harems were most definitely a sexual thing, just because you keep your sisters and aunts with your sex slaves doesn't suddenly make your sex slaves regular slaves.

There is no jumping to conclusions. A harem will always include sex slaves/multiple wives, it will not always have female family members.

Ergo all harems are sexual but not all women in the harem are for fucking.

Has anyone seen this
Hareems were basically a mudshitslims brothel

>Red pill me
Fuck off.

The children even male ones of the sultan also lived there with their mothers.

Children means sex, they don't magically appear you know.

You can have a harem without sex slaves

>You are here and cannot leave ever again, your job is to have sex with me
>No its not slavery don't be silly

How about you go fuck a rake leftist shit

Its KULTURALLLLL!!!!!

>tfw no Osaka sex slave

Not as fun

at least you get to be a slave in luxury

>having to have sex with a hairy cockroach
>peace

Ah, no sweetie

I imagine it would be incredibly stressful.

Not just the rape, imagine the succession assassinations and intrigues. Imagine the pressure to please your rapist so he doesn't sell you to someone worse. Imagine being strangled to death by your peers because you were masters favorite and thus a rival to having their son granted favours.

It sounds like a nightmare.

Voluntary Harems would be the solution
>Be the kings sex slave for castle life

strawpoll.com/5w2dazg

I've been thinking if I were ever really rich, I would do this.

Just get women with BDSM fetishes and subcontract them to pretend to be secret Illuminati sex slaves.

That had nothing to do with what I said. A harem only requires a household where male non-relatives are forbidden. It can very well include only female family members, freeborn wives, and their domestic (non-sexual) servants.

Source?

Even if that were true and you could find examples of that I could just as easily copy paste straight from the "Sexy Veeky Forumstorical facts" thread that one Anons posts about all those harems of hundreds of women all being used as sex slaves.

This is pretty basic stuff you'll find on any academic work on harems. Really wiki wouldn't be the worst place to start for its bibliography.

It is true, and again I'm not saying it's one way or another. There were in fact plenty of harems with concubines, but all I'm saying is that a harem is not automatically a sex slave den. Even royal and aristocratic harems, the kind that most often gets brought up in erotic fiction and historical anecdotes, can be way more complex than some old fart's sex dungeon of kidnapped girls.

We can take the Ottoman harem as an example. There you wouldn't have hundreds of women being used as sex slaves. The vast majority were actually there to serve the few dozen elite concubines, wives, and relatives of the sultan. And while there were plenty of concubines who started out as kidnapped slaves, a fair number of them were also free-born upper-class women whose families had them enter the harem as political agents, and their influence was one of the reasons why many harems of historical sultans and caliphs gradually favored rootless slaves from abroad over local Arab and Turkish aristocrats who invariably had ties with powerful clans in the area. And in the Ottoman case, the harem wasn't even run by the sultan at all, who barely had any say in the women acquired and presented to him. Instead it was usually his mother or first wife who was in charge of bringing in and training new concubines. The Ottoman harem was effectively its own independent branch of government by the 16th century, with a large bureaucracy linking several aristocratic households with the ear of the sultan - and more importantly the Queen-Mother - and was regularly used to make or break the careers of Ottoman high officials and future heirs to the throne.

At its core it is a sex slave den. They're dressed in fine clothing and surrounded by luxury but don't think that it isn't. You essentially admit it in your reply. A concubine from abroad is not there willingly, such women were usually taken as slaves. Daughters of local nobility in a harem are political prisoners that double as a sex slave not spies. They are there to ensure loyalty, that's not to say some didn't try and become political agents. It doesn't matter who bought and trained the slaves, they are still slaves. It is still a slave den.

In the end you're just saying the woman lucky enough to be the mother of the ruling Sultan had the most political power in the sex slave den. The majority of women in the harem weren't there for sex but the women that were there for sex were slaves because they were owned by a Sultan. Just because the Sultans mother buys them doesn't mean they're not the Sultans slaves.

>He still believes in "harem is for sex" meme

>No you are incorrect.
No, I'm not.

You're repeating meme history of a topic you have not researched.

Just because not all the women in a harem are there for sex does not remove the fact that the primary purpose of a harem is sexual in nature. You're being needlessly difficult. You can have a thousand servants serving the sex slaves but the sex slaves are still sex slaves.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem
>Harem (Arabic: حريم ḥarīm, "a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family"), also known as zenana in South Asia, properly refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family and are inaccessible to adult males except for close relations. Similar institutions have been common in other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations, especially among royal and upper-class families and the term is sometimes used in non-Islamic contexts. The structure of the harem and the extent of monogamy or polygamy has varied depending on the family's personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs. This private space has been traditionally understood as serving the purposes of maintaining the modesty, privilege, and protection of women. A harem may house a man's wife—or wives and concubines, as in royal harems of the past—their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic workers, and other unmarried female relatives. In former times, some harems were guarded by eunuchs who were allowed inside.[1]
>Although the institution has experienced a sharp decline in the modern era, seclusion of women is still practiced in some parts of the world, such as rural Afghanistan and conservative states of the Gulf region.[2]
>In the West, Orientalist imaginary conceptions of the harem as a fantasy world of forbidden sexuality where numerous women lounged in suggestive poses have influenced many paintings, stage productions, films and literary works. There are several Renaissance paintings dating to the 16th century that defy Orientalist tropes and portray the women of the Ottoman harem as individuals of status and political significance.[3] In many periods of Islamic history women in the harem exercised various degrees of political power. [4]

Took literally me typing 'harem' into google to disprove you.

>You're being needlessly difficult.
Different person user.

>Just because not all the women in a harem are there for sex does not remove the fact that the primary purpose of a harem is sexual in nature.
Except that it's not. It's the place where female family members stayed. As has already been said, the sex slave thing came from western orientalism and fetishisation.

This isn't some "islam dindu nuffin" or "evil white man mispresenting totes progressive culture" point or anything like that. It's just a very common, basic historical misconception that you're adamant on defending.

Sure you can make the "some of the women didn't marry these men willingly so they were sex slaves ergo it was a sex dungeon" but then of course the same logic could be applied to pretty much all medieval marriages.

Why are you posting fringe apologist theories when it's clear the consensus is against you. Are you a Turk?

> A harem may house a man's wife—or wives and concubines
>as in royal harems of the past—their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters

Took me literally reading your post to disprove you.

Wives and concubines are not there to look at, children don't magically appear. Its a sex thing.

I mean, in the same way that having a stay-at-home wife is a 'sex thing'.

Or even just having 'a wife'.

You realize it is a sex thing because the children/daughters/sisters stay and live there right? You can't have that many children and daughters from a single woman. The children of concubines are evidence for it being a sex thing not against it.
While women often didn't have the right to choose their husband they had more rights than a woman in a harem. A woman married in western Europe had more rights than a woman forcefully taken in to and kept in a harem.

Really?

Last a checked wives can leave home.

>The ideal of seclusion was not fully realized as social reality. One reason for this is because working class women often held jobs that required interaction with men.[11] Women participated in economic life as midwives, doctors, bath attendants and artisans. At times they lent and invested money and engaged in other commercial activities. [18] Female seclusion has historically signaled social and economic prestige.

Even wealthy families that considered their women secluded in Europe gave more independence to their women. A harem simply did not allow the same personal freedom.

Okay. And?

That means one is a sex slave or the child of a sex slave and the other is not.

So the argument that a wife in Europe is also a sex slave is bullshit.

>You realize it is a sex thing because the children/daughters/sisters stay and live there right?
Well no. Children being reared in the room does not mean they were literally conceived and born in said room. It's just the women and children's room. I don't know why this is hard to understand.

>While women often didn't have the right to choose their husband they had more rights than a woman in a harem. A woman married in western Europe had more rights than a woman forcefully taken in to and kept in a harem.
Except the harem included your mother, sisters, children and so on. Again, it's not a sex dungeon nor a room exclusively for sex slaves any more than the king's room was his sex slave room by virtue of it being the room where his wife (who did not necessarily want to marry him) slept.

But they weren't slaves. They were often attended by slaves in wealthy or royal households. For most households in the time period we're talking about, the 'harem' was literally just where your wife and daughters and mom and young sons hung out when they were home. So, like, the 'living room'.

>be me
>some yemenese aristocrat
>invite western infidel over for lunch
>hello my friend let me show you around
>this is the bathroom. this is the kitchen. here's the women and children's room.
>like a sex dungeon?
>what? no. this is where they just hang out and stuff.
>but it's a sexual room yeah? like, it's primarily sexual in nature.
>mfw

RIP my sides

If the children were not born from women in the harem that means they're essentially illegitimate or adopted. Which is bullshit because if a man had a harem he wouldn't need to find women elsewhere. Even if he did he would just add them to the harem.

Children in a harem were most definitely born from the women there. There was no other way for them to exist because only women and eunuchs being allowed inside a harem.

Siblings, mothers and female servants being inside the harem does not negate the primary purpose of the harem. It is a sex dungeon, a fancy sex dungeon but still a place you can never leave if you were a wife or concubine. That's what makes it a dungeon, they can't leave. A King in Europe didn't keep his wife confined to the palace so its not a sex dungeon.

...

Googled slavery.
>Slavery refers to a condition in which individuals are owned by others, who control where they live and at what they work.

So the wives and concubines were:
>Owned by their husband
>Forced to live in the harem
>Forced to be wives or concubines

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
>Divorces were fairly frequent and could be initiated by either party. However, men did not have to provide a reason and could expect to be compensated and to compensate his wife, whereas women had to provide a reason, such as “there is a lack of good understanding between us.” Upon divorce, women would lose any financial benefit brought to her by the marriage and would sometimes have to pay her husband.

>owned by their husband
>forced to be wives

????

>Being forced to live in one location and never see anyone except the people who also live with you isn't confinement

Hold the phone, I didn't realize prison was not prison at all, its merely a living room, like any other room in a house.

>Own nothing except what your husband gives you
>Have to pay him to leave
>See? She could leave whenever she wanted!

>Lay women possessed a great deal of agency for the time period. Ottoman women, for example, could own property, and retained their property after marriage. They also had access to the justice system and could access a judge, as well as be taken to court themselves. By comparison, many married European women did not have this right, nor could they own property until the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Despite these advantages, the law limited women’s abilities to testify for themselves, which kept them at a disadvantage. Because women had access to the legal system, much of the information about women in Ottoman society comes from court records.[2] Muslim women in the early modern empire “bought and sold property, inherited and bequeathed wealth, established waqfs [endowments], borrowed and lent money, and at times even served as holders of timar [prebends] and usufruct rights on miri [state] land, as tax farmers and in business partnerships.” Because of their leverage in shari’ah courts, and the importance of these courts in the empire, non-Muslim women often saw conversion as a way to attain greater autonomy.

>own nothing except what your husband gives you

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

>Lay women

That means they aren't in a harem. If anything this is proof that women in a harem had less legal rights than the average woman in the area.

Its a bit hard to own property, borrow money and enter business if you are confined to a building and only see servants and eunuchs that your husband allows inside.

It was far better than the alternative of being raped but also beaten and looked down upon as a common whore.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Women
>The Sultanate of Women (Turkish: Kadınlar Saltanatı) was the nearly 130-year period during the 16th and 17th centuries when the women of the Imperial Harem of the Ottoman Empire exerted extraordinary political influence over state matters and over the (male) Ottoman sultan, starting from the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent.[1] Many of the Sultans during this time were minors and it was their mothers, the Valide Sultans, or their wives, the Haseki Sultans, who effectively ruled the Empire.[2] Most of these women were of slave origin, which was often the case in general for consorts of Ottoman sultans.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>If the children were not born from women in the harem that means they're essentially illegitimate or adopted.
Are you illiterate

>implying the women didn't like submitting to powerful dominant kings and enjoying a life of luxury and ease

I honestly don't know what you're trying to say. Your quote only says a Sultans mother or his favorite wife could whisper in his ear. You think the rest of the Sultans wives (sex slaves) had such privilege?

Again that just indicates that his secondary wives were worth less and were essentially sex slaves while his primary wife was the one he was expected to have children with. There are instances today where women knowingly allow and assist their husband to enslave/rape women, its not a strength but a weakness.

Naturally a woman would want her son to succeed so would a wife in a harem, without him they would probably be dead, killed by another of the sultans wives and son. Its not a matter of power but a life or death situation.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic

Also [citation needed] for basically everything you've contended in this thread.

The argument is "Are harems a place where sex slaves were kept"

We got off track a bit but I really don't know how its deniable.

Many of the women in a harem that were used for sex were not there willingly and they had sex with their master. That makes them sex slaves.

Its not even an argument. Having other people in your harem does not mean they weren't living next to your sex slaves.

The 'argument' was, formed as a statement: 'All harems were necessarily places where sex slaves were imprisoned, all wives kept in harems were sex slaves, and the primary function of a harem was to imprison sex slaves'.

The reality is that 'harem' is the GENERIC TERM for 'the place where the women hang out in a house'.

If you want to get into the harems of various royal courts, where female slaves often WERE kept, that is a separate topic.

A harem is not where they hung out. It was where they were confined. They were always under guard and could only leave under guard. That is captivity not a hang out.

No one has said wives were sex slaves, only that its a place where sex slaves were also kept. No one is saying everyone in a harem were sex slaves. It has been said numerous times that relatives were kept alongside sex slaves.

>No one has said wives were sex slaves
???????????????????????????????????

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seraglio
>A seraglio (/səˈræljoʊ/ sə-ral-yoh or /səˈrɑːljoʊ/ sə-rahl-yoh) or serail is the sequestered living quarters used by wives and concubines in an Ottoman household. The term harem is a generic term for domestic spaces reserved for women in a Muslim family, which can also refer to the women themselves.

Someone else has already proven that lots of wives and concubines were slaves.
>most of these women were of slave origin

So yes a wife can have been a slave, being married is a means to escape slavery not proof that they never were a slave.

>seraglio
>used by wives and concubines

If we go back again to we see that once again they were mostly at one point slaves.

...

So your argument is "It wasn't a harem that kept sex slaves but a seraglio" ?

All harems (the women) are kept in a seraglio. So by your own admission harems contained sex slaves.

>All harems (the women) are kept in a seraglio.

But they aren't.

>So by your own admission harems contained sex slaves
That's not the argument you're having though.

The disagreement came from the assertion that the harem itself was inherently sexual rather than what it really was, the room for the female family members and children.

Nor were seraglio the only structures harems were located, as they are unique to Ottoman culture, and harems are not unique to Ottoman culture.

Explain what you're trying to tell me then user, I can't read minds.

I think it's obvious that harem is not a comfortable place for men to be in.
Those wives and concubines are probably there for marital alliance and represent their respective family. They probably also control the palace, the king's advisors, secretaries, servants, and doctors and will punish you

That is if your princes didn't kill each other already

You're a pig-headed idiot with extremely poor reasoning capabilities.

Marriage is sexual in nature, it produces children. So is a harem, it produces children that is why it often contains children in one.

Both are sexual in nature.

I'll say it again, the existence of other people in the harem that didn't have sex with the owner of a harem is not proof that a harem is not sexual.

All harems are by definition isolated from most people, it doesn't matter what its called.

I don't think that's what you were trying to say. You linked one post to one of mine without any explanation.

If you're trying to say the average harem was different with a "ROYAL" harem I'd disagree with you. Only wealthy individuals could afford a harem so they would only really differ in size.

There was literally nothing wrong with harems.

The Sultan had to keep up appearances and produce martial alpha male sons so he needed the very best women to mix his dynasty's blood with, it was not a sex dungeon, such a thing would be considered petty. All his concubines would be cultured, intelligent and THICK, they would be trained to dance, play musical instruments and recite and sometimes write poetry to impress guests and generally prove their worth and enhance the prestige of their high test virile sovereign. They did it for the greater good, for their country. Dignitaries from simpleminded tribes would see the obnoxiously curvy energetic dancers with their big asses jiggling and titties swinging and all the healthy boys produced and be impressed, they would not sense weakness.

Most were chosen from among the citizens and it was like winning the lottery. Overnight they would be elevated to the nobility, if they had a son they'd enter the heights of political power. Some were slaves but only very high class slaves specially procured by successful merchants who had the attention of the court. If someone stole a gemstone they'd have their hand chopped off, if a caravan guard harmed a prize slave they'd have their knob chopped off and left to bleed to death in the desert, these slaves weren't harmed, at all. If you understood these people you'd realize how ridiculous that notion is. Most slaves were taken opportunistically and the demand for high class slaves did not contribute to slavery which was inevitable in those days.

>muh oppression
If they had the wrong temperament the Sultan's agents just wouldn't bother with her. The vast majority of concubines consented. Believe it or not most women enjoy sex. I am sure without the material incentive they might have preferred to fuck the stable boy but that does not mean they disliked the Sultan, having to lower their standards slightly for a life in opulent splendor is hardly pressuring her into sex.

t. Emir Yusuf Berat Muhammad Yılmaz

>tfw no high class sex slaves stolen from distant lands

>I'll say it again, the existence of other people in the harem that didn't have sex with the owner of a harem is not proof that a harem is not sexual.
This still sounds ridiculous. Your wife, mother and grandmother are a harem but because you fuck your wife the harem is therefore primarily sexual.

That's weird. You're weird.

You only have one mother and grand mother, you would have as many other women/wives in there as you could afford. Assuming you married off your sisters the majority of permanent residents in your harem wouldn't be family.

>At its core it is a sex slave den.
In the same way your kitchen is a drug den, sure.

And you missed the part where he said not all women there for sex were actually slaves. Like, half of the sultans and pretenders to the Ottoman throne were born to free-born women of Muslim background.

>That means they aren't in a harem.
In what way is a lay woman not also a woman of a harem? It's not a religious convent. And a harem is also not a place of confinement any more than it is a sex dungeon. Women would and did go out and about to visit friends, relatives, public facilities, religious sites, etc.

You could also have the mothers and grandmothers of your siblings, and the mothers and grandmothers of the servants all serving them.

The majority of permanent residents in a harem may not be direct family, but they aren't necessarily sexually available to the harem's owner either.

What about my highschool anime girls harem like in my doujins?

I'm not too read up on harems but I heard that alot of the sex slaves were christian women. I think it was illegal to enslave a fellow muslim. Maybe that could have been why some of the early janissaries were kidnapped christian kids.

I could be dead wrong though so don't take my word for it.

Harems had whites, but it was mostly black slaves. Read up on the Barbary Slave Trade

I was under the impression the Barbary pirates were the ones who raided the European Mediterranean coast kidnapping the white Christians there for the slave trades.

Yes but the muslims also had their own slave trade in Africa that kidnapped 4x the amount than Europeans did, plus they had a policy where they castrated all the males.

In fact some of the Arab countries didn't make slavery illegal until the mid 20th century

Mad bitches

Yeah i know about that part. Odd how they don't have some stupid guilt complex like whites do.
:-^ )