How long does it take to read The Imperial Harem?
The Imperial Harem by Leslie P. Peirce takes about 6 hours 51 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 51 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1993. 374 pages, about 102,850 words.
14 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 11 hours 26 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 51 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 17 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The unprecedented political power of the Ottoman imperial harem in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is widely viewed as illegitimate and corrupting. This book examines the sources of royal women's power and assesses the reactions of contemporaries, which ranged from loyal devotion to armed opposition. By examining political action in the context of household networks, the author demonstrates that female power was a logical, indeed an intended, consequence of political structures. Royal women were custodians of sovereign power, training their sons in its use and exercising it directly as regents when necessary. Furthermore, they played central roles in the public culture of sovereignty--royal ceremonial, monumental building, and patronage of artistic production. This text argues that the exercise of political power was tied to definitions of sexuality. Within the dynasty, the hierarchy of female power, like the hierarchy of male power, reflected the broader society's control for social control of the sexually active.
Subjects: Harems, Harem, Women in politics, Kings and rulers, Wives, Social conditions
