ḤARF (حرف). (1) An extremity, verge, or border. (2) A letter of the alphabet. (3) A particle in grammar. (4) A dialect of Arabia, or a mode of expression peculiar to certain Arabs. The Qurʾān is said to have been revealed in seven dialects (sabʿat aḥruf). [[QURʾAN].] (5) A term used by the Ṣūfī mystics for the particle of any true essence.
ḤARĪM, or HAREEM (حريم). A word used especially in Turkey, Egypt, and Syria, for the female apartments of a Muḥammadan household. In Persia, Afghanistan, and India, the terms ḥaramgah, maḥall-sarāi and zanānah are used for the same place.
The seclusion of women being enjoined in the Qurʾān ([Sūrah xxxiii. 55]), in all Muḥammadan countries it is the rule for respectable women to remain secluded at home, and not to travel abroad unveiled, nor to associate with men other than their husbands or such male relatives as are forbidden in marriage by reason of consanguinity. In consequence of these injunctions, which have all the force of a divine enactment, the female portion of a Muḥammadan family always resides in apartments which are in an inclosed court-yard and excluded from public view. This inclosure is called the ḥarīm, and sometimes ḥaram, or in Persian zanānah, from zan, a “woman”. Mr. Lane in his Modern Egyptians, has given a full account of the Egyptian ḥarīm. We are indebted to Mrs. Meer Ali for the following very graphic and interesting description of a Muḥammadan zanānah or ḥarīm in Lucknow.
Mrs. Meer Ali was an English lady who married a Muḥammadan gentleman, and resided amongst the people of Lucknow for twelve years. Upon the death of her husband, she returned to England, and published her Observations on the Musalmans of India, which was dedicated, with permission, to Queen Adelaide.
“The habitable buildings of a native Muḥammadan home are raised a few steps from the court; a line of pillars forms the front of the building, which has no upper rooms; the roof is flat, and the sides and back without windows, or any aperture through which air can be received. The sides and back are merely high walls, forming an enclosure, and the only air is admitted from the fronts of the dwelling-place facing the court-yard. The apartments are divided into long halls, the extreme corners having small rooms or dark closets purposely built for the repository of valuables or stores; doors are fixed to these closets, which are the only places I have seen with them in a zanānah or maḥall (house or palace occupied by females); the floor is either of beaten earth, bricks, or stones; boarded floors are not yet introduced. As they have neither doors nor windows to the halls, warmth or privacy is secured by means of thick wadded curtains, made to fit each opening between the pillars. Some zanānahs have two rows of pillars in the halls with wadded curtains to each, thus forming two distinct halls, as occasion may serve, or greater warmth be required; this is a convenient arrangement where the establishment of servants, slaves, &c. is extensive.
“The wadded curtains are called pardahs; these are sometimes made of woollen cloth, but more generally of coarse calico, of two colours, in patchwork style, striped, vandyked, or in some other ingeniously contrived and ornamented way, according to their individual taste.
“Besides the pardahs, the openings between the pillars have blinds neatly made of fine bamboo strips, woven together with coloured cords; these are called chicks. Many of them are painted green; others are more gaudy, both in colour and variety of patterns. These blinds constitute a real comfort to everyone in India, as they admit air when let down, and at the same time shut out flies and other annoying insects; besides which, the extreme glare is shaded by them—a desirable object to foreigners in particular.
“The floors of the halls are first matted with the coarse date-leaf matting of the country, over which are spread shat̤ranjīs (thick cotton carpets, peculiarly the manufacture of the Upper Provinces of India, woven in stripes of blue and white, or shades of blue); a white calico carpet covers the shat̤ranjī on which the females take their seat.
“The bedsteads of the family are placed, during the day, in lines at the back of the halls, to be moved at pleasure to any chosen spot for the night’s repose; often into the open court-yard, for the benefit of the pure air. They are all formed on one principle, differing only in size and quality; they stand about half a yard from the floor, the legs round and broad at bottom, narrowing as they rise towards the frame, which is laced over with a thick cotton tape, made for the purpose, and plaited in chequers, and thus rendered soft, or rather elastic, and very pleasant to recline upon. The legs of these bedsteads are in some instances gold and silver gilt, or pure silver; others have enamel paintings on fine wood; the inferior grades have them merely of wood painted plain and varnished. The servants’ bedsteads are of the common mango-wood without ornament, the lacing of these for the sacking being of elastic string manufactured from the fibre of the cocoa-nut.
“Such are the bedsteads of every class of people. They seldom have mattresses: a white quilt is spread on the lacing, over which a calico sheet, tied at each corner of the bedstead with cords and tassels; several thin flat pillows of beaten cotton for the head; a muslin sheet for warm weather, and a well wadded razāi (coverlid) for winter is all these children of Nature deem essential to their comfort in the way of sleeping. They have no idea of night-dresses; the same suit that adorns a lady, is retained both night and day, until a change be needed. The single article exchanged at night is the ḍupaṭṭa (a small shawl for the head), and that only when it happens to be of silver tissue or embroidery, for which a muslin or calico sheet is substituted.