Talk:Harem/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Secondary Sources for the Quran Verse

I found a secondary source article by Nikki Keddie published in the Journal of World History here are some quotes that may help our discussion:

Other verses, however, indicate that after Muhammad had taken several wives and had some problems with men talking to these wives, there was a revelation saying that men should talk to the Prophet's wives only from behind a curtain and that his wives should be limited in other ways as well. The Prophet's wives apparently came to be subject to types of veiling and seclusion that resembled those later followed by the urban upper and middle classes. It would be simplistic to say, however, that later veiling was simply an emulation of the practices of the Prophet's wives. In her book on Muhammad's favorite wife, A'isha, Nabia Abbott notes that this turn toward veiling the wives was itself a reflection of greater prosperity among the Muslim ruling group, which enabled them to hire servants and to keep women from duties outside the home, and also of the Muslims' greater contact with surrounding societies where women were veiled.

The divergences went mostly in the direction of reviving and reinforcing patriarchal tribal practices, as in rules of inheritance, or else in adopting customs from the Byzantines and Persians, such as veiling and seclusion, and reading those customs back into the Qur'an.

Seraphimsystem (talk) 12:23, 3 April 2017 (UTC)12:15, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's the first RS we have explicitly stating that seclusion was adopted from the Byzantines and Persians. I'm not sure there's anything else we can use from these quotes directly, but there's possibly more relevant discussion in Abbott's book. It's hard to find on paper, but it's available from U of Chicago in PDF. It's an old book, though, and at a first glance not much cited in post-Leila Ahmed sources. Eperoton (talk) 23:00, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Section reorg

Seraphimsystem Please stop attempting major reorganizations of this content without prior discussion, especially when you refuse to review the sources I've shared with you. Your new version arbitrarily deviated from what the sources said in detail, and introduced confusion not only of different epochs (Chatterjee is talking about the Delhi Sultanate; you're off by three centuries with the Mughals) but even different millenia and continents (Moscovite Russia is ancient near east??) Please discuss your proposed changes in this section incrementally. Also please don't make unsourced changes saying you will source them later. This isn't your personal sandbox.

I see you have no intention of letting me enjoy my trip without worrying about you trying to ram through major changes, but we will proceed with this discussion at a deliberate pace. I'm open to reasonable reorganization proposals, but they have to be carefully coordinated with what the sources actually say. As for Ahmed, she makes that statement on p. 27 about "women in Muslim societies". If you have the book, you can see that yourself. If you don't, I'll provide a full quote in a few days when I'm back home. Eperoton (talk) 13:22, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Please review WP:OWNERSHIP, if I made a mistake on Chatterjee I'm sorry. You should have included that information in your edit, I am having a hard time cleaning up after you. You are free to improve it yourself. There is a lot of material to add and I would be able to get more work done if you didn't cause a major problem for every edit. The reorganization is necessary, there is too much to say about economics, and a lot to add from Ahmed about the ideal of seclusion. The background section is growing unwieldy and covers too many topics. Seraphimsystem (talk) 13:31, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Argh, I see that you've already done much of this reorg at some earlier point while I wasn't keeping a close enough tab on your flurries of edits. Look, you've been making all kinds of changes without my interference or objection. Do you see me edit warring with you over disputed points? No, I'm keeping to the talk page while the dispute is playing out. I'm not imposing my judgement on discretionary issues; I'm only opposing misrepresentation of sources which I have and you apparently don't. It's completely contrary to community standards to do a major reorg of material while we're disputing it and without letting me know. Eperoton (talk) 13:35, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I will address specific points if you raise them calmly. It is hard to deal with a flurry of accusations. I am making every effort to represent the sources accurately. I will review the articles, but I have not made any changes, aside from cleaning up excessive citations. I am not sure why you feel I have misrepresented the sources. I did add intext attribution where it was appropriate. There is significant dispute over this, and another editor above has also said that this would be better organized into separate sections. I also have more material to add, but I am making changes slowly because I know you will want to offer input. Seraphimsystem (talk) 13:42, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

You also need to clean up your citations for Leila Ahmed, you are using the same page cite for everything. I should not have to guess which quote you are using. Seraphimsystem (talk) 13:44, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Did I make any unsourced changes? Seraphimsystem (talk) 13:59, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

My patience is long, but you've finally managed to snap it. You'll receive the usual notification when I have time to file a complaint at the admin noticeboard. Eperoton (talk) 14:04, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the sources, but you have been pushing to use wording in the article that emphasizes stereotypes about women and Muslim women in particular - I have had to edit out language like confined, "slave servant", brothel numerous times. The citations are messy and the content is often imprecise and poorly worded. I have to spend more time cleaning up after you, and managing your endless complaints then improving the article. I would like to move on to the sections about Orientalism, writings of harem women, and the sultanate of women, without having to worry about your threats to go to admin while I am trying to refimprove and expand this important C-Class Women's History article. Seraphimsystem (talk) 14:22, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, in multiple places you've changed language which reflected the word choices used in the cited sources, apparently without trying to find out what the source says. I don't know anything about "slave servant", but the other two words were taken directly from sources and I could find no reason consistent with NPOV not to use those words. This has been a pattern, and at this point I feel like I have to comb the content I had sourced every day from start to finish to spot new instances of it. It's a good example of why I'm looking for admin involvement. Eperoton (talk) 18:27, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I do not remember changing anything without the source in front of me. I have corrected your language to better reflect the sources, and only after I have reviewed them. I have removed jargon. I have consistently objected to using language that, when taken out of context, perpetuates sterotypes of women during this period. I have objected to your introducing complex issues to the article without doing the work to add context. I have had to do this myself, and it has kept me from working on sections I am interested in like secondary sources about the writings of women who lived in the harem, which were published to challenge these kinds of Orientalist stereotypes. These stereotypes are widely challenged in secondary sources. My understanding is that this is not considered POV pushing in women's history articles. What is the POV you feel I am pushing? If you spent as much time working on the article as you did on stalking my edits, I am sure it would be FA by now. It seems peculiar that you are this involved checking my edits for an article that was in such poor condition and full of unsourced content when I started editing. Seraphimsystem (talk) 19:23, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Some of this doesn't describe what you've been doing, and some of this are not valid grounds for what you've been doing, as I've already tried to explain multiple times. I will have to spend time recording some facts about what's been happening here and then we can discuss facts instead of exchanging vague assertions. I've always been ready to have a policy-based discussion of your concerns about the text I sourced myself, but any attempts to have such discussions were overtaken by a wack-a-mole of ever-shifting objections and a steamroller of undiscussed changes. Is there a point of spending pages of talk space discussing a sentence (as routinely happens on WP) when the entire section is going to be unexpectedly refactored while the discussion is going on? It's a waste of time, and I don't want to invest more time in detailed discussions unless there's a change in the process. Eperoton (talk) 22:33, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

You aren't really making sense anymore, please do that. You introduce Ideal of Seclusion and now I have to write about it. You introduce the verse on veiling, you should write about it. Why do I have to go back to your source and fix your cherry picked quotations? One or two lines you picked out is not enough. You have been disruptive and made it impossible to improve the article. You are the one who spends hours talking about a badly written sentence when you should be adding context to the article. The article is start-class, there are going to be changes. What you are saying is bizarre. It's not an FA article with broad consensus that has passed multiple reviews. I don't need to have my edits approved by you. If you were editing competently we wouldn't be having a problem, period. The only other page I have ever had a problem on is anything in Israel-Palestine wiki, which is why I (mostly) stay out of there. Seraphimsystem (talk) 23:44, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I think you are a competent editor in Islamic studies, but you have been extremely insensitive and unresponsive to the women's history angle of this article. Islam is an important part of this article, but it needs to be added in carefully, with sensitivity to the copious literature on Orientalism and the social and cultural context that influenced Islam. I think you should consider stepping away from this article, but if you would prefer to proceed to admin we can hash this out again there. Seraphimsystem (talk) 01:12, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Citation Format

Any objections to switching to sfn format - we have started having some problems with page numbers and duplicate citations for Leila Ahmed so this may be a good time to switch. Sandbox remarks not withstanding, I can't really continue editing until we reach agreement about citations. Seraphimsystem (talk) 15:43, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

No objection, thanks. Eperoton (talk) 18:15, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

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Chinese, Indian and Jewish 'Harems'

My Bookkeeper's Grand-Father had many wives, as was common before Mao. She has countless cousins. She describes how the back part of the house and the back garden were the women's and infants' area, totally unseen by anyone outside the family. No wonder there are only references to the Imperial Court. The extent of polygamy in China seems to be largely unknown outside China, and never mentioned along with other non-Western customs.

while I am writing about Women's Quarters, that also still exists in Orthodox Jewish homes, especially where there are extended families in connected houses etc, something also unseen by outsiders and not documented, I must correct the idea that a Harem, or Women's Quarters, is principally one of sex and seduction, but the truth would be that most of the women would be breast-feeding or pregnant and not available for reproductive sex.

In Brahmin families in Kumaon, the low attic under the roof was women's quarters with extended families ruled by the Mother-in-Law, but it is something I observed and is not documented anywhere. Relying on published, peer-reviewed references is very limiting. NaumTered (talk) 06:27, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

PS. I guess my fault is not having published what I know, so I could anonymously quote myself. NaumTered (talk) 06:27, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Victoria was Queen from 1837-1901

“The lustful Turk” may well be a 19th century novel that epitomized orientalism. If it was published in 1828 is wasn’t Victorian. E A (talk) 22:20, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Uncited sources.

There are many references to uncited sources. Most may be ancient but several are modern. This one may be a combination of both: "(Ctesias, frg. 16 (56) in Jacoby, Fragmente III/C, p. 471)". User-duck (talk) 16:33, 13 July 2021 (UTC)