duskyalpha
Virgin
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2010
- Posts
- 16
Ok this challenge for you all you history buff or have written stories where the main story
Intro:
Basically write story where the main character is set in historically accurate depiction of the harem social lifestyle, as it was first defined (eg. in the Ottoman Empire harem definition). Include the social relationship of women, slavery, woman's rights, and limited emancipation under Ottoman law. Then simultaneously contrast that with the modern public interpretation of harem, either from the Japanese interpretation or the Western interpretation.
The plot, the size of the harem, the amount of sex, the exact sexual fetishes is your choice. The only thing that is a challenge is the setting. For a historically accurate interpretation of the harem, needs to be either set in Ottoman Empire time period or in a futuristic/modern time period where society for some odd reason has decided to socially revert into a scifi facsimile of Ottoman society.
Explanation of the Challenge
Now this challenge may not seem like much at first glance, but this is actually a lot harder to do considering that most people's interpretation of harem is a historically inaccurate Western interpretation and not the original interpretation of harem, or family household, as it was defined by the Ottomans themselves.
As they recorded what they saw of the Ottoman Empire, early Medieval Western explorers constantly were met with the Arabic phrase ḥaram, meaning forbidden, when they tried to enter people's private quarters. What the explorer's did not realize that above all things the most important thing to an Ottoman was protecting and honoring the family. So early explorers thus always got the common sense "NO!!!", when they tried to enter any family quarters, especially the women's quarters. In modern times, the Ottomans letting western explores into their private quarters is equivalent of you allowing you house to be searched and analyzed by out of state, forensic experts, whom you never met before and are trying to find out how people in your state live by just forensic science. Would you allow some random person with credentials and no warrant to enter your home and strip search it?
It was the writing of these earlier western explorers, who later become the teachers of the western philosophers, that shaped interpretation of what most people would call harem... you know--the idea of over-glorified male-centric polygamy with erotic communal where women are slaves, have slutty clothing, and either don't ever get jealous or not in the mood--every man stereotypical ultimate fantasy.
Today, we don't know 100% what harem culture was exactly like. However, thanks to the millions of legal document relating to slavery and domestic and diaries of women, especially those of nobility, who lived during the Ottoman Empire. Thus the hard part of the this challenge is researching what exactly harem lifestyle was like in the Middle East, during the reign of the Ottoman Empire.
To give you a example of one facet of Ottoman Empire harem lifestyle, I post a link below of the famous case of Semsigul:
http://books.google.com/books?id=fw...m the middle east&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false
As the court case talks about under Ottoman Law, if you got a female slave pregnant, she was considered a free citizen, be emancipated; therefor the slave can no longer be sold. Socially, when a slave got pregnant she would normally marry the person who impregnated, with equal rights going into the marriage, which lead to multiple wives and one type of harem in Ottoman society. In fact a slave owner would typically impregnate a slave because he wanted to marry her.
However as you may read in the link above, Semsigul's case was unique in that it was a slave trader not only raped and impregnated her, but lied about it when he sold the slave to the region's prince. Semsmigul then sued her former slave trader for the right to freedom, and actually won. The court decided not only was Semsmigul a free citizen but that the slave owner had violated the law. Including have to pay back the money he owned the prince for selling the slave, the court stripped slave owner of his economic and social status, as a wealthy merchant, by taking away his slave traders license. Although her child was required to go to the slave trader who impregnated her(**), Semsmigul was then left with the choice of either staying with the abusive slave trader or staying with the prince.
This court case is evidence of how the concept of a harem setting is not as cut and dry as Ottomans had the notation of slave rights(***)
(*)Note Ottoman Empire, by 1700s/1800s was actually very advanced an had pretty good condoms.
(**) The child protection laws and the concept that parents can abuse children had not surfaced in most society around this time, so it was expected that laws would dictate who inherited the child in a divorce, which in most paternal cultures was the male.
(***)Note they didn't exactly call them rights. More it was laws that protected slaves from harm or unfair situations by the common sense of an Ottoman citizen.
Intro:
Basically write story where the main character is set in historically accurate depiction of the harem social lifestyle, as it was first defined (eg. in the Ottoman Empire harem definition). Include the social relationship of women, slavery, woman's rights, and limited emancipation under Ottoman law. Then simultaneously contrast that with the modern public interpretation of harem, either from the Japanese interpretation or the Western interpretation.
The plot, the size of the harem, the amount of sex, the exact sexual fetishes is your choice. The only thing that is a challenge is the setting. For a historically accurate interpretation of the harem, needs to be either set in Ottoman Empire time period or in a futuristic/modern time period where society for some odd reason has decided to socially revert into a scifi facsimile of Ottoman society.
Explanation of the Challenge
Now this challenge may not seem like much at first glance, but this is actually a lot harder to do considering that most people's interpretation of harem is a historically inaccurate Western interpretation and not the original interpretation of harem, or family household, as it was defined by the Ottomans themselves.
As they recorded what they saw of the Ottoman Empire, early Medieval Western explorers constantly were met with the Arabic phrase ḥaram, meaning forbidden, when they tried to enter people's private quarters. What the explorer's did not realize that above all things the most important thing to an Ottoman was protecting and honoring the family. So early explorers thus always got the common sense "NO!!!", when they tried to enter any family quarters, especially the women's quarters. In modern times, the Ottomans letting western explores into their private quarters is equivalent of you allowing you house to be searched and analyzed by out of state, forensic experts, whom you never met before and are trying to find out how people in your state live by just forensic science. Would you allow some random person with credentials and no warrant to enter your home and strip search it?
It was the writing of these earlier western explorers, who later become the teachers of the western philosophers, that shaped interpretation of what most people would call harem... you know--the idea of over-glorified male-centric polygamy with erotic communal where women are slaves, have slutty clothing, and either don't ever get jealous or not in the mood--every man stereotypical ultimate fantasy.
Today, we don't know 100% what harem culture was exactly like. However, thanks to the millions of legal document relating to slavery and domestic and diaries of women, especially those of nobility, who lived during the Ottoman Empire. Thus the hard part of the this challenge is researching what exactly harem lifestyle was like in the Middle East, during the reign of the Ottoman Empire.
To give you a example of one facet of Ottoman Empire harem lifestyle, I post a link below of the famous case of Semsigul:
http://books.google.com/books?id=fw...m the middle east&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false
As the court case talks about under Ottoman Law, if you got a female slave pregnant, she was considered a free citizen, be emancipated; therefor the slave can no longer be sold. Socially, when a slave got pregnant she would normally marry the person who impregnated, with equal rights going into the marriage, which lead to multiple wives and one type of harem in Ottoman society. In fact a slave owner would typically impregnate a slave because he wanted to marry her.
However as you may read in the link above, Semsigul's case was unique in that it was a slave trader not only raped and impregnated her, but lied about it when he sold the slave to the region's prince. Semsmigul then sued her former slave trader for the right to freedom, and actually won. The court decided not only was Semsmigul a free citizen but that the slave owner had violated the law. Including have to pay back the money he owned the prince for selling the slave, the court stripped slave owner of his economic and social status, as a wealthy merchant, by taking away his slave traders license. Although her child was required to go to the slave trader who impregnated her(**), Semsmigul was then left with the choice of either staying with the abusive slave trader or staying with the prince.
This court case is evidence of how the concept of a harem setting is not as cut and dry as Ottomans had the notation of slave rights(***)
(*)Note Ottoman Empire, by 1700s/1800s was actually very advanced an had pretty good condoms.
(**) The child protection laws and the concept that parents can abuse children had not surfaced in most society around this time, so it was expected that laws would dictate who inherited the child in a divorce, which in most paternal cultures was the male.
(***)Note they didn't exactly call them rights. More it was laws that protected slaves from harm or unfair situations by the common sense of an Ottoman citizen.
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