What were the ethnicities of girls in Ottoman harems? How many girls did a typical harem consist of? What countries were they from?
Answer (1 of 8): Which harem, harem of Sultan or harem of ordinary people? For harem of sultan and for the golden age of ottomans, there are girls from all ethnicities but harem keepers was noticing the balance of brunette girls from Mediterranean coast and blonde girls from Caucasus and Russia. ...
Which harem, harem of Sultan or harem of ordinary people? For harem of sultan and for the golden age of ottomans, there are girls from all ethnicities but harem keepers was noticing the balance of brunette girls from Mediterranean coast and blonde girls from Caucasus and Russia. They generally buy girls from child and raise and educate them well or they accept girls as gifts. Some girls became consorts to sultan (valide sultan/queen mother were choice healthy, beautiful, smart and educated girls for sultan) and if their sons manage to be sultan, they become Valide Sultan (queen mother). For other girls there was a duty period(10-12 years I suppouse) after this period, they generally married with officers (with gifts like diamond earrings and clocks from harem). So Harem of Sultan was source of palace-educated girls for both sultan and officers. For harem of ordinary people,there were not many girls and ethnicity of girls are dependent on era. For first times of ottoman empire girls were generally Greek and other Balkan people. For middle period they were generally middle european and Russian-Ukrainian and for last periods of Ottoman Empire they were generally Caucasian. White girls were generally bought as concubines( like wife but islam permits only four women as wife and it don't satisfy some people perhaps, and for sultan it was necessity because ottoman empire had a strong central government and sultan was not willing to share his power to dynasties by marrying their doughters and also there was many pandemics so it was a necessity to sultan to have many sons). There was not many black slaves in northern parts of ottoman empire but blacks were generally maids, nursemaids and ahiretliks( it is a Turkish term to describe women slaves who are assistants-friends, literally “ until/for judgement day”). After abolition of slavery(or slave trade) in Ottoman Empire they were mainly Caucasian and specially in africa, African(because Caucasians were selling their girls to traders and slavery was still strong in Africa)
Modern Turks have to thank their ancestors for having such a foresight and self hate. Deep down the sultans knew that whites are the most attractive race and the original turkomans are subhumans. Thanks to generations of white washing Turks are now the whitest among ethnics. Sands, curries and rice didn’t have such luck, kek.
