Abstract
In Muslim culture Seraglio is known as the part of the Muslims' house
particularly sultans/kings and emperors' or palace particularly reserved for the
wives and concubines. Contrary to this a number of tales about harem/seraglio
have been concocted on the basis of information collected by early modern
travel narratives and intuition. Such early modern (Mis)-representations are an
attempt to characterize the institute of harem as a legitimate place for seduction
within the Islamic culture. This topic has been attracting scholarly attentions for
many centuries for many cultural and political reasons. A tradition of such
(Mis)-representation of Islamic culture in Western course of historical and
literary texts on imaginative and intuitive specters is not new in its essence. On
the other hand, Western intellectual discourse at large does not reveal the
element of sensuality from its own tradition of courtly- love relationships. It is
surprising to see that this relationship was reckoned sacred and existed between
erotic desires and spiritual attainments within the Western culture. In Islamic
tradition the harem or seraglio was restricted to the place where no strangers
were allowed to visit and only a home's selected male members and chosen
eunuchs were allowed to roam around freely. This study investigates how the
Ottoman seraglio was portrayed in early modern writings and how the creative
artists associated their cultural exotic phenomena with Ottoman Empire. How
travel narratives, stereotyping, fantasy, over-generalization and religious
biasness have contributed in fictionalizing the Ottoman Seraglio.
Keywords: Seraglio, Concubines Representation, Heram, courtly-love
محمد الیاس, ڈاکٹر عابد مسعود. (2016) سلطنت عثمانیہ: حرم سرائے اور مغرب کی (غلط) نمائندگی , Mayar , Volume 15-16, Issue 1 .
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