The Harem

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from The Harem: An Account of the Institution as It Existed in the Palace of the Turkish Sultans With a History of the Grand Seraglio From Its Foundation to the Present TimeThis work, as the title-page explains, deals with the haré'm of the Turkish Sultans - but not merely with the hare'm. It deals also with the Grand Seraglio as a whole. Thus only one palace is concerned, and only one baré'm. It is necessary to make this clear, because several royal palaces existed in Constantinople, and all of them contained hare'ms. True, the majority of them date from only the nineteenth century, but the first palace to be built by the Conqueror after his entry into the city in 14 53 was not the Palace, but quite a different one in another part of the town. It might be thought that if the names of the palaces were given all di¿iculties would be overcome, but nu fortunately the same name was bestowed on both palaces at different times. The only palace, with its haré'm, which this work sets itself to describe is that built by Muhammad H, the Conqueror, on Seraglio Point between I459 and 1465.The exact meaning of the various terms employed in its description is given in detail in Chapter I. It will be sufficient here to say that the Italians, the first Europeans to have dealings with the Turks, found it necessary to coin a word which would include the whole of the Royal Palace buildings - the barc'm, grounds, kiosks, etc. Thus seraglio was adopted, and the promontory on which it stood, the site of ancient Byzantium, was known as Seraglio Point. The abbre viated form semi simply means palace, ' and the modern Turkish name for the palace which forms the subject of this work is Top/eapi Sarayi, or the Seraglio of the Cannon Gate, although both gate and cannon have long since disappeared.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.