Were the Real Harems, Viziers and Sultans of Ancient Arabia Anything like the Way Hollywood Presented Them?
Hollywood movies have long provided most Americans with their conception of such things as a sultan and a harem. These things really did exist, but were they anything like what was presented in those black and white movies? The sultan was actually the term given to the leader of the Ottomans during the days of their glorious empire. The sultan was actually something of a precursor to his later European counterpart, the monarch endowed with absolute power. The comparison does not fit perfectly, however, because although the sultan enjoyed absolute power in theory, he was constrained by the expectation that all decisions would be fair and just. (Something no one ever expected of a king or queen.) This idea of fair justice went far beyond the political arena, though, since that embrace of political justice was intricately tied to ideas about personal justice. Although perhaps corrupted over time, these ideas related to justice are an elemental aspect of Middle Eastern thought, connected s
