A fascinating illustrated history of one of the strangest, and cruelest, cultural institutions ever devised. A worldwide best seller, translated into twenty-fiv

Harem explores life in the world's harems from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century.

In the Western imagination, the Middle Eastern harem was a place of sex, debauchery, slavery, miscegenation, power, riches, and sheer abandon. But for the women

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire remained the grandest and most powerful of Middle Eastern empires. One hitherto overlooked aspect