Word: harems
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...religious system notorious for its human sacrifices, which annually destroyed many slaves and king's favorites to pacify the local gods. These customs were continued until Benin was subdued by the British in 1897. Today scarcely a trace remains of the ancient city, with its famous palace harem lodging the king's 900 wives...
...stages he was half-blinded and paralyzed by fever. Quarrels with his lieutenant John Hanning Speke, who went on alone to discover Victoria Nyanza, echoed for 20 years after. To escape them, Burton went to Salt Lake City to have a look at the Mormons. Brigham Young's harem reminded him of a "large English hunting stable" and after a brief taste of the prevailing moral strictness he sailed for home. Between trips he had asked Isabel to marry him, had been put off only because of violent opposition from her mother. This time she said yes. Then began...
...idea of a harem is the one frequently pictured in comic cuts, in which a worried sultan or equally worried eunuch is completely surrounded by a bored beauty chorus. Proud purists who know enough to pronounce harem "hareem" may have suspected that this picture was misleading. After conning Mr. Penzer's careful study of the Turkish harem as it once flourished in Constantinople, they can be sure...
Since 1909, when the Young Turks drove out Abd ul-Hamid II, there has been no harem in Turkey. Constantinople's Seraglio is now being converted into one of Istanbul's museums. British Investigator Penzer, Master of Arts, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, snooped all through it time & again, took photographs where he was allowed, drew plans, read everything relevant he could lay hands on, calls his report the fullest to date. Much of that report was of interest only to historians and architects, but some of it makes eye-opening reading to vicarious snoopers and plain...
...harem's boom days (16th Century) the Chief Black Eunuch bossed some 600 to 800 of his kind; the Sultan Validé headed 1,200 women. Of these the Sultan legally married only four, but might go a-roving among the other 1,196. To pass the time, the women-in-waiting sometimes amused themselves with the eunuchs (who were of three types), sometimes with each other. Palace plots were common, and occasionally the Sultan cleared the atmosphere by wholesale drowning. That at least one of these occurrences was of fairly recent date is indicated by the story...