Anna Harriette Leonowens was an Anglo-Indian or Indian-born British travel writer, educator, and social activist.
Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the UK suffragette movement and helped women win the right to vote. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
Ibrahim was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1640 until 1648. He was born in Constantinople, the son of Sultan Ahmed I by Kösem Sultan, an ethnic Greek originally named Anastasia.
A governess is a largely obsolete term for a woman employed as a private tutor, who teaches and trains a child or children in their home. A governess often lives in the same residence as the children she is teaching. In contrast to a nanny, the primary role of a governess is teaching, rather than meeting the physical needs of children; hence a governess is usually in charge of school-aged children, rather than babies.
Hürrem Sultan, also known as Roxelana, was the chief consort and legal wife of the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. She became one of the most powerful and influential women in Ottoman history as well as a prominent and controversial figure during the era known as the Sultanate of Women.
Harem refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A harem may house a man's wife or wives, their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic servants, and other unmarried female relatives. In harems of the past, slave concubines were also housed in the harem. In former times some harems were guarded by eunuchs who were allowed inside. The structure of the harem and the extent of monogamy or polygamy has varied depending on the family's personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs. Similar institutions have been common in other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations, especially among royal and upper-class families, and the term is sometimes used in other contexts. In traditional Persian residential architecture the women's quarters were known as andaruni, and in the Indian subcontinent as zenana.
Safiye Sultan was the Haseki Sultan of Murad III and Valide Sultan of the Ottoman Empire as the mother of Mehmed III and the grandmother of Sultans Ahmed I and Mustafa I. Safiye was also one of the eminent figures during the era known as the Sultanate of Women. She lived in the Ottoman Empire as a courtier during the reigns of seven sultans: Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II, Murad III, Mehmed III, Ahmed I, Mustafa I and Osman II.
The Imperial Harem of the Ottoman Empire was the Ottoman sultan's harem – composed of the wives, servants, female relatives and the sultan's concubines – occupying a secluded portion (seraglio) of the Ottoman imperial household. This institution played an important social function within the Ottoman court, and wielded considerable political authority in Ottoman affairs, especially during the long period known as the Sultanate of Women.
Ottoman court was the culture that evolved around the court of the Ottoman Empire.
Esperanza Malchi also spelled Malk or Malkhi was a Jewish Ottoman businesswoman. She was the influential favorite and Kira of Valide Sultan Safiye.
Nawal Elsaadawi was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician. She wrote numerous books on the subject of women in Islam, focusing on the practice of female genital mutilation in her society. She was described as "the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World", and as "Egypt's most radical woman".
Princess Zainab Nazli Hanim was an Egyptian princess from the dynasty of Muhammad Ali Pasha and one of the first women to revive the tradition of the literary salon in the Arab world, at her palace in Cairo from the 1880s until her death.
Sophie de Bouteiller, known by her pseudonym Henriette Browne, was a French Orientalist painter.
Halime Sultan was a consort of Sultan Mehmed III, and the mother of Sultan Mustafa I. The first woman to be Valide Sultan twice and the only to be Valide twice of a same son. She had at least four children with Mehmed: two sons Şehzade Mahmud and Mustafa I, and two daughters Hatice Sultan and Şah Sultan. She was de facto co-ruler as Valide Sultan from 22 November 1617 to 26 February 1618 and from 19 May 1622 to 10 September 1623, because her son was mentally instable. Halime was also one of the prominent figures during the era known as the Sultanate of Women.
Huda Sha'arawi or Hoda Sha'rawi was a pioneering Egyptian feminist leader, suffragette, nationalist, and founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union.
Eugénie Le Brun also known as Madame Rushdi was a French-born early Egyptian feminist intellectual, influential salon host, and close friend of Huda Sha'arawi.
Out El Kouloub (1899–1968) also known as Qut-al-Qulub or Qut al Qulub al Demerdashiyya, was a female Arab writer. Much confusion arises over her three names as she has been a prominent writer in many languages including Arabic and French. She grew up in Cairo, but eventually fled when the Nasser regime came to power. Her most famous work is Ramza, and while it is considered fiction, many scholars view portions of it through an autobiographical lens. Because of her extensive travels to Europe,, Kouloub was very well received abroad. Her work was demanded by many cultures. All of her books were written in French and some have been translated into English, German, Arabic, Dutch, and Indonesian.
Grace Mary Ellison was a British journalist. She wrote several books about Turkey. Though not herself a trained nurse, she was founder of the French Flag Nursing Corps during World War I.
Elizabeth Marsh (1735–1785) was an Englishwoman who was held captive in Morocco for a brief period after the ship she was traveling from Gibraltar to England to unite with her fiancé was intercepted by a Moroccan corsair and overtaken by its crew. Marsh revealed the experiences of her captivity through her captive narrative,The Female Captive: A Narrative of Fact Which Happened in Barbary in the Year 1756, Written by Herself, published more than a decade after her return from captivity. The Female Captive documents Marsh's misfortunes after she and her shipmates were captured by Moroccan sailors, becoming the first captive barbary narrative written in English by a woman author. In the published version, Marsh also added quite a few details that helped reframe her narrative in a more novelistic form and that heightened the sense of danger she felt as well as created dramatic tension around the question of whether or not she would escape. Marsh's narrative is an important contributor to the larger genre of European women's captivity narratives, which frequently featured female resistance to captivity and sexual violence.
Elsa Cecilia Maria Lindberg-Dovlette was a Swedish writer and Persian princess, known for her stories from a harem, an environment little understood in Europe at the time. Born in Stockholm to Finnish parents, she married a Persian prince in 1902 and moved into a harem, initially in Constantinople and later in Monaco. She wrote about harem life informed by her own experience, particularly that of being a European in an Asian culture. Her stories covered the complexity of harem life in the Ottoman Empire in the period before the First World War when traditional beliefs and practices were being challenged by new ideas. The books proved popular and were translated into Dutch, Finnish, French and German.
