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).
[118] For an illuminating account of an Assyrian harem in the time of Sargon, more than seven centuries B. C., see Histoire de l’Art dans Antiquité, Tom. II, p. 435, et. seq. (by G. Perrot and Chipiez, Paris 1884). See also the account of the prehistoric palace of the Kings of Tiryns, as given in Schliemann’s Tiryns, p. 239, et. seq. (New York, 1885). According to Dr. Dörpfeld and other eminent archæologists this palace, the oldest in Greece, is distinctly oriental in plan and its smaller megaron was obviously a harem. Cf. also Schuchardt’s Schliemann’s Excavations, p. 31. For interesting descriptions of visits to harems in Turkey and Syria, consult the Bosphorus and the Danube, p. 125, et seq. (by Julia Pardoe, London, 1839), and the Inner Life of Syria, Chap. XI (by Lady Isabel Burton, London, 1884). Both of these women during their sojourn in the East, had exceptional opportunities for studying the real life of the harem where they were always cordially welcomed by its inmates.
The custom of wearing the veil, it may here be remarked, dates back almost as far, if not fully as far, as the harem. Cf. Genesis, xxii:65, and Isaiah, iii:23. Nor is the wearing of the veil in the Orient to-day confined entirely to Moslem women. Christian and other non-Moslem women wear it and have worn it from time immemorial. How erroneous, therefore, is the statement, so often made, that it was Mohammed that imposed the veil on the women of the Orient and inhumanly incarcerated them in the harem!
[119] Observations on the Mussulmans of India, p. 168 (London, 1917).
[120] Everyday Life in Turkey, p. 108 (London, 1897).
The Princess Christina Belgiojoso who spent three years in making a careful study of the people of Asia Minor writes: “The household of the Turkish peasant resembles that of the Christian peasant and, I am sorry to add, the former would often serve as a model for the latter. With equal fidelity, the advantage is in favor of the Turk, for his fidelity is neither imposed on him by civil or religious law, nor by public opinion, nor by local manners, customs and usages; he is led to it simply through the goodness of his nature to which any idea of causing grief to his associate would be repugnant.
“The Turkish peasant cherishes his companion as parent and as lover; never does he knowingly or willingly oppose her; there is no provocation to which he will not cheerfully submit through love for her.... I have seen women old, decrepit, infirm and hideous, led, comforted and adored by fine old men with long, flowing, silvery beards, strong, serene eye and as erect as mountain firs.” Oriental Harems and Scenery, p. 108–110 (New York, 1862).
[121] A well-known English journalist, Sidney Whitman, who was long on terms of intimacy with some of the most distinguished men of the Ottoman Empire, tells us that “The stranger, whatever his opportunities, only comes into contact with one-half of the Mohammedan population; the other is barred from his observation, from his very sight. In the course of all my visits to Turkey I never had an opportunity of approaching a Turkish woman within speaking distance.” Turkish Memories, p. 267 (London, 1914).
Writing from Constantinople, where she made a special study of the Turks, their manners and customs, the gifted and brilliant Lady Mary Wortley Montague, tells her correspondent in England, “It is a particular pleasure to me here to read the voyages of the Levant which are generally so far removed from the truth and so full of absurdities. I am very well diverted with them. They never fail giving you an account of the women whom it is certain they never saw and talking wisely of men, into whose company they are never admitted, and very often describe mosques which they dared not even peep into.” Letters, Vol. II, p. 5 (London, 1793).