Beyond the Sublime Porte: The Grand Seraglio of Stambul

by Barnette Miller, Halide Edib (Introduction)

281 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

Reviews

[Tucker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Barnette Miller was a professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She traveled to see the Turkish harem soon after the Ottoman Empire fell. It is not surprising that her text is in large part an architectural description, and there are several diagrams of the building, including a foldout illustration.

There are eunuchs throughout the book [read more at Dead Men Blogging], but they are described almost as part of the furniture in the way that they performed certain functions. I remember only one, Haji Bektash, who is mentioned by name. There's no direct examination of the gender and racial dynamics in this political system, though it may be possible to infer some of her perceptions and positions based on a few general comments she made about how its power functioned.

N. M. Penzer followed her model to a large extent when, five years after Miller's book was published, he published a writeup of his own visit to the palace, but he scraped together a separate chapter to attempt to explain the eunuchs, goofy though it was.