Abstract:

This paper will analyze how the female authors approached the polygamy and positions of Caucasian concubines among Ottoman elites during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite the fact that Orientalist Western authors and travel writers depicted the East as a place of the harem, reserved solely for men's sexual pleasure, Muslim women authors describe women in harem in the Ottoman Empire with their social responsibilities and their service as stewards, housekeepers,, nannies, and maids. They were paid for their housekeeping services. Surprisingly, female authors did not include the sad stories of slave girls and their pain during the Ottoman and early period of the Republic of Turkey. This paper will focus only on Caucasian concubines in the novels of two Ottoman Muslim women authors such as Fatma Aliye, who also wrote the first book entitled "Women in Islam" in 1891/1892, and Halide Edib, a self-exiled women author who wrote novels during both the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. These conservative women authors depicted a different life for concubines than Western authors, aiming to defend Islamic law (sharia) and the dynamics of Ottoman social life. They highlight the status of concubines in their masters' mansions, their relationships with their masters, the length of their stay, their acquired assets, and their rights in their novels. The dilemma for these authors is that, despite coming from Ottoman elites and defending women's rights, they ignored the fact that concubines lost their freedom at an early age.