In Velvet-Lined Rooms: Princess Gulbadan
Helen Pfeifer, 26 June 2025
No space has elicited more lurid Orientalist fantasies than the harem, once found in elite residences across the Islamic world. In practice, most harems (haram in Persian) were unremarkable sites of domestic labour. What caught the attention of Western Europeans were the enslaved women, as well as the social mores dictating that respectable women rarely appear in public. Early travellers...