TRAINING FOR THE HAREM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8270, 31 May 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

TRAINING FOR THE HAREM.

The Review Britannique contains an article descriptive of the training of girls for harems. Their education is begun at a very early age, children of from seven to ten being usually chosen for the purpose. The girls are then sent to a regular harem school, where they are educated and taught various accomplishments. Those intended for the Sultan's harem are taught music and French ; if, however, as they grow older they are found to bo stupid or wanting in good looks, they are sold as slaves to the lower nobility. Girls from Persia and Afghanistan are in great demand, particularly from the latter country. Circassians generally supply the Turkish slave market nob only with their own children, but with girls who have been stolen in their infancy from Russia and the Roumanian provinces of Hungary. Tho gipsies, it is stated, up to the present time entice young children away from their homes, and travel with them to the market of Top-Hane, where there is a constant demand for good-looking girls. Some few years ago these thefts became so common that the Hungarian Government instituted an inquiry into the subject, and since then the trade has decreased ; but it is still carried on secretly to a certain extent. One of the rules of the Sultanic harem is that when a slave has reached the age of twenty-five, and does not meet with the approval of the Sultan, she in immediately removed and married to one of tho Court officials, whose taste is not consulted upon the subject, but who acquiesces in tho inevitable with true Oriental indifference.