Aus dem Inhalt (38 Beitrage): V. M. Alpatov, Female Variant of Japanese Z. Anayban, The Women of Tuva in the Context of the Transformation Period in Russia. Birtalan, Ada: A Harmful Female Spirit in the Mongolian Mythology and Folk Belief E. Boikova, Common-Law Marriage in Pre-Revolutionary Mongolia D. Chmielowska, The Image of Woman in Turkish Literature in the Second Half of the 20th Century M. Dobrovits, Maidens, Towers and Beasts M. R. Drompp, From Qatun to Refugee: The Taihe Princess among the Uighurs B. Frey Naf, Compared With the Women the a Menfolk have little Business of their own." - Gender Division of Labour in the History of the Mongols M. Galik, The Twenty-Fourth Nasreddin? Two Women in Wang Meng's Xinjiang Stories J. Giessauf, Mulieres Bellatrices oder Apis Argumentosa? Aspekte der Wahrnehmung mongolischer Frauen in abendlandischen Quellen des Mittelalters M. I. Gol'man, The Mongolian Women in the Russian Archives of the XVIIth Century W. Heissig, Zum Motiv der Hexenverbrennung in der Mongolischen Volksdichtung F. G. Hisamitdinova, The Place and Role of the Bashkir Woman in Family and Society: The Present and the Past.

This Turkish bestseller tells the story of a real-life Sephardic Jewish woman who gained access to Suleiman the Magnificent.

A fascinating illustrated history of one of the strangest, and cruelest, cultural institutions ever devised. A worldwide best seller, translated into twenty-five languages. “I was born in a konak (old house), which once was the harem of a pasha,” writes Alev Lytle Croutier. “People around me often whispered things about harems; my own grandmother and her sister had been brought up in one.” Drawing on a host of firsthand accounts and memoirs, as well as her own family history, Croutier explores life in the world’s harems, from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, focusing on the fabled Seraglio of Topkapi Palace as a paradigm for them all. We enter the slave markets and the lavish boudoirs of the sultanas; we witness the daily routines of the odalisques, and of the eunuchs who guarded the harem. Here, too, we learn of the labyrinthine political scheming among the sultan’s wives, his favorites, and the valide sultana—the sultan’s mother—whose power could eclipse that of the sultan himself. There were the harems of the sultans and the pashas, but there were also “middle-class” harems, the households in which ordinary men and women lived out ordinary—albeit polygamous—lives. Croutier reveals their marital customs, child-rearing practices, and superstitions. Finally, she shows how this Eastern institution invaded the European imagination—in the form of decoration, costume, and art—and how Western ideas, in turn, finally eroded a system that had seemed eternal. Juxtaposing a rich array of illustrations—Western paintings, Turkish and Persian miniatures, family photographs, and even film stills—Croutier demystifies the Western erotic fantasy of “the world behind the veil.” This revised and updated 25th anniversary edition of Harem includes a new introduction by the author, revisiting her subject in light of recent events in Turkey, and the world.

Rönkä is the only Finn to have received the prestigious Glass Key Award for crime fiction in Scandinavia