The unprecedented political power of the Ottoman imperial harem in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is widely viewed as illegitimate and corrupting. This

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

The first study exploring the lives of female slaves of the Ottoman imperial court, drawing from hitherto unexplored primary sources

A study of the chief of the African eunuchs who guarded the sultan's harem in Istanbul under the Ottoman Empire.

The "fascinating . . . lively" story of the Russian slave girl Roxelana, who rose from concubine to become the only queen of the Ottoman empire (New York Times)