Nothing could be more preposterous, or further from the reality. For monogamy and not polygamy is the rule in the Ottoman Empire especially in Anatolia, and always has been. The Koran does, indeed, permit polygamy but under such restrictions that a plurality of wives is confined to those who are able to make due provision for their support. And even among the wealthy monogamy is daily becoming more prevalent. Thus the late Sultan, Mohammed V, unlike some of his polygamous predecessors, had but a single wife and to her, also unlike his predecessors, he was legally married. Indeed, so unpopular has polygamy become among enlightened Mussulmans that an eminent authority on the subject declares that “if Mohammedanism had a Pope and a Church, in a word, an authority always living and invested with the right to modify the precepts of the Koran, in order to adapt them to the needs of the age, it is almost certain that polygamy would already have disappeared.”[116] Much of the prevailing misconception concerning the harem life in the Orient arises from the lamentable ignorance in our western lands regarding the true meaning of the word harem. To many who should know better it is synonymous with a place of debauchery, whereas, it is, on the contrary, the very opposite of this. Derived from the Arabic word _harim_, Turkish _harem_, it signifies anything forbidden or a sacred thing or place. Thus the part of a Moslem’s home which is assigned for the exclusive use of his wife and children, for their female servants and friends is called the harem. It is their sanctuary to which no males are admitted except the immediate members of the family. It may be but the half of a Bedouin “House of hair,” or the wing of a marble palace on the Bosphorus but it is still the harem--the sacred abode, the _sanctum sanctorum_, of the feminine members of the household and women visitors.[117] In ordinary Ottoman houses the harem occupies the upper story and is the best and most commodious part of the building. The usual term employed to designate the wife’s apartment is _haremlik_, while that occupied by the husband--his reception room where he receives his male friends--is known as _selamlik_, and is generally on the ground floor. The women’s apartment is always recognized by its screened windows. The occupants of the _haremlik_ can thus see everything in the immediate vicinity without being seen. The name _harem_ applies not only to the wife’s part of the home but also to the sections reserved for women on tram cars and steamers, and to the women’s waiting rooms in railway stations and women’s compartments on railway trains. The harem, thus understood, is an institution that has very much to recommend it. It secures its occupants a privacy which, in the estimation of Oriental women, more than counterbalances their apparent loss of liberty.